(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

Just tried reading that New Yorker article about the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Got about halfway through it and decided I didn't want to know any more of what went on. The little snippets you hear on the news do not do what happened justice.

I am going to shut my eyes, put my hands over my ears and start going "la la la la," because I don't want to know any more. It's one thing to know intellectually that people are people, capable of anything on the grand spectrum of good and evil, and another to know that for all you know, some of those people doing those things could have been the ones you had in mind when you decided to save up your old issues of Rolling Stone to send off. It is a completely irrational and silly and prejudiced thing to think that Americans are necessarily better people, but it still hurts when the fact rears up in your face they're not.

Comments

[twoweevils.livejournal.com]

Word. I had to stop my mother from recounting the details to me. The fact that it happened is all I need to know. The sad thing is, when you train people to dehumanize themselves to the point where they can function as "perfect" soldiers, they tend to act inhuman.

M.

[sonatine.livejournal.com]

I am not sure it is the fact that they were so much trained in torture to the point of being inhuman that disturbs me so much, but that in the pictures they looked very cognizant of what they were doing, and enjoying it. They have these big silly grins on their faces, and they look like they're having the best time in the world. I can understand, dimly, the concept of torture as an odious necessity in war (I don't believe that but I can sort of understand it), but the taking of real pleasure in the degradation and humiliation of another human being I cannot fathom.