A vegetarian's beef

… "beef" as in "issue".

The U.S. Army shoots live pigs and has soldiers stitch the wounds as part of their (the soldiers', not the pigs') training before deployment to Iraq. Seriously. It's called a "medical trauma exercise". I read this news story Saturday, in Sunday's early-released Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and my reaction to the news has seemed to resemble the stages of grieving, because I'm just now beginning to believe it's actually true the Army shoots pigs just to stitch them up again. The two meat-eaters I discussed this with expressed disgust over the practice.

A few months ago, CNN showed a video of a U.S. soldier in Iraq hurling a puppy over the edge of a cliff. The presenting newscaster warned watchers that the footage she was about to show was something like incredibly or extremely or painfully or devastatingly disturbing, and to omnivorous humans everywhere, it was.

In a way, these pieces of news are wonderful: They show how fickle and ridiculous our sensitivities are.

To the puppy-hurling soldier, the public response was shock and outrage; the military's response was purportedly to dishonorably discharge the hurler and the filmer of the hurling experience. The Army defends its shooting of pigs (to PETA, of course) by asserting that the exercise will likely save the lives of soldiers. The utilitarian logic used to defend the torture of Guantanamo detainees is similar: The suffering of one (presumably "bad" or "guilty") person is acceptable if it might help prevent the suffering of many (presumably "good" or "innocent") people. The math appears hard to argue with, until you realize the ideological foundations of the claim - which are the sanctity of life and infinite worth of the individual - and the inherent contradiction of the ideologies and the practices they inspire: Our belief in the sanctity of human life compels us to commit the ultimate degradation. (This contradiction also appears in capital punishment cases.) The difference with the pigs is that no one presumes they're guilty of anything. Would it be stupid to suppose that pigs, and other non-polluting animals, are victims of human ecological destruction (as well as our militaristically-accomplished imperialism)? Would sympathy for their inability to construct their way out of both destructions be ridiculous?

If I were to create career superlatives, under "Most Likely to Kill Animals", I'd probably list "soldier" somewhere around "police officer" and "professional wrestler". While it's definitely disturbing to see a solider hurl a puppy off a cliff, it makes a certain kind of sense. If the Army is supposed to be able to protect our country, its members should be able to easily kill a puppy or a pig. Aren't the interests of our country exceedingly more important than the life of a puppy? The interests of our country aren't served by killing a puppy, but apparently the interests of our country are served by shooting pigs. And it doesn’t seem like it should be easier to kill a human than to hurl a puppy if shooting pigs is part of military training and hurling a puppy is grounds for dishonorable discharge. We're confused.