Joanna
Doug Henwood wrote:
> joanna bujes wrote:
>
>> I don't exactly want to watch one; so could you guys explain why it
>> was a freak out?
>
>
> The deed was done using a knife held with bare hands. It's very messy
> - lots of hacking, punctuated initially by screams. Lots of spurting
> blood. I watched some videos of guys being shot (on the same Ogrish
> site), but those are relatively quick and clean. The beheading was
> drawn out, and it seemed that the victim experienced lots of pain and
> terror before the lights dimmed. It's a very intense dose of pure horror.
>
> There's a political angle to it as well. A few days ago, a veteran
> peace activist whom I admire quite a lot (I'm not mentioning his name
> because I didn't ask if it was ok to quote him) told me that one
> reason he thinks the antiwar movement has nearly died out is because
> of the brutality of the resistance. As he put it, that means that it
> "lacks a certain 'edge' of legitimacy which the Vietnam war had.
> Personally I support the right of people to resist in their own way -
> but in Iraq this has become very confused. Perhaps only the harder
> part of the US Left can rejoice over the chaos." I felt something like
> that watching the video - that anyone who could cut off someone's head
> with a knife held in his bare hands is so debased that it messes with
> one's political clarity about the war. Yes, I know the US military is
> far more murderous, and it's our military, and yes, I agree that
> people have the right to resist in their own way, but it takes some
> kind of hardness not to be knocked a bit off political course by the
> unmediated brutality of a beheading.
>
> Doug
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