Re: [Marxism] Marine's wife says army in Haditha was "out of control"

[Marvin Gandall <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fred Feldman wrote:

> By the way, there is definitely too much gushing over the pressures
> "our" troops are under, fighting in the dark against the resistance
> which "slaughters" them.  Much of the media -- and sometimes even the
> left -- leaves the impression that the only really guilty party in this
> war -- the only real criminals --are the armed resistance.  And the
> pressures they are under with their country occupied and being
> slaughtered by the mightiest military power on earth gets no press at
> all.

> The resistance are "terrorists" and "ruthless murderers" but the Gis are
> good kids under too much pressure.  What else can you expect.  One thing
> totally left out of their  "emotional" problems is racism and
> imperialist arrogance -- that they have a right to be obeyed and
> protected and even loved and appreciated by those they are pushing
> around.
====================================
Exactly right. The roots are the same as with domestic violence - the
frustrated and displaced urge of the powerless to lord it over those with
even less power than themselves whom they've been conditioned to despise.
Atrocities are inevitable when the most brutalized and least self-controlled
among them are given the means and opportunity to vent their pent-up rage.

Here, for example, is sergeant Ron Radaker of the Pennsylvania National
Guard providing a glimpse into that psychology in an interview with Scott
Anderson in the May 28th New York Times Magazine ("Bringing It All Back
Home"), an otherwise standard piece about the emotional difficulties of
returning veterans. The "stress" Raddaker refers to is his daily grind as a
lonely factory worker in the US, not the combat he experienced in Iraq. He
describes Iraq, in fact, as a release, providing him with the comradeship
and, most of all, the opportunity to exercise the power he lacked at home -
at the expense of the Iraqis. of course.

"This same sentiment was echoed by every other member of Alpha Company I
spoke with", Anderson writes. "One of them was a 33-year-old sergeant named
Ron Radaker. 'It's just very hard, very stressful,' he told me, sitting in a
coffee shop near his factory workplace in East Butler. 'I mean, it's great
being back with my wife, spending time with my kids, but in other ways. . .
well, I guess I kind of miss it. I miss my fellow soldiers. I miss the
camaraderie. And I don't mean to sound arrogant when I say this, but I miss
the power. Over there, when we would do a patrol and have a car approach us
and we fired warning shots, that's a thrill, that's power. Over there,
everybody knew we were there. We were the king of the road, and they either
respected or hated us for it. And now you're back here, and you ain't king
of nothing. That's very hard to explain to anyone else, but it's why I try
to avoid these situations that set me off - like being in crowds or people
doing stupid things on the road - because when that happens, I get hyper,
and I don't like being hyper here because there's nothing I can do about
it.' "



________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism