...and the bleat goes on

In ‘Scapegoating Blackwater,’ Ted Rall misuses the sometimes short-sighted and ignorant cowboy actions of some private contractors as a launch pad to fly off on a diatribe against despicable incidents of inhuman behavior by our soldiers in Iraq. The article has in fact not much to say about how Blackwater is or isn’t being scapegoated; but that doesn’t seem to be his intent. Rather the title and first few paragraphs are current enough that they allow Rall to seque into the issue of misbehaving troops, an article that may otherwise leave him editorially abandoned due to forced disinterest.

Rall’s a smart guy and sometimes a very good writer. He shouldn’t have let himself fall into the trap of generalizing the actions of a few to the judgment of many. That’s so 1973. By allowing his anger about the war to make him lazy, both he and his editor let slip a really good opportunity to talk about differing standards for soldiers and private contractors, who those contractors are, and why those differences exist. I’d like to see more short articles like that, as it would help more people learn how mercenaries are changing the face of conflict for our country and decide whether they’re doing more harm than good (my bet is that they’re doing much more harm than good at, as Rall points out, nine times the price).

On another note, I’m not sure how I feel about blatantly anti-Iraq-war types like Rall (and myself) detailing the inevitable grisly effects of war, or the occasionally horrid actions of people in uniform. Part of me wants to print them on every billboard and rub every pro-war person’s nose in it, especially the chickenhawks, and say ‘This is what you’ve wrought. This is what happens every time no matter who and for what they are fighting. Don’t you read?! This is what they mean when they talk about unleashing the dogs of war.’ But the other part of me, especially when reading things like Rall’s article, doesn’t appreciate the manipulative nature of such compelling visceral detail when it’s wielded simply to make me agree with the author. It’s a shabby use of already shabby deaths, and I continue to hope that not just we as Americans but all people can rise above the pathetically tribal exploitation of dead bodies, be they hanging from bridges or from newspaper printing machines.