March 06, 2008

The Buildup to Civil War is Working

The Myth of the Surge : Rolling Stone

posted by VMM at 5:30 PM

1 Comments:

Blogger JAB said...

From the article:

The Iraqis do not resist — they are accustomed to such treatment. Raids by U.S. forces have become part of the daily routine in Iraq, a systematic form of violence imposed on an entire nation. A foreign military occupation is, by its very nature, a terrifying and brutal thing, and even the most innocuous American patrols inevitably involve terrorizing innocent Iraqi civilians. Every man in a market is rounded up and searched at gunpoint. Soldiers, their faces barely visible behind helmets and goggles, burst into a home late at night, rip the place apart looking for weapons, blindfold and handcuff the men as the children look on, whimpering and traumatized. U.S. soldiers are the only law in Iraq, and you are at their whim. Raids like this one are scenes in a long-running drama, and by now everyone knows their part by heart. "I bet there's an Iraqi rap song about being arrested by us," an American soldier jokes to me at one point.

NOTED yesterday: One of my students had to cut the last two weeks of class because her husband is being sent back to Iraq-again- for 15 months.

There were plenty of lies in WWII, but there was at least some clarity as to its national purpose. This type of war is an endlessly deadly indulgence in fantasies of power, and generates an acid in our great democracy.

A society at War tends to create a cultural structure that glorifies and excuses brutality. If we continue this war indefinitely, we will keep rationalizing it as a nation, and the nation will grow used to brutality, and we will begin to confuse it for what is good.

This is one cultural basis for fascism.

March 7, 2008 at 9:12 AM  

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