Moral Bankruptcy

By Ross Caputi

Scott Olsen was shot in the head with a projectile by the Oakland Police on Tuesday October 25th. Scott was a young veteran who did two deployments to Iraq with the Marine Corps. It is unclear exactly how Scott felt about his deployments to Iraq, and it is unlikely that he will be able to tell us any time soon. His injuries have left him unable to speak.

However, it is clear how the #Occupy movement feels about Scott's "service". Many people in this movement feel outraged that the police attacked a veteran. Iraq Veterans Against the War, an organization in which Scott was a member, has not hesitated to highlight his two deployments to Iraq as they called for vigils across America in solidarity with Scott. Veterans for Peace, another organization that Scott belonged to, also emphasized Scott's deployments. The New York Times has reported that "his injury — and the oddity of a Marine who faced enemy fire only to be attacked at home — has prompted an outpouring of sympathy, as well as calls for solidarity". This appears to be true. Scott's "service" has made the police brutality against him more egregious than it would have been otherwise.

This response to Scott Olsen's attack reveals where the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan stand as an issue in the #Occupy movement. As a moral issue they stand somewhere on the sideline; however, as an economic issue they do get some attention. Scott Olsen's deployments to Iraq are being spoken of in a positive light, rather than as voluntary participation in an immoral and brutal occupation. The word "service" is being used to describe what Scott did in Iraq, and nobody bats an eye. It appears that the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are an issue for the #Occupy movement only because of what the occupations have done to our economy. The #Occupy movement is focused on economic injustice at home, not on the crimes we are committing abroad.

The irony that Scott was put in the hospital by some of the same tactics that his Marine Corps has used against Iraqis has escaped most Americans. Neither IVAW, nor VFP, nor the #Occupy movement have said a word about it. Nobody has drawn a connection between what happened to Scott and what happened to Iraqis when the US military fired into crowds of peaceful protesters and killed civilians; like in Fallujah on April 28th, 2003 when the US killed 13 civilians. The lies of the Bush administration, the more than one-million dead Iraqis, the millions of refugees and orphans, and the dramatic rise in cancers and birth defects in Iraq have all been forgotten as Americans speak about Scott's "service".

We should all decry police brutality wherever it rears its ugly head. Yet police brutality and the murder of innocent civilians in foreign countries are both moral issues; and to decry one without decrying the other suggests a rather serious disconnect. It is this disconnect that is plaguing our country. We decry economic injustice at home, but stay silent about the immoral occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. We decry police brutality at home, while our troops brutalize innocent people abroad. It is difficult not to come to the conclusion that Americans only care about themselves.