Today’s is from Sadly No commenter and war vet Mikey, on the plausibility or otherwise of a The New Republic report on US atrocities against civilians:
mikey said,
July 25, 2007 at 23:16
In a combat zone you are asked to do things no one should ever do. You cannot avoid seeing things no one should ever see. On top of that, people you don’t even know are trying really hard to kill you and you have no option if you want to go home in one piece than to kill them first, and harder.
This has been true for many thousands of years. The young man in combat is not defined by his nationality, but by what the environment requires of him. Or perhaps what it creates FROM him. American soldiers are like all soldiers. They quickly understand that a vestigial humanity will get them and their friends hurt.
You have to look inside and find hatred, anger and cruelty. You need to turn off your other feelings, and let your hatred come to the fore. You burn away all softness. You grind down the kindness. You react with a careless brutality to all stimulus.
You see, it can’t be pretend. You understand completely that if you’re pretending to be a soldier in combat, when that moment comes when you have to do something truly, horribly inhuman to survive, you won’t be able to do it. You’ll act as a civilized human, and not a brutal killer. And you’ll die.
So to find cruel, brutal people behaving in cruel, brutal ways in a combat zone is not a surprise. It’s not news. And anyone who denies it is delusional. I cannot begin to imagine the thoughts and feelings of a 24 year old kid from Missouri on his third tour, rolling out for yet another night patrol in Diyala. But if you think that he has any humanity left inside him, you are wrong.
Don’t forget that he’ll be your neighbor, your daughter’s boyfriend, your employee one day. And sure, he’ll tamp it all down and bury it behind a veneer of civilized politeness. He may not even know it’s still there.
Over the years he’ll discover that it’s a box, once opened, that you can’t just put up on the shelf when you’re done with it. Rather, when it’s done with you they’ll put you in a box.
Physical wounds are one thing. But the human damage that war does is infinitely worse, and the consequences last for generations…
mikey
