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Recent
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April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
April
2, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Politics of Casualties
David
Lindorff
Making America Safer...for Iraqi
Fighters
William
Blum
Some Observations on the Recent Behavior of the Empire
Gustavio
Sierra
The Morning After the Slaughter at
Nasser
Patrick
Cockburn
Playing Into Saddam's Hands
Robert
Jensen
Peter Arnett: Whipping Boy of the
Pentagon
Jeremy
Brecher
Uniting for Peace Update
N.D.
Jayaprakash
The Siege of Basra
LaDawn
Haglund
You Can Jail the Resisters, But You
Can't Arrest the Resistance
Robert
Fisk
Truth and Subterfuge
Jemima
Khan
I'm Ashamed to be British
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
Stew Albert
Total War
Website
of the Day
Traitor List: Sign Up Now!
April
1, 2003
Jason
Leopold
Rumsfeld: "Get Me Rewrite"
William
S. Lind
The Pitfalls of War Planning
Jorge
Mariscal
Latinos on the Frontlines, Again
Paul
de Rooij
Arrogant Propaganda
Jo
Wilding
From Baghdad: "I Am His Mother"
Tarif
Abboushi
Operation Embedded Folly
Lee
Sustar
Labor's War at Home
Akiva Eldar
Israeli Dreams of Iraqi Oil
Bernard
Weiner
The Vietnam Connection
Robert
Fisk
The Graveyard at Baghdad's North
Gate
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/01
Website
of the Day
A Collectible War
March
31, 2003
David
Lindorff
Liberating Iraqis from Their Homes
Neve Gordon
A Different Kind of Despair
John
Chuckman
Absurdities and Contradictions
Ron Jacobs
Bernie Sanders Voting Maybe on
War
Wayne
Madsen
The Siege of Washington
Mark Franchetti
Slaughter at the Bridge of Death
Robert
Fisk
Blood and Bandages of the Innocent
Robin Cook
Send Our Soldiers Home
Anthony
Gancarski
Investigate Perle
Uri Avnery
The Devil's Dictionary
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 03/31
March
29, 2003
Kathy and
Bill Christison
"Like Being Autistic with
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Ben
Tripp
"My Empire for a Map!": Geography
American Style
Ann Harrison
The War on Protesters: San Francisco's
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Kurt
Nimmo
Dead People: Don't Go There
Chris Floyd
Blood on the Tracks: Cheney the
War Profiteer
Ann
Pettifer
Israelis: Victims No Longer?
Jo Wilding
Dispatch from Baghdad: Nowhere
is Safe
Ramzy
Baroud
Horror Chamber: Inside the Al-Amiriya
Shelter
David Krieger
Perle is Gone, But the Looting
Continues
John
Gershman
Dreams of Empire; Eulogies for International
Law
Robert
Fisk
Bombing the Phone System
Brice Abel
War, Bush and the Jesus Torilla
Tom
Stephens
The Chickenhawk Circle of Hell
Alexander
Cockburn
"War Not Going According
to Plan"
March 28,
2003
Robert
Fisk
Bitter Truths About Basra
Daniel
Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris
and Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising
Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Steve
Perry
War Web Log
March 27,
2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Rahul
Mahajan
The New Humanitarianism: Basra as
Military Target
Simon Jones
A Letter from Uzbekistan
William
S. Lind
No Exit
Diane Christian
A Day of Reckoning
The
Black Commentator
Onward
Embedded Soldiers: the Press and the War
Mickey
Z.
Remembering the Real Moynihan:
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Richard
Thieme
The Problem of Empathy
Jason Leopold
Energy Scams: Bilking California
Out of Billions
Tariq
Ali
A Naked Display of Imperial Power
Alexander
Cockburn
Up the Creek
March 26,
2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch
Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning
Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets
of Blood
Patrick
Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs,
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Robert
Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A
Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria
Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The
Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25,
2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What
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Bill and
Kathleen Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why
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Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings
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Jason
Leopold
Blood
Indicator: Casualties and the Stock Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless
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March 24,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers
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Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The
Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How
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Anthony
Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We
Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other
America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
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Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
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Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Jo Wilding
From
Waiting to War: a Day and a Night in Baghdad
Stephen Banko
I Was
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Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did
We Become an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert
Jensen
Myths
and Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come
On Democrats, Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch
from Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
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April 4,
2003
The Lethal Logic
of Barbarians
There Are No
More Arguments
By VIJAY PRASHAD
There are no more arguments.
Only pictures.
Each image of an Iraqi, man or woman,
either staring angrily at the camera, pierces the distance between
us with fear, resentment or something that I have never experienced
and cannot name. Even the images of those who celebrate, or else
who come out to ask the marines for food or water, evoke in me
a sense of their ambivalence. On PBS, we are told that five thousand
Iraqis have decided to abandon their quiet lives in the other
Arab lands and return to Baghdad to defend their homeland. One
man told the reporter that he has no love for President Saddam
Hussein, that he fears for his family, but nonetheless he feels
compelled to leave Amman, Jordan to stand beside the other ill-equipped
men and women who live in the small towns that ring the marshlands
around Baghdad. Without irony, the media has named this heavily
populated zone that rings the capital, South Central Baghdad.
There is a South Central in every country on the planet.
A few of my students have siblings who
are in one or other of the detachments en route to the Baghdad
region. One of them almost wept when we quietly talked about
her brother, when she told us that he did not particularly support
the war, but that, being one of the many working-class youth
for whom the military was a way  forward, he had no choice
but to go along. Images of men and women, no, boys and girls,
many in the late teens or early twenties, young Americans with
heavy arms, being jeered at, fired upon, hated. It is obscene
that the hawks rebuke us for being against our troops. I fear
for them, for they stand as the proxy for all that is wrong with
our foreign policy, for the integration of our war machine with
dollar corporations (please take a look at the Institute for
Policy Studies' excellent report, "Crude Visions: How Oil
Interests Obscured US Government Focus on Chemical Weapons Use
by Saddam Hussein," March 2003).
It was one or more of these young people
who opened fire at the Najaf checkpoint and killed ten people.
I've been following the toll of the dead
at iraqbodycount.org,
whose website tracks the number of dead with citations and other
details fairly regularly. "Shock and Awe" did not conduct
the type of indiscriminate bombardment we saw in 1991. Indeed,
the campaign did not immediately produce the death toll in the
Afghan bombings where our forces, we heard at the end of the
first week, "ran out of targets." My initial reaction
to this war was that our massive, planetary protests, backed
by the diplomatic debacle at the Security Council and in the
Turkish Parliament, checked the ability of the Rumsfeldians to
run riot over the Iraqis: one indication of this is the relatively
low death toll (only 77 civilians dead according to Iraqi officials
in Basra, after a torrent of firepower engulfed the city). In
a small way, the limited force, I felt, was a victory for the
anti-war movement. [I find it hard to get worked up about Seymour
Hersh's revelations that Rumsfeld wanted a small force, with
heavy bombing, and that the generals wanted the overwhelming
force associated with 1991: are we supposed to want more troops
there simply to spite the administration?]
But the frustration seems to have set
in, with the resistance and the suicide attack impelling a harsh
reaction from the imperial forces. The armed forces underestimated
the depth of Iraqi nationalism. Even though the Iraqis showed
off their suicide squads in the parades preceding the war, it
seems that the generals did not train the troops to keep their
calm at civilian check points. Then again, the experience of
the Israeli Defense Force shows that if there are suicide attacks,
the army tends toward indiscriminate violence against all those
whom it sees as the potential enemy. The British, with a violent
history in Iraq that stretches to its conduct against the Iraqi
uprisings of the early 1920s, have declared Basra, Iraq's second
largest city, a legitimate "military target." Iraq
will be our Occupied Territories.
The logic of the Coalition seems to be
this:
* We are Civilized.
* We only fight a clean, rule-based war.
* They are not fighting by the rules.
* They are forcing us to break our rules.
* They have made us act like barbarians.
* We will act like barbarians.
Every imperial force has used the same,
benighted logic.
There are no more arguments. Positions
have hardened as the Iraqi defense lines weaken. We have the
realists who say that people die in war, yes, but the whole episode
is for a greater good. Then there are those who say that nothing
good will come from death and conquest, that the blowback will
be immense. There is no room to have a discussion, or even to
agree on a language for a conversation. War does that. It diminishes
civility and it makes us hunker down in our premises, unwilling
to engage with each other.
The death count will continue to rise.
The rage and suffering of the Iraqis, and other Arabs, will also
rise. Those who are not Arab may also get upset, but Arab nationalism
is yet a potent force, despite the fulminations of State Department
thinkers like Faoud Ajami, and it is this patriotism that is
kindled by the images of the American soldier raising the Stars
and Stripes at Umm Qasr or of the dead civilians in the bazaars
of Baghdad.
When I put my two year old daughter to
bed, I shut the windows, close the doors, draw the curtains,
make sure that our guests stay quiet for at least fifteen minutes.
We read books, talk a bit, drink some milk, sing a song, and
then, in absolute silence, she goes to sleep.
Every child should have such a gradual,
calm, night.
Iraqi children are no strangers to suffering.
In late 1999, UNICEF reported that the death rate among children
under five had doubled during the sanctions regime: half a million
children died in this period who may have otherwise lived, according
to UNICEF chief Carol Bellamy. Iraq is a young country, with
half its population under twenty. These are children who have
been raised in a siege, some have taken up arms, others are looking,
as the poet Suheir Hammad put it, "toward the night sky
with fear, as though there are no stars, only bombs in the cosmos."
Without being sentimental, can we consider what hope means for
these Iraqis, especially as our bombs erode their steadfastness
(samoud, the same word that was the name of the Iraqi missiles)?
Can those American children who are protected from harshness
ever know what it must be to survive as an Iraqi child? Aadmi
tha, bari mushkil se insaan hua: we are people, with great difficulty
we became human.
We'll count the dead, but what about
those hearts and minds that will suffer the torment of noise,
fear, blood. Our ethical horizon has already been diminished
by the trauma of the Iraqis. We have sent our youth, those from
among the working class, to do our dirty work. We are yet complicit
in this violence. Let us not forget this as quickly as the British,
for instance, forgot their brutality in India, or the Belgians
forgot their barbaric rule of the Congo. They don't make us act
like barbarians. In our blood lust, we are barbarians.
Vijay Prashad
is an Associate Professor and Director of the International Studies
at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. This article is an excerpt
from his new book: Fat
Cats and Running Dogs: The Enron Stage of Capitalism.
Prashad can be reached at: Vijay.Prashad@trincoll.edu
Today's
Features
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
the Theater of Operations
David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
to Fight
Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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