Counterterrorism

I heard some military personnel in Iraq interviewed the other day. One of them said the only way he can deal with the horrors of seeing people mangled and killed is “not [to] think about it.”

Clearly the strain of trying to reconcile all the issues raised when people start killing each other over ideas is too much clutter in the mind when one is on the front lines.

Just after 9-11-01, I tried in my clumsy way to stir up some sort of alternative thinking regarding the use of force and whether it would really bring an end to terrorism, or even much respite from it. I deliberately did not include people who served in the military, because they had already agreed to follow orders. I knew from observing my father’s experiences that the military does not like to hear constructive criticism from within the ranks. So why agitate people who were already going to have to follow questionable orders? The people to reach were the people poised to give those orders.

Unfortunately, the decision makers in this country are as unreachable as the super-classified spooks in their undisclosed locations. Write to your congressman and you just get told why they’re going to do what they were already going to do before you contacted them. Try to reach anyone higher than that and get even less. Catch a government official out in public and they’re too pressed for time to give you more than a handshake or a wave, and maybe a catch phrase or a greeting they hope is relevant to you. When they do have the time, it’s somewhere else, and for someone other than you.

Okay, it’s hard to run a big country, especially by committee, the way we do. George Bush was right. It would be easier if he was dictator. Not good, but easier. And hey, what he is does have the letters d, i and c in it.

Meanwhile, the military personnel are developing the detachment necessary to keep killing and cleaning up after inconclusive battles. Some of them are cracking a little under the strain. Others are shuttering their minds, controlling their feelings, for now. It’s turning into a real war. Survival strategies are developing.

Vietnam gave war a bad name in this country for many years afterwards. The pointlessness, the death, the maiming, the mental and emotional scars actually seemed to dull our taste for violence for a few years. By the 1980s we were well on the way to recovery, though. So you could theorize that the Vietnam casualties died for our sins, to alleviate our need to pursue conflict. The casualties we suffer now may have to serve the same sad purpose, because we cannot be permanently cured of the desire to fight each other to the death over our disagreements.

If you find the part in the Gospels where Jesus said “Go forth and kick some ass,” let me know where it is. But then he just ended up nailed to a cross. What kind of example is that? You don’t smite any evildoers that way.