I feel for the innocent Iraqi. I feel for the sniper. The thing about war is that it damages the survivors as well as the fallen.
But nobody really believes that going in. The idea of kicking ass feels so GOOD. So right. Se easy.
Good heavens, that's sad.
Daniel Davies has a piece up on his own blog addressing some of the same issues in relation to the shooting of that Brazilian guy in London.
I've been thinking about Davies piece; might do a post on it today.
It's sad that Salihee was killed, and I am glad for his family if this sort of publicity gives them any peace. But the piece itself is troubling; it's an impressionistic account that seems more interested in serving certain narrative ends ("good doctor," "simple Southern boy," "tough decisions," etc.) than anything else. I'm sure it's heartfelt, but it depresses me in ways that are only ancillary to the content.
SCMT,
Can you elaborate on that? If you are saying the piece seems to want to show how war affects good, ordinary people then I'd say "Yeah, so what?"
Tripp:
I very much liked Four Weddings and a Funeral, and particularly liked the reading of the poem at the funeral. After I left the theater, I idly imagined a series of funerals in which I'd show the same grace. I rejected family funerals as too creepy, but I happily killed a series of friends to justify my moment; indeed, some friends were spared only because they weren't really close enough to justify a scene.
That's kind of creepy, but (I hope) pretty normal. It was only a movie, and only my imagination. I don't really think the act of imagining something makes it likely to happen. There just wasn't much incentive for me to take seriously the scene I was imagining; I could trim all of the gristly bits of reality off for the sake of the narrative.
I feel, sometimes, like we (Americans) do the same thing as regards Iraq. The central problem is that we don't much care what happens to the Iraqis. Not really. So the Right feels free to use them as either Nobel Savages who are to be elevated through our efforts, or as the objects of some Toby Keith song. And the Left (inc. me) treats them as part of a lesson plan about how war is morally complex, war is hell, or whatever. It just feels fake to me, somehow.
Meanwhile, everything over there is going to hell, and I have no idea what the next step should be. I'd say that we should feel obliged to stick around and clean up the mess, but I think pretending to do that while we don't really care is likely to lead to an even bigger mess.
Aren't you holding the piece to a rather high standard of art? The writer is reporting a tragic error, and trying both to include the facts necessary to make it clear that it was an error and still not blaming the sniper as an individual villian. That's tough -- I'm not surprised the result feels a little formulaic.
With everything considered, though, I think it's better that a piece like this should be written than not -- while it may oversimplify to an extent, at least it reminds us, or informs us, what an incredible mess our actions in Iraq are.
LB:
I don't really have a problem with the author. He was doing his job, he did it well, and, as I said, I'm sure it was heartfelt. But there's no new insight in there: decent Iraqis are being killed by Americans (knew that), the American soldiers doing the killing are decent people themselves (knew that), and the actual event is likely to be a function of minor error and the nature of the game (knew that).
It bothers me more as evidence about the way we respond to the Iraq war, and the limited likelihood that there are better ways to address it that we will find by looking at the war. It isn't the writer's fault that there isn't any new information that might help us better craft policy. Maybe the information just doesn't exist, or if it does, maybe we don't really care enough about the issue that we'll notice it. I don't know. It just depresses me to think that all we're really doing now is playing out a series of already known moves to complete the game. And it depresses me more to suspect that our actions are now being driven more by the symbolism of the war for those at home than by what's going on in Iraq.
At the end of the day, I guess I think that most people who read Salon (i.e., ogged) already know "what an incredible mess our actions in Iraq are," and I want someone to tell me what we do next.
Shorter SCMT: I find myself more and more depressed about Iraq; it's not even fun being angry anymore.
But there's no new insight in there: decent Iraqis are being killed by Americans (knew that), the American soldiers doing the killing are decent people themselves (knew that), and the actual event is likely to be a function of minor error and the nature of the game (knew that).
I get, and share, your depression, but what stories like this do is keep people from assuming that "I never hear about Iraq anymore; things must be all right." I think there's a lot of unsupported contentment with the results of the war in Afghanistan, mostly because there isn't much coverage of the current situation there (which I understand to be pretty much violent anarchy/warlord control everywhere outside Kabul.)
SCMT,
I'd say that we should feel obliged to stick around and clean up the mess
The sad fact is that there is nothing we can do to clean up the mess, and sticking around just makes it worse.
Maybe everybody reading this already knows many Iraqis who have been killed were innocent. Maybe we all know the soldiers are innocent, too. Still, there are strong forces at work trying to dehumanize both sets and this article works against that.
As for how you feel - you should feel depressed about Iraq. It shows you have a conscience.
I want to echo LizardBreath's point about the need to keep the stories in the media. SCMT may know this stuff alreafy, but a lot of people don't.