i just saw a CBC documentary which featured footage from the front lines (i.e. taken by the soliders themselves) ~ iraq mostly, and then afghanistan. i just watched some american soldiers in iraq torture chickens, taunt iraqi children (who have no comprehension of english) by getting them to say 'i fuck donkeys,' and blow up a turkey! i find myself DISGUSTED ~ having NO REASON to maintain any shred of respect for any of these so-called soldiers. please do not lecture me. these fucking imbeciles do not deserve the title 'soldier.'
and don't make any stupid, lame excuses for such brutish behaviour that makes me feel ashamed of my membership in the human race. many, many humans bear witness to unspeakable horrors, death, carnage, suffering ... and these people do not make children utter pornographic statements, or torture and brutally kill innocent animals! we each take responsibility for our own actions, attitude and behaviour. and we lackc that capacity, then we belong locked up in a psychiatric institute. simple as that. no one will convince me otherwise.
war sucks. when will anyone learn its simply NOT the answer. and it never has provided the answer. one does not simply pull out a bigger gun or a bigger stick with which to beat the opponent who pisses us off, or strikes some humility into us by reminding us we do not own or control the fucking universe! guess what? that's called bullying. its resulted in columbine, taber, and there have been other bully-related shootings, i'm sure. unless you've been in a coma for several years, you know of what i speak. how can we, in all honesty or seriousness, tell our children violence solves no problems, all-the-while we systematically engage in some fucked up politically shrouded religious war?
i have had ENOUGH of this disgusting hypocrisy! am i alone, here?
here's a novel thought. how about we just drop that mythical notion that any religion anywhere in the world represents pure evil? that means lose the islam-bashing. its lame. its old. its no different than anti-semitism, or hatred of people with coloured skin. IMHO. before you protest loudly ... ask yourself, have you ever endured feeling the taunts and hatred of another, simply based on your ethnicity or skin colour? i'm guessing most of the loudest protesters have no idea what that feels like.
that's all. just wanted to colour this page with a little 'brown crayon' ... (that's what they called me when i was a kid). coz ... in the end ... we all hold membership to that same certain party ~ HUMANITY. remember that?
ps. liars! watch the video ... dubya's watch, indeed did get lifted from his wrist. undeniable. no, dubya did not put it in his pocket! if you expect anyone to believe that, then i'm guessing those are the ones who are still waiting to see where those WMDs might have gotten stashed by saddam. HA HA.
its official. i feel embarrassed to call myself human. and i feel that way at least once daily. and ... i have this growing urge to somehow apologize to the earth and the other (i.e. non-human) species that occupy said earth for the carnage, stupidity and downright brutality my own species has and continues to inflict upon this planet ... and universe, even (hey, we're even littering space, now).
let's face it ... WE SUCK. what shall we do about it? anything? or just pretend we're on the titanic ... and do sweet fuck all?
any thoughts?
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
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This means challenging my self to compassionate, encouraging, genuine and hostile-free exchanges. It also means contemplating my reaction to the thoughts, feelings and expressions of others, prior to acting upon them. 
11 comments:
Your not alone in your thinking.
My feelings about this are somewhat complex. I haveknown many combat veterans, some of whom were close friends at one time. I understand them to a large extent. Furthermore, many of them did not like what they became in combat.
I asked one friend, a Vietnam vet, point-blank had he ever killed a child. His response: "Hell yeah. We killed children right and left"
He understood very well the horror of his statement, and he's certainly not proud of his and his comrades actions. To be honest, he was more angry than anything else. I don't think he ever understood why he did it, other than the fact that he was obeying the orders of a superior, who told him to shoot any person in an unauthorized zone (soldiers in Afghanistan received the same order, BTW). He had also heard rumors of children and women attack US troops.
While he doesn't know why they did what they did, I could take a good guess, however.
Poeple who have not experienced military life, or seen it up close, might find it difficult to understand the indoctrination that takes place during boot camp, and during the first few weeks stateside. From the moment a soldier receives that really awful haircut to the time they have been disciplined through PT, screamed at, punished for thinking independently, etc., the process forces the individual to forfeit their identity to a signficiant degree.
Yeah, I know: post-Nuremberg, following orders is no excuse. Unfortunately you can pretty much throw that out of the window. An indoctrinated soldier along with a group of peers doesn't have enough sense of himself to object, and even if he did the consequences he would have to pay are enormous--witness the courtmartial of Sgt. Camillo Mejia, who refused to return to Iraq as a killer while his conscientious objector status remained in limbo.
Knowing my friend as I did, the irony is that he would have given up his life to save the child he killed both before and after the war.
If you find the soldiers on the CBC documentary imbecillic, nasty, bellicose, violently brutal, etc., keep in mind that they are simply a reflection of the system that put them in the killing fields. Most of them did not enter the service to become murderers, although that's what some of them became.
What this long-winded response boils down to, I guess, is that I agree with you one hundred percent. When people say "support the troops" does it mean supporting illegal and immoral acts they might commit? Many people would not make that distinction, instead, blaming it all on the consequences of war. For me, supporting the troops doesn't have to do with jingoism, but rather helping them reintergrate into society, helping society, their familes, and themselves in the process.
Of course, I quite understand your point of view on this, and wouldn't argue against it.
Most importantly, we both agree that war SUCKS. It isn't the answer to our problems; in fact it is instrumental to many of our problems. War helps a few by establishing or maintaining hegemony abroad, while controling those at home. As Fletcher Prouty wrote, "The authority of the modern state over its people resides in its war powers."
janet ~ thanx ... one's gotta blow off some steam once in a while. what pissed me off was that some imbecile actually filmed the turkey getting blown up ... and of course the sound was on, so we could here them (soldier/perpetrators) madly giggling away.
how is this any different from those nazi ss officers, some of whom got the biggest power orgasms from inflicting torture and degradation on humans they hand a hand in rendering powerless and defenseless?
anyone got the answer to this?
x-dell~i appreciate your opinion in every way - it is so filled with wisdom. i get what you're saying. and ... (forgive the comparison, but its works for me @ this time) it reminds me of pack behaviour i observed a lot when i had a pack of 5 afghan hounds. individually, each knew that human = alpha. in a pack (for them, pack equalled 3 +) that all escaped them. the wild wolfish instinctual behaviours and desires began to emerge.
and so, i believe humans really seem no different. human = animal, after all, doesn't it? so, try as we may to civilize ourselves with structure, authority, and complex punishment reward menchanisms, we cannot diminish that animalia that lurks in all of us.
i remember how i felt and the behaviours and the personality i expressed when i nursed (FT plus plenty of OT) - knee deep in sickness, suffering, rotting wounds, dying bowels, hemorrhagic bleeding, and loss ... of every imaginable scale and intensity and veracity. it changed me. i did not like that person that i had become.
and now this makes me think of the movies ... because they're a great currency for exchanging thoughts on living and life.
ok. hannibal lector ~ all this talk of war and suffering and death makes me think of hannibal. perhaps the premise underlying hannibal (new book out now, have you read it? i have not but would like to ... and also see the movie) that he became a monster by witnessing the most grotesque and unspeakable monstrosities - perhaps that's not so far-fetched.
and have you seem a film called regeneration? its an english film from 7 or 10 years ago. it starred jonathan pryce. it focussed on the damage that war does to the psyches of some soldiers. i sincerely believe, as that movie demonstrated, that some psyches have sustained too much damage to be 'fixed' ... or integrated.
watching those horrid video clips tells me i'm not so far off.
the soldiers i have the greatest respect for are those who return home having lost a vital part of themselves. having done their duty - which is not always the same as blindly carry out orders - and having walked away from that battlefield with less that what they arrived with. i just don't mean physically. i mean mentally. PTSD makes living nearly impossible @ some points. i wonder of these soldiers that have committed these treacheries. will it return to haunt them later in life?
fyi - here's the link to the feature that inspired this blog post; i think its 10 or 15 minutes long. link here
Interesting video. It covers more the media aspect of coverage via the Internet. And for some strange reasons, we have in it British soldiers singing a Neil Sedaka song.
What's more striking to me about the video you linked to is that enough soldiers are putting out media content that distresses the Pentagon, so much so that they feel compelled to end access to media and to further control GI media by giving them instructions on what to shoot.
PTSD was a real hazzard for Vietnam vets. I remember the outcry a few years back when one vet was executed for a homicide committed during a PTSD hallucination. Yet, for some soldiers treatment for it can be difficult. Too many of them found it difficult to return to civilian life. At one time, a substantial share of NYC's homeless population consisted of Vietnam vets. Yet, many of these soldiers received less-than honorable discharges. Less-than-honorable discharges don't disqualify a former-GI from receiving medical and psychological attention, but it does limit their coverage to ten years. After that, they're on their own.
I haven't seen the films you mentioned, but I'll put them on my (long) list. As for dogs being pack animals, I getcha.
bush? wristwatch?? pocket????
Ahh XDell, the new WCH, new and improved, now with much more comments!
One last exam tomorrow girl, and then it's just online statistics for 4 weeks YEE HAW!
x-dell~ yes, the piece was really about the whole blocking-off some of the blogging sites to the soldiers. but ... as they discussed this, they showed some clips of the disgusting stuff soldiers post. they had a senior british general watch the most offensive clips; he admitted he felt shocked @ what he watched.
still, i get where you're coming from. and yes, many street/homeless people are PTSD sufferers - to the point of psychosis - they have suffered/witnessed unspeakable horrors. but they're odd-looking (mental illness tends to have that effect on a person) and so they become outcasts ... vilified for their own afflictions.
infini ~ i saw a clip of dubya somewhere in the middle east or somewhere like that. reaching out and shaking hands with the crowd. clearly, his watch got lifted right from his wrist. the white house denies it, of course. but ... when ya see the clip its pretty obvious.
lol. it amuses me.
I have one final exam left today in a couple of hours and then I will only have to worry about statistics.
HAHA on the watch!
No argument.
I just read X-Dell's comments, and there is truth to them. I understand what soldiers have to become in order to survive and this is what leads to post traumatic stress syndrome. By the same token, my husband has told me some awful stories of the "men in packs", be it peacetime or war. There is almost a beastlike mentality that emerges. Reading this reminds me of some of his uglier stories.
i think its because the human psyche, after witnessing all the beastly suffering and carnage ... just becomes what it has powerlessly witness, even stood by and helped create. indeed, this creates a huge conflict for the person ... i wonder, what can stem this ...? anything? or are we humans doomed to become beastly such as that?
~roxanne
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