Tuesday, May 30, 2006

now, it's not surprising that atrocities have been committed by our side in this conflict, just as they have been by the other sides (yes, that's plural, because there are multiple factions working against each other), and it's not surprising that it took so long for this specific atrocity to come to light, and it's not surprising that most of us don't seem to care as scandal-shocked as we are. so, the article is much the same as every other one we've read over the past week or so. but what i found interesting is the following clip from this particular article:
"More than two months after the incident Time magazine asked the military to respond to allegations of the killings.
The magazine says a Marine spokesman responded with an e-mail stating, "I cannot believe you're buying any of this. This falls into the same category of Al-Qaeda in Iraq propaganda."
so, what was this guy saying exactly? that al-quaeda is not in iraq? top officials (um, dick cheney) are still claiming that saddam had direct ties to al-quaeda and was harboring them before we invaded. so, is this guy in fact saying that dick's covered with shit? i mean, i DO feel like i've been inappropriately penetrated by the the dickmeister, but here's a spokesman for the marines telling time magazine that bystander-obliterating is about as believable as a bar-mitzmah in babylon. and he uses the al-quaeda link, which we've been repeatedly told to put in our hanky pockets since 2002, as an example. odd. especially since we know that al-quaeda is indeed in iraq now. unlike when we invaded.
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1 comment:

Mustang said...

I find that paying restitution for killing innocent civilians is the true attrocity. Reportedly, $1500 to $2500 per person was paid to the victims families as a result of the "incident".

I also find it simply wrong to cloak revenge in the guise of attrocity. There were no attrocious actions, simply revenge murders. Young men with superior firepower, inferior grief coping skills, and lacking sufficient supervision...revenge for a dead buddy. Happens in L.A., Chicago, and D.C. Yet we do not call them "attrocities".

Ignoring Rwanda was an attrocity. Ignoring Sudan is an attrocity. Ignoring Alabama, West Virginia, Georgia, and Louisiana are attrocities.

We cannot let the popular media (either flavor) coax us into some kind of emotional reaction by misleading us with inflammatory words. They have a responsibility to convey the issue accurately (ah..blind faith versus Internet-eroded profit margins..), or so we could hope. Using words such as attrocity instead of what it really is (revenge killing)may not be initially fair (or seem that way), but calling this an attrocity deflects the importance of what happened, and that in turn just makes us fall into our rut of "another-Iaq-born-attrocity" acceptance. Rather, if we were told that a group of angry, vengful warriors sought retribution for the killing of a comrade, and murdered innocent civilians as a consequence...perhaps we would start asking better questions, and demanding more attention be paid to these issues.

M

May 30, 2006 11:14 PM

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