Still, there've been similar moments; the past year has seen a shower of death in Iraq and the one just started appears to promise much more of the same. What's especially upsetting about these deaths?
I believe at least part of the answer lies in the way the scenes of celebrating boys and men (and the, in the US, yet to be fully shown images of the charred bodies being kicked and strung up over a bridge) destroy the CPA's official story about Iraqi sentiments -- 'we're loved by freedom-loving Iraqis, only foreign fighters and regime holdouts continue to resist.'
It's impossible to mistake the meaning of a teenage boy exulting over the death of your soldiers. That boy is not a foreign fighter or a member of al Qaeda or a "former regime element". He's simply a boy who's happy to see one of your own die horribly. The implication is clear: perhaps there are many such people and not just hot-headed young boys but their fathers, mothers and sisters too.
This is a deeply disturbing idea for Americans who truly believe they've come to help -- and although the policy makers undoutedly harbor cynical motives, it's a sure bet a good number of the troops, aid workers, contractors and so on really believe they're helping Iraq. If these people, who you liberated and try to help at great personal sacrifice, turn on you the problem is deeper than you thought.
The problem wasn't really the regime; it's the entire culture.
That is, if you cannot blame former regime elements and al Qaeda for all your troubles you must re-interpret the people -- no longer hapless victims, they're actually 'bad seed'.
Thus you go from know-nothing altruism to 'exterminate the brutes' in one easy step.
A vivid example of this thinking can be heard by listening to NPR's Melissa Block's interview with former Marine "Bing" West on "Controlling Fallujah" --
<http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=1806091>
Mr. West informs NPR listeners that Fallujah was the town that "supplied Hussein with his thugs" and is just a "bad neighborhood".
So you see? No need to worry about these terrible deaths. There are no broader implications. Fallujah was always bad; it's filled with bad people. The people there are so bad they were the primary source for Hussein's thugs. We can return to our easy chairs and reality tv shows, confident that only bad people oppose us. Well yes, it's true the list has expanded from only 'terrorists' and 'former regime dead-enders' to just about everyone in an entire city but even so, no need to worry.
Soon, through the proper application of force (Mr. West emphasised the good rifling skills of the US Marines now tasked with controlling the town) these bad elements will learn their place or be killed.
It's impossible to understand this maze of thinking, which will always find a way to preserve the appearance of virtue, through fact-based analysis alone. It's at moments like this the value of someone like Zizek reveals itself -- or, to phrase it more broadly, the value of applying psychoanalytic theory (among other disciplines that seek to peer behind the veil of behavior) to political events.
DRM