2004-07-19

I’ll say one thing for the fully televised and published war (that features bonus extra prison atrocities) is that it is letting people know the exact nature of war. Mo more will they think of ‘war’ as this benign, far away, unseen event. We can see the blood, limbs, destroyed cars, amputated children, screaming mothers. WE can’t help but hear about dead foreigners, dead soldiers, suicide bombers, blown up buildings and beheaded American contractors. Every day brings more tallies of dead soldiers and kidnapped foreigners.

I hope that having this knowledge of war will effect people in a similar way that having knowledge of meat production does. That is, when some people have an understanding that lamb is indeed a baby sheep that has been slaughtered (and maybe see some images of this process), they are slightly perturbed. In some cases, they may swear off the eating of lamb, or become vegetarian as a result of knowing the baying shrieks of the animal as it is killed and bled. Or from knowing the cruelty of battery chickens. Or from having a clue about how pigs are confined so they can hardly move.

With every guided missile explosion that we see on TV, with every photo of cruelty to prisoners, people are becoming more aware of actually what happens in a modern war. And I hope, perhaps naively, that people will become angered by what they see. But gosh, when will a change start?