October 3, 2005
What the Gruesome Images Say
By: John Chuckman
There is an Internet site that displays extraordinarily gruesome photographs taken by American soldiers in Iraq. Apparently, the owner of the site exchanges access to pornography for soldiers sending him their war pictures.
Digital cameras and the Internet are now providing a real glimpse of war to an American public that still daydreams about fresh-faced boys and girls marching off to do brave deeds on behalf of democracy.
The Pentagon has become concerned about the site, and rightly so. It is a public relations disaster, especially in the Arab world where such pictures must burn deeply. Karen Hughes peddling American Sunday School stories in the Middle East can hardly compete with the visceral impact of this stuff. It is not just the images themselves which evoke disgust, but the implicit idea that Americans take such pictures and regard them as legitimate currency for pornography.
One Pentagon official was quoted saying something about the people engaged in the trade breaking all kinds of military regulations. I'm impressed with ethics like that: it is fine to disembowel people or burn them to crisps, but it is a serious breach to publish photos of your handiwork.
When I was a little boy growing up in the south side of Chicago, I saw many unpleasant things. Somehow, I understood at a young age that there are people who enjoy destruction and horror and inflicting pain. Likely all the legends of ghouls, vampires, and other staples of horror literature derive over centuries from genuine human experience.
They seem to constitute a minority of human beings, otherwise humanity's penchant for destruction would outweigh its impulse for creation, and a form of human entropy would reduce society to chaos. But they are a sizeable minority, and there is nothing special about America which prevents its producing a full share. If we believe that nurture, as well as nature, plays some role in producing these dark creatures, American society may well produce more than its share. They are after all, at least the milder, non-lethal cases, the very people who take pleasure in injuring complete strangers through business fraud, computer viruses, and vicious politics - all prominent features on the American landscape.
There is a persistent tendency for Americans to believe this can't be so. The influence of Christianity is important here. Since the idea of America is often emotionally blurred with the idea of a secular Church, complete with its own Apostles' Creed and Holy Scripture (Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, etc.), it is not surprising that there is widespread belief in the intrinsic goodness of America's soldiers. But that belief is as scientifically baseless as the one about "curing" homosexuals or the one about "creationism" being a legitimate school subject - both, please note, held by tens of millions of Americans. We might add also the American Catholic Church's dreamy ideas and stubborn refusal to take responsibility for conditions of a priesthood that encourage countless cases of child molestation.
Those who enjoy violence and destruction always have been part of human society, likely representing a genetic thread, and in ancient days they were just the kind of people you might want on the ramparts defending your city. The trouble is America doesn't keep them at home. It insists on sending them abroad to practice their ghastly arts on others.
I have to suppress a bitter laugh when I read things in the liberal press calling on soldiers to hold on to their humanity. Would those be the sons of the soldiers who cut the throats of tens of thousands of civilians in night raids during Vietnam? The sons of the ones who collected human ears? Relatives of CIA officers running an international torture network? The words serve no purpose for those actually possessing humanity. Equally, they are a waste of breath for those with the bad genes. You can't tell someone with a serious, violence-inclining mental disorder to kindly behave him- or herself.
We have a choice in society. The people who have such uncivilized tendencies may be kept in check by rational laws and policies. America with its high rate of incarceration, its continued use of the death penalty, and its endless fascination with redemption clearly recognizes in some distorted way the importance of doing this at home. What civilized people all over the world want to see is America exercising restraint abroad.
How utterly reckless to just casually start wars without realizing that releasing the human monsters from their cages always is part of what you are doing. If Americans ever come to understand that simple fact, the world will be a better place.
Posted by rowan at October 3, 2005 8:08 PM | [eMail this article!] |I think you actually believe that 10s of thousands of throats were slit during viet nam. I think you have lost your mind, Rowan, I really do. I'm acutally apalled that an educated American believes this. Why do you remain in America? This is the last time I will read any more items here and I could care less what you do or say about this post because I won't be reading anything here any more starting right now.
Posted by: goesh at October 4, 2005 6:46 PMgoesh,
If you had looked at the article, you would see that I did not write it.
Rowan, Thanks for publishing this article by Mr. John Chuckman, no matter how you see the world "Sunshine is always the best disinfectant"
Posted by: bill hooked at October 5, 2005 12:26 PMDid anybody get Goesh ball and bat before he went home ?
Posted by: bell hooked at October 5, 2005 7:10 PMI "grew up" in the Vietnam era. I knew people, male and female who were drafted, and I have worked, talked and have friends who are Vietnam Vets. I have also worked with, talked with and have friends who are Vietnamese.
Vietnam was an ugly war - probably all wars are. Do I believe John Chuckman's statement about "tens of thousands" of throats cut? Not literally, but I do believe that tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. Mai Lai was not the only atrocity of that war.
I worked for over a year with a Vet who claimed to be ex-Special Forces whose unit was tasked on "political" missions (aka assassination squads). He spoke various times of the number of Vietnamese he had killed and the number of assassinations he had participated in. From the numbers he gave, it would not have taken many such soldiers to reach at least 10,000.
Vietnam was infamous for its "free fire zones." Iraq is rapidly becoming renown in this "strategy" as well.
Some would argue that acknowledging atrocity - whether torture, civilian deaths, or other ignoble "incidents" demeans the sacrifice of "those who served." I believe that ordering troops to engage in such activities dishonors them. I don't think that U.S. troops - or even "enemy" troops are inherently "evil" "baby killers." I do think that awful things happen within the insanity of war. I do think that leadership (political and military) set the environment and boundaries of "engagement."
I know of the atrocities of former conflicts. My conversations with some of those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that "atrocities" are happening there as well. None of theses wars - Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq - were "necessary." I have my doubts about some others as well.
When it comes to the individuals who serve in the armed forces, I face them with neither anger, nor joy - neither pride or disdain. Rather as individuals who have been forced to participate in an awful event that inevitably transforms their lives. I feel sadness for human beings ordered to kill, and I feel sadness for those killed - on all sides and civilian and military. Some feel pride in their service, and some do not. All bear the scars.
Posted by: rowan at October 5, 2005 7:28 PMI am a Viet Nam Vet, and I never slit a throat or took even one ear, not to say in the right environment and situation that kind of evil is within me as well as others. World War II was also full of kinds of horrors and all they way back to every war, the best way to make these things go away is to: WAGE PEACE. Rowan your comments are right on, thanks again.
Posted by: bill at October 6, 2005 12:46 PMAdios, Goesh. For what it is worth.
Denying death tolls or the harshness of war, literal or figurative, is one reason why Americans are still so blind. I know little about the Vietnam war. I know that something called Napalm caused the deaths of many. Could this be a knife?
Posted by: Shawna at October 7, 2005 12:10 PMI am a Nam combat Vet. As far as I am concerned, these Nam Vets who need to sanitize Nam so they can feel better, are a disgrace to everything for which the Constitution Stands! The official pentagon version of Nam is crap and these guys are full of it up to their ears! Get over it guys and quit being big babies! You were dragged into evil by evil and you became one with evil! And this evil is repeating itself! Ed.
Posted by: Hotel Bravo at October 7, 2005 2:39 PMI can guarantee that Goesh IS still reading--he has had this sort of tantrum before. Can there be some sort of denial that atrocities at the hands of both American and Viet Cong soldiers did not happen in Viet Nam? I know the current policy is to deny until the mantra is absorbed, but let's stay grounded--it is impossible to wage war without trauma and atrocities. That is Mr. Chuckman's point.
What kind of logic suggests that criticizing government policy equates a need to leave that country?
I admire veterans and sincerely appreciate their personal sacrifices and courage. Most veterans I meet are very cautious about waging war, and most veterans I meet seem to comprehend the very nature of armed combat and the fear and violence that defines it. The numbers of throats slashed or the nature of civilian dead are not the core issue. The issue of what is at stake for EVERYONE, women, children, soldiers, animals and the environment is what should be more elegantly considered.
Our involvement in Iraq is a fiasco in a manner very similar to Vietnam.
Posted by: Pamela at October 8, 2005 11:01 AM