Unjust Wars Require Dehumanizing the "Enemy"

Sometimes an event breaks into the mainstream media that reveals the truly brutal, oppressive nature of the armed forces of the US and the wars they are fighting. At a moment when we are being told by the oh-so-rational and humane administration of Barack Obama and Co. that we must line up behind a new aggressive war against an oil-producing Central Asian country, the recently released video of US soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses has exposed the way "our" soldiers view the entire population of the region: as subhuman.

Now we must challenge Americans to not look away from these terrible images, but absorb what these incidents tell us about the essence of what is still happening in our names: unjust, illegitimate violence unleashed by the most powerful against some of the poorest people on the planet.

From thehill.com:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry slammed the Obama administration on Sunday for being too tough on a group of Marines photographed urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

"Obviously, 18, 19 year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often, and that's what's occurred here," Perry said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Perry said the soldiers should be punished but that criminal charges are excessive.
"What is really disturbing to me is the over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military it appears," Perry said.

U.S. and Afghan officials have condemned the incident, and a military investigation is underway. The Geneva Convention bans desecrating the dead.

Today, I received this poem from Tania Ramalho:

Apology

To the Afghan people: