In 1993 Canadian citizens received a rude awakening.

Our ‘peace-keepers’, members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, tortured and killed a Somolian teen-ager. The boy was 16.

The government and the military brass chose to ignore the central decay of a department that had been unable to detect the bad characters and properly train the good. Instead the DND just got rid of the Airborne. But the leadership did start to recognize the strain of involving Canadian soldiers in so many missions, if only because with the scandals the PR value of peace-keeping was starting to erode.*

And now the UK and the US wrestle with the dogs of war.
This Asia Time article mocks how the average western citizen perceives war.
What caught my attention is that this piece is directed at the viewer, we - the computer chair/couch potato observers.

Don’t you remember the stark images in Life magazine of US soldiers torturing suspected communists during the Vietnam War? Have you forgotten about the My Lai massacre? Did you think the Disasters of War, as depicted by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya in 1810-11 (click here ) were things that only other countries perpetrated, in other times?

Did you think American wars are more civilized, more humane? Well, of course you did. Your president and your media, after the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction had been swept under the carpet, sold you this war as ridding the world of the brutal, bloodthirsty tyrant Saddam Hussein; as bringing the forces of humanity, civilization and enlightenment to a people living in darkness. And you believed that war could achieve this. Now, shocked, you are seeing images that show that the brutal, bloodthirsty tyrant’s boot fits some American feet as well. Sorry, but war is dehumanizing.

Your president thunders that prisoner abuse “is not the American way”. Maybe he really thinks so - he never saw service in Vietnam, or any other war, after all. Maybe his advisers just didn’t tell him what really goes on in war. But to all but the simple-minded and the rose-bespectacled, this is not only the American way of war, it is the way of all sides in all wars.

Yes. We forget if we know at all. We think we need life sanitized for us.
“Lest we forget” is a grand slogan if we are the ones that don’t have to do the awful remembering.

The underlings who will be punished are soldiers who were dragged along by the dogs of war. If you are shocked and appalled by what they did, it is those who let the dogs out who should be investigated. They have only one question to answer, and it is not “Did you order the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners?” The question is, “Is this a just, necessary war?” If it is a just war, you may swallow your horror, because this is how wars are waged.

Sometimes war is unavoidable. Just don’t be naive about it. Sorry to say, the grim reality is a whole lot worse than what you have recently seen on the “stupid box”.

*The Lion The Fox & The Eagle - Carol Off. page 23