| __________GIs Sometimes Act Like Children by KT
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(AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
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Just when you think you've heard what can be said about Iraq, something new pops up. The latest supposedly has GIs in Iraq, unsupervised or with too much time on the computer, swapping some of their photos of war-mainly gruesome ones of the dead-for access to a pornography website.
On the surface, this sounds pretty bad and it is. However, GIs, unsupervised, will get themselves into mischief. This is not unlike issues such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the one National Guard battalion charging Iraqis money for being allowed to do commerce inside the "Green Zone" (gigantic staging area for many of the American soldiers).
The local San Francisco paper which simply hates Bush and is about as anti-military as you can get, had a scathing article. The article had about as much insight as a tree. I don't condone what the soldiers did as it is stupid to say the least. And, I doubt seriously if they could not find porn on the web with little or no effort. Why they would feel a need to trade war photos is a little unclear. They need their asses kicked. Nevertheless, this is an example of poor supervision.
__________Soldiers Are Often Like Sheep
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Soldiers live their lives being told what to do; and, then when they get free time, their lives at war need to be monitored. They become like sheep: nudged to move right, then left. They do it. Any parent with any moxie understands this. I have never been comfortable with all this access that soldiers have to email and the Internet. If they have all this time, what are they doing over there? Soldiers have all levels of supervision and for them to do this is inexcusable. Somebody has to be asleep at the wheel.
The flip side of the coin is that I give no credibility to the story in the local paper. San Francisco is a world class city, but we have a bush league (no pun intended) newspaper. It doesn't even attempt to be objective; and, as someone said, I had rather read one page of the New York Times than the entire local paper. Now, that is an indictment.
GIs, need supervision; and, in war, strict supervision. In war, all the rules are out the window because people die in war. Soldiers trading war photos for porn is unacceptable, but it points to the realization that war is no day at the beach; people die in war; and, regardless of how we view it, the war in Iraq is reality. This war does exist and those same soldiers that are being stupid are also dying for what they perceive as freedom.
GIs have always taken photographs. I have a giant collage of the 82d Airborne from WW II that was given to me by a friend. In it is one of the most gruesome photographs that I've ever seen: dead children, found in the rubble of a house, probably bombed by Americans during the war. For the writer of the Chronicle article, I suggest she read some of the WW II books and look at photographs of the dead from the Holocaust or from American POW camps of the Japanese. War is hell.
Why would a porn website publish gruesome photographs? Publicity? I doubt the motive is anything worthwhile, but the photos cry censorship. I couldn't care less, but I do care about GIs being stupid and contributing to this sort of thing. Another example of just what a mess we have in Iraq.
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| __________ About The Sixties by KT
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I watched this program about the sixties the other night on public TV. It has been on before, but last night was the first time I saw it totally through. Very interesting. According to the documentary, I was in Vietnam during this pivotal time. Like all documentaries, it tells the story from a particular perspective. The perspective was that the entire country was into the summer of love. University of California at Berkeley was the place to be-the student movement, the black panthers, etc. And, of course, for the discerning person that was not true. The events that the documentarian thinks were turning points in our country; and, in Vietnam, I don't see at all.
So, was it mostly in their imagination? Not necessarily. Someone said that "A person's perception is their reality"- so true. The documentarian of the program, The Sixties, has a perception and for him and the writers, it is their reality. But, for many of us, the sixties were entirely different.
And, some of the facts were wrong. Before I went to Vietnam, I was a chaplain to the 503d Military Police Battalion. In 67', we went to Washington for the March on the Pentagon. The 503d was shown in lots of pictures and the documentary called them the 82d Airborne. Not. The 82d was not even there. Now, does that make any difference? No. But, I think what it means is simply that documentaries, TV, movies, etc., have a story to tell and sometimes the facts, even very relevant ones, get lost in the process.
KT
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