What would Shakespeare say?
Sep. 20th, 2005 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieAs I was glancing at headlines this morning, I ran across the following quote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune (emphasis added by yours truly):
"New Orleans Guardsman Brian McDow, in an e-mail from Alexandria where most of the troops are still stationed, said soldiers grew increasingly frantic as they watched news of the storm from abroad. "With each minute that passed, we gathered around the televisions … and we watched Katrina do her work," he wrote. "Word spread like wildfire when the levees broke, and we all wanted to know where and how bad the city was flooding … What came as a horror to us was all the criminal activity during and after the hurricane. We all wanted to go to New Orleans and treat these thugs like insurgents."
Okay. On the one hand, I completely understand the impulse, particularly since this is his hometown; of course he wanted to lay the smackdown on the people shooting at aid helicopters and wantonly looting TVs. On the other hand, the subtext is pretty frightening.
I dunno. Maybe he just means "insurgents" to mean those who are setting off roadside bombs - in which case I can certainly understand his anger. These are his buddies getting blown up. But Abu Ghraib and other incidents makes me wonder if he might not mean all Iraqis, if the ongoing stresses there have dehumanized all of the citizenry to the status of less-than-human, stomp-on-them-for-the-greater-good-and-never-mind-the-legalities. How exactly are he and his fellow military men treating the insurgents? How are they being defined as insurgents in the first place?
I can't help but think that we'd be a heck of a lot better off in Iraq today if we had started off remembering Shakespeare's words in Henry V: "For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentlest gamester is the soonest winner." Now, of course, it's probably too late even if we had someone in charge who was willing to tackle the problem of cruelty instead of instituting it as policy.
"New Orleans Guardsman Brian McDow, in an e-mail from Alexandria where most of the troops are still stationed, said soldiers grew increasingly frantic as they watched news of the storm from abroad. "With each minute that passed, we gathered around the televisions … and we watched Katrina do her work," he wrote. "Word spread like wildfire when the levees broke, and we all wanted to know where and how bad the city was flooding … What came as a horror to us was all the criminal activity during and after the hurricane. We all wanted to go to New Orleans and treat these thugs like insurgents."
Okay. On the one hand, I completely understand the impulse, particularly since this is his hometown; of course he wanted to lay the smackdown on the people shooting at aid helicopters and wantonly looting TVs. On the other hand, the subtext is pretty frightening.
I dunno. Maybe he just means "insurgents" to mean those who are setting off roadside bombs - in which case I can certainly understand his anger. These are his buddies getting blown up. But Abu Ghraib and other incidents makes me wonder if he might not mean all Iraqis, if the ongoing stresses there have dehumanized all of the citizenry to the status of less-than-human, stomp-on-them-for-the-greater-good-and-never-mind-the-legalities. How exactly are he and his fellow military men treating the insurgents? How are they being defined as insurgents in the first place?
I can't help but think that we'd be a heck of a lot better off in Iraq today if we had started off remembering Shakespeare's words in Henry V: "For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentlest gamester is the soonest winner." Now, of course, it's probably too late even if we had someone in charge who was willing to tackle the problem of cruelty instead of instituting it as policy.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-20 07:38 pm (UTC)I know I'm a cynic, but you sound like a bona fide pessimist here. You need a vacation, not just from work but from the news.