skippy the bush kangaroo: one very disturbing book...

Friday, May 19, 2006

one very disturbing book...

i have no military experience. i've never witnessed armed conflict, either. the closest i've ever come to that was the time in august 1999 when i was walking home from a convenience store, around 9 pm, when two thieves came out of the woods pointing loaded pistols at my head. they got away with everything in my wallet and my pocket change; they left me my groceries and my keys. no shots were fired, and i wasn't physically harmed. in fact, from the few glances into their eyes that i managed, i got the very weird impression that they were almost as terrified of me as i was of them.

a few minutes later, i was on the phone to the police. a couple cops came to my apartment, i described what happened, gave the physical descriptions of the thieves i gleaned from the light of the streetlamps (two black men, one shorter and heavier than me, the other taller and skinnier, both wearing what i took to be doo-rags from their noses down), and they left. and that's the end of that story. i never got another call from the police, and i never called them back. there was just nothing more for them to go on. that was just fine with me.

because i knew one thing: i never wanted to go through anything like it again. so i lost my credit cards, my bank card, my license, and about thirty dollars. i went and got new cards, a new license, and said the hell with the thirty bucks -- my life was far, far more valuable to me. and it still is, and even more so than then at that.

having a pistol aimed at your skull from just inches away is difficult to describe. time appears to decelerate. any background noise there may be -- chirping crickets, maybe a jet passing by far overhead -- quickly fades into silence. it's like the world consists of you and the guy(s) with the gun(s), nothing more. and you're too frightened to move.

this was just one brief petty robbery with zero casualties. what the bloody f&$k@*g hell do people on a battlefield experience? day in, day out? for weeks, months, even years?

i've started to wonder about all these warbloggers out there with my one fleeting glimpse of possible violent death in mind. how many of them have also stared saucer-eyed down the business end of a handgun? for those who have what went through their minds at the time? did they enjoy it? or, rather, was it good for them? because i definitely didn't enjoy it. for the life of me, i cannot understand their incessant faux macho posturing, or their fervent support of the self-styled war president -- who couldn't even finish his own service in a guard unit that was never in danger of being dispatched to fight in any foreign conflict.

...

i hope i'm never in a position where i have to point a loaded gun at someone else. or that i have to kill someone so that i might live. and i honestly don't know what i would do if i was in such a position. but i'm reasonably certain that whatever i opted for, i'd regret it -- and that's why i find chris hedges' book so disturbing...

(full "good lord, i feel sorry for these idiot warbloggers" version at mockingbird's medley...

posted by Jim Yeager at 12:20 AM |