Donna and I went to a party today.\u00a0 At one point our host put on a DVD his son sent from Iraq, where he’s serving with the US Army.\u00a0 We’ve known our friend’s son since he was in junior high, and we’ve seen him grow up into a fine young man.<\/p>\n
The DVD he sent was composed of still photos of him and his comrades, their forward operating base,\u00a0some of the weapons and equipment they use, and weapons they’d confiscated from Iraqis.\u00a0 Interspersed with the stills were short digital movie clips he’d filmed while on patrol in Baghdad.<\/p>\n
Now I am obviously not in Baghdad, and some would say that fact disqualifies me from saying anything about what I saw on that DVD.\u00a0 I’ll try to bear that in mind.<\/p>\n
What I saw, mingled in with what I’ve already described, were clips of American soldiers in military vehicles ramming Iraqi cars on Baghdad streets, ramming them and shoving them off the road simply because their Iraqi drivers didn’t get out of the way quickly enough.\u00a0 Another clip showed an American soldier stopping an Iraqi driver at a checkpoint, punching him in the face twice through a rolled-down window, then motioning him to drive on.<\/p>\n
True, I also saw\u00a0photos of bombed-out American military vehicles, vehicles in which American troops must have been horribly injured or killed . . .\u00a0but I did not see the Iraqis our troops\u00a0rammed\u00a0or punched in the face blow up\u00a0those vehicles or\u00a0maim and kill our soldiers.<\/p>\n
Most of us have\u00a0seen similar videos\u00a0on the internet.\u00a0 Before, I would have said those videos\u00a0depicted exceptions to the way American troops normally interact with Iraqi civilians.\u00a0 After seeing what I saw today – especially knowing those videos were filmed by a young man I know, a young man who was raised with good values and taught not to treat others with contempt –\u00a0I’m starting to think otherwise.<\/p>\n
I need more time to think about what I saw today.\u00a0 But right\u00a0now, my gut’s telling me this shit’s\u00a0going to come\u00a0back at us.<\/p>\n
Update (1\/6\/08):<\/font><\/em> Of course, this shit (treating all Iraqi civilians as the enemy) has been coming back at us all along, as one of the major motivations of Iraqi insurgents.\u00a0 What I meant is that in addition to furthering the misery in Iraq, this shit’s going to come back at us at home.\u00a0 Many would say it already has, and would point to the increasingly arrogant behavior of police, and our own willingness to truckle to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donna and I went to a party today.\u00a0 At one point our host put on a DVD his son sent from Iraq, where he’s serving with the US Army.\u00a0 We’ve known our friend’s son since he was in junior high, and we’ve seen him grow up into a fine young man. The DVD he sent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-military","category-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3786,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/3786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}