War is horrible. War is sickening. Wars started for supremely righteous causes are just as horrible and sickening in their consequences as wars started for less than righteous causes. Politicians who sit in office chairs and start wars and wave flags as young men and women go off to kill and die and be psychologically and emotionally damaged for life are the most sickening of all. Politicians start wars and are rewarded with an appearance on weekend talk shows and Very Respectable Discussions with Very Respectable media figures and jokes at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner and appearances on Leno and ghostwritten self-glorifying memoirs and lavishly catered fundraising parties with corporate executives. They should be rewarded with outrage. They should be rewarded with scorn. Starting a war is a monstrous, monstrous crime against humanity, as we know when it begins that no matter how cleanly it is conducted it will result in thousands upon thousands of bullets smashing men’s skulls and arms and legs blown off by shrapnel and mothers and children incinerated by high explosives. And every extra day that a war is perpetuated unnecessarily is a crime anew.
Americans hate the Taliban. It’s what’s expected of us; hating the Taliban is de riguer because…well, it’s what we’re do. Few can really tell us why, other than they’re evil Islamofascists. The Taliban weren’t responsible for 9.11. Nor are they generally responsible for terror attacks directed against American targets outside of Afghanistan. We hate the Taliban because it’s what the media and our leaders have told us to do. Like the Sheeple we are, we’ve meekly acquiesced and now consider the Taliban to be Public Enemy Number One. Just don’t ask Americans to explain why this is the case.
Don’t take that to mean that I love the Taliban. It’s hard to feel sympathetic about a group of ignorant, intolerant, religious zealots willing to kill for their faith (Et tu, Scott Roeder, Paul Hill, Timothy McVeigh, etc.??). What I’m saying is that Americans hate a group they don’t understand because they’ve been instructed and conditioned to do so. This relates to the outrage over the video of Marines pissing on Taliban corpses primarily because the media and most Americans are missing the point.
I’m certainly not going to argue that the actions of the Marines in the video aren’t reprehensible and inhuman. The actions of a few have succeeded in tarring all American servicemen and women with the same brush. If the Marines in the video can be identified, they can and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As the outrage machine cranks up to full volume, though, we’re missing the thing we should truly be outraged about.
For the past almost 11 years, America has been in the war business…and business has been very, very good. More than 5,000 Americans and upwards of 100,000 Iraqi, Pakistani, and Afghan civilians have been killed…or turned into “collateral damage” if you prefer to use the technical term. We’ve becomes skilled at killing and destroying and somewhat less so at building and creating. We’ve spent trillons on the tools and methods of death and destruction…and to what end? Iraq is only marginally more stable than it was in 2003, though we did leave behind the largest US Embassy in the world (never mind what having an embassy that resembles a fortress says about us). Ten years on, and Afghanistan is no closer to pacification. The British couldn’t do it. The Soviets couldn’t do it. Are we really arrogant enough to believe that, because we’re Americans, we can and should ignore the lessons of history?
We have an entire generation of young Americans who’ve returned home physically and mentally damaged, in some cases permanently. Though this has been a boon for the prosthetics industry, it’s done little for the generation that’s dealt and seen more death and destruction than any human being should be subjected to. We’ve succeeded in creating our own “Vietnam generation.” Somewhere, George Santayana is smiling.
Yes, we should be angry at the actions of the Marines who thought that urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters was the appropriate way of demonstrating American dominance. There’s nothing in our values or ethics that can begin to justify that travesty. That said, I can’t help but wonder why so much outrage is directed at the Taliban when it should more accurately be directed at those who continue feeding the American war machine. We’re quite likely going to put Marines in prison for pissing on the corpses of Taliban fighters. The people who sent the Marines there in the first place will continue to be treated as heroes and Very Important People with Very Important Things To Say.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but thinking that we’ve been so thoroughly propagandized for our protection that we’ve been rendered incapable of recognizing the true outrage.
And so it continues….