Dreamers Rise
An Open Notebook
And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight
Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate.
 Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) | |||||
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A sort of electronic broadside, composed of rants and reviews, conceits and speculations, and whatever else feels the need to be here. Issued as chance will have it. Haditha From The New York Times, June 2, 2006: Military and Congressional officials have said they believe that an investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis in Haditha on Nov. 19 will show that a group of marines shot and killed civilians without justification or provocation. Survivors in Haditha say the troops shot men, women and children in the head and chest at close range.And so on. Every time something like this happens, whether it's at My Lai or Abu Ghraib, the script gets dusted off. Our leaders declare how “troubled” and “concerned” they are, promise a full investigation, and insist that anyone found to have committed acts contrary to the rules of war will be prosecuted to the full extent blah blah blah … And of course it was, after all, just a few bad apples. This morning, when I began to write this piece, I paraphrased what I fully expected to hear, that 99% of the men and women serving in Iraq were completely incapable of such horrendous actions. As it turned out, my estimate was low, or less precise; here's in fact what I read later in the day: “We know that 99.9 per cent of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner,” said Mr. Rumsfeld. “We also know that in conflicts things that shouldn't happen do happen.”And again, this time from Brig. Gen Donald Canpbell: While the bulk of our forces, 99.9 percent, serve with honor, there are a small number of individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path.Just in case there's any lingering question about our good intentions in Iraq, we're told there will be “core values” sensitivity training to make sure our men and women in uniform understand that it's not okay to waste non-combattants. We can all breathe easier, then. The new reports concerning the deaths last November at Haditha are now followed by reports of a similar incident (and possible cover-up) at Ishaqi. In that case the US military has quickly stated that, based on its investigations, there was no massacre, that “soldiers had followed all the correct procedures.” In the end it hardly matters, does it? Whether the victims were murdered in cold blood or were just unavoidable “collateral damage,“ like the two women — one pregnant and possibly in labor — who were shot to death at a checkpoint in Samarra when they apparently strayed into the wrong lane, the end result is the same. And I can't get my mind around how the children slaughtered at Haditha were any less innocent or are any less dead than the victims of the atrocities of September 11, 2001. Weren't we supposedly fighting to put an end to that kind of thing, instead of in order to perpetrate it? I suspect that, when all the investigations and prosecutions are over, those who may be judged responsible for what happened at Haditha will not turn out to be sociopathic monsters at all. They will be perfectly, blandly ordinary. (Even the sadistic party animals of Abu Ghraib were, after all, only a little worse than anyone else.) Faced with the same horrific conditions of terror and rage, knowing in the back of your mind that you were only a pawn in the grand designs of fools, would you or I do any better, or could a moment come when we might well snap and blow away anything that breathed? The real responsibility at Haditha, and elsewhere, lies with those for whom war is anything other than a desperate last resort, who pretend that with a little “shock and awe” it can be fought surgically, scientifically, that nobody will have to die who didn't deserve it anyway, and that only a handful of “dead-enders” and incorrigible fanatics will fail to greet our tanks with flowers. June 2, 2006 [ Permalink ]
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