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this is a colonial occupation. the occupier is by definition in an adversarial relation to the population as a whole, which typically resists being occupied through all kinds of means some formal or overt-to-violent, many more diffuse. the problem is being in the position of a colonial occupation force. there is no good way to be in that place. the bush administration should never have placed the military in that position. such occupations, particularly this one, are a structuring crime from which others flow. and the situation brutalizes all sides, dehumanizes all sides. you could say that by the time that gunner is opening up on the crawling man, something of his humanity had already been taken from him by the situation of being part of a colonial occupation.
but this is not news. this is what enables the israel/palestine dynamic to unfold as it has.
(there's a whole long glorious european history dehumanization and brutality beyond that.)
so this isn't just any combat situation. and it really makes no sense to float versions of the "shit happens" defense simply because the first move that "shit happens" entails is a bracketing or putting aside of the simplest fact of the matter: the americans are a colonial occupation force in iraq and this is the kind of situation that colonialism opens onto.
the solution is to get the fuck out of iraq.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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