(no subject)

[mamculuna]

I can't believe the pictures I see, the news I hear. Last year when the war started I had moments when I thought, "This must be what it felt like to live in Germany in 1939."

Now I think I begin to get an idea of how it felt to live there in 1945, to see the terrible evidence of what had been done by your country--by you.

Such evil. And those soldiers--they could be people I know, students I've taught.

Comments

This is what war is

[ann1962]

It is not dropping bombs from far away. It is not standing on the deck of a ship describing accomplishments. War is this and these pictures. It is the looking into the face of a hooded man with wires on his hands. It is being on the ground when the bombs are dropped. It is seeing your buildings collapse. It is Mai Lai. That is what war is. It is seeing your dead parent. It is seeing your dead child. There is no glory, and no winning. Whenever we get to this point, *we* have lost.

I am ranting so much

[ann1962]

that I didn't even point out that I agree with you. Sorry.

Re: I am ranting so much

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I knew!

Re: This is what war is

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

It is true--then war destroys our souls. I think most Americans have never seen this close up, in their own lives, not for almost 150 years. They don't know what they are losing.

Actually it reminds me of the Vietnam War

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ever since the Iraq conflict started I thought, gee, Vietnam. And
wondered, do we ever learn? The situation is frighteningly similar in some respects. We entered Vietnam to oust a regime we did not like and found ourselves not much better than that regime. Have you seen
Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola - the film discusses in brutal detail what we did in Vietnam.

In WWII, did you know that we brought mustard gas over? Now the Germans refused to use mustard gas, because Hitler had been gassed in the first World War and was against it. The Americans used it and in an attack on an Italian Submarine, mustard gas was released and killed everyone on the Italian Sub and in the nearby village in a horrendous and torturous fashion. Also in WWII, we had Japanese Internment camps, where our country placed Japanese-Americans behind barbed wire as prisoners, because they happened to have relatives from Japan.

These pictures made me flinch when I saw them and I wished I hadn't. But they did not surprise me. Nor do I think for a moment that they are indicative of all of the soliders behavior over there. What I see is well something Joseph Conrad wrote about in Heart of Darkness and Joss Whedon delves into in his stories - that when we fight monsters we must be very careful we don't become them. The line is thinner than we think.

Also, when you get the chance? Check out ginmar, this is a woman solider in Iraq whose been posting what is going on over there in her livejournal and her dispatches show a more humane side
to the action and remind us that both exist.

Re: Actually it reminds me of the Vietnam War

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I was old enough to know what was happening during Vietnam, and put in a lot of time and energy opposing that war, too. In Berkeley, in those days...

But I was saying today that even My Lai was more comprehensible than this. I couldn't excuse Calley, but thought some of the troops probably were so stressed and terrified that they weren't behaving rationally, and must have hated themselves ever since.

But the military police in Iraq weren't in the same situation as the My Lai Americans--this was done in much colder blood, with no excuse of fear or PTSD. This was calculated evil. And these weren't raw draftees, were they--I am guessing that MP's have been in the military for a while.

Thanks for leading me to ginmar. She's really interesting. I think I should friend her for the education I"ll get views.

[altaego.livejournal.com]

One thing that is frustrating to me is that our leaders have used the label of "terrorism" as a justification for anything they want to do, as if there are black and white distinctions between people who are against goodness and "freedom" and people who are for those things.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Yes--that's why I think that our leaders didn't mind at all when we were attacked on 9/11. A great excuse for whatever they want to do. At the time, my thought was "Reichstag Fire." I don't know that it's an exact analogy, but it's being used in the same way.

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

My sentiments exactly, to the last word. I feel incredibly stupid and irrelevant teaching Their Eyes Were Watching God to freshmen and rhapsodizing about Black female self-discovery while this is going on. Yet I don't know what else to do.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

That's not irrelevant...if those MP's had ever learned to empathize with other human beings, they couldn't have done that. At least, as an English teacher too, I HOPE we humanize. But maybe not.

[habibti.livejournal.com]

I've been sitting here for a good 15 minutes trying to type an adequate response. I've started a dozen times and erased it a dozen times. I don't want to accept the pictures I see, don't want to see the glee on cheer on the faces of the American and now British soldiers torturing Iraqis. When are we going to realize that we all people are born with inalienable rights, no just the ones who live within our national borders?

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

There's nothing we really can say, but hope that everyone shares our horror.