The Good Ol' Boys Good-Time Massacree and Prayer Service
Well, it was bound to happen. You send good-hearted, decent American men and women overseas with expensive weaponry and eventually there's going to be one of those types of situations where they just have to kill everyone they see. Especially when they've been programmed to forget all of their innate human qualities and demonize large groups of people as unholy others that must be killed at any cost. The US military has been caught perpetrating the first unadulterated massacre of Iraqi civilians since the war started, and it appears that we can thank the modern communications industry for providing the evidence via a participating Marine's camera on his cellphone. The sharp minds of the military haven't just bought the rope to hang themselves, but they have constructed the slipknot as well. All of those nifty pics from Abu Ghraib must have really taught the military a lesson.
What makes me laugh in the wake of this story is the idea that this behavior is the first of its kind by US troops in Iraq. Incidents like the shooting of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena or the shelling of a hotel containing numerous members of the international media in Baghdad during the early days of the war were initial indicators of the way in which the US wished to conduct itself in this conflict. At this stage, the war has become a stalemate where US soldiers are targets rather than active participants in their own fate. Psychologically this must be a terrible burden, especially when combined with the propaganda our fighting men and women were fed in the runup to war. When words like liberty and freedom are thrown around by douchebag politicans, it is often a signal that a sizable bloodletting is on the way. The ideals of young soldiers must die as hard as their comrades on the battlefield as they see Iraqis rejecting the cheap knockoff of Western democracy being proffered by the cynics of the Bush gang. No roses strewn in their path, merely improvised explosive devices--which I like to call bombs, by the way--and no end in sight to a war that was illegal from its first days of planning. Ignorant and uneducated people under stress are liable to make very bad decisions, and these bad decisions are compounded when high-powered rifles, xenophobia, heatstroke, dehydration, and racism are factored into the equation.
So-called embedded journalists have provided many stories about the thuggish behavior of US troops in the Iraq conflict. The massacre of Haditha is an outgrowth of the same impulse that led US soldiers to torture prisoners; but it is also an outgrowth of the stunted morality practiced by the Bush gang. Their false piety is supposed to excuse the horrific and violent crimes committed against defenseless human beings on a daily basis in Iraq. In the Haditha incident it appears that numerous crimes were committed--murder and a coverup being the most prominent among them. But these soldiers, if guilty, indict the Bush administration by their actions in much the same way that the privately contracted torturers of Abu Ghraib did. Ultimately the moral responsibility for these deaths rests on the empty head of a panicked, privileged, and overwhelmed asshole who calls himself the President of the United States.
One of the photographs taken from the soldier's cellphone in Haditha shows a mother and child bent over in prayer, stilled forever in death. Shooting unarmed human beings in the head while they are crazed with fear, begging for help from their distant and uninvolved deity--is this an example of the heroism of American soldiers? Perhaps it is the level of transgression that a soldier may attain that impresses the impressionable. After all, killing in war is morally excusable, according to all of the Big Three religious traditions; to wallow in the blood of innocent people must be the ultimate transgressive buzz. And as a soldier, after you've killed them, there are a number of even more transgressive acts that can be indulged. Just let your imagination go as wild as your soul. You are an army of one. When you've finished, don't forget to take a knee for Jesus. Your god is bigger and better than their god.
What makes me laugh in the wake of this story is the idea that this behavior is the first of its kind by US troops in Iraq. Incidents like the shooting of Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena or the shelling of a hotel containing numerous members of the international media in Baghdad during the early days of the war were initial indicators of the way in which the US wished to conduct itself in this conflict. At this stage, the war has become a stalemate where US soldiers are targets rather than active participants in their own fate. Psychologically this must be a terrible burden, especially when combined with the propaganda our fighting men and women were fed in the runup to war. When words like liberty and freedom are thrown around by douchebag politicans, it is often a signal that a sizable bloodletting is on the way. The ideals of young soldiers must die as hard as their comrades on the battlefield as they see Iraqis rejecting the cheap knockoff of Western democracy being proffered by the cynics of the Bush gang. No roses strewn in their path, merely improvised explosive devices--which I like to call bombs, by the way--and no end in sight to a war that was illegal from its first days of planning. Ignorant and uneducated people under stress are liable to make very bad decisions, and these bad decisions are compounded when high-powered rifles, xenophobia, heatstroke, dehydration, and racism are factored into the equation.
So-called embedded journalists have provided many stories about the thuggish behavior of US troops in the Iraq conflict. The massacre of Haditha is an outgrowth of the same impulse that led US soldiers to torture prisoners; but it is also an outgrowth of the stunted morality practiced by the Bush gang. Their false piety is supposed to excuse the horrific and violent crimes committed against defenseless human beings on a daily basis in Iraq. In the Haditha incident it appears that numerous crimes were committed--murder and a coverup being the most prominent among them. But these soldiers, if guilty, indict the Bush administration by their actions in much the same way that the privately contracted torturers of Abu Ghraib did. Ultimately the moral responsibility for these deaths rests on the empty head of a panicked, privileged, and overwhelmed asshole who calls himself the President of the United States.
One of the photographs taken from the soldier's cellphone in Haditha shows a mother and child bent over in prayer, stilled forever in death. Shooting unarmed human beings in the head while they are crazed with fear, begging for help from their distant and uninvolved deity--is this an example of the heroism of American soldiers? Perhaps it is the level of transgression that a soldier may attain that impresses the impressionable. After all, killing in war is morally excusable, according to all of the Big Three religious traditions; to wallow in the blood of innocent people must be the ultimate transgressive buzz. And as a soldier, after you've killed them, there are a number of even more transgressive acts that can be indulged. Just let your imagination go as wild as your soul. You are an army of one. When you've finished, don't forget to take a knee for Jesus. Your god is bigger and better than their god.
posted by alyosha mcbain at 7:31 AM
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