Love & War

Okay, so here's an article about U.S. troops exchanging gruesome photos and video from Iraq and Afghanistan for access to internet porn. (Click here for the grisly war material). It reminded me of what Chris Hedges wrote:

The violent breakup of Yugoslavia, which was preceded by economic collapse, began in 1991. lt was the same year that the government decided to permit hard-core sex films to be broadcast on public stations and that the first locally made pornographic film was produced. While the old Communist Yugoslavia did not censor love scenes in its state-run film industry, it condemned pornography as the exploitation of women and banned its production. The first graphic pictures of mutilated and dead from the war, along with the racial diatribes against Muslims and Croats, hit the airwaves at the same time Yugoslavs were allowed to watch porno films. The war was, like the sex films, about the lifting of taboos, about new forms of entertainment to mask the economic and political collapse of Yugoslavia. War and sex were the stimulants to divert a society that was collapsing.

But maybe I'm wrong to think of the War on Iraq Terror in such terms. After all, everything changed on 9/11 – including human nature. Am I right? You bet I am.