Pardon the "drive-by" nature of this diary. I posted this link to an open thread and was encouraged to make it a full-fledged diary so it would get the attention it deserves.
Here is an infuriating and heartbreaking video posted on YouTube that shows American G.I.'s riding through a bombed-out Iraq neighborhood, taunting ragged Iraqi children with a bottle Evian water. I originally saw the link to this video on the WFMU radio blog under the title "Cruel to be Thirsty."
I think we are all aware of how our soldiers have been put in an impossible situation, with horrible, delusional leadership, no clear plan, faulty equipment, etc. I look at a video like this and while I do not excuse the behavior of the soldiers, neither do I let my rage and sadness at it settle upon them. This is---unfortunately---an iconic image of what the USA looks like to much of the rest of the world.
This is George Bush's America in a nutshell----the destruction, the pointless "college prank" cruelty, the flaunting of military strength and material prosperity, the image of a basic human need as a "privatized" commodity, but most of all the sheer stupidity and short-sightedness of it all. It's all there. And all of us will be paying for this bullshit for the rest of our lives.
P.S. I didn't mean to imply that I'm not sickened and disgusted by the behavior of these particular soldiers. But as with Abu Gharib and other atrocities of this grand atrocity, I am relatively uninterested in the small fry. I don't want to hear the "few bad apples" defense. This is systematic, this is institutional, this is, at some level, an expression of official POLICY.
P.P.S. The more I think about it the more I'm struck by the symbolism of this clip. We went in as "the good guys"; we "held out the promise of a better life" for the Iraqis, and what did we give them? A mad, chaotic, deadly scramble for life that for most of them is worse than what they had under Saddam.
That little boy running after the bottle is the last tattered remains of any hope, trust, faith, idealism in the "liberation of Iraq." It was all a cruel, pointless, tasteless joke.
[Yet another update]
The best comment, in my opinion, on this entire thread comes from EastcoastChick:
This episode and the many other examples (some much worse - some much less so) are a symptom of a broken military.
Soldiers are trained to be human killing machines. They are trained to dehumanize their enemy "targets" so as to make it easier on the psyche when they have to kill quickly and efficiently.
This works well when the mission is clear and the enemy is clearly defined. But with this "war" in Iraq the mission is murky (liberation? WMDs? terrorism?) and the enemy largely morphs and merges with the civilian population that's a recipe for trouble. Add to that over work from too long deployments, shoddy leadership from the top, long periods of boredom intermixed with fierce periods of fighting, bombing, and avoiding sniper fire...and you have this video of a couple of bored troops cruelly taunting children laughing like Beavis and Butthead.
I agree with you that the soldiers aren't wholly to blame for their behavior - they are being misused. But I disagree that we're okay...we should be ashamed of this. This is not the way a professional military behaves. This is not what we want our soldiers risking their lives to do. And the top - the people who are really responsible for this - should be held accountable. And the soldiers...bring them home.
Thanks. You've expressed the complexity and tragedy of this situation in words far more wise and eloquent than I could muster.