Shame of Baghdad
A video made the rounds recently that purportedly shows a Marine in Iraq chucking a puppy off a cliff. I say "purportedly" because even though I've read about it, I can't bring myself to watch it. Some have claimed that it's a fake, but most agree that it's real, and there's even an investigation on to track down the offending soldier.
In one of life's increasingly less entertaining coincidences, this all happened when I was fresh off reading Brian K. Vaughan's stellar and heartbreaking Pride of Baghdad, a graphic novel inspired by the true account of four lions who escaped the Baghdad zoo during the bombings of April 2003. The book plays as a grim fable as the lions make their way through the ruins of the city and attempt to survive amid the rubble and chaos of a world being destroyed. Vaughan's writing is as sharp as ever: He delineates the four main characters and their personalities in a matter of pages before plunging them and the reader into a journey that can only be described as harrowing. I will not here reveal what happens to the central cast, or even to the ancillary characters — including the rest of the animals who escaped the zoo, a giant bear being kept as a lethal pet, and a wise old turtle living down by the river — except to say that, as is the case in the real world and Vaughan's stories, not everyone makes it out safely. However, the real power of the story isn't just the way Vaughan gives it an emotional resonance, but in the way he uses a tragic climax to illustrate a broader point about the war in general. After a few panels of silent scenery, Vaughan simply states that the preceding was based on a true story before concluding with, "There were other casualties as well." And in one moment, the story manages to spiral up and out, taking the pain and joy and nameless other yearnings and focusing them on the human cost of the fighting.
I say all that because reaction to the video generally fell into three camps. Most everyone was appalled, and a few people even expressed something like sad resignation that this had happened, as if being away from home and fighting in a war is all the excuse you need to mindlessly kill a harmless animal. But many people used the video as a way to turn the focus back toward the human lives lost, saying that it doesn't make sense to get all worked up over a dog when people are dying. This is the right idea, but the wrong execution. It's wrong because it assumes that a dog's life is worthless and should serve as a reminder that real people are dying every day, when in actuality that dog is the best way for people who don't have any connection to the war to see it for just what it's doing to those who are affected by it. The war has become a senseless thing, a lumbering and unjust beast whose appetite for willing soldiers and innocent civilians is impossible to satisfy. But seeing a dog, a pup whose only mistake was to find himself in the hands of the wrong Marine, killed with the kind of offhand you never want to imagine someone having — that's affecting in a way that death counts and press spin could never be. That's why we're right to get worked up about the video. The human cost suddenly comes screaming home, and not because the dog was just an animal; it's because it was alive, and that life ended in a place where people are killing each other every hour.
Comments: 11
I didn't watch the video either b/c I agree with you. That is a sad sad testament to where we have gone psychologically
And this from a guy who likes shooting animals for fun
I couldn't watch them. Not in a million years, no. As I was reading this my own darling pooch came over to rest her chin on my thigh and gaze up at me with her soulful brown eyes, and I got a pit in my stomach just thinking about it.
Nicely done. You're a real class act, Dan Carlson.
Not that it's something to be proud of, but I saw the video before it got big. I didn't really know what I was watching until it was too late, and I was upset.
I'm so glad you recommended this, and Vaughn himself, to me. I read it in a sitting and got a little lump in my throat.
I just finished reading Pride of Baghdad myself! And I've seen the video. However, I couldn't pt the two together as eloquently and with as much meaning as you did here. Thank you.
I couldn't watch either the video or the movie. But I did see something a couple of years ago of Iraqi's - or some people from that area torturing zoo animals - absolutely broke my heart. How can people do this? My cat at home totally gets precedence over me.
There are more things in heaven and earth , etc. etc .
I did watch the video, and it is without question horrible for all the reasons you state.
I'm not certain if it is real. I'm not certain it is faked. it looked real enough, but then again, we've been so used to looking for the seams, it could easily have been faked.
But why would anyone want to kill a dog that way?
Or why would anyone want to fake a video of a dog dying?
Neither one makes sense.
About two years ago, a video surfaced purporting to show a group of British mercenaries--sorry, "Private Security Contractors"--rolling around Iraq machine-gunning cars with much greater offhandedness than the puppy-flinging Marine. (Pet peeve: people who call Marines "soldiers." Soldiers are in the Army. Marines are in the Marine Corps, which is a separate body. It matters to some people.) It did not spark nearly as much outrage or discussion.
The fact is that a large number of armed foreigners (and by foreigners I mean non-Iraqis) has had the run of the country for the last five years, effectively allowed to kill whomever they please with minimal consequences. And what gets our panties all in a bunch? A freaking puppy.
Not that it's ever okay to throw a puppy off a cliff, but there's a reasonable chance that that very same Marine has in fact killed innocent human beings without incurring this level of outrage, and maybe without even provoking the kind of half-hearted chiding he gets in the video. (A voice, off-camera, resignedly says "That was mean" a couple of times.)
I've heard that non-American media outlets, especially in Europe, are not shy about showing war in all its brutal horror, which is one reason why opposition to war is so much stronger there. Perhaps if our newspeople didn't have to worry about upsetting the kids, it wouldn't take a puppy to make us notice the titanic human cost of this entirely misbegotten conflict.
Pen Dragon,
I'm not sure I get your point.
Are you saying people should be more offended by the innocents [presumedly] killed by this Marine than by the videotaped death of the puppy?
My initial response to your post is that all of that stuff you mention is heinous and f*ucked up. We should find none of them acceptable. But the puppy video is/was fresh on our minds, and Dan eloquently describes how it underscores the greater atrocities happening in Iraq.
I just get a sense that you feel the Marine's actions are less objectionable because of these other unrelated objectionable offenses you introduce. Perhaps its your use of the word "but" after stating "Not that it's ever okay to throw a puppy off a cliff..."
IMO there is no "but." It is never acceptable to kill innocence. And the person that finds it acceptable for any reason has lost an appreciation for life. And that is a Goddamn shame.
haven't seen the video .. AM not going to watch something as senseless and stupid as that .. but this whole situation somehow reminds me of 'Apocalypse Now' when the soldiers killed the vietnamese over a puppy (which they didn't know) .. but one of the soldiers kept the puppy and sort of went crazy when it got lost cos he loved it so much ...
the movie to me was very disturbing and it does gave an idea of how crazy ppl get during and after going to war ... but i found the whole puppy thing in the movie was so freaking weird... the fact that he kept it (the puppy) in the middle of the whole madness that was going on .. which brought me to a conclusion that he needed the puppy as a reminder of what life used to be before the war ..
i guess in this situation the soldier reacted differently
Your last paragraph brought me to tears. It's awful and wonderful to hear someone say what you would have if you were smarter. Many, many thanks for this.
I agree completely. I didn't watch the video because I just don't want to degrade myself to that extent.
Also, that graphic novel is quite amazing. Brian K. Vaughan is an amazing writer.
Mar 13, 2008 2:53 PM