"We were on a dismounted patrol in Marja ... and walked up on a box in the middle of the street. The IEDs we found were never that obviously placed, but we called EOD (explosive ordnance disposal), just to be on the safe side ... long story short, they came out, checked the box out, and then called us [on-the-ground leaders] up ... the box was empty except for a dead baby. It must've suffocated in there, or starved ... we later found out (through intelligence reports) that The Taliban did it for two reasons: One, it was the kid of a local that had turned some of them in. Two, they just wanted to fuck with us, like they were showing they were capable of anything."
These are ambiguous times we live in. Ambiguous wars, ambiguous purpose, ambiguous intent. In Iraq, sometimes I tried to humanize the enemy, and sometimes I didn't. It all depended on ... well, everything.
But pure evil exists. This wasn't an ambiguous act that occurred in Marja. A murdered innocent, not yet even self-aware. Pure evil in its most obvious and egregious form.
Sometimes, I think pure good must exist, if only to combat the pure evil of the world. Pure evil like this.
Sometimes, I think differently. Sometimes I think that good, at its best, can only aim to be ambiguous, if only because of the eternal flaw of humanity, original sin. And what kind of match is ambiguous good for pure evil?
And sometimes, most times really, I just don't know.
I just don't fucking know.
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Sometimes I don't know too. I had my kids later, and lack some of the optimism that my nephew, who had his early, has about things. I try not to think about it too much. And we trudge, and sometimes even dance, on.
ReplyDeleteI hope your guy is okay, and is finding a way to cope with that memory.
So ... what are we as a country supposed to do about that? Loaded question, I know. It's one thing to ignore that stuff when we don't have boots on the ground. But we're there. So what do we do about that?
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