11/16/2004|||110061655821111586||||||

UNFRIENDLY FIRE

The alleged killing of a captured insurgent in Fallujah becomes the new hot issue of the day, with the BBC reporting that Iraqis are particularly angry that the incident took place in a mosque. I'm assuming they're equally outraged that mosques are being used as sniper nests and arsenals.

Not surprisingly, The Independent splashed the story all over its front page. How easy is it for editors to make judgments about what happens on the battlefield? I can't help thinking of Paul Fussell's introduction to one of the classic accounts of the soldier's life, With The Old Breed, E.B. Sledge's memoir of Marines on Okinawa and Peleliu:

"...[S]uch an understanding of human behaviour, obvious to all on the line, was not readily available to those removed only a short distance to the rear. If you are back only a couple of hundred yards behind anger and cruelty and hysteria and fear of death, you are too far back to understand, and that is one of the reasons Sledge has written this book. It is about the mystique - that is the right word - of killing to avoid being killed, torturing to avoid being tortured. At various headquarters reason may govern, but the line is a place of passion and madness."

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/unfriendly-fire-alleged-killing-of.html|||11/16/2004 02:23:00 pm|||||||||

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