More War Porn

So, the Rulers of the World have screwed up again. Imperial stormtroopers have been fooling around with the body parts of dead Afghans, and have been stupid enough to be photographed doing it.

Bad show, men. Bad, bad, bad show. Bad apples, the lot of you.

But...

If, each time the Empire's brave boys in Afghanistan (or, earlier, in Iraq) are caught out in war crimes, it's "a few bad apples" who are to blame, isn't it time the Empire went in for some fumigation of its orchards? Murdering people for body parts as trophies, posing with SS insignia, raping kids and shooting them, urinating on corpses, etc....if there are so many bad apples, why shouldn't the entire crop be condemned? I can't think of any.

I’ve read that the Empire’s military chiefs attempted to stop the pictures of Imperial stormtroopers posing with the bodies and body parts of dead “Taliban suicide bombers” (we only have their word that these were even Taliban, and as I’ve said many times before I wouldn’t trust the Empire to tell me the sun rises in the east). This is significant on several distinct levels:

First, that these are the same, exact people who have made “war porn” a legitimate term and have, whenever it suited them, displayed positively ghoulish delight in displaying the corpses of the Empire’s “enemies”. Remember the parade of Saddam Hussein’s sons’ bodies across Iraq? Remember the incinerated Iraqi bodies on the Highway of Death, lovingly photographed by the Empire’s pet correspondents? Anyone who’s seen the movies in which Hollywood tries to prove the Empire won the Vietnam War will remember the piles of “gook” corpses bulldozered into shellholes after each battle.

Also, to this day, the Empire chooses to justify the destruction [warning: graphic video] of the Iraqi city of Fallujah by pointing to the fact that the incinerated bodies of four Blackwater mercenaries (not stormtroopers, who have a right to protection under the Geneva Conventions, but mercenaries, who are not, in Imperial parlance, “legal combatants” and also, by the same Imperial conventions where it comes to Guantanamo detainees, have no rights whatsoever) were strung up on a bridge. Presumably, all the inhabitants of Fallujah were responsible for this “atrocity”, not merely a small number of them; otherwise how does one justify the devastation of the entire city, including the fact that to this day babies are being born with birth defects from the depleted uranium and chemical munitions, including white phosphorus, that were used on them? Therefore, and this is hardly the first time we’ve seen this, laws and morality all hinge on who does the moralising.

Then again, as I said, the Empire chose to try and stop the Los Angeles Times from publishing the photos of stormtroopers posing with corpses. These are the same people who would have screamed press censorship and tyranny if something similar had happened in Russia or China, let alone in target nations like Iran or Syria. Again, law and morality seem to depend on who’s doing the talking. Yes, it’s true that this is a general phenomenon, but at least most others who do this don’t claim to be an Exceptional Nation with a Divine Right to Rule the World. 

If one were a completely uninformed reader encountering this phenomenon, one might be forgiven for thinking that this was an exceptional circumstance. Unfortunately, it’s anything but; it’s just the culmination of a couple of centuries of trophy hunting. Continuing the ancient tradition of taking enemy’s heads, the Empire’s forces went from scalping Native Americans to taking Japanese skulls as souvenirs in the Second World War (not German skulls, though – they were ethnically of the same stock). They then made necklaces out of Vietnamese ears, and it’s only a short step from that to putting up photos like these on the internet – photos I remember seeing as far back as 2005, so it’s hardly as though it’s either new or the work of a few “bad apples”. The racist old White Man's Burden, it seems, isn't dead yet. It's just changed names.

And it's not even restricted to humans. When the training the Empire inflicts on its stormtroopers includes eviscerating live goats, there's hardly any reason to expect human feelings from them afterwards.

It seems, though, that institutional protection is the Empire’s main focus in these cases. At first, deny, and if that doesn’t work, then claim that it was the action of a few individuals. If there’s a case of mass murder of civilians, find a convenient scapegoat and blame it all on him. If there’s a case of systematic torture of detainees, blame a few of the warders who were idiotic enough to get photographed doing the torturing. At all costs, try and protect the system, because the system is the meal ticket.

As the war in Afghanistan drags on, Pakistan withstands daily drone strikes, the creeping invasion of Central Africa continues, and the planning goes on for attacking Iran and Syria (attacks which are certain to take place unless Russia and China stand firm), there will be more and more “bad apples” taking the blame. What will not happen is that those responsible for putting these “bad apples” – many of whom are far less morally evil than the victims of situations outside their own control, uneducated poverty draftees fighting immoral wars in nations they can’t locate on the map in order to enrich corporations which care for nothing except the balance sheet – into trouble will be punished for their actions.

Footnote: It’s becoming more and more difficult to write satire. In the wake of the major Taliban attack on Kabul a few days ago, I’d written a piece in which I’d made a “NATO spokesman” claim that the attack was a NATO victory. I was faintly surprised to find actual NATO spokesmen making that same claim, in part because all the attackers had allegedly been killed. Since it was, by the Taliban’s own statement, a suicide attack, claiming that it was a victory is like saying it’s a victory for gravity if someone jumps off a building and falls to the ground. I was slightly more surprised to read Australian PM Julia Gillard said her nation will withdraw its occupation forces from Afghanistan early, because, apparently, there have been “significant security improvements”. Yes, having the enemy attack your embassies in the centre of a fortified security zone, that’s how you know security’s improved, all right.

It’s not even funny anymore, if it ever was.