Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Videos of American soldiers taunting Iraqi children are flowing like a river. It started, I remember, with video of American soldiers in a vehicle making fun of an Iraqi child, teasing the child with a bottle of water as the child ran after them, desperate.
The latest is a video in which children gather around an American soldier who encourages them to say that they fuck donkeys. Of course, the children don’t understand what the soldier is saying, but they go along with the game. Given this kind of garbage, maybe the new Army slogan ought to be: A public relations disaster of one.
If the soldier had just engaged in this kind of sexually slanted mockery of Iraqi children on his own, it would not amount to more than a personal failure - just another crude American teenager making a dumb joke on the level of Beavis and Butthead. But no, the soldier had to capture his joke on video, and then had to post it on the Internet so that the whole world can see it.
Now, people all around the world can see this aspect of what the American military is doing in Iraq: Involving Iraqi children in sexual slurs. After the sexually-charged torture in Abu Ghraib, this kind of stuff gains a new meaning. Why would anyone think that American soldiers are going to help make Iraq a safer place after seeing this video?
I wouldn’t want this soldier and his buddies and their guns around my children. Would you?
This video makes all the abstract talk about staying the course and surges and victory in Iraq much more concrete. For me, it boils down to this basic concept: We cannot make Iraq into a stable, secure, pro-American democracy by using large numbers of angry, sexually frustrated teenagers with guns as our diplomatic corps.
You can argue that soldiers shouldn’t be required to be ambassadors, but as this video shows, they are ambassadors in fact, regardless of what we want.
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February 7th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Yeah - I saw it and was appalled but also happy to see it exposed. Disgusting and chilling.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
And furthermore, you could chalk it up to the low standards the military is stooping to when recruiting. What do we expect?
February 20th, 2007 at 12:56 am
felons, no GED required because they will pay to give you one, and if you read my post, recruiters are by passing mental illness issues, battery issues, etc. just to get the numbers. Then there is the fact of Stop Loss, and the only way out now is to do something that will get you kicked out. You’ve been an outstanding soldier/marine for 4, 6, 12 years but this is now your 2nd, 3rd, 4th tour and you need a way out. I am in no way condoning this action, but when a back door draft is instituted, rules change at a drop of a hat, and you haven’t done the job you were trained for at AIT and are now a truck driver or MP for the 3rd tour in a row, this is not what you signed up for.
Is it low standards of the military? or the fact that no one has stopped the insanity of the president and his militia.
Military Wife
February 20th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Even for Vietnan they could only draft someone for two years. If they wanted them for the third year, they had to re-enlist. I think they could only re-enlist for one year at a time.