January 30, 2004

From Joi Ito, we have this bit of infrared footage from an Apache helicopter's gun camera [you can also view it here without registration]. It depicts what happens to human beings when they're hit by 100 30mm rounds.

The human beings, in this case, are Iraqis. Unfortunately for them, the helicopter pilot spotted one of them dumping a "tube-shaped object that appears to be about 4 or 5 feet long" into a field. Now, they're dead, and someone apparently thought that we should see that. As far as I know, footage from American military gun cameras doesn't usually get released into general circulation.

I won't belabor the obvious. What we've got here is violent, mechanized death on film. It's brutal and nasty and nauseating.

I won't comment on the "tube-shaped object," either. I wasn't there. But I will assume that a combat-trained Apache helicopter pilot might know the difference between a bundle of farming implements and an RPG launcher better than I do. Remember, also, that this grainy footage wasn't what the pilot saw--he was either using his own eyes or his own camera system. Furthermore, any video equipment used in combat is very high-resolution, and most of that resolution was lost in the multiple transfers this footage underwent between the gun camera and your computer screen. There is also the possibility that the pilot was mistaken, that the Iraqis tossed a piece of irrigation piping or some other innocuous object into the field. In that case, he needs to be relieved of duty, at the very least. The situation in Iraq is tense and confused, and nerves are frayed. But we can't have that sort of thing happening with any frequency, or we'll never accomplish our goals there, and we'll never be able to leave.

A number of commenters on Ito's site made a suggestion that intrigued me. Basically, their idea is that if this sort of footage were shown to us more often--say, on the evening news--we, as a nation, would more fully appreciate the horrors of war and wouldn't be so eager to engage in it. The assumption is that some of those who support the war aren't bloodthirsty violent neocons, but are actually good people. Good, but ignorant. If these people knew what war was really like, in gut-spattering detail, they would be against the war in Iraq.

I'm against war. I think it's a terrible, stupid, primate thing to engage in. I think that in general killing another human being is never a good thing to do, although it is sometimes the right thing to do (see this post from December of 2002 for more on that distinction).

So let's do a little thought experiment. Let's say that it's the year 2000, and that we've acquired an ample supply of footage from Uday and Qusay Hussein's personal video collection. We've got footage of people being fed into industrial plastic shredders, head-first for those who were shown mercy, and feet-first for those who weren't. We've got footage of childrens' bodies being dumped into mass graves beside their stuffed animals and their parents. We've got footage of the wives of Iraqi dissidents being raped in front of them, with bonus footage of the dissidents' ears being cut off and their tongues being cut out.

Now, let's show that footage on the television news.

That would be terrible, wouldn't it? All those people being tortured, raped, burned, mutilated, crushed, and killed, night after night. There would be outrage. Surely, that would incite all of those "good but ignorant" people to cry out: this is intolerable! This must be stopped!

But now they've got a problem. They want to stop this inhumanity...but they can't kill anyone. Because they're good people, and they know that killing others is wrong.

If we want to give the commenters the benefit of the doubt, we must assume a genuine moral conviction on their part, rather than the petty prejudice that killing is wrong only when committed by the American military. This means that the good people, now relieved of their ignorance, would want to stop all of the killing and torture they see nightly on their televisions.

What are their options?

They'd be faced by a tyrant with a military bearing weapons of unknown destructive capability, who is surrounded by a savage political establishment. Do we offer him diplomatic incentives, so that he will mend his ways? Say we lift the sanctions. He then increases his income from oil exports, builds up a massive military, arms it with chemical and perhaps even nuclear weapons, and invades Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, killing millions on all sides. So that's no good--all that killing is wrong, and we would have made it possible.

Perhaps we can encourage the native Iraqi resistance? Give them funds and logistical support. Then they, in turn, rise up, and kill a bunch of Iraqis--civilian and military alike. In the aftermath, the oppressed target their former oppressors, and blood runs thick on the streets in the upscale neigborhoods of Baghdad. Once again, we've enabled murder.

Say we lift the sanctions and encourage the resistance? Somehow, I don't think that would end up as a gloriously bloodless coup either.

What effective action can they take to stop the slaughter? What do all these good people do, now that the scales have fallen from their eyes?

Nothing. There's nothing they can do, except remain true to their principles. Meanwhile, Hussein's death machine would rumble onward, chewing up hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and spitting their bloodied bones out into the sand.

What about other situations of savage inhumanity? What about Rwanda? 500,000 people were murderd there, mostly with machetes. Machetes, mind you, not $20 million gunships. What about Somalia? The Congo? The Balkans? All these people, all over the world, killing each other using whatever means are available, with no end in sight.

And these commenters, these armchair moralists, want to show me footage of people being blown apart by 30mm rounds, so that I won't want to fight anymore. So that I'll see that killing is bad.

I know that killing is bad, thanks for preaching.

My question to them all is: how would you stop it?

This isn't heaven. This isn't the Kingdom of God. This isn't Utopia.

This is planet Earth. It's muddy and wretched and well-populated by a species of fast-breeding primate with a limbic system that hasn't evolved much for the past 100 million years and opposable thumbs that can make finely-crafted lethal weapons. It's full of pain and suffering, death and ambiguity. It is a place where ideas have no real power.

Only action matters, here.

You can't out-theorize evil. You can only act against it. Were it not for the evil enacted against us two years ago, those Iraqis in the field might be alive today. We wouldn't be working to root out the fascism in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Africa that has claimed more lives than any American action.

This work is now required of us. Not because we are morally superior, but because we're monkeys like everyone else, and we must protect ourselves. We must act. And because this is Earth, and because it and we are imperfect, that action will be imperfect.

Deal with it.