Instead of being upset at the random death of an onlooker, my fellow soldiers were elated: Thank goodness OUR people weren’t killed. And hey, look, even our vehicle was minimally damaged! The dead and injured Iraqis, who had nothing to do with this battle, weren’t even spoken about as collateral damage. They were talked about as human armor for us. It’s a good thing those civilians were in the way, they said—except they casually used a slur to refer to Iraqis. We should just surround our vehicle convoys with them all the time.
