not okay

NOT OKAY Upper Sproul, Spring 2008

I just read an article about the "Kill Team" in Afghanistan. My first reaction is: oh damn, sucks, but it happens, the whole of war is messed up, acceptance, move on. But today, I actually read through the explicit details of the story, and it hit me a little harder than usual. The last time I remotely felt this way was three years ago in my Controlling Processes class. Our guest speaker was this guy named Dahr Jamail who used to be a mountain guide in Alaska, who up and left for Iraq in 2003 to find out what was going on first hand.

During the lecture, he stood at the podium and simply described the nuances of what he observed. Stuff like how the streets over there don't have clear addresses like we do here, so it was common for military personnel to wrongly (and knowingly) detain, question, and harass civilians from incorrect locations for indeterminate lengths of time. No defenses, no lawyers, no complaining.

I know that if someone ever did this to me, my family, or a friend, I'd simply explode, kaput, and probably develop some kind of hard and vengeful, paranoid outlook on life :/

I just remember after the lecture, I went on my usual way home through Upper Sproul, except this time I stopped at the fountain, sat for a while, and broke down. It's not something I have a habit of doing, either. I really couldn't help it. It just hit me. A stranger even tried to console me and all I could say was, "the Iraq war [sobs]." I don't know my American idioms too well, but I guess in a different way, the devil lies in the details. I'm not sure why I'm writing this, but I know that I don't ever want to forget how I felt then, not numb, not cold, not okay with it.