Outrages old and new

We must increase the protest


US bombing of villages in SE Asia, c. 1970

Update note 7/17/2005: The image originally posted here was being linked to a vile anti-Muslim post on a bulletin board, so I have taken it down.
US bombing of Fallujah, Iraq, November 2004

The spring of 1970 was formative for me. At our high school in Minnesota, a large portion of the student body defied an order from the school administrators and walked out of school in protest of the invasion of Cambodia and the killings of student protesters in Ohio and Mississippi.

Today the foreign outrages being committed in the name of the United States of America are beginning to look an awful lot like those committed during the dark days of Spring 1970.

Back in those very different times, newspaper columnist Pete Hamill, then of the old New York Post, wrote:

There are four dead Americans on the campus of Kent State University -- gunned down by other Americans. Tear gas seeps through the air of a half-dozen other campuses. Mass rallies are building....

From Indochina we hear news as we have for so long from Peter Arnett of the Associated Press. The forces of what is laughingly called "the Free World" are moving into Cambodia -- burning and shooting and destroying.

Kids from Iowa are asked to distinguish between Cambodians and Vietnamese. Artillery is fired at moving human beings. The B-52s fly from our privileged sanctuaries in Thailand to churn up the Earth. Here we come, Cambodia, stick with us and let us give you freedom -- at 17 rounds a second.

Sound familiar? In Fallujah, Fall 2004, US military theory is the opposite, yet exactly the same as it was in 1970. Instead of driving civilians into urban areas in order to depopulate the countryside, Fallujah -- a major city the size of Saint Paul, Minnesota -- has been depopulated in order to expose the resistance within. But thousands of innocent civilians are still there. And many tens of thousands among those who left are now refugees. This adds up to a colossal humanitarian crisis -- "Catastrophic Conditions", according to Aljazeera.

A report in today's Observer further lays out the madness, stating that "Civilians are paying the price in Falluja":

With [the bitter urban war] has come the awful realities for civilians. 'Anyone who gets injured is likely to die, because there's no medicine and they can't get to doctors,' said Abdul-Hameed Salim, a volunteer with the Iraqi Red Crescent. 'There are snipers everywhere. Go outside and you're going to get shot.'

Rasoul Ibrahim, who fled Falluja on foot with his wife and three children on Thursday morning, said families left in the city were in desperate need. Doctors at Falluja's hospital said there had been an increase in typhoid cases. 'There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying,' Ibrahim told aid workers in Habbaniya, a makeshift refugee camp 12 miles to the west of Falluja where about 2,000 families are sheltering. 'People are eating flour because there's no proper food.'

Pile on top of that the intentional destruction of hospitals and at the hands of the US military. According to reporter Jackie Spinner of the Washington Post, embedded with the Marines near Fallujah,

The U.S. military was ... vetting the doctors and staff at the hospital to make sure there were no insurgents among them. One of the persistent problems for the military -- and this was the case last April -- was the misreporting of civilian dead and wounded by the propaganda machines at the hospitals. The Marines secured this hospital first, in part, to make sure that civilians had access to medical care during the offensives.

Apparently they had doctors arrested and handcuffed. But even more importantly, don't we have to wonder if the military's statement concerning propaganda relayed by Ms. Spinner is propaganda 180 degrees in the opposite direction? According to another Aljazeera story, "US troops are preventing a Red Crescent convoy of emergency aid from reaching helpless residents inside Falluja, a spokeswoman says".

It is difficult to reconcile stated US military policy that is supposed to ensure civilians have access to medical care when they are prevented from getting to the hospital. And these reports do not square with what US military spokespeople are saying:

Q General Sattler, Barbara Starr from CNN. Sir, if I could impose upon you to step closer to the mike so we could be very sure to hear you. I'd like to ask you to address in as much detail as you can the current humanitarian situation inside Fallujah. When will you allow the Red Crescent to go in? What is the medical situation, the ability to get food and water and other humanitarian assistance to the civilians that are left in the city?

And as you clear these houses and streets, we are seeing pictures, of course, of significant damage to homes and cars. Your plans for making restitution to the civilian population?

GEN. SATTLER: As soon as the security situation permits, the Iraqi interim government already has the humanitarian -- and I will obviously let the prime minister's representative discuss this -- already has the humanitarian supplies completely lined up and ready to come into Fallujah.

MR. AL NAKIB: Well, we already sent 14 trucks yesterday. It's very well-equipped with the medicine and humanitarian stuff in it, and blood and many things that the civilians will need. And we are going to send some more -- it's already been prepared -- with a group of doctors and personnel who's going to take care of the situation over here in Fallujah. And I believe if the general is (over ?) he will give us the green light tomorrow, we will be ready to bring all this equipment over here and we will start immediately.

GEN. SATTLER: Barbara, I'd like to also stress that we have one group of 30 civilians who came out who were taken and moved to a humanitarian assistance area. And the only other civilians -- we had one civilian who was injured, a family of three who was picked up by Iraqi security forces and brought out, and then the approximately 300 that I mentioned earlier that are a combination, we feel, of civilians from Fallujah and possibly some fighters embedded with them. And that is the only families -- the only civilians we've come across

They're talking like it is a different world than is being reported from the scene. Who is more reliable? The US military or multiple sources from foreign media?

My own opinion: Right now I just can't buy the statements of the military of my own country or it's Iraqi puppet. If they think squelching reportage of civilian casualties emanating from hospitals is more important than the gross catastrophe facing those civilians...arrrrgggghhhh, that just seems so sick to me.

There is apparently some theory in this about destroying the naysayers to supposed US democratic purposes in Iraq. But like in Indochina three and a half decades ago, US planners have run up against a people who will not submit to liberation at gunpoint. The sympathies of the vast majority of Iraqis are clear -- they want the US out -- and the flames of vengeance are being fanned by the current US attacks. Pretty soon, there will be no issue for young American troops in distinguishing fighters and civilians -- every Iraqi who loves his or her country will have been made into a fighter.