Dark Heart of the Coalition

March 12th, 2006 at 20:18 Björn Hallberg

Owing to Ben Griffin’s hasty but morally courageous departure from the SAS, we have gained a rare glimpse into the behaviour of Americans in Iraq from one of Britain’s finest. In his first interview since opting out last year, he notes that

“As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their college fees. They had no understanding or interest in the Arab culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid and these weren’t isolated cases, this was from the top down. There might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a bit better but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them.”

It should be noted that Griffin, while in Iraq, was working alongside America’s supposedly most outstanding regiment, Delta Force. Opinions of other British soldiers and security contractors corroborate Griffin’s account, describing U.S. troops and officers as racist, incompetent, arrogant and heavy-handed.

Here is a quote from a British security contractor in Iraq about his American counterparts: “I hate those bastards more than the scumbag insurgents.” A British colonel recently returned from a tour in the country said that, in our next war, he would sooner fight alongside the Russians than the US.

“I’ve had conversations with many [US security contractors] and regular US soldiers who are evangelical Christians who see themselves in a crusade against the Muslim hordes. In my view, they’re not much different to the Iraqi militiamen and foreign fighters who see themselves at the heart of a jihad against the Christian crusaders.”

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