In any case, a repost is a much quicker start to a new blog than to craft one from scratch and to place too much emphasis on it being the first, lest I futz over every single word and never publish anything. While I don't intend on throwing stuff up on this blog in unedited-stream-of-consciousness format, neither do I intend to wait until final-draft quality stuff is ready before I publish here. I hope to find that happy medium between diarrhea and constipation...
Running Man
This book has had a profound effect on me. It has opened up something I didn't know was there. This post will be an attempt at a limited catharsis of what I found.
Our country--nay, our world--needs to understand and deal with a plain and simple fact of war: the worst thing that can happen to a soldier in a war is not necessarily his death (although, of course it is true that his death is a bad thing).
What we must remember about war is not only that we ask our soldiers to risk death or dismemberment or physical trauma. We must remember that, in the case of the soldier who marches off to war and does not get physically injured and returns home in relatively-good health, physically-speaking, what we ask that soldier to do, and what that soldier does in fact do, when he is over there, is to murder in our name.
(Notice also that I'm talking about "over there", because that is where it takes place for the American soldier--at least historically-speaking since 1865.)
Now, it doesn't matter if you agree with "the government" that sent the soldier or not, because in this country "the government" is all of us--no matter how much we might like to distance ourselves from that fact of democracy. That you and I have little efficacy in directing the decisions of "the government" is our failure, and not the soldier's failure. He does what he does because we have told him to do so.
This brings me to the thrust of my post--I wish to confront, and I hope to help the people who may read this to confront, the mass-murder in which I played a non-trivial role.
I was a junior officer in the US Navy (when I resigned in early 2000, I was a Lieutenant, equivalent to a Captain in the army). I was assigned to the USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. I served as a division officer in several reactor-department divisions, and also supported the watchbill both on the bridge (where I "drove" the ship) and in the propulsion plant (where I operated the nuclear reactors, provided steam for the catapults that launched the planes, and steam to turn the ship's screws--"propellers" as they are often misnamed by those not in the know).
In December of 1998 my ship was a part of Operation Desert Fox, which was a "military action" in response to Saddam Hussein's not following the rules of the UN inspection program, set up after the first gulf war.
Wikipedia estimates between 600 and 2,000 dead Iraqis and an American force about the size of 30,500. Wiki has this happening over just 3 days, December 16-18, 1998, but we kept bombing continuously (1-2 times per week minimum) until September 11, 2001--interrupted temporarily by an actual threat to our country, one of course that had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq. I remember a speech Captain (now an Admiral) David Crocker (CO of the Vinson) gave to us in January of 1999 telling us we, already, had been involved in "the longest continuous bombing campaign since Vietnam". Yes, those were really his words!
It was well after the flurry of those 3 days in December, during the early months of 1999, when I was standing watch up on the bridge on a quiet, late night with little going on since most of the people on the ship were asleep. The captain was at his chair, looking at a TV screen, when suddenly he said, "oof! Bruce, come over here--you gotta see this." He motioned for me and the other junior officers to come over and look, addressing me specifically because I happened to be closest to him on the bridge at the time.
When we looked at his screen we saw the familiar green/black images of that footage we've all seen on CNN showing a camera focused on some target that suddenly explodes with an explosion right at the center, as if the camera knew exactly where the explosion was going to be. It was one of those sequences that the military loves to roll out to show how "smart" our weaponry is--how accurate our bombs are and how humane we are for using these weapons because we strike only what we intend to strike with a minimum of "collateral damage". These images are strikingly rhetorically-effective in this regard, because they tell a story about an evil building that gets destroyed while the children in the playground right next to it keep playing because, while the noise is loud, the deadly force is contained to precisely destroy only evil and never stray to injure the innocent.
This was one of those images that wouldn't make it to CNN because it was not nearly as rhetorically-effective as those you do see on CNN.
On the characteristically-green screen was some kind of building moving slowly away but staying perfectly-centered. Suddenly someone--I think it was a man--runs out of a side door and is sprinting away. Details are sketchy, but one can generally make out that it was a male, probably fairly young but not a child, and either athletic or benefiting from an adrenaline-induced enhancement to his running skills. Suddenly the screen goes greenish-white followed by what appeared to be smoke and debris. The running man is nowhere to be seen, but it is fairly safe to assume that he is no longer with us, given the size of the explosion and his proximity to it the moment before detonation.
I notice the date/time stamp on the footage, and see that it correlates with the middle of the watch I had stood on the bridge the day before. Knowing that all planes had landed from their sorties by the end of that same watch, I know that the plane who dropped this bomb was one of those that landed, and that there was a better-than-average-chance that it took off during that same watch. I had stood the propulsion plant watch just before that particular bridge watch, so if it didn't take off when I was driving the ship, it took off using steam I helped to deliver to the catapults. (Note that the bridge team plays a critical role in launching and landing planes off the deck of an aircraft carrier, because it is imperative that the winds across the deck be "just right", especially for landing.)
This 20-second grainy-greenish video was as close as I would ever come to the evil I helped to perpetrate.
Layers of technology--the plane, the pilot, the button that the pilot pushed, the guidance system that "drove" the bomb, the GPS satellite (this operation was the first to usher in the GPS guidance system), or more likely the special-forces grunt painting the building with a laser--all served very well to insulate me, morally, from the death I was a part of. This video was a fluke--the Captain probably shouldn't have shown it to me, but he did, and because he did he disrupted the nice layer of moral insulation. My imagination rended the rest of that insulation asunder...
Why was this guy running? How did he know that he was a target? Did he think he had a chance to outrun the bomb, or was it pure instinctual fear that drove him to run in spite of his knowledge that it was hopeless? Was he ready to die? Did he take comfort in the knowledge that he was going to die in the service of his country? Who did he leave behind? This happened a little over 30 hours ago--is his mother crying right now? His wife? His son?
There was a nervousness among the people sharing this video experience. In an attempt to distance us from it, somebody (one of the other JO's, I think) said something to the effect of "fucking towelheads", even though (in spite of the graininess of the footage) it was perfectly clear that this guy was not wearing a turban. If I had to guess at his clothing, it was some sort of military uniform--one much like the one I was wearing at the time. In spite of the inaccuracy and the inappropriateness of the comment, we all gave a nervous and appreciative laugh--a "thank you for placing a little more distance between us and that fucking towelhead" kind of appreciation.
Was his death quick, or was it painful? If I had to guess, it was very quick, but I could be wrong. He very well could have been thrown away from the explosion by the pressure wave, like you see on all of those "A-Team" shows where they make a point of showing them stumble away covering their heads with their hands to indicate that they need an aspirin or something--somebody fetch this fucking towelhead an aspirin, for God's sake! (Feel free to nervously-laugh with me here.) This video clip, however, gave us no indication of whether he made it to the aspirin stand nearby, the aspirin stand that is no-doubt completely unharmed because of how smart our bombs are.
One might say this is killing, but not murder, hearkening to that loophole-type language from Exodus. One might get away with that if we can show that this particular death was justified somehow. You know, if this specific guy can be compared to the rhetorical-device crackhead that breaks into your hypothetical house brandishing a hypothetical gun and you must kill him or be killed--or worse yet kill him or he kills somebody you love. Can I make that case, specifically with our running-man-in-desperate-need-of-an-aspi
Well, we might say that running-man is an extension of Hussein, and his death was necessary to get Hussein to stop making WMD's and to be more cooperative with UNSCOM inspectors. On top of not helping soothe me much on the whole killer/murderer distinction, this obviously falls flat because it is obvious that running-man's death (or headache) had no efficacy in this regard. Saddam may have been a bit peeved to lose that building, whatever it was and whatever evil things it helped that evildoer to do, but I do not think that Saddam shed a tear for running-man, and reconsidered his actions and strategy upon hearing news of his death. In fact, I think running-man's death, plus the deaths of the 600-2,000+ others, merely reinforced Saddam's hatred and his resolve.
So, running-man died for nothing. I murdered for nothing. That I could divide the 600-2,000 dead by the total force of 30,500 and come up with the figure that I killed only between 1.97% and 6.56% of a single person does not console me. As a single force, we perpetrated murder on a scale that far exceeds any single criminal mass-murderer story I can ever remember hearing about here in the US.
Technology insulated this from me before. My imagination really didn't accuse me of murder directly until now, after reading Tick's book. The greenness and graininess of the video served fairly well to numb me to the reality--as if it was a Hollywood movie, or a video game.
Now I'm starting to consciously feel guilt from my participation in this murder--not so much for the 599 to 1,999 others that died, but for this running-man. He's special. Somehow his spirit jumped through all of that technology separating us and left a mark on my conscience. Somehow the details of his life, his crying family, his fruitless search for aspirin... it all hurdled over these layers of moral insulation and was helped over the last wall by my imagination and I see him--or at least I want to. I want you to as well.
I'm sorry, running-man, for murdering you. Please forgive me. I'm sorry, running-man junior, for killing your father. Please forgive me.
Fuck this technology that tears us apart. Fuck this feeling that I should stop my sorrow for this man because I cannot possibly ever know him to weep for him. Fuck this world's justice that rewards me for mastering that technology and using it for murder, and placing that mastery of murderous-technology on my resume to land a well-paying job and a comfortable life with my wife and son. Fuck it all.
Fuck you, technology, especially for trying to keep this truth of running-man away from my understanding.
Sometimes I wonder what happens when Germans who participated in some aspect of the nazi concentration camps, no matter how far from the actual mechanisms they may have been, wake up to the realization of what they did and what they were a part of. I can imagine it feels a little like my affair with running-man here, although perhaps more acute. I refuse to judge those who tortured at Abu Ghraib because I'm not so sure I would have done a much better job, as an officer, keeping them in line, or even as a grunt--would I have had the moral perspicuity to identify the evil, and the moral courage to refuse? I really don't know. I probably would have, given my track record with running-man, found a way to distance myself from it and participated like a good soldier--just like those who were there did.
Some may say I'm making something out of nothing, and to compare my running-man story to Abu Ghraib or even nazi concentration camps is going too far. But how do these things start? Do you really think somebody wakes up in the morning to commit an atrocity and pull off a conspiracy? No--it's not like that at all. Conspiracies take place slowly, and they build up little-piece by little-piece, and like a frog who sits in a pot that is slowly heated to a boil, we don't notice until it is too late what is happening, if we notice at all.
Running-man is not insignificant. That we "only" killed 600-2,000 people in that conflict does not make it "less" evil than killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
A million people are killed one running-man at a time.
Peace.
