Friday, June 13, 2008

On the eve of Flag Day, the Stars and Stripes are very tattered!

Caution: The following video contains very graphic, sadistic scenes of what some servicemen are doing to enhance America's image in Iraq. Some of these really sickened me and, if an animal lover, you may not want to watch this at all.



I'd like to think the scenes in this video are the result of some very deep sense by our soldiers that what they were taught to be right is being gravely violated by their presence in Iraq, in situations they find themselves placed by their country.

Perhaps appreciating their circumstances can help to understand the repulsive and horrifying actions manifested through them so aggressively against people who have done them no harm.

Or maybe not. Perhaps what we see on this video is the materialization of man's basest instincts surfacing when the fragile wall between what is right and what is wrong disolves away.

3 comments:

Utah Savage said...

I am faint hearted when it comes to atrocities. I know they are being committed everyday, everywhere. But in Iraq they are being committed in our name. How much we must be hated. How long will it take for our nation to recover? If McCain wins, I'm selling my house and becoming an ex pat. I can't survive the next war of choice, the cutting of my medicare benefits, the squandering of our ethics, or decency, our hope for the future. The future is NOW. If we don't get it right this time, I do believe we are lost.

Dada said...

Thanks for your comment, Utah. Actually, I expected this particular YouTube to ignite a few more comments, but maybe it's "old news" for many.

I was as outraged as you after viewing this. You echo my sentiments exactly. The rope this nation is hanging by is very frayed I'm 'fraid.

D.K. Raed said...

I'd heard about this vid & somewhere saw a brief (mercifully edited) scene. I know I can't watch it, so will take your word for it.

As a fellow dog/cat/nonhuman animal lover, this would give me nightmares, so I commend you for gutting through it & posting it.

I'm very afraid your last paragraph is the correct interpretation (that war brings out man's basest instincts as it dissolves our moral sense of right and wrong -- how could it not? it demonizes fellow human beings in order to make them killable. once that barrier is broken, the always tenuous pedestal non-farm animals occupy is broken).

I read somewhere that one of the Nazi SS tactics was to train young cadets with their own personal german shepherd pup. They would have the dog for years, it was their best friend. The end of each cadet's training involved killing their own shepherd. The boys (now young men) who couldn't do it, were not SS material. Maybe Wermacht, but definitely not SS. That this happened many years ago does not diminish the cruelty.