Dr. Forbush Thinks

I was listening to Randi Rhodes last week on Air America Radio. And, she mentioned that some US soldiers were posting pictures from Iraq on a web site called “Now That’s Fucked Up.” I thought that I should know a little bit more about what was going on in Iraq in order to be able to comment on it in a more informed way. So, I wandered over to the site and found out that it is a porn site. The site has several categories of pictures that you can imagine, and it has a category called Iraq and Afghanistan. Under this topic is a section called “gory.” Being an adult, I thought that I should be able to handle the “gory” section. After all, my grand parents lived next to a mortuary and I saw my share of dead bodies from a very young age.

Well, I need to tell you that I wasn’t prepared for the violence that I witnessed on this site. And, both sides committed this violence. When I saw a picture of an Iraqi with his head in pieces and a US soldier smiling next to him I couldn’t look at any more pictures. This picture is engraved in my mind and I can’t get rid of it. It is more disgusting than any porn on that site could ever attempt to be.

So, I began to think about the damage that we are doing to our young soldiers over there in Iraq. These guys are in their early twenties and their experience with death before they went was most likely a death of a relative or friend. They most likely had very little experience with the violence that they now see every day in Iraq. I was effected by this one picture in such a deep profound way that it took me until today to write about it. It wasn’t only about the death of this one Iraqi that bothered me, it was also about the joy on the face of the American Soldiers next to him. Death should never be celebrated in this way. The death of this person effects the family of this person. In a way, America is sending a message to the Iraqis that their deaths don’t matter. Even if it isn’t the official policy, Iraqis see this and they build a hatred toward the American occupation of their country. How could they not?

Imagine yourself in this situation. A country overthrows our government and imposes military occupation on us. Imagine that Bill Clinton is President, for all you right wingers out there. At first, you might think that it’s great not to have Bill Clinton in power any more. But when you see this foreign military killing Democrats that you know, but don’t necessarily agree with you might have second thoughts about the occupation. This is what is happening in Iraq. And, the longer we stay in Iraq the more the people will hate us.

These pictures on this web site don’t help us. We need to ask the question - “What should be done about this?” I know that the right wing will jump up and down and say that censoring the site is the solution. But, most Iraqis don’t see the pictures on this site. Instead, the Iraqis see the US soldiers doing these things right outside their homes in the streets. They don’t need the pictures, they have the live action in their streets. Censorship only prevents us from knowing what is happening in Iraq. Our American Soldiers are out there acting in this inhumane way toward the Iraqi dead, because they have been emotionally changed by the war itself. The violence has made them feel as if Iraqi deaths are different than American deaths. And these soldiers will return home at some point bringing these scars of war with them. The longer they stay there the further away from humanity they travel. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for the soldiers to come home before they can never come home again?





politics, Iraq and Impeach Bush