Anal rape of children is bad. This is a sentence that, in the normal course of things, one would think that it would be unnecessary to write. I'm pretty sure -- much as I loathe humanity, most of the damn time -- that the majority of humans on this planet, obsessed as they tend to be with their progeny, would agree with me that raping children is a bad thing. One of the worst things that you can do, they'd probably say, short of maybe genocide.
Or rather, cleansing. Ethnic cleansing, to wash away those pesky ethnic underarm stains that are so embarrassing in polite society.
'Rape's a part of war, though, stav!' I hear you cry, as I cup quivering-with-rage hand to shell-like ear. 'To the victor the spoils, and the orifices. The plunder, the glory! It's part of our common human heritage! It's tradition, damn it!'
Well, sure. But butt-f--king kids while their mothers look on? While videotaping it? I'm not sure that's really in line with the 'rape, loot and pillage' modus operandi so loved and respected throughout human history. Pushing the envelope a little, that. It may not be specifically forbidden by the letter of Geneva Convention, for example, but I'm pretty sure it goes against the spirit of it.
Which is why the Bush administration spent so much time and effort trying to ensure that their troops would not be bound by international law, of course.
Because that's what the Americans were doing, it seems, at least until they got caught.
Raping children. With Soldiers Gone Wild spring-break videography.
I wrote an deliberately, egregiously offensive piece called 'Neocon Allegory' many months back, in which Dick Cheney anally rapes and murders an Iraqi boy. It was the most over-the-top offensive thing I could come up with, that little piece, after the unwelcome images of that tableau had gotten their claws into me, and I knew I had to write it down to get it out of my head. I wrote it down alright, and I've thought about deleting it many times since. I'm glad now that I didn't.
How horrifying is it that the central metaphors of that post -- the rape of children by Dick and George, the rape of two nations, of the whole f--king planet -- would seem to have come true, in as literal a way as one could imagine in the worst mescaline-driven nightmare? How awful that the worst metaphorical flight of nasty invention I could come up with is now a reality in fact, and it's being hidden by the powerful and ignored by the hypnotized?
Pretty awful. And they ask why I seem to hate America so. They keep asking.
You can also subscribe to the 
Booze Glorious Booze
Emergency
Korea-related
Links
Metablogging
Me|dia
Musical Interludes
People Say Stuff Sometimes
Random Silliness
Reminiscences
Thoughts That, If Not Deep, Are At Least Wide
Trippy Visuals, Man
Uncategorizable Crap
Uncrappy
non compos mentis
dg said
Yeah, things have certainly got to the point where even the most rabid have to admit that control has been lost in Iraq. Until that happens, there is nothing that can be done towards righting the wrongs, if that is possible.
July 16, 2004 9:32 PM
Camilo said
Oh, Stavros, you know well that those videos have a high probability of being under the Pentagon's "accidental deletion" policy.
Unless they show up in Kazaa, at which point this country will realize the extreme at which it has been violated and deceived.
July 16, 2004 9:44 PM
tizzie said
Chris, I thought of your neo-con piece and how it horrified me when I read that thread on Mefi last night. This is real life. This is so much worse.
I feel sick. If this was condoned by Rumsfeld or anyone even close to that level, then this government has to go down in history with that of Stalin or Pol Pot.
July 16, 2004 11:12 PM
dv said
Not what George Carlin had in mind when he said "Fuck the Children!"
July 17, 2004 2:39 AM
Nonya said
Gee and for a second I thought you had a real link to a real story.
You should have saved your rant until you got some facts.
July 19, 2004 10:27 AM
stavrosthewonderchicken said
You think that's a rant? Not hardly.
July 19, 2004 3:06 PM
stavrosthewonderchicken said
Also, I'd call this as veering pretty close to evidence, wouldn't you, Nonya?
July 21, 2004 9:12 AM
Nonya said
I apologize for my first retort...just reading what you posted pissed me off, and after getting into a self-righteous anger I went to your links and saw they weren't real newspaper articles. That ticked me off even more for getting worked up about something that, at this point, is hearsay and not published fact. Those are very serious allegations, and if (and I still say "if") true, need to be brought public and the guilty hung by their nuts.
July 22, 2004 9:30 AM
stavrosthewonderchicken said
Agreed, if the light is shone into the corners, and if it does indeed reveal that Seymour Hersh (and some senators and congressmen, let it be said) are not making shit up.
July 22, 2004 9:32 PM
stark said
I read this entry and then I read your earlier entry "Why I Seem to hate America so". I think I agree with you on a lot of points. US could be great [and is in a lot of ways] but it's not as great as it should be or as it thinks it is. But that's true for a lot of places and a lot of people. I think it's best summed up as "people suck and don't know it".
July 25, 2004 3:49 AM
Mark V Shaney said
I really am fed up of people online whom I have subsequently met offline and I donââ¬â¢t think anything of it, but when it is used competently. Violent war is not senseless slaughter and
destruction, at least not when it keeps happening again and again and again it starts to piss you off. Then you realise that if you keep reacting to it, its interests, and its allies.
Mark V. Shaney
July 28, 2004 2:20 AM
stavrosthewonderchicken said
Er, what?
July 28, 2004 8:42 AM
The Bobster said
nonya said " That ticked me off even more for getting worked up about something that, at this point, is hearsay and not published fact."
I think the definition of hearsay has to do with when someone is recounting the words of someone else. Hersh pretty clearly indicates that he has viewed this video himself (else he would not be able to comment on the shrieks contained in it) so I would hazard that his comments amount to first hand eyewitness testimony as regards the existence of the video.
Not intending to quibble here, just wanted to clarify.
Although Hersh is as likely to be fooled by a bogus tape as any other person not trained in the specifics of the tech, I don't see him as the kind of guy who makes things up.
July 30, 2004 12:34 AM