The "Hadji Girl" Debate and the Fog of War

With all the news from and about Iraq last week the brouhaha over the video of a marine singing a song about using a little girl as a shield and laughing when she is killed might seem to be a tempest in a teapot. If you want to hear it and read the lyrics (see below) you can just google it. If you do you will find yourself transported to the world of the nutty right-wing blogosphere where the song, as well as the war, is praised and no opportunity is lost in dissing the left and the arch villains, "liberals" and others, who don’t find war and killing to be noble patriotic pursuits.

To understand what is going on here we need to see it in terms of both Bush’s sneaking into and out of Iraq last week, and the congressional "debate" rejecting a deadline for troop withdrawal, as well as the news about the murder of civilians at Haditha. This war is so lost that after three years the US still has no control anywhere outside of the Green Zone and the president can only make "surprise" visits—i.e., the security is so unstable that he must be smuggled into the country, can only stay a few hours, and then rushed out. Despite all the hoopla on TV about visiting the troops, it is not lost on them that the situation is so dangerous that Bush can’t hang around very long. Most of them would probably have loved to leave with him. They won’t be doing that anytime soon as long as the right is in power.

Despite the ongoing and degenerating bloodbath we are responsible for in Iraq, our brave stay at home senators and representatives can’t bring themselves to see this bungling unjustified war for what it is. Here is the Speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, bloviating about our noble mission. "It is a battle we must endure and one in which we can and will be victorious. The alternative would be to cut and run and wait for them to regroup and bring the terror back to our shores." (New York Times, 6/16/06)

So the old canard linking Iraq with 9/11 is still being dishonestly bandied about. The right-wing spinmeisters and politicos feel no shame sending American troops off based on known lies! Hastert continues, ""It is time for this House of Representatives to tell the world that we know it [our cause is noble] too [along with the troops he lied to], that we know our cause is right and that we are proud of it."

Another Republican who has no shame telling lies to the troops, as well as to those who elected him, is Representative Charlie Norwood of Georgia, who asks (in the same issue of the Times), with respect to supporting the war: "It is time to stand up and vote. Is it Al Qaeda, or is it America." So it you don’t vote for the Big Lie you must be for Al Qaeda. Everyone who knows anything about Iraq knows that we are responsible for the small Al Qaeda group that formed in the country after we invaded it (experts estimate about 5% of the insurgency may be sympathetic to Al Qaeda.) Truth is not a Republican strong point.

The Haditha massacre must surely be a blemish on the "noble cause." We are asked by John Crawford, an Iraqi war vet, to think like a GI if we want to understand what happened at Haditha (NY Daily News 6-18-06) What Crawford tells us is the true Fog of War— where right and wrong, good and evil, and truth and falsehood cannot be discerned. But it is one thing to be in the fog when you are being shot at, it is another to artificially generate the fog in Congress and the mass media to hide the ignoble cause that this war surely is. Crawford says the troops play a game called "Bang! You’re Dead" where they place Iraqi civilians in the cross hairs of their guns a "woman on the way to a bakery, a child walking to school...."

Then you say "Bang! You’re Dead!" But you don’t actually shoot them. "There’s no shot of course because the safety is on."

Maybe Crawford kept his safety on but there are many reports, in the international press and from unembedded reporters, of American troops, snipers particularly, shooting civilians. Iraqi hospitals and doctors have made the same reports. This is not a game that anyone should be playing. But blame Bush and his supporters, not the troops, for starting this criminal war of aggression in the first place. Crawford writes about the pressures on the troops in the field. They are great and it is a miracle that more soldiers don’t snap and become rabid killers as allegedly happened in Haditha. They do, by the way, Haditha has just gotten more publicity. Forget what you see and hear on radio and television, Crawford says, "war is never clean or just or pretty. It’s just killing and dying and insanity." Hastert and his ilk should remember that when they wrap themselves in the flag and talk about noble causes and such other balderdash.

And now about the song that has stirred up such emotions, mostly on the right, "Hadji Girl." This was sung by a marine, Cpl. Joshua Belile, who was video taped during the performance. The song was then posted on the internet, the lyrics published, and we can hear other marines clapping and laughing in the background." "Hadji" is a term, like the N word, that Americans use to describe people of Arabic descent. Here are the lyrics:

Hadji Girl

I was out in the sands of Iraq
And we were under attack
And I, well, I didn’t know where to go.
And the first think I could see was
Everybody’s favorite Burger King
So I threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Then suddenly to my surprise
I looked up and I saw her eyes
And I knew it was love at first sight.
And she said
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl I can’t understand what you’re saying.
And she said
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
Hadji girl I love you anyway.

Then she said that she wanted me to see.
She wanted me to meet her family
But I, well, I couldn’t figure out how to say no.
Cause I don’t speak Arabic.
So, she took me down an old dirt trail.
And she pulled up to a side shanty
And she threw open the door and I hit the floor.
Cause her brother and her father shouted
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They pulled out their AKs so I could see
And they said
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
So I grabbed her little sister and pulled her in front of me.
As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniacally
Then I hid behind the TV
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little f***ers to eternity.
And I said

Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
They should have known they were f***ing with a Marine

To the mortification of the right-wing, Cpl. Belile has apologized for this song and has said, "I will never perform this song again, and I will remove all video and text in relation to this that I have control of."

That should be the end of it, one would think. The lesson is that our troops are truly caught up in the fog of war, the sooner they get home the sooner the fog will lift. Not so for those such as Karen Zautyk who lives in her own moral fog. She writes in the Daily News (6/18) about the apology; "More’s the pity. The kid’s got talent. ’Hadji Girl’ should be recorded. ’Hadji Girl’ would be at the top of charts."

I fear Zautyk may be correct about the charts. This war and the immorality of the Bush administration has caused many, far too many, people to abandon even the most rudimentary moral and ethical views they might have been expected to hold.

Every day this war continues is a day that weakens this nation’s decency [what’s left of it] and democratic traditions. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

Thomas Riggins is the book review editor for PA and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net.