With the Michael Vick dogfighting story in the news, I thought I’d bring this up. In its July 23 issue, The New Republic printed this Baghdad Diarist, by an American soldier writing under the pseudonym Scott Thomas. The piece is meant to illustrate how war desensitizes soldiers and warps their sense of humor. So we’re treated to tales of Thomas and others sexually humiliating a female colleague who’s been maimed by an I.E.D.; of a prankster private who desecrates a corpse from a Saddam-era mass grave; and of another who enjoys running over dogs, in the cruelest possible manner, with his Bradley Fighting Vehicle, to the delight of his buddies. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.
Thomas dresses all this up as a pained exercise in moral philosophy. Yeah, we get it: War Is Hell. It’s a tired excuse. For these soldiers, Iraq is apparently a conscience-free zone, where the id roams free and no one has the guts, or the leadership qualities, to call anyone on it.
It’s been persuasively argued that those who abuse animals also tend to abuse people. Hello Abu Ghraib, hello Haditha.
Bring them home.
**Update: a reader points out that the veracity of this TNR piece has been called severely into question. It could be a hoax, yet another Stephen Glass-style embarrassment for TNR. The doubters, unsurprisingly, are right-wing and military bloggers. But the truth is the truth. If TNR retracts this piece, then I will retract the post. For now, it should be read with far more skepticism than I initially gave it.
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