Getting Away With Murder

[Lightning Rod]

When I was locked up, I did an informal survey. It was not good prison etiquette to inquire into the nature of the crimes that had brought one to the institution, but with patience and tact I was able to interview a number of inmates, particularly concentrating on the murderers.

I found that they fell roughly into two categories. The first category was crimes of circumstance and chance and passion. Someone was drunk or had their back against the wall or was at the wrong place at the wrong time. These people usually had great remorse for their crimes and their victims.

The other category I called the "Iwouldakilledthebichagain" category. These had no remorse.

One of my best friends and workmates was John Kohler. He was a big, fuzzy bear of a man. He reminded me somewhat of Mickey Mantle. He was lovable and great to be around and work with. He was caring and fun loving. We lifted weights together. He could lift three times what I could. If trouble broke out, he stood between me and the trouble. He had a great heart and I was glad he was my friend. Also, he was a cold-blooded murderer.

I don't mean a one-shot deal, a crime of passion. John had killed perhaps a dozen people. He was an executioner. He did it for money. It was his job. He didn't have the slightest regret about killing those people. In his mind, they needed to be killed. They had welched on a bet or ratted out a dope dealer or had stolen money. They deserved it. He would kneel them down and blow their brains out. Necessary. Humane.

He was just doing his job.

John was a blonde, blue-eyed Jew. He was just a soldier doing his job, not unlike the young men and women who are just doing their jobs in Iraq, or the young Nazis who were just doing their jobs in Germany.

With the proper indoctrination, an impressionable young person can easily be convinced that a person of another race or religion or nationality is something less than human. Their is no disgrace in killing the enemy. After all, they deserve it.

I love our soldiers. I don't blame them any more than I blamed John Kohler.

[stilltrucking]

...
..

[jimboloco]

"What did you get, man?"
"I did'nt get nothing. I had to pay fifty dollars an pick up the garbage!"
from Alices restaurant....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"In his book The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien said: "You can tell a true
war story by its absolute and uncompromised allegiance to obscenity and
evil." This is something people in the US have forgotten after years of
watching CNN. War is dirty, always wrong, but sometimes unavoidable. That
is why all these horrible things must rest on the shoulders of those
leaders who supported a war that did not have to be fought.
But those who put all of us there will never understand this. That is why
they need to be judged. But they will never receive the most just
punishment: feeling what myself and all the other veterans of this hideous
war will deal with for the rest of our lives."
--------
Michael Hoffman took part in the invasion of Iraq as a US Marine and is
co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War (www.ivaw.net).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 44,00.html

[Zlatko Waterman]

Jim:


Are you familiar with Chris Hedges' book:

"War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" (?)


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books


Some of the 56 reviews here are worth reading.

Hedges' article in the current New York Review of Books is also one of the best pieces I've read on the Iraq War. Michael Massing's book review (in NYR) also does an excellent job of meticulously examining the mass media cover-up and complicity in the war.

This website reviews all the materials above:


http://www.tonykevin.com/NY-Review-of-%20Book1.html





Zlatko

[jimboloco]

War is a geography lesson for Americans.
No we haven't been introduced.