I corresponded briefly with a US soldier in Iraq today. He was an extremely angry young man. I’m not sure young man is even an appropriate term because he displayed a lack of maturity and an inability to hold a rational conversation. The answer to every question I posed to him was, “You’re a pussy” or “You’re a fagot”, but not once did I get a straight answer to a single question. I tried very hard not to be inflammatory but asking him to think was inflammatory enough I guess.

In this first video, on youtube, the caption justifies this driving by saying that soldiers have to drive this way to minimize risk of attack. If someone drove this way in the states they’d be shot dead in the first mile. I can’t help thinking that it is exactly this sort of behavior that provides the incentive for Iraqi’s to attack our s0ldiers. I know if someone invaded our country and behaved this way, I would be putting a substantial amount of effort into devising ways to put them out of my misery.

In this second video, a group of our soldiers crushes an Iraqi’s car for supposedly looting fire wood. The Iraqi owner of the car denies this and says he was a taxi driver and we’ve destroyed his livelihood, but even if he were looting fire wood, we’ve destroyed the electrical infrastructure, the water is contaminated, and these people often have no other option for cooking and boiling water.

The world is in the process of changing. I have seen two paths. If we continue on the path that we’re on, it’s going to be painful for everybody, much death and suffering along the way right here in America not just across the seas in Iraq. If we continue escalating we will only make it worse for ourselves down the road. We need to stop this insanity, stop escalating hatred and war.