Our military leaders have been systematically desensitizing combat soldiers to death and denying the humanity of “the enemy”, reported Democracy Now on Wednesday. While people are trying to understand how a young soldier with a “Personality Disorder” could end up raping and killing a 15-year old Iraqi girl and then murdering 4 members of her family, (one as young as 4 years old) it was revealed by a former soldier that the military attempts to remove all humanity from Iraqis in its training of soldiers so that they can be more easily killed, without soldiers feeling that bothersome remorse. Geoffrey Millard revealed to Democracy Now that this type of objectifying that can lead to murder goes on regularly. He said it has led to many murders at checkpoints in Iraq and some reports of families being killed were merely shrugged off by those in command. Obviously, this is what is leading to atrocities in this military exercise, as it has led to similar atrocities in previous wars. Millard said,

“. . . . in this checkpoint killing, an entire family was murdered — a mother, a father and two young children, a young boy, age of four, and a young girl, age of three, were all killed that day in a car. It was moving very quickly towards a traffic control point, at which time a private pressed the butterfly trigger of his 50-caliber machine gun and killed this whole family. And as this was briefed to the general, a full bird colonel turned around to the division staff and said — and I quote — “If this f**king haji learned to drive, this s**t wouldn’t happen.” And that really was a big turning point for me in realizing what war was truly about, and the fact that this term “haji” isn’t just a term that grunts use on the ground, it’s one that is projected down from the top, all the way up in ranks downward upon the average G.I.”

In fact, the term haji is still being used by soldiers now. There is probably no better example of how pervasive this word is, and how innocently viewed, than in this story of a Marine who wrote and sung a song about a murdered Iraqi girl, in the context of a love story. This soldier called the song, “Haji girl”. He was prevented at the last minute from professionally recording the song by officers who discovered his plans. The song was scheduled to be aired on a conservative radio show as soon as it was finished, which tells me that soldiers aren’t the only people being desensitized to killing — Republicans suffer from this too. Obviously, we’re destroying minds with this senseless occupation/war. It’s time to stop it before it’s too late for others.