LUDIC LOG

It's always difficult to write entries like this. After a particularly horrific terrorist attack, a juicy slaughter or an act of allegedly unparalleled brutality, any opinionating against the administration inevitably meets with accusations that one condones the attack -- or, at the very least, has an insufficiently developed level of moral outrage. On the face of it, of course, this is absurd; the human mind being a rather powerful piece of equipment, it is in no way difficult to both condemn an act of terrorism and make critical judgments concerning the environment in which it occurs. To claim that the occasion of a bus bombing in Tel Aviv cannot countenance the condemnation of Israel's policy of oppression, or that the memory of 9/11 is somehow spoiled by noting the progress of our government since that time, is to claim that thinking adults are little more than parakeets, incapable of holding more than one thought at a time in their tiny minds. And yet, it has become a requirement to make the proper obeisance to sacred Western virtue by performing ablutive acts of rage and dismay, of shock and awe.

So here goes: what was done to the four American contractors in Fallujah, Iraq yesterday -- their murder by an enraged mob and the subsequent incineration and humiliation of their corpses -- was repulsive, uncivilized, horrible to behold. It was something that any decent human being would rightly condemn. I'll spare the reader a lengthy lesson in the barbaric and uncivilized nature of the dusty-skinned demons capable of such an act, as they are in no short supply from the pundits, opinionators and typing heads of the internet and print journals; I will simply say that I feel an awful pain for the families of those men, and an awful sadness that my fellow man is capable of such degradation.

I can't escape, though, the sensation that there's something...off about the reaction of my countrymen who choose to express their sickened reactions in a particularly public way. Perhaps it's that none of them found it particularly repulsive when American bombers reduced Afghani civilians to similarly incinerated lumps, or still-living but limbless ruins; or that they don't seem to recall that our own troops are quite capable of raping children, slaughtering innocents, wearing necklaces of human ears, and shooting fleeing men in the back; but who can blame them? Those things are invisible and far away, and we have already misplaced them in our memories. A hundred unseen deaths are infinitely better than one that takes place before our very eyes. Perhaps it's that they've had little to say about the ranks and files of Iraqi, Palestinian and Afghani dead -- after all, the family of a contractor savaged by a mob cries no truer tears than the family of a soldier form Baghdad gunned down by a passing helicopter, and it matters very little to the parents of a dead eight-year-old whether the child was murdered by a hijacked airliner or by a stray Israeli rocket. But as we have been told endlessly, our dead are worth more than their dead, and if we're in it, we'd best be in it to win it.

No, I think what bothers me most of all is the naivety. The death of one's fellow man should always hurt and sting, but all day long I've wanted to say: "what did you expect?" No matter the reprehensible quality of the regime of Saddam Hussein, we came to Iraq as an invading army. No matter the pseudo-democratic nature of the new government, we have made Iraq into an occupied territory. Since the birth of empire, occupied people -- no matter how justifiable their conquerers say the invasion was, no matter how fair their occupiers insist they are being treated -- have struck back against the others who hold their lands. As long ago as the age of the Caesars, the civilized and freedom-loving people of Rome were nauseated and appalled at the horrible fate that was sometimes inflicted on their centurions, their governors, their civil servants. From the brutal assassinations in Roman Judea to the Black Hole of Calcutta to the burning tires wrapped around white bodies in South Africa, senseless and bloody ends have been handed out to occupiers, colonialists and conquers by people who don't have the good sense to know that they've been beaten. Back at home, the people who make it their business to tell the public what to think have always said the same thing: what is wrong with these people? Are they savages? Are they animals? We are there to help them, and look how they thank us. Don't they know that we are making their lives better? That we are a civilizing influence?

And, of course, the reaction is always the same. The benevolent conquerer, who is always in the right (for, indeed, has there ever been an occupation where the superior might of empire did not, in truth, make things better for the backwards backwaters it occupied?) reacts in the strongest possible terms. It answers violence with violence, force with force. It puts on its tough-guy hat and swears it will not be cowered and intimidated by these filthy, desperate acts of brutality. It will strike back with full force, and it will prevail. America today is vowing a harsh retaliation against the nebulous forces who hung its charred and shattered men from a bridge: it learned its lesson well from Israel (who learned from the Soviets, who learned from the British, who learned from the classics): when you are mocked, you slap. When you are slapped, you hit. When you are hit, you kill. And, of course, it will all work out in the end: for, indeed, doesn't every empire last forever?

Unlike the British, sadly, Americans do not study history. We do not even remember as far back as 30 years, when a similar situation was playing itself out in Southeast Asia. Oh, we remember parts of it: we remember to say that the war is over, even though we seem to be the only side that thinks so, and most of all, we remember that it's trouble to let cameras get too close to the action, lest Mom and Pop back home get too spooked by the reality of what the occupation is costing us. But we don't remember how ungrateful the lousy zipperheads were. We don't remember how Charlie refused to understand that we were there to help him. We don't remember that as much as we thought he hated Uncle Ho, he hated us even more, and as long as the people in charge of his country weren't from his country, he would never stop fighting, no matter how many of him we put in the ground. But we'd better remember. We'd better burn it back into our minds. Because those burning, spat-upon bodies were only the first. They won't be the last. Soon it will be our soldiers, because we will retaliate, and we will kill more of them than they can kill of us, and there will be a hundred more people who will never be happy until we are gone from their homes.

I heard a general on the radio this morning discussing the horror, and here is what he said: "Fallujah is one of those places where the people just don't get it." Somebody just doesn't get it, with that I can agree. But I think it's us.