17:10 I can’t do anything here. She needs to get evaced…

17:46 Well it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.

17:48 That’s right.

We see how enormous the power of definition is. In this case, child casualties are not even considered collateral damage, let alone evidence of a grievous or indeed any mistake made by the U.S. helicopter crews. The wounded children are just one more piece of evidence of how perfidious the “insurgents” are since they don’t even hesitate to take their kids into battle.

^{Source: WikiLeaks}

THE DEFINITION OF ENEMIES

At one point in the “Collateral Murder” video, one of the helicopter gunners says of the injured man trying to crawl away, “Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.” Here, too, we see the convergence of violence and the confirmation that it was justified. The gunner wants the man to behave according to the soldiers’ definition of the situation, as an insurgent, so that they can kill him. We observed the same mode of self-fulfilling prophecy in relation to World War II soldiers’ treatment of supposed partisans. In that case, it was the ammunition allegedly found on victims that justified executing them as “terrorists.”

This is a general characteristic of violence in war. The behavior of those defined as the “enemies” confirms the legitimacy of that designation. This has nothing to do with stereotypes, prejudices, or “worldviews.” The only characteristic of “target persons” that counts is that they pose a threat. Any indication to that effect provides sufficient reason to kill. In the Vietnam War, soldiers feared that even babies could be carrying concealed hand grenades. In World War II, children could be considered partisans, just as in the Iraq War they could be regarded as insurgents.

In a voluminous study of the dynamic of violence in the Vietnam War, historian Bernd Greiner cited a series of examples of the “self-evident” identification of enemies. The simplest one was that anyone who tried to flee was automatically an enemy who should be shot. The attempt to escape confirmed suspicions that an individual was a Vietcong.⁸⁵¹ Somewhat more complicated is the discovery of “evidence.” When examining the surveillance protocols, we highlighted the story of the presence of ammunition being used to distinguish supposed partisans from civilians. The same procedure, however illogical it was, was applied in the Vietnam War, where GIs sometimes razed villages in which they had previously deposited Soviet-made ammunition as proof of a Vietcong presence there. The U.S. 9th Infantry Division killed a total of 10,899 people but only secured 748 weapons. That suggests that 14 civilians were murdered for every true Vietcong eliminated. As a justification, soldiers often claimed that the Vietcong were killed before they could go get their weapons.⁸⁵²

It was difficult for American soldiers in Vietnam to precisely identify enemies since the Vietcong waged a guerrilla war. Not knowing whether they were confronted with incognito fighters, men and women, or harmless civilians, created a huge challenge. The lack of orientation soldiers feel in a “war without fronts,” or what we today would call asymmetrical warfare, underscores the compulsive need soldiers feel to establish certainty, particularly under violent conditions. Precisely in situations in which soldiers do not face standard sorts of battle, but can be killed in irregular attacks, explosive traps, and ambushes, their ability to orient themselves is a precondition for survival. Ambush situations also make soldiers feel helpless. As one present-day German sergeant serving in Afghanistan described it: “If you’re ambushed, things get hectic. You require a phase of orientation. Who is being shot at from where? It feels awful, to say the least. The enemy is always at an advantage since he chose the place of the attack and is familiar with it…. I was also glad if I could alight from my vehicle. You may lose some cover, but you’re a much smaller target. And you can act on your own terms again, decide whether to shoot back or hide.”⁸⁵³ Only when a situation of clarity has been restored about who the enemies are do soldiers once again feel secure. Fatally, violence is precisely the means by which orientation can be regained most simply, quickly, and unambiguously. A successful act of violence removes the gray areas.