The Death Mask Of War: American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity

[babylonsister]

The Death Mask Of War

American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity.

By Chris Hedges

07/28/07 "Adbusters" -- -All troops, when they occupy and battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in "atrocity producing situations."

In this environment, surrounded by a hostile population, simple acts such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke means you can be killed. This constant fear and stress pushes troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. This hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find.

The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed over time to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing -- the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm -- to murder -- the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you. The war in Iraq is now primarily about murder. There is very little killing.

After four years of war, American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The American killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed with this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal clash when soldiers and Marines return home, alienating these combat veterans from the world around them, a world that still dines out on the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. But slowly returning veterans are giving us a new narrative of the war -- one that exposes the vast enterprise of industrial slaughter unleashed in Iraq for a lie and sustained because of wounded national pride and willful ignorance. "This unit sets up this traffic control point and this 18 year old kid is on top of an armored Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun," remembered Geoffrey Millard who served in Tikrit with the 42nd Infantry Division. "And this car speeds at him pretty quick and he makes a split second decision that that's a suicide bomber, and he presses the butterfly trigger and puts 200 rounds in less than a minute into this vehicle. It killed the mother, a father and two kids. The boy was aged four and the daughter was aged three."

more...

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18082.htm

[TomInTib]

1. This should be required reading for every one here who has never seen combat.

Thanks for the post, 'sister.

Definitely recommended.

[stellanoir]

2. It is as though we've collectively become desensitized to the utter inhumanity

of killing or ever hurting another human being.

How did torture ever become an acceptable consideration. . .?

How did unelected sociopaths gain control and presumed impunity?

Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question.

The situation is unsustainable. The pendulum will swing back to center over time.

As long as we make it so.

Keep the faith and the action up.

[fed-up]

3. my son has heard some very graphic stories from a friend that just headed BACK to Iraq-

stories of 10 year olds being knifed so soldier could grab the homemade bomb, then having to carry the child into the hospital

My 18YO says he tries to avoid conversations like this as they are very disturbing to him



If anyone has any pointers for how civilians stateside can deal best with those that are coming home for leave and feel a need to tell these stories please share them. I realize that it may help those telling the story, but also realize that repeated tellings may not be beneficial.

As more and more troops return home family and friends will need tools to help soldiers readjust and for family friends to readjust to them.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

4. This is what happens with men (and women) at war

During Vietnam I was in the Army (because I lacked the courage to declare myself a coward) but I didn't "go over". I did three years stateside but, being anti-war at heart and a secret hippie, I made it a point to talk to the guys who just got back from being Over There, ply them with drinks, and get them talking. The full horror of that war has never been written about or depicted -- Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now . . . none of them got more than a mild portion. My Lie -- that was only the biggest and most publicized massacres. There were many smaller such incidents.

If we think the Viet Vets were troublesome, I fear the folks who make it back from Iraq will be way worse. While home sick these past 2 weeks, I saw a movie called The Ground Truth (http://www.thegroundtruth.net/) where a lot of returning soldiers talked about what they did over there. Powerful and depressing, worth seeing if you can take it. Very much like the Vietnam fighters I can remember talking to and hearing from.

[truedelphi]

5. Yes thanks Babylonsister

I found this on Adbusters and was not only agitated and miserable reading it, but also in reading the commentaries of people posting their replies at the Adbuster site.

Several soldiers who posted were so filled with hate - we civilians are awful for not believeing in the war - the media is awful for not showing the positive things that are happening there, etc. People who have served in the Iraq war have had their sense of reality skewed so that venom and hatred are now the only thing that they understand.


Where do you begin? How can healing happen when the person has had three or more tours in such awful circumstances? A human pscyhe can only take so much before it snaps - and then there may well be no way to return it to normalcy.

[populistdriven]

6. The GOP supporters are "socialized to atrocity" nt