dreams 2006-05-06

I'm watching a video feed, overhead real-time bird's eye view of an outlying area of a Middle-Eastern city, most likely somewhere in Iraq. On a dirt road just outside the suburbs, a truck sits by the shoulder, a few armed men gathered around it. As someone, civilian, bicycles past along the otherwise empty road, I hear radio chatter and a missile streaks across the screen, narrowly missing the truck and the cyclist and exploding maybe ten metres away from the road in the desert. The cyclist pedals frantically to escape, but heavy machine-gun fire -- from offscreen, again, but a different direction -- blasts his body off the bike and sends it tumbling across the road. But why has this person been shot, and not the armed men? They had started running as soon as the missile struck, heading off the road towards the suburbs, going from one backyard to the next through gates, over fences and hedgerows. Now the machine-gun tracers follow them, blasting fences to bits, tearing gaping holes in anything they hit. And I realize that this is no Iraqi suburb any more; they're now running through the North American Suburb of Myth, the land of soccer and SUVs. I can tell the machine-gun fire must be coming from low-flying helicopters, and these people might as well be sheep for all those flying metal tanks may care... I see bodies getting ripped apart and tossed across backyards when struck by these rounds -- those guns are designed to take out light armoured vehicles, this I know! my God, my God... In one backyard, I swear I see a gunman run past a kid just playing, oblivious and happy, but then the tracers come -- no, how can this be? -- and both just ragdoll under the impact. Then I see one of the choppers fly overhead and hover -- it's an Apache, I think mechanically: 24 missiles to unleash the very fire of hell, and a 30mm automatic cannon besides. The gunner looks around, the gun automatically pointing wherever the gear on his helmet faces; just look, press button, slaughter. Two people try to hide under a picnic table; he just looks down, gun swivels, brrrraap, they're gone.
Now the video feed is coming from a camera on the ground; marines are charging down the streets, bursting into house after house, this horrible pursuit now being taken to the next stage. It's madness and death everywhere, and I can't even believe I'm still watching.
But then the video stops and I'm sitting and talking with an Arab guy my age; he's weary and sad, but hasn't totally given up on the world yet -- he's trying to get through to me, at any rate, but I'm just reeling after all of this. "Everyone's raised to think that their people are the good guys," is all I manage to say. His expression is moral pity, but not any sympathy for me -- I should still know what's right, he seems to be telling me...