Collateral murder

If you haven’t seen it yet, WikiLeaks has released a damning classified video of American Apache gunship pilots wantonly slaughtering people in Baghdad. This is an abbreviated version of the full 39-minute video, and perhaps necessary background to what I wrote below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0[/youtube]

On the one hand, I am grateful to WikiLeaks for making this available. On the other, I am ashamed, disappointed and frightened that such direct evidence of evil is necessary for people to ascertain its presence and dominion.

“Bushmaster” will never be prosecuted by the system which put him in control. Maybe one or two of the CounterStrike-addled kids who actually did these murders will, and be released after a couple of years, having been “rehabilitated”. The whole goddamned thing will be swept under the rug and forgotten, much like the carpet-bombing and napalming of Vietnamese and Burmese families two generations ago. Much like the firebombing of Dresden. Much like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much like the massacres in the Philippines. Oh, I could go on…

And the machine will grind on. Threatening, extorting, imprisoning, torturing, maiming and murdering, until we put a stop to it. These creatures — I cannot call them “people” — live in your communities. They attend your churches. They dine in your restaurants. They attend PTA meetings at your school. They shop in your grocery store, and, maybe, they occasionally come into contact with your children or grandchildren at the playground. They are monsters, worthy of less than the bottom of a well, and yet they live among you.

And they are forming your culture. They are defining the world we live in. They are honored and revered for their “service” to rival global death machines. And the music swells, the crowd rises, hands go over hearts, and…