Interview with the vampire in uniform

[richlevy]

The Haditha incident has caused the news of the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl to fade a bit into the background, but this article brought it back to my attention.

Soldier: "I came over here because I wanted to kill people."
By Andrew Tilghman
Special to The Washington Post
Over a mess-tent dinner of turkey cutlets, the bony-faced 21-year-old private from West Texas looked right at me as he talked about killing Iraqis with casual indifference. It was February, and we were at his small patrol base about 20 miles south of Baghdad. "The truth is, it wasn't all I thought it was cracked up to be. I mean, I thought killing somebody would be this life-changing experience. And then I did it, and I was like, 'All right, whatever."'
He shrugged.
"I shot a guy who wouldn't stop when we were out at a traffic checkpoint and it was like nothing," he went on. "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant. I mean, you kill somebody and it's like 'All right, let's go get some pizza."'
At the time, the soldier's matter-of-fact manner struck me chiefly as a rare example of honesty. I was on a nine-month assignment as an embedded reporter in Iraq, spending much of my time with grunts like him - mostly young (and immature) small-town kids who sign up for a job as killers, lured by some gut-level desire for excitement and adventure. This was not the first group I had run into that was full of young men who shared a dark sense of humor and were clearly desensitized to death. I thought this soldier was just one of the exceptions who wasn't afraid to say what he really thought, a frank and reflective kid, a sort of Holden Caulfield in a war zone.
But the private was Steven D. Green.
The next time I saw him, in a front-page newspaper photograph five months later, he was standing outside a federal courthouse in North Carolina, where he had pled not guilty to charges of premeditated rape and murder. The brutal killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and her family in Mahmudiyah that he was accused of had taken place just three weeks after we talked.

Of course from what I have heard, there is a 'shock the reporter' attitude among some soldiers, and being that he was working for Stars and Stripes, the reporter might have seemed like a safe target since he wouldn't be able to print the story, which should be taken into consideration. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that 3 weeks later this kid allegedly raped and killed a girl and wiped out part of her family, this whole interview might be dismissed as 'shock the monkey' games.

If you read the rest of the article and see what his unit went through, it might be possible to see what may have cracked this guy.

There is a lot of talk of evil being floated about, usually about people in uniforms (or lack thereof) other than ours. We still ask the question are there evil people or just people who perform evil acts?

If he did what he was accused of, is Green evil?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Not evil, numb.

[Griff]

A hopeless war is evil. Some soldiers are victimized by that. Some, like this guy, probably would have been low level sociopaths here at home, but we give them the power of life and death over people they feel no empathy with. This administration really gives us some things to think about when considering the nature of evil.