Oops.
The guy must have thought that someone back home would get a big kick out of the picture, that it was, therefore, a suitable souvenir of the time he spent somewhere out fighting a war some place other than his Jewish home. If you listen close enough, you can just about hear him chuckling, or maybe his buddy, the guy with the camera, who grabbed this shot when his friend leaned in to make it look like sport.
He got what he wanted, I guess, a record of his stupidity, of his callousness toward a major world religion, more Catholic than Protestant, I imagine, but just as offensive toward any and all major world religions.
I'm not entirely sure that this soldier's being Jewish matters all that much. What he's up to is an act--giving the virgin a cigarette--that's just plain vulgar, an act so decidedly so that is to almost anyone a sacrilege. Such things happen in war, I guess, even though both sides in any conflict would much rather not have a bunch of these kinds of photos lying around awaiting publication. You can bet that this guy and his buddy with the camera thought helping the Virgin light up was a scream.
I guess you had to have been there.
The Middle East has been a tinder box forever really, and will likely continue to be, next week, next year, next century.
Which is not a reason to stop working for peace. Try to imagine, if you will, seeing the Middle East as something other than a tinder box, a place for instant aggression, a place for holding on to resentment as if it were a blessing, not a curse.
Some guy thought it would be a scream to stick a butt in the mouth of the Virgin. Almost certainly, he got some encouragement. Such a riot! Sometimes war can be fun.
Sometimes peace can require another world altogether.
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