It puzzles me why the soldier-throwing-puppy-off-cliff video has drawn far more outrage across the internet than any single video of US soldiers in Iraq committing indiscriminate murder. Perhaps this video, of American troops essentially behaving like assholes, (or children someone made the very poor choice to hand guns and who are drunk on power, or frat boys who would be much better served by being given scissors to run around with) can put the puppy video into a tiny bit of perspective.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq5_vG3cYGM]

At least in part, the sentiment that causes us by and large to focus on the puppy-over-the-cliff, as opposed to indiscriminate disregard for human dignity, property and life, may be due to the fact that many of us know people who have gone to Iraq. Take the town of Killeen, Texas for instance. Stars line the walls of the high school for the hundreds of parents who are in Iraq, they’ve had to dig an entire new cemetary, and 200 widows have been created by the war since 2003.

We know these people, they’re our neighbors. How can we reconcile these images with our own communities, and as such, our own identities? Is it really possible that the victimizers are in fact also victims?

I’ve written before that I have little faith in human nature, and that each and every one of us is capable of the worst nightmarishly horrible violations, if only given the power, and the ability to think of others as subhuman.

The towns, though, that continue burying their young people who come home in boxes, understandably prefer to believe that their sacrifice is for something worthwhile, something that in the national imagination is inarguably above our value as individuals:

Everyone believed that US troops should remain in Iraq to protect America from terrorists, to honour the dead, such as Gary, and to complete the job… even one whose definition was becoming less certain.

“You want to know why small-town America is losing so many of its people in Iraq?” he asked, his voice quivering. “It’s because small-town America still believes in this country, still believes in fighting for the freedom to worship whichever God you believe in. Our young men and women – like Gary – have been sacrificing their lives for this for 200 years. This is America.”

If we are to remove the ideology from the equation, and gain a practical understanding of what is happening and what our government is sending people to die for, we must, in fact we NEED, to be listening very carefully to these people.

Related posts:

1. Baby I’m A Soldier
2. Italians Killing Americans
3. Israeli Court Bans “Neighbor” Policy
4. Citizen-Soldier-Book Reviewers
5. Addicted to War