Chris Hedges: How the Brutalized Become Brutal

[marmar]

from truthdig:


How the Brutalized Become Brutal

Posted on Aug 24, 2014
By Chris Hedges


The horrific pictures of the beheading of American reporter James Foley, the images of executions of alleged collaborators in Gaza and the bullet-ridden bodies left behind in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are the end of a story, not the beginning. They are the result of years, at times decades, of the random violence, brutal repression and collective humiliation the United States has inflicted on others.

Our terror is delivered to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. It is, to us, invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel’s occupied territories, Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a caldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And, willfully ignorant, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.

Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described what happened when he obtained a knife and confronted a German in an office. The act he carried out was no less brutal than the beheading of Foley or the executions in Gaza. Isolated from the reality he and the other inmates endured at the camp, his act was savage. Set against the backdrop of the extermination camp it was understandable.

“It’s not a decision,” Engel said. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office, and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’ ”

Any good cop, like any good reporter, knows that every criminal has a story. No one, except for perhaps a few psychopaths, wakes up wanting to cut off another person’s head. Murder and other violent crimes almost always grow out of years of abuse of some kind suffered by the perpetrator. Even the most “civilized” among us are not immune to dehumanization. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_the_brutalized_become_brutal_20140824

[malaise]

1. Thank you Chris

As I asked do we really think the Westerners aren't viewed as terrorists in the Middle East?

The answer is YES and with good reason.

[JJChambers]

2. There is never a good reason for beheading a journalist.

[marmar]

3. Nobody is saying there is, but people want to pretend this stuff happens in a vacuum. It doesn't.

[malaise]

5. And there is never good reason for slaughtering people

and destroying their country particularly when the pretext for invading Iraq was one big fucking lie.

You see war crimes and war crimes and the method of death hardly matters to either the dead or their relatives. Wish I had seen this outrage for the murder of journalists from the Middle East - I condemn all of them.

[JJChambers]

7. I think beheading a journalist on camera for terrorism purposes is worse.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. Violence begets violence.

'Turning the other cheek' was never about simply being a silent victim, waiting to be victimized again. It tells us to not respond to violence with further violence, that only continues the chain.

The US is not 'hated for it's freedom'. It's hated for exploiting the poor of the world, for arming their oppressors who help us exploit them, for indiscriminately killing those who have done nothing against us when we do lash out.

The world smoulders with legitimate anger under the bonds of economic slavery created by American-born corporations.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? Gandhi