Seven marines and a navy corpsman are charged with kidnapping and murder. They allegedly pulled an Iraqi man out of his home and shot him, then placed a gun in his hand and claimed self-defense.
Three soldiers are accused of deliberately allowing three Iraqi detainees to escape just so they'd have an excuse to shoot them.
Twenty-four Iraqi civilians dead in Haditha, including children and an old man in a wheelchair, all deliberately and mercilessly murdered by U.S. marines.
Can we please stop the blanket endorsement of "the troops" now?
It diminishes us as a nation. Everytime I see a Democrat or liberal pundit prattling on about how Bush has mismanaged the war, the whole thing is hurting America's image abroad, but constantly pointing out that he or she supports the troops 100%, I want to ask, Does that mean you support this?
I've never served in the military, and I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like in Iraq. Just by serving there, the grunts on the front lines exhibit a bravery I'll never know. But that doesn't make them better than the rest of us, and to hold them up as shining exemplars of all that is good denies them any individuality, or sense of humanity.
The military's like any workplace. Mostly everybody's just trying to do their job. There are cool people, slackers, nutjobs. And the inevitable alpha dog, who surrounds himself with weaklings. Only in this case, the nutjobs and alpha dogs are bored, frustrated, pissed off and scared shitless. And they have guns.
When prisoners are allowed to escape just so soldiers can take pleasure in shooting them, you're looking at bloodsport pure and simple, The Most Dangerous Game brought to life. Actions like this could only be commited by people who have ceased to even view their enemy as human. They're just a bunch of dak-skinned foreigners, sand monkeys, camel jockeys, fuck them and fuck their shitty country.
This attitude isn't just held by the soldiers on the scene. How could the horrors of Abu Ghraib be swept so quickly under the rug, by both the Bushinistas and their useful idiots in the press, unless there was a feeling that hey, it's us against them, and they aren't like us, if you know what we mean. The first rule of war is to dehumanize your enemy, and in Iraq it is learly working all too well.
The president claims the war is morally justified, so I guess the loss of our humanity is a small price to pay for doing the right thing.
