Ethics

The front page of today's Herald features two photos, in color, above the fold. They are two frames from the video of the murder of Nick Berg. The first shows him sitting on the floor, surrounded by masked men. The second shows one of the men holding Berg's head to one side as he applies the edge of his knife to Berg's throat.

Thank you. I think we all needed to see that. Mr. Berg's family surely needed to see that. Like hell.
The US government prevents us from seeing photos of our military coffins, citing security (hah!) and sensitivity to the families. But a civilian (Whom authorities now say was advised to leave Iraq, and if that isn't a case of the buck stops with the victim, I don't know what is.) being murdered as payback for a photo of a prisoner wearing a dog collar (Oh, yeah. That's a fucking eye for an eye, I'll tell you. I can surely see the corollary there, boy howdy.) well, that's just perfect fodder for the insatiable American viewing public.

Fuck me. I don't think so. And if I were the least bit paranoid, I would say that Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg had one thing in common other than having their cold-blooded murders paraded through the American press: they were both Jews.

If I were the least bit paranoid, I would say that one thing is what makes it acceptable to show their deaths.

But I'm not that paranoid. I think that the reason these brutal slayings are shown ad nauseum is because we need images like that to keep the determination to stay in Iraq alive in the hearts of the American people. This is just propaganda for the Bush mill. Bush and his lousy, filthy cadre of chickenhawks. Not a one of the high-ranking men in his administration served in the Viet Nam war. Not a one of them has a son or daughter in the military, at risk for the kind of death they allow to be broadcast nightly. They condone the demonization of the enemy, and then react with faux horror when the citizen soldiers of our own republic are found to have committed "atrocities" against the enemy.

A person cannot commit an atrocity against an enemy who looks like them, or has the same values as them. You need to create a demon in order to be able to maintain the fight. Our government is creating a demon in fact by its actions in Iraq, and a demon in the popular imagination by what they chose to allow to be shown to the American people.

And I for one, have had enough.