The killing zone

By Samia Farid Shihata

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For months now television screens have been full of scenes of butchery and destruction. Not a day passes without Iraq being front page news, without television reports exposing the dark side of humanity, showing soldiers sent in to battle to kill and maim. The look on the faces of US soldiers is one of resigned despair, startled efficiency or else automatic compliance with a dreadful mission.

What do they think of? What fills the minds of professional combatants fighting for a cause they can barely comprehend, thousands of miles from home, in a foreign country, in an unfamiliar landscape, in a place where they can never belong?

The killing has reached a crescendo, and the killers are ordinary men and women. They wake up each morning to inflict destruction on a nation about which they know nothing. These soldiers are just as much victims as the Iraqis themselves. They are fighting an absurd war for reasons at which they can only guess. They are turning blood into oil and money for the merchants of death, the manufacturers of arms and the big corporations. They deserve better than to kill and die in a meaningless war.

We see them on the screens. We see them shooting, but no one tells us how they live. The media focusses on the gore, the politicians and the sound bites. No one cares about the soldiers. Why should they? They're just human.

* This week's Soapbox speaker is professor of political science at Helwan University.