|
The reverse genie rule makes more terrorists I blew by my news reader summaries of stories about a report that U.S. soliders favor torture. You don't have time to read everything, and I figured OK, I know that already. But USA Today gave a different headline to its story about the Pentagon report on an focus group study of battlefield ethics, so it attracted my attention, and I found this other bit from the report: "...only a third of Marines and roughly half of soldiers said they believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity." No wonder they hate us. Why can't we learn to stop doing things and behaving in ways that make them hate us more -- like hanging around running their country when their fondest wish is for us not to be there? Our policy is to be the stubborn control-junkie jerks of the world: if the Islamic world wants something, that's the last thing it's going to get from us, just on general macho principles. A matter of pride, is what I get from Bush. That kind of pride is anything but noble, sorry Mr. President. I take this personally. It breaks my heart, and it embarrasses and shames me to be the citizen of a country that bullies its way around the world the way we do. That's me you're representing over there when you kick the bazaar shopper in the head, Mr. Gyrene Guy, and the Marine guy who trained you. I try not to blame the individual soldiers; the parts of the focus group report we know about show they're messed up mentally by this war, and they can never be sure who the non-combatants are. Plus, they're part of a wrong-headed system and a misguided belief that we can fight this problem with an army. A system that relies on dehumanization to gain control might work in a prison, but it can't be the way to go in a civilian population already predisposed to dislike us.
|
 |
Photo by 
