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Gosh. Golly.
Gee whiz. Maybe it’s
time to start quoting some bumper stickers.
How many of these have you seen around town?
“Bush/Cheney `04: Apocalypse Now”
“Bush/Cheney `04: Who Would Jesus
Bomb?”
“Bush/Cheney `04: Read Between the
Pipelines”
“Bush/Cheney `04: If You Aren’t Completely
Appalled, You Haven’t Been Paying Attention”
Right
now, of course, we’re all appalled.
We’re just appalled!
The pictures that came out of Baghdad last week -- photographs of
naked Iraqi prisoners subjected to abuse and humiliation by American soldiers
-- have left us so “appalled” we can’t think of another
word to describe it.
Joint
Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Richard Myers is
“appalled.” British
Prime Minister Tony Blair is “appalled.” Army spokesman Brigadier General Mark
Kimmitt was first “dismayed” and then “appalled,”
and even George W. Bush, who’s never appalled, said he was
“deeply disgusted.”
Stamping
his foot like Shirley Temple, the President of the United States concluded, “I didn’t like it one
bit.”
Just
imagine how the Iraqis feel. Or
maybe you’re not appalled enough for that. Maybe you’re like Alexander Downer,
the Australian foreign minister, who says the torture and degradation of
Iraqi prisoners is “appalling,” all right, but that his
government – up till now, a gung-ho, paid-up member in the Coalition
of the Willing – “no longer bears legal responsibility for Iraq
as an occupying power under international law.”
I
had to read that a couple of times before I got it right. “Mr Downer said yesterday that Australia was originally a joint occupying power,”
according to The Age in Melbourne, “but after the toppling of Saddam Hussein
the United Nations Security Council identified the US and Britain as the occupying powers.”
Ah,
the old “after-the-toppling-of-the-tyrant” trick! I might have known.
You
remember the United Nations?
They’re the ones the U.S., Britain and Australia paid no attention to whatsoever before commencing
their invasion, and whom the U.S. and Britain, at least, are looking to now to get them out of
this mess. (Please, don’t call
it a “quagmire.”)
As
to “international law,” The
Age reports: “Mr Downer said he did not see
any need for Australia to do anything about it, because British and US
leaders were already sufficiently appalled, and well aware of the view on
the abuse held by Australia and the rest of the world.” Downer’s counterpart in the
Australian opposition, Labor Party MP Kevin Rudd, has denounced this
position as “obscene,” but Downer’s holding firm, staying
the course, seeing it through – “obscene” is when Janet
Jackson flips a nipple at the cameras, not when “our brave
troops” stick a light bulb or a broomstick up a Mussulman’s
ass.
You
should be weeping, is what. But you
should have been doing that a long time ago. Why did we need these pictures to tell us
what we already know – that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq is illegal, immoral, indefensible and
doomed? Is it better or worse to be
stripped naked, “piled in a pyramid” and forced to “simulate
sexual acts” than be blown to pieces by a “precision”
bomb?
Put
differently, would you rather be held incommunicado in a dark cell, unable
to sit, stand or lie down, deprived of food and sleep and forbidden even to
pray, or arrive at a makeshift clinic in Falluja with “multiple blast
wounds – lost limbs, abdomens blown apart,” only to die on the
ground without anesthetic because, in the interest of your
“liberation,” your liberators have blocked the supply of even
basic medications to assist you?
Going
for the gold now: Which is more
important, President Pipsqueak’s reelection or the infant mortality
rate in Baghdad, currently estimated at 103 deaths per 1,000 live
births, compared with 6.8 per 1,000 in the United States? According
to UNICEF, “one in eight Iraqi children dies before his or her fifth
birthday. A fifth of Iraq's children are malnourished, and a quarter are
born underweight.”
Christians! Did you hear what I just said? “Innocent babies” are dying
in Iraq while you’re stuffing $5 boxes of popcorn
and 2-gallon buckets of Coke down your throats at The Passion of the Christ.
And if, as General Myers insists, “there is no evidence of
systematic abuse” in U.S. detention centers in Iraq – if the
horrific treatment of Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is the
work of “just a handful” of rotten apples at the bottom of the
military barrel -- why not give our “enemies” the same
excuse? Why has the recorded
incidence of hate crimes and harassment against Muslims in the United States increased by 70 percent over the last year?
Take
some time out from praying and Bible class and you just might see the
connection. But don’t expect
your “leaders” to do it for you, because they won’t. They don’t give a good goddamn what
happens in Iraq, to babies or anyone else. These are the men who rain leaflets down
on refugee camps, saying, “If you’re a terrorist, beware,
because your last day was yesterday!”
These
are the “neo-cons,” wonks, Likudniks and “analysts”
who tell reporters that “we’re not engaged in an
`offensive’ in Falluja – we’re simply attacking cockroach
nests in the poorest part of town.”
These are the reporters who repeat lies without blinking. And these are the ones who keep Little
Hitler in power, fixing his syntax and marveling at his
“gravitas” while he mumbles and mewls about
“freedom,” “democracy” and “progress, you bet
... Whether it be in Falluja or elsewhere, we will deal with them, those
few who are stopping the hopes of many."
Is
it too much to hope that we’ll deal with Bush, too?
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