"Americans are poor soldiers. The best soldier is a Nazi. But we'll become better and better soldiers as we become more and more like Nazis." Kurt Vonnegut in a talk in Chicago in 1995
Like most satire, this is funny and true without being factual.
Even in Iraq, American soldiers aren't acting like Nazis; as a matter of fact, even the Nazis didn't act like Nazis. Outrageously brutal behavior by soldiers is simply part of war.
In wars like Iraq -- a war based on a lie and fought for oil, for power, for profit -- the individual soldier doesn't know why he is fighting. He can do unbelievably vile things -- because he doesn't know any better, because he is confused, because he is scared, because he is ordered to.
Last February, US troops opened fire on a taxi, killing a woman, and wounding her two children. "There is evidence to suggest that the warning cones and printed checkpoint signs had not yet been displayed in front of the checkpoint, which may be the reason why the driver of the taxi did not believe he was required to stop," says an official memo matter-of-factly.
Ho-hum. These things happen. And so it goes.
In another case, an Iraqi civilian said US forces opened fire with more than 100 rounds on a sleeping family, killing a mother, a father and a son. The army acknowledged responsibility and made a compensation payment to a survivor.
If we act like Nazis sometimes, at least we make amends with a cash payment. Money solves everything.
The real Nazis are the politicians who authorized this grotesque war, and still defend it -- e.g. McCain, Hillary Clinton, George Bush. The president blathered about today's attack on the Iraq parliament: "There is a type of person that would walk in that building and kill innocent life and that is the same type of person that is willing to come and kill innocent Americans."
Of course, there are no innocent Americans in Iraq. We are the occupiers, we are the destroyers.
Posted by Deck at April 12, 2007 03:39 PM