I don't say naive. And I don't say "they're just kids." I've seen the footage and I feel sick about it (especially cause of the barely contained excitment of the 'Counter-Strike' type discussion). But I still say that when you have a political system that offers military service as an alternative to poverty and incarceration, and a foreign policy that murders, tortures and decimates civilian populations without accountability or justification, then the guy pulling the trigger has about as much ethical importance as a bag of sand.
I remember arguing with some loved ones during the Gulf War about the term "culpable lack of imagination," which they applied to local kids who were joining the army. We were living in a poor part of a poor province, right next to an army base, where the future was pretty damn bleak for just about everyone in the neighbourhood except us. The army was a job and a way out. Meaning what? That the apalling murder-for-fun of Iraqis is a societal, not an individual, culpability. Nobody is off the hook, more of us are on it.
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I remember arguing with some loved ones during the Gulf War about the term "culpable lack of imagination," which they applied to local kids who were joining the army. We were living in a poor part of a poor province, right next to an army base, where the future was pretty damn bleak for just about everyone in the neighbourhood except us. The army was a job and a way out. Meaning what? That the apalling murder-for-fun of Iraqis is a societal, not an individual, culpability. Nobody is off the hook, more of us are on it.
- sally mckay 5-29-2004 8:48 am