Soldier Taunts Children In Iraq, Now Seen By Iraqis
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.
Date: February 5, 2007
Categories: media, war and peace
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