Desecrating the Dead

A thread on this topic had already been started in the Politics forum but was locked. I have no idea why. The topic concerned four American civilians killed in Fallujah, Iraq, their bodies desecrated.

I had avoided much of the news about this for many reasons. But tonight I saw the images of two of the dead hanging from a bridge, and a few short, but brutal seconds of footage from Mogadishu when the body of a dead soldier was dragged through the streets in 1993. Both images will remain with me for a long time. Both make me feel utter sickness. Both make me cry.

Do I cry for these men and their families? Certainly. But I also cry for the lack of humanity in this world. How can hate dominate so much that, to quote from a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, "individuals could become so detached from their sense of humanity that they could brutalize each other in life or death."

In the initial thread of this topic IronLionZion said "I think it would do us all good to remember that at least 10,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have died as a result of this invasion so far. This often downplayed fact has to be taken into consideration when Americans wonder how Iraqis could be so ungrateful and enraged. Yes we need to remember this. And yes it is understandable that Iraqi citizens would feel rage, hatred and more for the deaths of innocents and the chaos that exists in their country. But hate breeds hate. American soldiers do not (for the most part I believe) take any pleasure in killing or in partaking of his war. The men I saw in the footage took pleasure in their acts.

Are you not horrified that our fellow human beings could behave like this? Could display the actions that remind one of a pack of rabid dogs?

What bothers me even more is knowing this is not the first time such acts have been committed upon one human being from another. I imagine it is not outside the realm of possibility for these types of atrocities to take place every day. You need only go to the Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International web pages to read about some of what happens. How can hate like this exist??

I do not believe this war should have happened. Hussein needed to be removed from power, but not in this way. And he is not the only one. What of Kim Jong-il? A man who allows his own people to starve while he lives in luxury?

I am wholly disheartened by the state of affairs in the world today.

Yet I feel so very fortunate right now to live in a country where I can live freely, where I have choices and where I do not live in fear.