Reflections on Week Nine

Week nine was a good week, and was made even more so by parents weekend. My parents came into class on Friday and participated in our advertisement activity, which was a very interesting one at that. The first advertisement we saw was a recruitment ad for the US Army which, although I thought it was a “cool” ad, displayed a clear jingoistic trend starting in the middle and increasing towards the end. I feel like the claim, “There is nothing on this green earth that is stronger than the US Army…because there is nothing on this green earth that is stronger than a US Army soldier” really damaged the credibility of the ad because it just sounded, well, foolish. I think a majority of class agreed, because when the ad came to that section a good number of people laughed in a, “wow, that’s a joke” kind of way.

Although understandable in the context of the military, I felt uneasy when the words, “The strength to obey” appeared on the screen due to controversies involving US personnel in the last several years, such as Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Mahmudiyah, Guantanamo Bay, Hamdania, and Shinwar. I am disgusted by the abuse, torture, and murder of civilians and prisoners these events reek of. Such terrible actions portray the United States in a very negative light, damaging our image with the international community and harming US efforts to combat global terrorism by providing justification to our enemies’ claims that we are an “evil” country. Further, crimes like these give our armed forces a bad name, flying in the face of the strength of character, purpose, and ability to do good that the ad talked about, and deeply wound our national morale.

Reading about these atrocities, it hurt me to know that they were perpetrated by people from my own country.

It made me feel ashamed.

I know that the US military is not made up of cruel, malicious individuals looking to hurt other people. I know some people in the military: I have a friend in the Army and a cousin in the Air Force, as well as a friend whose father is in the Air Force. However, I cannot say that I am any more familiar with the US military on a personal basis than that. Hence, I can see how easy it is for people in other countries to look at headlines reporting such events and make negative generalizations about our country and our military—they are even less familiar with the our military (and country), having to base their perceptions on our foreign policy and how it affects them (be it food aid or invasion). Such events even make me want to generalize sometimes, but it is easier for me to put things in perspective and look at the overall picture than it is for the Iraqi civilians whose friends and family were brutally murdered by a small group of reckless, cruel Marines. I think that what those soldiers did was of the utmost repulsiveness and cruelty, and I think they should be punished for it. However, it is important to remember that those soldiers were there because our political administration got them sent there on an agenda crafted of deceit, greed, and fear. Whatever actions stem from such an agenda are likely to be corrupted because, as the pivotal NSC-68 foreign policy recommendation so wisely states:

“If we do not in the application of force demonstrate the nature of our objectives we will, in fact, have compromised from the outset our fundamental purpose.”

-Gregory Proulx