History Repeats Itself

When I was a freshman in college, my sociology professor showed our class a documentary that explored the lives of Vietnam War vets soon after they returned home from war. I recall a panel discussion where trembling soldiers took turns describing some of the atrocities they and other soldiers committed against Vietnamese civilians, some so gruesome that they caused a wave of shudders across the lecture hall I sat in.
Despite the graphic nature of the descriptions, what I won't forget about that documentary is the listless, absent expressions on the faces of some of the soldiers, almost as if they had experienced and taken part in so much horror that there was nothing left inside of them.
I remember ... it was Spring 2003 when Professor O'Connell showed us this documentary, which, I might add, was completely unrelated to the course he was teaching.
The credits faded to black, and he stood in front of us and said, "I'm not trying to change your opinions or affect you deeply. I just want to provide you with a piece of information. Don't think about it right now, just file it away for later." He then proceeded with his regular lecture as if nothing had happened, while the 300 of us sat in stunned silence for the remainder of the hour. Less than a week later, the Iraq war, which is still raging on, had its official start.
This morning, I started my workday by reading the CNN headlines, business as usual, when I stumbled upon a story about Paul Cortez, a U.S. soldier who recently testified to raping an Iraqi girl and killing her family. All of a sudden, the information that Professor O'Connell asked me to file came racing to the front of my mind.
Reading further, I found out that Cortez is avoiding the death penalty by testifying against three other soldiers also involved in the case. As it turns out, the soldiers took turns holding 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi down while their fellow soldiers could rape her, one by one, before shooting her several times in the head and killing her family.
Allegedly, Cortez cried and showed signs of extreme grief as he described his own actions and the scene, but all I could ask myself was why and how. Why would a group of young people who are serving their country and supposedly fighting for democracy in another destroy an innocent family so heartlessly? How many cases are there like this one that we haven't heard about? Why is this useless war still going on? And why, why, why do we allow history to keep repeating itself this way, without learning from our mistakes?
My file on this subject is rapidly expanding, as you can tell. I don't really know what else to say.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/22/soldier.rape.ap/index.html?eref=rss_us