U.S. Soldiers Taunt Iraqi Children Running for Water
I just watched a YouTube video of Iraqi children running after an American tank from which one soldier holds out a bottle of water toward the children, holding on to it as he urges them to keep running for it, while his fellow soldier videotapes the entire scene. The children keep running, faster than you could think possible, trying to get this bottle of water that is to them what diamonds are to us, because they have no clean water to drink. The soldiers are laughing hysterically, joking about how fast they're running, all the time shouting, "Come on! Keep running!" They finally drop the bottle of water only when the children have fallen far behind and have no chance of getting it.
This kind of thing probably happens dozens, maybe hundreds, of times a day, but it's not the kind of event that would ever end up in a U.S. newspaper. If it weren't for a site like YouTube, we would not know about it. No wonder that YouTube has become such an indispensable tool for political bloggers.
Watch it here:
1 comment:
If I may offer some insight into this video.
When I was a combat soldier in Somalia in 1993, we did the same thing with the children there. Not me personally, as after months of being in-country I was too indifferent to care one way or another, but some guys in my unit attached a box of MREs to a humvee by a string and the Somali children chased after the box desperately trying to catch up to it. Finally, the soldiers in the humvee cut loose the box and the kids tore it open triumphantly, only to find that the box was full of used MREs and was just a trash box. This was the final joke by the soldiers. As cruel as this may sound in retrospect, it fulfilled a purpose for us. Like I said, at the time, I was completely indifferent to life itself in Somalia. I didn't laugh at this spectacle nor did I condemn it. I viewed it merely as a welcome distraction in my otherwise boring, insignificant and hateful life as a soldier in a Third World hellhole, which is exactly what these soldiers were feeling as they did this.
What I am saying is that you would be wrong to think they are being purposely cruel or even trying to funny. This was an act of supreme indifference because these soldiers only have two desires in life: first to get out of Iraq and secondly, to get out of the Army.
Curtz
http://beyondvisualrange.blogspot.com/
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