Hadji Girl
Read this from a conservative American website. I'm not sure where to even begin tearing it apart...perhaps within the "peaceful" confines of the United States. 
Commentary: Marine Iraq song needs context
By PAMELA HESS
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON, June 14 (UPI) -- If you can set aside the grisly final verse of a song composed and performed by a Marine that made its way onto the Internet -- and into headlines -- "Hadji Girl" is an instructive tune.
It is the last verse that caught the attention of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group and watchdog for Muslim rights in the United States.
"I grabbed her little sister and put her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally ... I blew those little f**kers to eternity ...They should have known they were f**king with the Marines."
On Monday the group, known by its initials CAIR, issued a press release decrying the song, which had been posted in March on YouTube.com, a popular Web site that allows users to share their homemade videos.
"The song, posted online in March, tells of a U.S. Marine's encounter with an Iraqi woman," CAIR stated. "Members of the audience, not shown in the video, laughed and cheered wildly for these lyrics."
By the time CAIR issued its statement, the video had been removed. CAIR provided a copy of the objectionable tape on its Web site and demanded the Pentagon punish those involved.
On Tuesday, the Pentagon issued a statement condemning the song. On Wednesday, the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing announced it is conducting a "preliminary inquiry" into the video.
"The video...is clearly inappropriate and contrary to the high standards expected of all Marines," stated the Wing in a press release. Also Wednesday, the composer, 23-year-old Cpl. Joshua Belile, issued an apology "for any feelings that may have been hurt in the Muslim community" and promised not to perform the song again.
"Hadji Girl" hit the Internet at a deeply troubling time, when Marines from one unit are being investigated on allegations of a massacre, and Marines in another unit have been arrested on allegations of murder.
In the clip, Belile steps onto a stage, apparently at Al Asad Air Base in Anbar province, and gives what appears to be an impromptu performance of the song. Boredom is the universal experience in the war and troops have to entertain themselves.
He strums an acoustic guitar and launches into chords reminiscent of Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl."
"Hadji Girl" is a narrative of a Marine who meets a beautiful -- and forbidden -- Iraqi woman, the girl of the title. At the opening of the song the Marine has "hit the deck" -- thrown himself on the ground outside his Humvee. Why is not exactly clear.
He looks up and sees the Iraqi woman's eyes and falls immediately in love.
She says something to him that he can't understand because, he notes wryly, he doesn't speak Arabic.
Her lilting jibberish refrain becomes the chorus of the song. It's lifted almost straight from "Team America," the profane, offensive and hilarious puppet movie produced by the "South Park" creators. Both the show and the movie seem to run on a constant loop in troop tents and recreation centers in Iraq.
What is apparent to the audience, but not to the clueless narrator of the song, is that the woman is his sworn enemy, and is singing about jihad, or holy war.
Blinded by the sexual frustration that is an even more insistent companion to troops in Iraq than the menace of roadside bombs, the narrator -- standing in for the U.S. military -- is the butt of the joke.
He is in the middle of an insurgency with no grasp on the language or culture, and no ability to tell friend from foe.
So when she proposes to take him home to meet her family, and again mumbles something about jihad -- he goes.
She throws open the door and he is confronted by her father and her brother, both of whom are wielding AK-47s and singing the same chorus.
This is where the song takes its dark turn. The two men open fire on the narrator, and he grabs the closest protection: the little sister of the Hadji Girl. He fires back with a grenade.
Suffice it to say, the U.S. military is prohibited from using human shields; the very notion is deplorable.
The context here should be kept in mind: U.S. troops in Iraq face daily ambushes and attacks with roadside bombs -- not everyone, every day, but it is an omnipresent possibility. Every piece of litter on the road could conceal a bomb that can destroy an armored Humvee and its occupants. American troops are periodically fired upon from crowds and are rarely able to shoot back for fear of hitting innocents; the people they fight are less scrupulous.
The "rules of engagement" -- the conditions under which Americans are allowed to fire their weapons -- are appropriately restrictive for a war conducted among civilians, but it feels to many they are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. Most would not have it any other way, but still: they are in a situation where they are rarely allowed to win.
A Marine recently quoted by Newsweek lampooned the rules of engaging a potential car bomb this way: "You're supposed to wave, throw a flashbang, say hi, make a baloney-and-cheese sandwich, shoot in front, shoot the tire, shoot the other tire, have some tea, shoot the engine, then shoot the windshield."
Now, set that irreverence to music -- and what you might come up with is "Hadji Girl," the latest installment in a long tradition of war songs composed by soldiers, for soldiers.
"Hadji Girl" uses hyperbole and the contrast of a sweet melody with a violently twisted ending to capture the frustrations of a counterinsurgency in which the goal is not to win but to hold the line until the struggling Iraqi forces can do so.
It is a war in which 20-year-olds are counseled to have a plan to "kill everyone in the room" in case they have stumbled into an ambush, but told their mission is to "win hearts and minds."
The irony here is that, with the deal-breaking exception of the human shield, the narrator adheres to the rules of engagement: he does not shoot until he is shot at, and he is in a very literal sense trying to win hearts and minds.
The problem is that the song escaped its context, its audience. It was not posted by Belile -- who declined to talk to United Press International Tuesday under orders from his command -- but by someone else who got a tape.
Regarded within the peaceful confines of the United States, it is disturbing. But in a place where the shared experience is the constant threat of death and dismemberment, it's a pressure valve, a fantasy of prevailing when the deck is stacked decidedly against you.
CAIR's complaints are appropriate. So too is the Pentagon's condemnation. The open question is whether Belile will be punished.
It is not too much to ask that U.S. troops obey the laws of war, protect innocent life at the cost of their own, and fight with more restraint than the people shooting at them. We call them heroes: those restrictions are the price of admission.
But to expect a 23-year-old Marine to process the war in a way palatable to polite company, safe behind the lines, may be asking too much.
