I'm profoundly saddened by
this report on the testimony emerging from the trial of American soldiers charged with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, and the murder of her parents.
It's a desperate tragedy all around, and reading the descriptions of how soldiers are dealing with the stress of their situation in this war, it becomes disturbingly clear how far the implications of our "muscular foreign-policy" run. We put soldiers in a combat zone half-way around the world from their homes. The reasons for being in Iraq, although vividly and passionately argued, make far less sense when you're sitting in the desert waiting to be killed. The combat stresses--from constant insurgent attacks, lack of proper equipment, severe shortage of troops--mean that soldiers, according to testimony in this trial, go for weeks at vulnerable check points with no relief, no hot food or showers, no contact. They believe every day that they will die, in a place that means nothing to them. So they self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, and fall into a pit of hopelessness, terror and despair.
The cycle only deepens when drugged and desperate soldiers crack, unleashing horrific scenes of violence on civilians. And then, to appease the Iraqis and assure Americans that this is an anomoly, we put the soldiers up on trial in a public display of purging, without atonement. This is a recipe for the worst our country has to offer the world, and the ripples that roll away from these events travel farther than we know, or want to know. When you read about these horrifying crimes, relayed in slavering detail to frame the men and women involved as monsters, remember how the soldiers got there. Imagine, for a moment, the civilian strategists who engineered their environment sitting themselves in a bullet-riddled checkpoint, drinking bootleg whiskey and waiting to die.