Meat and instinct: War crime comes home to West Chester

Since I was a kid, my family’s been making an exodus from Philadelphia: Thompson Street to… Since I was a kid, my family’s been making an exodus from Philadelphia: Thompson Street to Delco and out to Chester County. We’re just looking for a piece of the pie. My grandparents are the last holdouts of the entire gene pool. They still live in what was the Italian neighborhood they grew up in; now it’s a ghetto. Every five feet there’s either a crack vial or a dead cat. My grandfather’s Crown Vic wagon has been shot eight times.

Everyone moves here, no one moves away. It’s rich, in the middle of things and it’s safe. Hell, Bam Margera lives and shoots his show here. Don Vito gets drunk at the bar across the street from my house. This is suburban paradise. I like the city and the country better than suburbs, but no one else does. After all, in the ‘burbs, you’ve got developments like Deer Pointe with million-dollar McMansions; the town has upscale restaurants on the corner of High and Gay — I’m not making that intersection up. This place is like Canada: nothing of dire consequence ever happens here.

It’s not like west Philly, where my grandfather still lives. I got a call from him a little while back that went like this:

“Hello?”

“Hi, Tony, it’s Grandpop. Did you see the news?”

“No ….”

“Your high school’s on TV. A man from West Chester got his head cut off in Iraq. Sons of bitches.”

Now I’m not going to whine throughout this column, wondering how something like what happened to Nick Berg could happen to an American, let alone someone from West Chester.

What bothers me isn’t so much the audacity or despicability of the execution — those bastards could have used a machete and ended it with one swipe rather than a dull bayonet — what bothers me is the American reaction. First off, this is war. That isn’t a cowboy declaration or an excuse; it’s an explanation. Horrible things happen in war.

Take that grandfather of mine, or rather, take his Ka-Bar. He gave it to me a few summers ago. It’s the real deal: a 60-year-old Marine Corps fighting knife. The blade is still black as pitch and the walnut grip is honed and oiled smooth. Playing around like a dunce one day, I learned firsthand it can still tear — forget that; it doesn’t tear, it divinely parts — skin and sinew.

That knife was on Iwo Jima and was used during a banzai night attack to fell two Imperial Japanese. It’s a relic that still bites. I really love that knife. It’s a connection to my grandfather and a symbol of American strength during adversity. Even a Democrat like me still gets bumps thinking about battles like Iwo. So, what’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s grandkid going to think of that dull bayonet in 60 years?

Now Gramps, I’m not comparing you to an Iraqi terrorist. And I’m not comparing the United States to Imperial Japan. Hirohito and Tojo butchered 20 million Chinese people and Southeastern Asians. The events at the Iraqi prison should not even be mentioned in the same sentence as the Bataan Death March or the Rape of Nanking. Everyone should remember that.

Everyone should also remember that “us” and “them” aren’t so different. America had institutionalized slavery and segregation for longer than it has institutionalized freedom and desegregation. The My Lai Massacre was only 30 years ago.

This is war, and war is always horrible and always does horrible things to the men who fight it and the people who witness it. Every Iraqi and every Afghan has been raised on a battlefield with bombed-out tanks for jungle gyms and sirens for lullabies. They have been warped by dictatorships and tribal warfare to the point that even considering similarity with one beyond the boundaries of their own insignificant group — Shiite, Sunni, Taliban, Northern Alliance, Muslim, infidel, male, female — is incomprehensible.

They don’t remember that we are the same meat and instinct and that we all can be injured by trauma. Let’s not make the same mistake. Nick Berg went to Henderson High School and was beheaded in Iraq because he wasn’t jaded enough to stay home.

Let’s look back into our personal and national heritages and see the weakness and the glory. The freedom of living a life in peace is worth fighting for, but it’s sometimes worth not fighting for. Let me guess. You think this sounds silly, right? Well, 800 dead Americans in Iraq sounds silly to me. Ten thousand dead Iraqi civilians sound silly to me. Osama bin Laden still free and Bush still in power for four more years sounds silly to me. But hey, that’s me … Damn, that was draining. I need to watch some Viva La Bam.

Anthony Ciarrocchi is a sex columnist for The Pitt News. Email him at rac29@pitt.edu.