Fog of War? A Necessary Evil?

WikiLeaks has released a video of the US Military shooting at and killing Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists. The video is gruesome and extremely difficult to watch. Here it is in edited form:



The killing is barbaric, but for me what was most unsettling was the exchange between the apache helicopter which opened fire and its superiors. The soldiers banter back and forth and even laugh while discussing killing these Iraqis. Investigations have apparently revealed that all actors involved followed military protocol, but that does not take away from the fact that these killings were conducted in a seemingly careless and brazen fashion.

It is easy to castigate the individual soldiers for what appears to be heartless murder, but this incident is surely representative of the type of war that America is waging in the Middle East, and part of the reason so little progress has been made in the region. One could certainly argue that for soldiers, adopting dark humor and a remorseless attitude towards killing is simply a coping method, a crucial shield used to block combat-induced trauma. I wholeheartedly buy such an argument. I can only imagine what I would have to do to be able to cope with killing indiscriminately. What I worry about more is that the United States continues to engage in activities that force young, healthy and mentally alert individuals in peak condition to reach the brink of insanity. What does it say about our society that we engage in such brutal activities?

It is far too easy to forget what we are doing in the Middle East. The US Military, as it exists currently, requires the construction of a culture so detached from the human-rights based society we live in that wholesale slaughter is glorified. Read these disturbing quotes, and consider the effects of a culture that makes people obsessed with killing.

From the New York Times:

"We had a great day," Sergeant Schrumpf said. "We killed a lot of people." ...

But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.

"I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."

From Reuters:

Two soldiers picked out two figures on a rooftop and quickly lined up their shot. Thankfully, First Sgt. Eric Engram saw them and also saw their target. “No man, that's a kid and a woman. It's a KID and a WOMAN,” he bellowed, and his soldiers lowered their rifles.

"These guys are young and most just want to get their first confirmed kill, so they're too anxious to get off shots. I hate to say ‘bragging rights’ but they want that kill,” Engram said an hour later.

From the London Times:
US marine, Corporal Ryan Dupre, surveying the scene by the bridge at An Nasiriyah, said: "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy. I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin’ Iraqi. No I won’t get hold of one - I’ll kill him."

From Reuters:

A tracked armored vehicle has crushed two men up the road.

"Killed one, ripped the legs off another," Monty said briskly, a cigarette dangling from his lip.

From the Los Angeles Times:
"I enjoy killing Iraqis," says Staff Sgt. William Deaton, 30, who killed a hostile fighter the night before. Deaton has lost a good friend in Iraq. "I just feel rage, hate when I'm out there. I feel like I carry it all the time. We talk about it. We all feel the same way."

From the Seattle Times:

The vehicle goes silent as the driver, Spc. Joshua Dubois, swerves around asphalt previously uprooted by a blast.

"I'm confused about how I should feel about killing," says Dubois, who has a toddler back home. "The first time I shot someone, it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever felt."

Dubois turns back to the road. "We talk about killing all the time," he says. "I never used to talk this way. I'm not proud of it, but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I will be like when I get home."

And finally, from the East Bay Express:

Six men in beige fatigues, identified as US Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet.

The captions that accompany these images, which were apparently written by soldiers who posted them, laugh and gloat over the bodies. The person who posted a picture of a corpse lying in a pool of his own brains and entrails wrote, “What every Iraqi should look like.” The photograph of a corpse whose jaw has apparently rotted away, leaving a gaping set of upper teeth, bears the caption “bad day for this dude.” One person posted three photographs of corpses lying in the street and titled his collection “DIE HAJI DIE.”

Soldiers in the US Military have been conditioned to view Iraqi and Afghani lives as negligible. When negligible lives are destroyed, there is no sense that a heinous act has occurred. Do you view your best friend as negligible? Of course not. Imagine seeing your best friend killed, his spewed entrails spelling out a hateful message. Your reaction is surely different from your reaction to hearing about such an act conducted on an Iraqi. We have set up a distinction between American lives and the lives of others that allows us to ignore brutal slaughter. Of course, it's not just our reactions that matter. It would probably destroy you to see your friend mutilated - imagine what friends, brothers, mothers, sons, fathers see every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. They do not hate us for our freedoms. They hate us for regarding them as so worthless that we have no qualms over murdering them.

We have to understand how interconnected we are with others around the world. Globally, we are intrinsically interdependent on each other in relation to the environment, food supply and distribution, commercial exchange of all kinds, culture, and war. Besides being willfully against our supposed ethics and values, it is explicitly against our interests to not acknowledge the plight of others. We are worse off when an Iraqi hates us for what we've done. We are worse off when an Iraqi dies.

That's just war, military sympathizers declare. Yes, it quite clearly is. The question is, why do we continue to glorify it? The media, being a profit-seeking industry, produces what its audience desires. Why does the mainstream media ignore and cover up military brutality? Because the mainstream in America has no interest in hearing about it. While the countless video games that have the player murder hundreds if not thousands of individuals do not necessarily lead to real world violence, they may aid in this process of devaluing life. It is interesting that there are more people playing Modern Warfare 2, a video game based on the war in Afghanistan, than soldiers actually fighting in Afghanistan. We, like US Soldiers, have been effectively conditioned to consider those outside of our clan as Other. We adopt a dichotomy of ethics (one set for our clan, another for the Other) that desensitizes us from emotional reaction when we hear of the Other's suffering. It allows us to abandon compassion and not suffer any attacks from our pesky little "conscience." No wonder, for instance, a survey of Americans found that 71% of us support cutting government spending on foreign aid (less than 1% of our spending), while only 22% of us support cutting military spending (23% of our spending).

It is crucial for us to learn how to grieve life. Not just for those in our immediate circle, our clan, but for everyone on the planet. If we have the capacity to grieve life regardless of cultural or geographic difference, we will find it far harder to kill. This will make us better off. American foreign policy is directed by a philosophy of power, masculinity, impermeability and domination. This philosophy is fueled by a myopic and jingoistic worldview. These philosophies and worldviews are perpetuated by our government, our media, and our society. We must realize that we are not beholden to these constructions. Indeed, it is our obligation to form new worldviews, and evince ourselves of the philosophies that have allowed wars such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world faces problems that can only be solved with global co-operation. Increasingly, the categories of "us" and "them" have become not only useless, but harmful.