Are War Crimes Funny?
We dehumanize our victims. And we do it in a very chilling and dark way.
“There’s nothing funny about those images—those images will haunt my nightmares. And you have to remember that for every horror that was captured in an image there were who-knows-how-many horrors that weren’t captured in an image—we see only the tip of a vast red iceberg.”
“Fortunately, there are those who take war crimes seriously—these people take dedicated action, make a big difference, and limit state violence.”
“And we need activism to grow exponentially if there’s to be any hope for morality—or even for survival—so how can we achieve that?”
War crimes aren’t funny—take a look at these incredible and striking images, but be warned, since these images are extremely disturbing:
There’s nothing funny about those images—those images will haunt my nightmares. And you have to remember that for every horror that was captured in an image there were who-knows-how-many horrors that weren’t captured in an image—we see only the tip of a vast red iceberg.
The odd thing is that our culture finds war crimes to be funny—take a look at this piece:
Here’s an excerpt:
Speaking from the lectern at the Southern Methodist University in Texas on Wednesday, Bush railed against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s autocratic rule and the impunity that enabled “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”
“—I mean, of Ukraine,” he quickly corrected himself as the audience erupted in laughter. “I’m 75,” he added, blaming, in jest, his age for the slip of the tongue.
The video made the rounds on social media, but it did not elicit laughs from everyone. Instead, many quipped darkly that the blunder was the closest Iraqis would get to Bush admitting to launching the bloody 2003 invasion of Iraq under a false pretext.
And another excerpt:
“While (Bush) was talking about Russia and its president, he made what must be one of the biggest Freudian slips of all time,” said MSNBC’s Mehdi Hassan. “I’m not laughing. And I’m guessing nor are the families of the thousands of American troops and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died in that war.”
I’m writing a piece about the US aggression against Iraq, and it makes me want to throw up when I think about what actually happened over there—I’m not laughing either.
Regarding how funny war crimes apparently are, Nathan J. Robinson writes the following in a 6 April 2022 piece:
The “horrible experience” Chomsky proceeded to recount was something that might seem quite ordinary: a time he and his wife went to see a movie in Boston in the early 1950s. The film was about the Hiroshima bombing, and what made the experience so disturbing for Chomsky, to the point where he recounts it with a shudder even today at 93 years old, is that he realized when he got to the cinema that the film was being presented as an exploitation film, playing in a theater that usually showed porn. (There is a whole genre of lurid real-world footage of atrocities presented for entertainment.) As footage of Japanese civilians with their skin peeling off played on the screen, the audience of Americans was laughing hysterically as if they were watching Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers.
Robinson comments on an important distinction:
It is one thing for people to not realize what it means for their country to have dropped nuclear weapons on civilian populations. It is a whole other level of depravity to be able to see the results and laugh.
Noam Chomsky writes the following in the 1969 book American Power and the New Mandarins:
As a final illustration of the callousness of the American response to what the mass media reveal, consider a small item in the New York Times of March 18, 1968, headed, “Army Exhibit Bars Simulated Shooting at Vietnamese Hut.” The item reports an attempt by the “peace movement” to disrupt an exhibit in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry
Chomsky then quotes the following from the 18 March 1968 New York Times:
Beginning today, visitors can no longer enter a helicopter for simulated firing of a machine gun at targets in a diorama of the Vietnam Central Highlands. The targets were a hut, two bridges and an ammunition dump, and a light flashed when a hit was scored.
And Chomsky then comments:
Apparently, it was great fun for the kiddies until those damned peaceniks turned up and started one of their interminable demonstrations, even occupying the exhibit. According to the Times report, “demonstrators particularly objected to children being permitted to ‘fire’ at the hut, even though no people appear there or elsewhere in the diorama,” which just shows how unreasonable peaceniks can be. Although it is small compensation for the closing of this entertaining exhibit, “visitors, however, may still test their skills elsewhere in the exhibit by simulated firing of an antitank weapon and several models of rifles.”
What can one say about a country where a museum of science in a great city can feature an exhibit in which people fire machine guns from a helicopter at Vietnamese huts, with a light flashing when a hit is scored? What can one say about a country where such an idea can even be considered? You have to weep for this country.
These and a thousand other examples testify to moral degeneration on such a scale that talk about the “normal channels” of political action and protest becomes meaningless or hypocritical.
Fortunately, there are those who take war crimes seriously—these people take dedicated action, make a big difference, and limit state violence.
And we need activism to grow exponentially if there’s to be any hope for morality—or even for survival—so how can we achieve that?