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5/21/2004 The disturbing and repulsive behavior of the US military in Iraq, including the Abu Ghraib issue and the recent attack on a wedding party, has me reconsidering how sympathetic I really am for 'the troops'. At one point I approached the whole ordeal with an eye towards blaming the leaders and not the actors. The fact that so much of the armed services is made up of working class folks and is far more reflective of society than even the university that I go to also has made me more favorable to those doing the fighting. As the towns of Fallujah and Najaf (and every other city) were/are being bombarded by the marines my mood started to shift. But still some how I rationalized it by telling myself, well the marines are all fucking wingnuts and murderers with a pathological zeal for violence and killing, they're not even human. Sick part is, they are. And so are the motherfuckers who bombed a wedding party. And so are the fucking mindless idiots from the sticks who tortured Iraqi prisoners. So you begin to see how my resentment towards the actions of this country is boiling over. I am and all of you (assuming you're from the States) are essentially complicit in the attrocities occurring right now. Still, the rational side of my mind chimes in. Not all of the kids in the armed forces are like these people it says. Somehow I really hope that they only represent a small minority but when I look around, when I open my eyes and walk around and see the society that I'm in... I get a really bad feeling that those people are not just a product of it but that they account for a larger percentage. Prone to following orders with an unflagging loyalty, capable of the most inhumane acts because they can say they were just following orders. You know it's funny, Lyndie England actually said that she doesn't think she should be punished for abusing and torturing people because she was just following orders. She was even crying when she said it. This type of thing happened in Nazi Germany and it's happening here. Not that this is a terribly new thing. I've read plenty about the shit that happened in Vietnam. The difference is that this is the first time that I have actually borne witness to what's occuring; the first time in my life that I have been very conscious of what's going on. And it's fucking disturbing. What hope for humanity? No appeal to humanity for sanity and compassion has ever impacted anything. Nevertheless, I am appealing for that now. Right after I wrote this, I got sent this article. Impeccable timing, thanks Geoff, it made me smile. Shit, then I find this article by Mark Morford, a great columnist with the SF Gate. He articulates the ensuing collapse of the empire quite well.
posted by Nathan Hall at 5/21/2004 03:08:00 PM link |
