You are Not Currently Who You Think You Are

by Dillon Freed
March 30, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1360/you-are-not-currently-who-you-think-you-are

To show solidarity with any one they believe to be getting the hard hand of the United States or of some right-wing authority, the Left often assumes identity with those souls. On cue, at the "Left Forum" in New York City this past weekend, which I went at the urging of Sun Tzu, always liked that "know your enemy" bit, I saw a farrago of signs that stated, for instance: "I am [Insert imprisoned rebel]."

There was paraphernalia for a Puerto Rican man jailed for spying, one for some black woman who was fighting racism in suburbia or something, and cheap posters (I am certain a fifth grader has more skill in graphic design) declaiming, "I am Bradley Manning." In case the name escapes you, he was the post-modern puke who sold out the United States by bequeathing Julian Assange and Wikileaks secret cables.

If I ever swallow poison, I will surely recall the emetic value of such posters. Why on earth anyone would identify with traitors, or any one else, for that matter - I have no idea. Indeed, I never liked this funny business of speaking of myself as someone else. I am myself, and quite happy about it – thanks.

But often one's identity, in this day and age, is harder to hold onto than Gaddafi's grip on reality, and sometimes you are someone else whether you like it or not. Presently, I shall break it to you, you are not who you think you are: indeed, our new names are Jeremy Morlock and Andrew Holmes and we served in the United States Army.

At this very instant: you, me and every single American on the face of the planet, civilian and military alike, in the eyes of many in the Muslim world, are the selfsame as these dastardly, sick, ugly human beings who took pictures and videos – smiling like Jared Loughner, though lacking the clinical illness – with the corpses of the civilians, and Taliban, they slaughtered in Afghanistan. They cut off body parts as trophies - skulls and fingers and heads in fact - and verbally dishonored and disgraced the dead. They even posed with the body of a teenage boy as if they had shot an elk - holding his head up by the hair as if his hair were antlers. Damn them and damn it.

These two men, whom the bulk of the pictures and videos are of, though I believe four are on trial, enrage me beyond measure. It would be horrendous still if they had just killed the Taliban and did such wicked things, but no: they were murdering unarmed women and children! (Then planting evidence to make it look as if they had been attacked).

Now, every soldier serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this will be for some time, is in exponentially more danger, and what it is more: so is every American anywhere in the world. That includes you. Revenge is in the air.

How bad is what they did? Aside from bucking every human sense of decency, bucking the warrior's code, bucking the United States Army prohibition against filming kills, bucking it further by distributing the media among themselves for their lurid, disgusting entertainment, and let's be honest, even sinking below the animal level of feral instinct, consider who these soldiers have pleased by their actions: First, terrorist doyens all over the world from Yemen to Somalia to the Balkans as well as in our own backyard have found their version of motivational tapes, and also, you can be they are yelping with joy at their new recruiting images and agitprop - the Der Speigel paper, which broke the story, will be their official brochure I am sure. And second, it will surely please the vile creeps who perpetrated Abu Gharib's sadomasochistic fest; indeed, finally they have others to look down upon, for at least they murdered no one.

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