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If this is for real, and I don’t have reason to think it isn’t, nor any confirmation that it is, the mom of a soldier serving in Afghanistan is asking for slingshots or wrist rockets for her son’s batallion. Because they don’t want to shoot the teenagers insurgents are sending with bullets. And the U.S. government won’t provide rubber bullets. There are so many things wrong with this that I can’t even start, but somehow this message on Freecycle, where my neighbors are normally trading mattresses and moving boxes, renewed the nightmare horror of the business of war in my head.
At the same time my dark side thinks there should have been a “Slingshots for Soldiers” scene of some sort in War, Inc. Perhaps just before the Tamerlane’s prosthetics kickline.
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Isn’t there something positive about this? They’re instructed to kill anything that moves, and yet they’re supposed to be winning hearts and minds, and it’s the killing of young people and civilians that creates more antipathy and resistance. And callow teenagers are used as cannon fodder by both sides. Perhaps someone’s using their head, and without official clearance, it seems. Rubber bullets are still very military/police and would probably be interpreted as weakness – at least this has a sense of humanity to it – and there’s also something patronizing about being hit by a paintball from a slingshot that might make a 13 year old kid think twice about what they’re taking on rather than redouble their effort.
I do agree that’s a positive, Ru. Finding a way to work around the madness is pretty awesome, actually. But the fact that a soldier has to ask his mom to send the tools he needs so that he doesn’t have to shoot at teenagers made me sad. Sort of a “this is what we’ve come to?” feeling. I guess I had forgotten the war for awhile, and this refreshed my regret for what’s happening and my compassion for those involved.