Sunday, March 19, 2006
A Grim Anniversary, and a Resolution
Three years ago today, the American military, aided and abetted by the British and few other allies in state-sponsored terror, began the formal invasion of Iraq. I am old enough to remember watching the progress of the first Gulf War on TV: the grainy, nightscope-green images of "smart bombs" hurtling down airshafts of precisely targeted factories and military installations, all narrated with surreal detachment by the waxiest of talking heads, Peter Jennings.
Three years ago, Jennings and his colleagues, officially sanctioned "embedded reporters" were back at it, narrating the "shock and awe" campaign. This time the goal seemed to be maximum destruction: there was no more talk of smart bombs, although mention was made of trying to avoid hitting civilian neighborhoods. But mention was also made of the "fact" that Saadam had been devious enough to plant his military installations right in civilian neighborhoods, as a deterrence method. We wouldn't let him outsmart us, though: entire districts were flattened in carpet bombing raids that were reminiscent of nothing so much as the infamous destruction of Nuremberg in World War II.
As the first week of the bombing campaign stretched into the first month, the pictures that emerged of the devastated Baghdad were nothing short of shocking. A beautiful, elegant city of great historical significance, bombed back into the stone age. People huddling in their houses without electricity, water, sewage or food, just waiting for the American forces to "liberate them," so they could take out those flowers and throw them joyfully at the troops.
Right. Three years later--nearly three thousand American dead later, at least 20,000 American wounded later and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children dead and wounded--Iraqis are still sitting huddled in their homes without electricity or clean water. They still have to wait on mile-long, dangerous gas lines to fill their cars' gas tanks--in Iraq, one the most oil-rich spots in the entire world. They still take their lives in their hands every time they go to the market to buy food for their families.
The Iraqi blogger Riverbend, who has been chronicling this war from her home in Baghdad since its inception, wrote yesterday, "Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots." To Riverbend, the advent of the fourth year of the American invasion is especially chilling, because it feels like a nightmare from which there seems to be less and less chance of waking up.
Riverbend concludes her anniversary post:
"Three years after the war, and we’ve managed to move backwards in a visible way, and in a not so visible way.
"In the last weeks alone, thousands have died in senseless violence and the American and Iraqi army bomb Samarra as I write this. The sad thing isn’t the air raid, which is one of hundreds of air raids we’ve seen in three years- it’s the resignation in the people. They sit in their homes in Samarra because there’s no where to go. Before, we’d get refugees in Baghdad and surrounding areas… Now, Baghdadis themselves are looking for ways out of the city… out of the country. The typical Iraqi dream has become to find some safe haven abroad.
"Three years later and the nightmares of bombings and of shock and awe have evolved into another sort of nightmare. The difference between now and then was that three years ago, we were still worrying about material things- possessions, houses, cars, electricity, water, fuel… It’s difficult to define what worries us most now. Even the most cynical war critics couldn't imagine the country being this bad three years after the war... Allah yistur min il rab3a (God protect us from the fourth year). "
What's most disturbing to me is how little attention is being paid to this anniversary here at home. I had to search hard in The New York Times today to find an article about national antiwar protests, and when I finally found it, it was an AP story--the Times didn't bother to assign one of their writers to the task. Apparently 7,000 people turned out to protest yesterday in Chicago, another 1,000 in New York, and in other American cities a few thousand people will no doubt stand up and be counted in their dissent over this war. Around the world, thousands are protesting in Britain, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and other nations. But we are not seeing the mass protests of three years ago. The furor seems to have abated. Why?
It's a combination of factors, I think. There's a small degree of fear: we hear that the Homeland Security team has been hard at work tapping the phones and intercepting the email, not to mention planting themselves in the meetings of scores of antiwar activists around the country. This is something to be taken seriously in a time when people the government suspects of wrongdoings as amorphous as "dissent" can be picked up, put on a plane, and sent overseas for questioning in notoriously brutal interrogation centers.
A more serious deterrent for the average American, though, is simple numbness and discouragement. We protested three years ago, and the war began on schedule. We put all our energies into ousting the Bush Administration, and got absolutely nowhere--not even John Ashcroft, under whose watch the Abu Ghraib scandal unfolded, or Dick Rumsfeld, who send our troops into war unarmored and understaffed, have been given so much as a slap on the wrist. Condi Rice continues to shop while conditions worsen in the Middle East, from Iran to Israel and the West Bank, and no one says anything about North Korea anymore.
People in New Orleans still don't have electricity, and in Washington, what are they busy doing? Approving a spending bill that authorizes the outlay of $9.8 billion a month--that's almost $10 billion a month--for U.S. military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn't include spending on rebuilding the shattered infrastructure of Baghdad, taken out of a separate taxpayer-funded account (and paid to contractors like Halliburton). We're paying ten billion dollars a month for young American soldiers (many of whom signed up for National Guard work, not deadly combat in a foreign country) to stand in harm's way and make absolutely no progress in their original mission of "bringing peace, prosperty and democracy to Iraq."
We are citizens of a country whose Vice President can get away with shooting his own hunting partner in the face; whose President cares more about bike-riding than working to restore order to the world he's destabilized; whose legislative branch is dominated by Conservatives more interested in eliminating family planning options for young women than building a healthy, well-educated, prosperous society at home; whose Judicial branch chooses partisan favoritism over justice.
Let's face it, the picture is disheartening as hell, and I think that's one reason why so many people are choosing to observe this anniversary by sulking at home today. Unfortunately, hiding our heads in the sand--or under our covers--is not going to make this depressing world picture go away. We can't change the channel or walk out of the cinema into the bright sunshine of a new day. It's just not going to be that easy.
It's going to take persistence, determination, and a lot of hard, thankless work to undo the damage the Bush regime has done, and get our world back on track towards a future of international cooperation on the issues that matter: peace, health, security, education, and human rights--for all people, not just for the rich and powerful.
On this third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I dedicate myself to this effort with renewed commitment. There is nothing more important that I--or any of my fellow Americans-- could be doing with our time, energy and talents.
Three years ago, Jennings and his colleagues, officially sanctioned "embedded reporters" were back at it, narrating the "shock and awe" campaign. This time the goal seemed to be maximum destruction: there was no more talk of smart bombs, although mention was made of trying to avoid hitting civilian neighborhoods. But mention was also made of the "fact" that Saadam had been devious enough to plant his military installations right in civilian neighborhoods, as a deterrence method. We wouldn't let him outsmart us, though: entire districts were flattened in carpet bombing raids that were reminiscent of nothing so much as the infamous destruction of Nuremberg in World War II.
As the first week of the bombing campaign stretched into the first month, the pictures that emerged of the devastated Baghdad were nothing short of shocking. A beautiful, elegant city of great historical significance, bombed back into the stone age. People huddling in their houses without electricity, water, sewage or food, just waiting for the American forces to "liberate them," so they could take out those flowers and throw them joyfully at the troops.
Right. Three years later--nearly three thousand American dead later, at least 20,000 American wounded later and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children dead and wounded--Iraqis are still sitting huddled in their homes without electricity or clean water. They still have to wait on mile-long, dangerous gas lines to fill their cars' gas tanks--in Iraq, one the most oil-rich spots in the entire world. They still take their lives in their hands every time they go to the market to buy food for their families.
The Iraqi blogger Riverbend, who has been chronicling this war from her home in Baghdad since its inception, wrote yesterday, "Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots." To Riverbend, the advent of the fourth year of the American invasion is especially chilling, because it feels like a nightmare from which there seems to be less and less chance of waking up.
Riverbend concludes her anniversary post:
"Three years after the war, and we’ve managed to move backwards in a visible way, and in a not so visible way.
"In the last weeks alone, thousands have died in senseless violence and the American and Iraqi army bomb Samarra as I write this. The sad thing isn’t the air raid, which is one of hundreds of air raids we’ve seen in three years- it’s the resignation in the people. They sit in their homes in Samarra because there’s no where to go. Before, we’d get refugees in Baghdad and surrounding areas… Now, Baghdadis themselves are looking for ways out of the city… out of the country. The typical Iraqi dream has become to find some safe haven abroad.
"Three years later and the nightmares of bombings and of shock and awe have evolved into another sort of nightmare. The difference between now and then was that three years ago, we were still worrying about material things- possessions, houses, cars, electricity, water, fuel… It’s difficult to define what worries us most now. Even the most cynical war critics couldn't imagine the country being this bad three years after the war... Allah yistur min il rab3a (God protect us from the fourth year). "
What's most disturbing to me is how little attention is being paid to this anniversary here at home. I had to search hard in The New York Times today to find an article about national antiwar protests, and when I finally found it, it was an AP story--the Times didn't bother to assign one of their writers to the task. Apparently 7,000 people turned out to protest yesterday in Chicago, another 1,000 in New York, and in other American cities a few thousand people will no doubt stand up and be counted in their dissent over this war. Around the world, thousands are protesting in Britain, Australia, South Korea, Japan, and other nations. But we are not seeing the mass protests of three years ago. The furor seems to have abated. Why?
It's a combination of factors, I think. There's a small degree of fear: we hear that the Homeland Security team has been hard at work tapping the phones and intercepting the email, not to mention planting themselves in the meetings of scores of antiwar activists around the country. This is something to be taken seriously in a time when people the government suspects of wrongdoings as amorphous as "dissent" can be picked up, put on a plane, and sent overseas for questioning in notoriously brutal interrogation centers.
A more serious deterrent for the average American, though, is simple numbness and discouragement. We protested three years ago, and the war began on schedule. We put all our energies into ousting the Bush Administration, and got absolutely nowhere--not even John Ashcroft, under whose watch the Abu Ghraib scandal unfolded, or Dick Rumsfeld, who send our troops into war unarmored and understaffed, have been given so much as a slap on the wrist. Condi Rice continues to shop while conditions worsen in the Middle East, from Iran to Israel and the West Bank, and no one says anything about North Korea anymore.
People in New Orleans still don't have electricity, and in Washington, what are they busy doing? Approving a spending bill that authorizes the outlay of $9.8 billion a month--that's almost $10 billion a month--for U.S. military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn't include spending on rebuilding the shattered infrastructure of Baghdad, taken out of a separate taxpayer-funded account (and paid to contractors like Halliburton). We're paying ten billion dollars a month for young American soldiers (many of whom signed up for National Guard work, not deadly combat in a foreign country) to stand in harm's way and make absolutely no progress in their original mission of "bringing peace, prosperty and democracy to Iraq."
We are citizens of a country whose Vice President can get away with shooting his own hunting partner in the face; whose President cares more about bike-riding than working to restore order to the world he's destabilized; whose legislative branch is dominated by Conservatives more interested in eliminating family planning options for young women than building a healthy, well-educated, prosperous society at home; whose Judicial branch chooses partisan favoritism over justice.
Let's face it, the picture is disheartening as hell, and I think that's one reason why so many people are choosing to observe this anniversary by sulking at home today. Unfortunately, hiding our heads in the sand--or under our covers--is not going to make this depressing world picture go away. We can't change the channel or walk out of the cinema into the bright sunshine of a new day. It's just not going to be that easy.
It's going to take persistence, determination, and a lot of hard, thankless work to undo the damage the Bush regime has done, and get our world back on track towards a future of international cooperation on the issues that matter: peace, health, security, education, and human rights--for all people, not just for the rich and powerful.
On this third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I dedicate myself to this effort with renewed commitment. There is nothing more important that I--or any of my fellow Americans-- could be doing with our time, energy and talents.
