Nick Berg: The Video

Posted on May 14, 2004 in Atrocity Occupation of Iraq

It’s politics Friday!

Isn’t it torment enough for his parents to know that he died this way? Must everyone make it a sacrament to hunt it down and look at it?

A few bloggers felt it was their duty to view the video. Most regretted it. Brian Kane exhorted us:

It should be seen. Flinch, shudder, scream, vomit, cry, fly into rage, or do whatever else you must as a consequence, but I tell you that the only way this will not spiral into chaos is for people to bear witness to the horror, and to make up their minds to take action to see it stop. You will not be unchanged, but the time for change has come.

This is a nation made resistant to gore by films such as Hannibal and Night of the Living Dead. If events like what happened at Abu Ghraib lead some to denial, I suggest that it is because they have been desensitizd to violence and cruelty by films. Why make an out-of-control phenomenon worse by suggesting that people watch this penultimate horror?

No, Brian. For the sake of Nick’s parents, no. For the sake of my sanity, no. It will not make me a better pacifist. It will not deepen my opposition to war. It will make me sick. There is no utility in seeing this video. Let us curb this epidemic that jumps from mind to mind, let us stand against vendetta and insanity.

I share without seeing the piece the Lovecraftian fears that Jeremy — who watched it once deliberately and twice by accident — evokes:

It’s possible, indeed, to summon a demon– but the demon always comes from within. It’s also possible for entire groups of people, or even entire nations, to summon gods from other dimensions, dimensions of pain and darkness. But, again, these gods emerge from a singular abyss, the abyss that results when compassion is set aside in the name of power. These gods emerged long, long ago, and have ruled the Earth ever since.

Yes, I can imagine the tentacle of Nyarlathotep in this. Do we need to spread the madness? Remember what happened after 9-11, the repetitive viewings of the collapse of one tower and then another, the shock that every person in the country who watched and rewatched the scenes had. Rush Limbaugh wants this video shown to everyone, he wants to wear down our minds until we drool and nod Yes Yes Yes to even more vendetta.

I say No No No to Fat Man on the air waves. I say No No No to Little Boy in the White House. I say no to this Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this atomic disaster of the mind; it is completely unnecessary and pointless. As this war has been from the beginning.

This video is the worst sort of pornography. The lovers of carnage on both sides want it seen by us. The more the better, because without our shock-spawned apathy, they cannot thrive. The repeated viewings of the 9-11 calamity numbed the nation so badly that we made a series of bad decisions, beginning with the Patriot Act and culminating in the disasters of this past two weeks: we gave George W. Bush — an AWOL National Guardsman, a drunk driver, and a childhood sadist — a blank check.

At the bottom of this is another fear: should a revolution come, what horrors would the New Guard wreak on the Old and on those “weak supporters” such as myself? If socialism ever does get a chance in this country, I should prefer that it be driven by compassion and not vengeance. That was the mistake in 1917. Millions paid dearly with their lives.

We must keep our senses. Let us not madden the opposition to this war. We know well enough what that video is about. You know already that this scene is vile. I don’t doubt that Nick suffered cruelly. Where some want to make him yet another tool for the advancement of violence or partisan agendas, I mourn for him. While I cannot prevent you from viewing it, while I will not call for censorship, I will not participate in indulging the gorehounds. I will not make having a say in this war conditional on observing the minutiae of this atrocity.

And I do not merely mourn Americans. What about the Iraqis blown to bits by our drones, our cruise missiles, our carpet bombing, our soldiers panicking in the streets of Bagdhad? I mourn Nick Berg, but I will not allow the prostitution of his death by terrorist, jingoist or war resister to make me forget them.

I am already enraged, saddened by the mere report of what was done to Nick Berg. I shall keep my head. I shall keep my head while everyone — including a few pacifists and other opponents to this war — around me is losing his.