killing is not killing if there is no killer or victim

I read this article and shuddered. Over and over and over again until I remembered I was at my desk in my air-conditioned office. I know such things are to be expected during a war/conflict/occupation, whatever you choose to call it, and to be shocked at such behaviour is conscious ignorance, if such a thing can exist. That I know it is to be expected does not make it any less outrageous. What worries me is that this behaviour shocks western audiences so much, they who think western soldiers are above such vile acts. I was horrified at the level of shock with which Abu Ghraib was received. They we I forget that these men are not men but machines. A soldier is a machine. The ability to kill requires the absence of empathy, an unconscious dehumanisation of the 'enemy' that is drummed inside. Soldiers do not kill/rape people, they destroy things. Perhaps the men behind these soldiers are criminals in their own right, individuals that would behave the same in a non-combat situation. But I think many of them, in fact most of them, would not commit such acts in 'normal' life.

I don't really know what I'm saying. I don't justify what these men did. I think if such a thing were to happen to my child, I would want the most painful vengeance I could possibly inflict. Yet we, we who speak watch witness comment are not there, we cannot begin to fathom what happens in barracks and what follows in battle. We do not have to pull the trigger. I have no desire to see that part of (wo)man that interested parties seek to channel for their own purposes, effectively turning (wo)men into beasts. No, machines. Even beasts are imbued with something animate and are capable of compassion.The very knowledge that the essence of one's own humanity can be 'switched off' (or perhaps, bludgeoned senseless) is to be acknowledged and respected, not manipulated. For look at the world around us now. What have we become? And for we who say we were not part of it, what have we let ourselves become?