Damn

I don't really have much faith in the "support the troops" mantra. I take no stock in the invitation to set aside criticism on account of a magical decree of national affinity.

I've only just recently argued that people who take the dollar to kill other people kind of have to know what they've gotten themselves into: if you decide to serve the House that the Dollar Built, with your body and with your violence, every now and again someone about to get crushed by the ever expanding foundation of that House might lash out at you.

The chap lashing out might read the Qur'an with an eye to a global Caliphate, and have regressive notions about women. Or she might belong to a cadre of Indian Maoists, fighting to survive a Western financed depopulation war.

Still, I'm moved by the palpability, the honesty of this man's desire to just go home:



Perhaps he has had some not so gentle coaching. I wouldn't doubt it. But, in bringing to the fore that we hold his analogs in captivity, he takes on a humanity that the cavalier butchers of the Wikileaks video cannot now or ever redeem.

h/t (sigh) HuffPo

full video @ ABC