Billmon is taking on the question of the mercenaries who were killed in Fallujah. It's toward the last of a post that also raises some very relevant questions about the Marine operations there in the weeks prior to the now-notorious killing/mutilation incident: A Show of Force 04/02/04.
Eric Alterman at his blog also provides a link to this item by blogger Kathryn Cramer with several other links on the high-end mercenary business, Iraq: The Secret Policeman's Other Ball 03/31/04.
As the Marines get ready to send more soldiers like Damian Heidelberg to die to avenge the deaths of the mercenaries who were killed in Fallujah, this passage from Chris Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002) on one of the psychological mechanisms of war seems relevant:
The cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave up their lives. We become enmeshed in the imposed language. When any contradiction is raised or there is a sense that the cause is not just in an absolute sense, the doubts are attacked as apostasy. There is a constant act of remembering and honoring the fallen during war. These ceremonies sanctify the cause. As Americans we speak, following the September attacks, like the Islamic radicals we fight, primarily in clichés. We sound like the Serbian or Croatian nationalists who destroyed the Balkans. The official jargon obscures the game of war - the hunters and the hunted. We accept terms imposed upon us by the state - for example the "war on terror" - and these terms set the narrow parameters by which we are able to think and discuss.
No comments:
Post a Comment