Trained professional soldiers go on a tour of duty for a few months and return with mental illnesses that require treatment. And this is said to be understandable given that war is hell. But the civilians whose families, homes neighborhoods, country and way of life are obliterated before their eyes are expected to stand tall and not be shaken by what happens to them according to the pundits who pontificate on subjects they ought to be careful about.
Time and again we hear of soldiers who come home from the front a changed person. The change can be slight or it can be a complete reversal of personality. They are affected as individuals and this in turn affects their family life and the way they interact with society. Some can function without treatment, others need treatment before they can reintegrate into society and a few descend into a personal hell that sometimes leads to homicide or suicide.
Now pretend for a moment that the civilians who are expected to stand ten feet tall are really not that tall but are made of the same DNA stock as the soldiers who experience those difficulties. Now imagine these people as they see their families, homes, neighborhoods, country and way of life being obliterated before their eyes and you will accept the notion that they may not behave like gentlemen or nice ladies all the time. And neither will you be shocked to learn that a few of them will want to inflict damage on the foreign soldiers who brought the horrendous calamity to them.
Most of the time a soldier from the invading army will develop difficulties after seeing a buddy of his being killed. If the buddy is killed by a civilian, the soldier will want to exact revenge by punishing the population that his army has invaded. By the same token, when a civilian of the invaded country sees a member of his family being killed by a foreign soldier, he will want to exact revenge by punishing the soldiers of the foreign army.
When the soldiers do what they do, they call that a military operation and it is how things are described in the communiqué that is issued. Sometimes, however, the reality is different from what is put into the communiqué because the operation would have more to do with a personal quest for revenge than it is a military necessity.
In fact, in some cases the soldiers throw a party after committing a gruesome act of revenge as when the Americans raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and murdered her family before setting the house in which they lived on fire. This was without a doubt the display of a strange sort of behavior but it was treated as if totally understandable by the reporters and the pundits who took up the issue. At least in one instance, the age of the girl was made fun of when a female reporter snickered that the girl was probably more like 25.
Yet, these same reporters and pundits find it hard to understand why an eight year old or a ten year old girl who saw her family blown up by a laser guided missile would want to "dance in the street" upon learning that her people have inflicted damage on the soldiers of the invading army. The pundits point to such behavior and say: look how violent these people are. Do you not feel gratified that our soldiers are over there keeping them in check?
The troubling part about this performance is not the apparent double standard which would imply a run of the mill kind of hypocrisy on the part of the pundits. No, the world is used to that. The troubling part is that the pundits are sincere in expressing what they feel. Look at it closely and be horrified because this says something very serious about us.
What the performance says is that the pundits expect an eight year old Palestinian girl or a ten year old Iraqi girl to have more class, more humanity, more backbone and more culture than the American army, the Israeli army or the political and cultural establishments that pitted the society from which the soldiers came against the society from which the girls came. That performance says a great deal more about the pundits and about us who listen to them than it says about the Arab girls or their culture. We should be horrified about what it says.
We often admit to ourselves that our young grow up in an environment that is so demeaning to them, they develop a diminished sense of self worth. However, most of the time people cannot describe what this means, how it is manifested or why it is a bad thing in the first place. Well, the preceding example is one that answers all three questions with enough clarity to chill the bones in our bodies. It is that we left it to the dubious among us to define us, and they do so by telling us we must hate and fear someone else because we are so inadequate.
In fact, the problem is not just how we treat each other at home or how we treat the foreigners when we invade their countries. The problem goes deeper than that, it goes to the root of the culture we have developed in the recent past and have shielded from criticism by attacking the integrity of those who blow the whistle when they see something alarming.
On the one hand we think of our culture as being the result of divine revelation; on the other we fear that it may be inferior to someone else’s. The result has been the creation of a refrain that our kids never cease to hear as they grow up. It goes like this: You are useless but look how much better off than the Arabs and the Muslims you are thanks to what I do for you. And by the way look how perfect the Jews and the Israelis are but don’t try to be like them because their portrayal is propaganda hogwash, not the real thing.
The reality, however, is that kids almost never feel worthless because someone tells them they are worthless. In fact, if you keep telling a kid that he or she is worthless, the chances are the kid will develop the backbone to improve themselves so as to prove you wrong. What really makes a kid develop a sense of worthlessness is their subtle treatment as a worthless being.
A kid will over time develop a perception of himself or herself by comparing the way that he or she is treated relative to someone else. For example, a parent or a teacher who treats everybody harshly does less damage than a parent or a teacher who treats everyone nicely but treats some kids more nicely than others. Favoritism damages the kids that are left out more than a harsh treatment that is equally applied.
In fact, this observation is so universal, it is found in the adult population as well. People of all ages get furious when they are treated less well than someone else even as they accept a harsh treatment that is equally applied. In recognition of this fact, the Human Right laws address the issue of equality among the people more extensively than they do the treatment of the society as a whole.
Knowing this, we can tell that to fix some of the ills in our society, we must stop playing the game of favoritism. This, however, is going to be a difficult thing to do in a culture where democracy has been so distorted, it is impossible to curry favor with one group without doing it at the expense of another. Democracy has many drawbacks but this fact alone is the Achilles’ heel. Yet, if we do not find a way to improve our performance, we shall be taken out of the game and everyone else will look ten feet tall relative to us.