All I can say is Holy Fuck!
]]>]]>How do soldiers come to terms with having taken a life in combat? Research has suggested that when people consider themselves to be “good†but are forced to do something “bad†to others, they adopt negative opinions about their victims to rationalize their actions. But according to a new study, this tendency may not apply to soldiers or at least not to those who have served in the Iraq War. American soldiers who have killed in Iraq do not think more poorly of Iraqis than Iraq War soldiers who have not killed—they do, however, think worse of Americans who speak out against the war.
Wayne Klug, a psychologist at Berkshire Community College, asked 68 Iraq War veterans about their experiences, their thoughts on the war and their opinions about Iraqis and Americans. Compared with soldiers who never saw combat and those who witnessed a death but were not involved, veterans who “were directly involved in an Iraqi fatality†were much more likely to consider the war to be beneficial to both countries. The finding is consistent with prior evidence that people tend to value outcomes that require great effort or distress. But although previous research predicts that these soldiers might disparage their victims, investigators were surprised to find that these veterans instead resented Americans whose opinions about the war suggest that their killings may have been unjustified. (Soldiers Who Have Taken a Life More Likely to Defend Iraq War)
Update: If you don’t find human costs compelling, wrap your mind around $3 trillion for the Iraq war. (That’s $3 million million or $3,000,000,000,000.)
]]>Well, [war is] a racket, all right. A few profit—and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation—it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted—to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages—all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers—yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders—everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
If the nation is in such dire straits that it needs to go to war—to mobilize troops to foreign soil, I agree that it behooves everyone to sacrifice for the common good. I imagine we would go to war far less often if this were the law.
]]>Imagine if this had happened in the United States. Would you have heard about it then?
(via reddit)
]]>After posting the photographs on his blog, he was told to remove them by public affairs officers of the U.S. military. When he refused, his embed with the marine unit was terminated.
As a commenter on reddit put it, “Funny how the folks who most support war never want to see it. Out of sight, out of mind.”
Update: Here’s another illustration of our complacency from Café Philos.
Intelligent, educated Iraqis are saying—based on a sound understanding of the situation in Iraq and the history of American dealings there—that America should get out of Iraq before we do any more damage.
The Americans in Iraq are like a virus, like a disease, and for us, we need to get rid of the Americans because the Americans just don’t know what they’re doing. Everything they do—probably even in good intentions—is bad for us. Everything they do, everything. There is nothing they are doing [that] is right.
They also don’t think the war ever about spreading democracy.
This amnesia [on the part of Americans about recent history] that I’m talking about. How would a people who’ve been oppressed for thirty-five years by a dictator that was supported by the United States, in a region where the United States supports dictators, how would they accept that America would come to spread democracy? Yes, some of them did.… But looking around… if the United States were interested in democracy, it would maybe topple Saudi Arabia. Why go to Iraq?
Contrast this with the constant drum beats of “the surge is working” that passes for most American journalism. Can we accept the idea that we broke Iraq and that we perhaps cannot fix it even with an extended occupation? Or would that be too much of a blow to our American exceptionalist ego?
Glenn Greenwald says of this interview:
]]>The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media’s discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation—views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts—ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: “virtually never.”
When will we admit that the existence of an ethnic state is a recipe for tribal warfare and declare the Israel experiment failed? Only when Israel becomes a multi-ethnic state where non-Jews have equal access to citizenship will there be a hope of peace in that region.
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