I am outraged over the Bush administration’s military assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. “One hospital has been leveled and another seized, neighborhoods throughout the city are being bombed, and door to door combat is underway. The estimated 50,000 civilians who remain in Falluja lack water, electricity, and food,and the nation has been put under martial law through January. The goal of this assault is to crush the insurgency in Iraq – but all evidence suggests that it will backfire, costing a horrific number of Iraqi and U.S. lives in the process” (Code Pink, on-line).Especially repugnant is the blasting background heavy-metal music to aid our soldiers in their killing. On public radio I heard the jarring music as a military officer explained it made the killing (first time for many) “more like a videogame,” with the soldiers “just shooting at human figures.” It lets their sensitive natures divorce from reality that they are shooting living beings.I have a grandson now. If ever a day came that my government tricked away his sensitivities so crassly, I would not accept it. I would interfere. Where are the mothers, grandmothers, wives, daughters now who do not accept their men being turned into automaton killers triggered by bad music? And will that killer-training ever leave them? What kind of psychologically-damaged men will return home?
Sincerely, Lynn Rudmin Chong