Two articles appeared in today’s Washington Post. The first deals with the current U.S. war in Iraq:
Witness Testifies Marine Knowingly Shot Children in Haditha
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., July 17 — One of the Marines charged with murdering civilians in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005 knew that only women and children were huddled in a back bedroom in a house there, but he opened the door and shot them anyway, a squadmate testified Tuesday.
The second deals with World War II:
Japan Warns U.S. House Against Resolution on WWII Sex Slaves
Japan has warned leaders of the House of Representatives that serious, long-term damage to Japanese-U.S. relations is likely if the House passes a resolution demanding an official apology from Japan for its wartime policy of forcing women to become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.
What makes the killing of unarmed women and children so much more shocking than the idea that a government sanctioned the repeated rapes of unarmed women for the pleasure of its soldiers?
Nothing.
There is nothing more criminal or shocking about one or the other of these crimes perpetrated in a time of war.
War by it’s very nature is government sanctioned brutality. The basis of war is physical violence of all kinds. Destruction of property, food supplies, and livelihood, beatings, rapes, torture: these are all tools that have been employed systemically throughout human history by one group of people as a means to control another. We simply call it something else – war, pacification, occupation, a police action – when these methods are undertaken under the auspices of the government and usually for some specious reason like differences in religion. Heathens, after all, aren’t the same as “us.” And if “they” aren’t the same as “us” “we” can do whatever “we” want to “them” goes the rationale.
And the killing of innocents is nothing new. Soldiers in Vietnam quickly discovered that women and children could be “enemy combatants” as easily as big strapping young men from the heartland of the United States. When anyone could possibly be the source of the next sniper or bomb attack, who is a threat in a combat situation challenges what we hold in the U.S. as “normal” for who can and who can’t be a soldier.
So, in the shifting sands of who can and can’t be a threat, what makes killing one person justified and killing another person murder? It’s a cheat to make a distinction.
Each of the crimes written about in these articles is a reflection of the brutality inherent in all war. And it’s this dressing up of brutality – calling one killing permissible and another murder – that perpetuates the illusion that there is ever any justification for war.
In discussing this amongst ourselves at Amphetameme we’ve been torn between our own cynicism – war is brutal, ugly, and, in my opinion, requires doing things that make you sick to your stomach (like shooting a nine year-old girl to death) if you want to truly “win” (assuming you define winning as ending up with a country full of dead bodies) – and our questions about just what standards the military is using to recruit the soldiers they are putting in the field.
I think, too, there are some underlying questions about the culture of violence in general in our country. Americans, in particular, have a very skewed relationship with the natural order of the world. There is no question that violence is a part of human behavior. Violence is a part of nature in general; anyone who has ever watched a nature special in which two animals compete for the right to be the alpha in a pack or group knows this. Sex too is a part of human behavior; after all, it’s how the species propagates.
Yet why is it we accept violence as entertainment – as of May 25, 2007 Entertainment Weekly records a summer movie body count of 15,776 – but sex is still taboo?
And to what end has our current regime here in the U.S., in their rush to war in Iraq, in their unwillingness to recruit and train troops via a draft (a move that would put Republicans out of the White House for a good dozen years I think), ignored the tenuous limits such training puts on the behavior of violence saturated individuals in tense, life-threatening situations?
More to the point: how much are military commanders exploiting our blood-thirsty culture and ignoring behavior they shouldn’t?
Is Haditha the tip of the iceberg when it comes to violence against the unarmed? Part of me wants to say yes; BushCo. has a control over the media that Lyndon Johnson probably would have given his right arm to have in Vietnam.
Yet, part of me wants to believe that the troops we have in Iraq are simply doing the best they can to survive and keep their essential humanity, to not turn into the kind of monsters they would need to be to actually “win” the war, so they can come home.
Perhaps the most cynical position of all is that both scenarios are true.
This article cross-posted to Amphetameme.org