afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?
Macbeth Act 5, scene 1
Frankly, I'm not as disturbed by the images of torture and mayhem perpetrated by American "warriors" as by some of the public response you can see at Wired.com where Abu Ghraib photos have been published. It's the ones that argue "this is a war and in a war. . ." and the ones that say "but these are Muslims and they would be happy to eat your children, yada, yada" that make me most ashamed to have any association with this self righteous and evil nation. They've made me evil too; Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and their puppet George Bush. I'm part of it because all I do is complain. I don't risk losing my life to end it, nor even my freedom. All I do is blog and go about my life of comfort and safety.
I got a video in my e-mail yesterday. I don't know whether it was staged or real, but it showed some US military personnel walking through an airport while people stood up and applauded. No one could have been thinking of the archive of pictures on view at UnderMars.com They aren't returning from a parade ground, but from hell and a hell the United States of America created with eagerness and enthusiasm and lies.
Men with plastic bags on their heads being beaten, smiling "warriors" posing with corpses, a man's severed penis in a mousetrap, blood and pain and shit; these are things many Americans think "you do in a war" even though you started the war and of course anyone caught up in the grinder is promoted to the ranks of the "terrorists" who bombed New York even though they didn't.
So clap when you see our soldiers; I'm sure nearly all of them are good people, but don't call them warriors. Warriors take scalps, soldiers are responsible for their actions. Warriors represent themselves, soldiers represent us and when there's blood on their hands, it's on our hands too and remember, when John McCain tries to tell you this is noble, this is about protecting your sainted mother, your back yard barbecue and your civil rights - it isn't. It's about water up the nose, the cattle prod up the ass, bloody teeth spilling out like corn from a popper; it's about rape, about shit and piss and blood on the floor being wiped up with the flag we're supposed to worship like some tawdry pagan idol.
It's about millions of homeless innocents, about a lost generation of uneducated children brought up in terror and squalor and hate. It's about people whose crime was fighting for their homes being tortured like John McCain who once was tortured by those whose homes and children he was destroying. It's about evil. It's about me and about you justifying it all by just calling it war.
10 comments:
I agree with you 'cept where it comes to the use of the word "warrior." Warrior has no such connotations in my mind.
Still not a single contractor in Iraq has ever been brought to trial on any criminal charges. We scapegoated a few low level soldiers.
The whole thought of this is about to make me lose my breakfast.
It's all subjective, but to me there's a big difference between a warrior and a soldier. New Guinea tribes have warriors, but they don't have soldiers. The world soldier implies being part of a regular organization; a warrior can be on his own and part of nothing other than himself.
I'm convinced that our army is not full of monsters, but we have enough of them and it seems all to easy to turn someone into a monster under the right circumstances. What we do not have, is the moral high ground.
Of course our military isn't full of monsters. It never has been and hopefully it never will be.
What we do have is a story hungry media that knows positive stories about good people simply ain't news and it don't sell the paper (so to speak). Just about any country boy will tell you that if you turn over enough rocks you'll eventually find something slimy hiding. The reporters do the rock turning.
Words are powerful things and a single word can create several mental images.
As I said, it's not so much that horrible things happen, it's that "patriots" are so instantly willing to downplay them, justify them or simply deny them. You get creeps like Rush saying it's no worse than a fraternity prank when elderly women are raped and tortured and as long as we call it war, we're supposed to suspend all sense of right and wrong.
We have relaxed standards to admit people who aren't qualified to be soldiers and we give them orders that we claim we didn't when they get caught committing crimes. We excuse behavior that we once executed Germans and Japanese and others for. To the average War supported it's only about winning and losing and we're always the greatest country that ever was simply because we say so, not because we act like it. I want very much to be part of a great country, an honorable country and a just country but I'm not sure we ever have been.
That's what gets me.
It's about me and about you justifying it all by just calling it war.
We can call it the Sunday Ice Cream Social, but that's not going to change the behaviors within. There are always a few crazies in any conflict, that step outside the bounds of human decency. But these orders to torture came from the highest level.
And I agree with you - the ho hum way it's treated in this society makes me want to scream!
wow! gr8 post!
yeah, war's hell, all right. but the innocent always suffer most. that's why no country shd go 2 war unless it's unavoidable. u'r absolutely on target re it not being about winning n losing. the supposed fact that things are getting better post-surge is no justification whatever 4 our being in iraq. illegal is illegal. hard 2 w8 till bush & co get indicted.
interesting knee-jerk reaction over michele obama saying she wasn't proud o america b4 now. hell, how cn anyone b proud o it even now? ESPECIALLY now?
we won't restore america's dignity till our current leaders are in the slammer.
It will be a long, uphill climb to get us back on the pedestal we fell off - or rather were pushed off by George.
The torture issue was part of that.
War is the failure of diplomacy, says a retired Colonel in my family. Sometimes it's also the failure of a system that was intended to control the power of a President.
torture alerted folk, but wartime abuses are inevitable, which is more reason 2 avoid unnecessary wars.
re "failure of a system...intended to control the power of a President":
don' 4get, it failed bcuz cheney n his gang made concerted effort 2 make it fail. u see that frontline?:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/
Scary. Notice we have seen or heard from Cheney recently? That's even scarier.
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