VIDEO GAME WAR IN IRAQ (AND AFGHANISTAN)

American foreign policy is like a snake that bites its own tail….The unipolar world has not given the world any sense of peace and security and this is partly due to the US’s own actions.

This video released today by Wikileaks showing a helicopter gunship In Iraq opening fire on a group of men which included two journalists is shocking not for the violence which seems strangely removed (I’ll get to that in a moment) but for the callousness of the military personnel whose comments you can hear as events happen….If it hasn’t been clear in the last seven years, it should be really clear now that the Iraq War is self-defeating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9P5vIzYyE

For one thing, the type of warfare employed in Iraq and also Afghanistan often involves violence occurring at a distance unlike past conflict like the Vietnam War where combatants did have to fight face to face….This is video game warfare without all the messy blood and guts….This has been good for US troops who are probably in better mental shape than their Vietnam forbearers.

However, this creates a removal from death and killing especially of civilians that leads to carelessness about minimizing civilian casualties….This has been the case in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is clear that despite the election of a president who on the surface seems to represent an understanding that the USA must do a better job of not seeming like crusader imperialists (even though to be honest they are), the American military is a hydra creating multiple potential combatants every time it kills innocent people....This is also true about the behavior of military contractors such as Blackwater.

There are other stories of US atrocities brewing currently that could be worse than this….The one in Afghanistan that led to several women with their hands bound, one of whom was pregnant, shot during a night raid and then the bullets dug out by US forces is particularly troubling.

It’s clear that president Obama needs to not only honor his campaign promise to get the troops out of Iraq but he also needs to change the strategy in Afghanistan and start bringing home the troop from there was well….That’s an unwinnable war but that’s a whole other post.