copyright © 2006 Jeff Goode

Evitable Atrocities
by Jeff Goode

So you probably heard about this soldier who raped the girl in Iraq, and then killed her family. And then his buddies burned their bodies to cover up the crime.

Obviously, this is just one bad apple. (And all of his buddies.) But that’s not the point.

The point is that, in an army of 100,000 upstanding soldiers, it was inevitable that at least one of them was going to turn out to be a bad apple. (And you know what that does to the bunch.)

And that’s the problem. Because even if you honestly believe — and 30% of us still seem to - that George W. Bush is a heroic and flawless beacon of humanity who never makes mistakes and never misjudges and never accidentally kills the wrong person, or invades the wrong country, or sends anyone to death row who later turns out to be innocent… When you start a War, you don’t do it with the army you want — which would be a battalion of flawless George Bush clones armed with magic machine guns whose bullets fly unerringly into the hearts of evildoers without ever missing their targets or catching innocent good-doers in the crossfire.

Because if that were the case, then War would always be a good thing, and we would be stupid not to invade everybody! Heck, we should invade England, if we can have George Bush on our side. And Canada, and Mexico, and anybody else in our rolodex, because our armies of mistake-proof George Bushes would be incapable of doing any harm to our allies with their unerring surgical strikes, since every one of them would be wise enough and good enough and guided-by-Jesus enough that their attacks would only kill the terrorists and insurgents and illegal immigrants living in those countries, and not kill any of the civilians and good, honest, hard-working folks that live there, too.

But we don’t have an army of wise and super-heroic George Bushes. We’ve got an army of ordinary human beings, just like you and me. And that means that the Army - just like any other cross-section of Americans — is going to be comprised mostly of courageous and patriotic individuals. (Not as courageous as George Bush, of course. But some of them are right up there.) And partly of just normal people - who have their ups and downs, who get scared sometimes, and make mistakes from time to time. And also partly of just plain scumbags - who are there for all the wrong reasons, but we gave them rifles anyway, and now there’s nothing we can do about it.

It’s nothing against the good people who go to War for good reasons, but when you throw a War, it is inevitable that a few of the other types are going to show up as well.

You’re going to get a few racists - who’ve always wanted to kill an Arab or two - because for them, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

You’re going to get a handful of dirtballs and psychopaths who’ve always wanted to kill ANY human being — just to see what it feels like — or attach electrodes to one’s nuts, or pose ‘em naked like faggots and take their picture, because that sounds like fun, too.

You’re going to get gangbangers — who want the free urban combat training that they can take back home with them and use on the streets in the States.

And you’re going to get a coupla guys who think Arab chicks are really hot, and always wanted to fuck one — and what better chance are you gonna get to be alone in a room with one, with a gun?

And it’s not that War breeds this kind of person, but that this kind of person is going to gravitate toward a War, because, given the chance, they would be a fool NOT to.

It’s also inevitable, in an army of 100,000, that you’re going to get a small fraction of harmless alcoholics and thieves and pedophiles and slackers and people-with-anger-management-issues — who were not getting into any real trouble in the States, but now we’ve air dropped them into a foreign hotspot with a backpack full of ammunition and only their own best judgment to guide them.

So, of course there are going to be atrocities. No War in history has ever been pulled off without its fair share of atrocities. Ever. That’s just what naturally happens when you take a random sampling of humanity and tell them that, for the time being, murder isn’t necessarily wrong. The good ones are going to do a good job. And the screw ups are going to screw up and kill the wrong person, or wipe out the wrong village, or bomb the wrong Canadians, or rape the wrong girl.

Because War is always messy.

War is not a surgical weapon. It is a huge blunt instrument. With jagged bits of broken glass and barbed wire sticking out of it. And sprinkled with anthrax.

Trying to root out terrorists in a foreign land, using a War, is like trying to find pick pockets in a crowd with a hand grenade. You can’t do it.

Or rather, you can, but the results are always going to be far worse, and far bloodier, than ANY of the other possible methods of rooting out terrorists, that we could have come up with if we weren’t in such a rush to get the War started. In fact, even Peace — as horrible as that sounds — kills fewer children.

And for our leaders to pretend that these inevitable atrocities of War are some sort of fluke, which no one could possibly have predicted… is a flat out lie. To claim that War is a neat and effective solution to ANYTHING is not only dishonest … it is diabolically evil. Only Satan himself would tell you something that patently untrue and then call you unpatriotic for questioning the decision.

The only way to have an atrocity-free War is if every single one of our troops is as perfect and mistake-free as George Bush.

So if we really want to win this thing, that’s who we should send into battle: Only the troops with the skill, experience, savvy, expertise, and Divine wisdom of George W. Bush, and nobody else. Because if those are the only guys we dump into a war zone, and nobody else, we can’t possibly lose.

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