Under The Same Sun

So far, neither of the evidence nor the eyewitness accounts supports the Marine's changing account:

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with Time. The tape makes for grisly viewing. It shows that many of the victims, especially the women and children, were still in their nightclothes when they died. The scenes from inside the houses show that the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with shrapnel and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood. But the video does not reveal the presence of any bullet holes on the outside of the houses, which may cast doubt on the Marines' contention that after the ied exploded, the Marines and the insurgents engaged in a fierce gunfight.

In the end, it seems pretty clear what happened. The marines lost one of their own in a roadside bombing and in their rage, they went into the nearest three houses and killed everyone inside. Will anyone get punished? So far, $2,500 per victim has been paid out -- a sum probably much smaller than what the Marines would have paid someone in the United States if they accidentally destroyed a briefcase, or even unintentionally scared a person.

The U.S. has paid relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the 15 dead civilians, plus smaller payments for the injured. But nothing can bring back all that was taken from 9-year-old Eman Waleed on that fateful day last November. She still does not comprehend how, when her father went in to pray with the Koran for the family's safety, his prayers were not answered, as they had been so many times in the past. "He always prayed before, and the Americans left us alone," she says. Leaving, she grabs a handful of candy. "It's for my little brother," she says. "I have to take care of my brother. Nobody else is left."

This kind of atrocity is not an unpredictable, unavoidable part of war. It is very predictable as it occurs in most wars and in almost all occupations. The only way to avoid is to punish the offenders very harshly, making sure the soldiers understand that it will not be tolerated. The current policy is to avoid even slaps on the wrists, if possible -- and to offer some regrets and minimal, mostly administrative punishment when incontrovertible evidence can somehow be summoned.

Posted by zeynep at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2006

Anniversary...

Tomorrow's the anniversary of the invasion. While it is a good opportunity to mark our protest, it is a bit misleading. U.S. aggression against Iraq started way before that -- with the sanctions, the indiscriminate bombing, the abritrary manipulation of the oil-for-food program.

There is one difference, though. Before 2003, they shared the responsibility of what was done to the people of Iraq with Saddam Hussein. Now it is theirs.

Posted by zeynep at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2006

Operation Swarmer: Keep the Army Busy

So they captured "weapon caches":

More than 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops, more than 200 tactical vehicles and more than 50 aircraft participated in the operation, dubbed "Operation Swarmer," according to a statement released by the U.S. military command in Baghdad. The operation was intended to secure an area that has been a hotbed of insurgent activity over the last several weeks, military officials said. The military said early reports indicate that a number of weapons caches -- containing artillery shells, explosives, materials for making car bombs and military uniforms -- were captured.

If I could, I would like to poll all officers in the armed forces and the marines. I wish we could have a show of hands: who thinks that hunting for weapon caches with massive airpower will stop the insurgency or the sectarian violence in Iraq?

So, why this operation? Probably for two audiences: what remains of Bush's base in the United States, and the armed forces themselves. Remember the recent report about Zogby's polling of the troops? 72 percent want out, this year. A little bit of action would might help that.

Posted by zeynep at 08:39 PM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2006

Tom Fox: Why He Was There

The murdered body of Tom Fox, one of the four Christian Peacemaker activists who were abducted last November, was just found in Iraq.

All I can do right now is to post a section from Tom's last email out of Iraq. I post these words not just to remember him, but mainly to remind myself that he would not want me to write about his murderers what I really want to write at this moment:

U.S. forces in their quest to hunt down and kill "terrorists" are, as a result of this dehumanizing word, not only killing "terrorists," but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women and children in the various towns and villages.

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically,
structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

Posted by zeynep at 11:45 PM | Comments (1)

March 07, 2006

Fool Me Over and Over and Over and Over

Cheney addresses AIPAC:

Vice President Cheney threatened Iran today with "meaningful consequences" if it fails to cooperate with international efforts to curb its nuclear program.

"For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime," Cheney said in a speech to the pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

This really shows the the distinct character of this regime: they have almost totally abandoned any pretense of caring about support or legitimacy... But, wait, here's one better, from John Bolton (also addressing AIPAC):

The Security Council will likely take a graduated approach to dealing with this issue, but it is critical that we use the Council to help mobilize international public opinion. Rest assured, though, we are not relying on the Security Council as the only tool in our toolbox to address this problem.

Ummm, so, the security council is a tool to mobilize global public opinion for our upcoming war? I guess that's what they mean by diplomacy these days. (This one reminds me of Madeline Albright's "we will behave multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must.")

Posted by zeynep at 07:28 PM | Comments (1)

March 04, 2006

Orwell Awards Forever Claimed

I think this takes the Orwell Award:

Two Iraqi women whose husbands and children were killed by US troops during the Iraq war have been refused entry into the United States for a speaking tour. The women were invited to the US for peace events surrounding international women’s by the human rights group Global Exchange and the women’s peace group CODEPINK.

In a piece of painful irony, the reason given for the rejection was that the women don’t have enough family in Iraq to prove that they’ll return to the country.

In fact, if there were Orwell Awards, they'd have to stop giving them out.

Posted by zeynep at 03:35 PM | Comments (6)

February 22, 2006

A Scary Turning Point

The attack on the Askariya shrine has finally managed what massive bombings of markets, schools, funerals had not -- some Shi'ite militants have turned around and attacked Sunni mosques, killing at least a dozen.

This may well be the scary turning point that the Salafi fundamentalists have been trying to achieve for so long. And it is not good for U.S. plans for the region -- it's been clear for some time that Zalmay Khalilzad has been trying, successfully for a change, to isolate some portions of the insurgency in return for more power to the Sunni leadership.

While this may bad it may be for the United States long-term plans for the region, it is a terrible turning point for the people of Iraq. The long-forecast civil war may yet spark, and if it does, the blood that had flown until known will possibly seem like merely a trickle.

Posted by zeynep at 09:57 PM | Comments (2)

February 18, 2006

A week goes by ...

A week went by, and I still couldn't find the time to write any lengthy posts. In the meantime, a new batch of torture pictures from Abu Ghraib were released -- and barely noted in mainstream press. At least a dozen people were killed in the cartoon riots -- but, guess what? They were all protestors. The implications of that point is also last on the many, many op-eds that continue to complain about harm done to "us" because of the cartoons.

Posted by zeynep at 10:16 AM | Comments (1)

February 05, 2006

Why Stop at Pakistan?

Well, you could see this coming:

In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.

Posted by zeynep at 10:05 AM | Comments (2)

February 04, 2006

"The president has decided that we can whack someone without the approval or knowledge of the host government"

We will shoot whomever, whenever, wherever. We won't even keep track of how many people or who we killed. We won't talk to the sovereign governments in question. We will then call ourselves civilized and others rogue states.

'Targeted killing' with missile-firing Predators is a way to hit Al Qaeda in remote areas, officials say. Host nations are not always given notice. ..

Despite protests from other countries, the United States is expanding a top-secret effort to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized Al Qaeda, U.S. officials say.

Several U.S. officials confirmed at least 19 occasions since Sept. 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, but also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their targets.

Critics of the program dispute its legality under U.S. and international law, and say it is administered by the CIA with little oversight. U.S. intelligence officials insist it is one of their most tightly regulated, carefully vetted programs.

...

High-ranking U.S. and allied counter-terrorism officials said the program's expansion was not merely geographic. They said it had grown from targeting a small number of senior Al Qaeda commanders after the Sept. 11 attacks to a more loosely defined effort to kill possibly scores of suspected terrorists, depending on where they were found and what they were doing.

"We have the plans in place to do them globally," said a former counter-terrorism official who worked at the CIA and State Department, which coordinates such efforts with other governments.

"In most cases, we need the approval of the host country to do them. However, there are a few countries where the president has decided that we can whack someone without the approval or knowledge of the host government."

Add that to the list of answers to "why do they hate us." We keep behaving like this all we are doing is increasing the number of people who hate us. And, again, even if we consider the question purely strategically --let alone the obvious immorality and the illegality of the program--, it is more than highly dubious. So what even if we kill one or two prominent members of Al-Qaeda? Which such behaviour on our parts, they will have no difficulty recruiting many, many more.

Also, check this out from Lee Strickland, "a former CIA counsel who retired in 2004 from the agency's Senior Intelligence Service":

Strickland, like some other officials, said the Predator program served as a deterrent to foreign governments, militias and other groups that might be harboring Al Qaeda cells.

"You give shelter to Al Qaeda figures, you may well get your village blown up," Strickland said. "Conversely, you have to note that this can also create local animosity and instability."

Mr. Strickland, that's called collective punishment and it is a war crime. But, hey, that doesn't apply to us now, does it.

Posted by zeynep at 11:56 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

Well, Here's The Sentence!

No jail. None.

A military jury has recommended that an officer once facing up to life in prison for the interrogation death of an Iraqi general be given only a reprimand, a decision that drew applause from soldiers.

Initially charged with murder, Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. now faces no jail time, the forfeiture of $6,000 in salary and what amounts largely to a barracks restriction for 60 days.

What is there to say?

Posted by zeynep at 07:29 AM | Comments (3)

January 23, 2006

Kill an Iraqi...

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer will be sentenced later this month, for the killing of Iraqi General Mowhoush. Placing someone in a sleeping bag (after being severly beaten and tied up), and suffocating him by sitting on the sleeping bag doesn't seem to count as murder, only negligent homicide.

A six-member court-martial board acquitted Welshofer Saturday of the original charge of murder, but found him guilty of the lesser offenses of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty. He faces 39 months in prison.

Welshofer, an Army interrogator, was accused of binding suspected insurgent leader Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush in a sleeping bag during an interrogation session, sitting on him, and placing his hand over Mowhoush's mouth and nose, causing him to suffocate.

Murder charges against three other soldiers in the room with Welshofer during the interrogation were dropped.

Two reached plea agreements and testified against Welshofer in exchange for reductions in their charges.

A murder charge against the third was determined to be unwarranted after an evidentiary hearing last March.

Now, the same six officers who convicted Welshofer will hear testimony from his family, friends and fellow soldiers about his character before deciding on his sentence.

There could be clues in the board's verdict to its feelings about Welshofer's actions on and before the Nov. 26, 2003, interrogation in a Qaim, Iraq, detention facility operated by Fort Carson's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

In handing down the verdict of negligent homicide rather than murder, the panel seemed to side with Welshofer, who testified about the confusion and lack of command guidance on interrogation techniques for enemy captives.

Welshofer admitted only to "straddling" the sleeping bag on his knees, not pressing his full weight on the general, and covering his mouth to keep him from talking but never cutting off his air supply.

Testimony by prosecution witnesses implied that Welshofer intentionally caused Mowhoush's death and knowingly disregarded Army memoranda on interrogation regulations, which did not include the sleeping bag technique.

The panel's decision also discounted testimony from a secret witness from the CIA who said that Welshofer admitted knowledge of interrogation rules the day before Mowhoush's death and told him he was "pretty sure they were breaking the rules every day."

This, of course, seems to be a pattern. The very few charges that were brought against soldiers implicate in relatively high profile deaths end up with convictions on reduced charges and sentences that range from light to none (you'd do more time in jail in this country for not feeding your dog properly).

Welshofer is not the first Fort Carson soldier to be charged with illegally killing Iraqis during the 2003-04 deployment by more than 12,000 Fort Carson troops.

First Lt. Jack Saville and Staff Sgt. Tracy Perkins of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team were charged with manslaughter after 19-year- old Zaidoun Fadel Hassoun allegedly drowned when the soldiers ordered him and his cousin to jump into the Tigris River after stopping them on a curfew violation in Samarra.

Hassoun's family recovered his body and buried him a few days later, but Army investigators never exhumed or positively identified the body to provide evidence that a death actually occurred.

Saville pleaded guilty to assault last March and was sentenced to 45 days in prison. Perkins was acquitted of the manslaughter charge last January.

Another Fort Carson soldier, Staff Sgt. Shane Werst, was charged with murdering Naser Ismail during a house search for insurgents and weapons in Balad in January 2004.

Werst argued that he shot Ismail in self-defense after Ismail lunged at the weapon of one of his soldiers. He was acquitted in a court-martial at Fort Hood, Texas, last May.

This weekend I was reading in the Washington Post that the Army had been incorporating counter-insurgency lessons into classes:

And because insurgencies are always political, politics can be more important than combat. "We can go in and kill insurgents, but it's the political piece that will bite you on the butt," noted another officer.

Most of all, they said, the key to victory is not defeating the enemy but winning the support of Iraqis and making the insurgents irrelevant. "When the people start ratting out the insurgents, that's a quantifiable way of measuring your support," said a third officer.

How do they think this support is going to materialize as long as Iraqis know that their lives are worth so little?

Posted by zeynep at 07:22 AM | Comments (3)

January 20, 2006

What Are They Justified to Do, Then?

A comment from UTSS reader Michael:

In other news today, Indian government officials have expressed regret over the loss of innocent life after their missile strike on the US House of Representatives. Two hundred fifty-four members of Conmgress and a school group from Boise, Idaho, were among the dead.

"We had good intelligence that the former CEO of Union Carbide was in the building," said a government spokesperson. "This man is wanted in India for the deaths of thousands killed by poisonous gas in the city of Bhopal, and he has been in hiding ever since he was indicted. It would have been far more regrettable to have let him get away."

So, what is our argument then?

Posted by zeynep at 07:19 AM | Comments (1)

January 18, 2006

Who's Number Two

The arguments that defend the missile strike in Pakistan, which killed at least 18 civilians, seem to center around the idea that it would be a "regrettable" but worthwile result if Ayman Al-Zawahiri was killed in the process.

Here's a pretty succint explanation why I think that line of reasoning is wrong (even at its face value):

Posted by zeynep at 09:27 AM | Comments (4)

January 16, 2006

Unequal Lives

Comment left on my last post by the Rambling Taoist:

"If an American is only concerned about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?" Martin Luther King Jr. 1963

Posted by zeynep at 11:00 AM | Comments (3)

January 15, 2006

It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do

So, what are we to do if we killed some kids? ::shrug::

<Link>Senator Lott, a former Senate majority leader, and another member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, did not shrink from the CNN interviewer's premise that the raid had been carried out by a C.I.A. Predator.

While saying that more information was needed, Senator Lott said that "my information is that this strike was clearly justified by the intelligence."

Senator Bayh also expressed confidence on the CNN program that the attack had been carefully planned and based on "solid information."

"The standard of proof before an operation of that type is extraordinarily high," he said. Of the civilian casualties, he said, "It's a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?"

Here's Shah Zaman, looking at the rubble of his house, clutching to his two surviving kids. We killed the other three (but what else are we supposed to do?)

And, the moral questions aside, from a purely selfish standpoint, does it make sense to alienate millions of people in that part of the world? Even if we accept the premise that Al-Zawahiri was there, this method makes no sense -- morals aside. What is the point of killing one high level person, who will now be revered as a holy martyr, by a method that makes enemies of millions?

Here are some scene from today's protests in Pakistan which drew tens thousands of people:

Posted by zeynep at 07:40 PM | Comments (2)

January 14, 2006

Who Are We Killing? And Is Anyone Counting?

Imagine a regular day. It's winter so it's cold. Other than that, it's a regular day. Your children are running around. The little one is still coughing so you make sure he puts his hat on. You worry about how to keep the house warm. You go about your business.

Except some people in the other side of the planet have sent a personless machine to kill you and your childern. And that's that.

Al-Qaida's second-in-command was the target of a U.S. airstrike near the Afghan border but he was not at the site of the attack, two senior Pakistani officials said Saturday. At least 17 people were killed.

Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. networks reported that a CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike in the Bajur tribal region of northwestern Pakistan. The two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information, and Ayman al-Zawahri was not in the village of Damadola when it came under attack

...

An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours later saw three destroyed houses hundreds of yards apart. Villagers recounted hearing aircraft overhead moments before the attack. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children.
...

The official added that hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at the home of one tribesman named Shah Zaman.

Zaman, whose home was destroyed, told AP he was a "law-abiding" laborer and had no ties to militants. He was not hurt but said three of his children were killed.

...

Doctors told AP that at least 17 people died in the attack. But at one destroyed house, Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, said he alone lost 24 of his relatives. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers.

"My entire family was killed, and I don't know whom should I blame for it," Ullah said. "I only seek justice from God."

Zaman said he heard planes at around 2:40 a.m. and then eight explosions. Speaking as he dug through the rubble of his home, he said planes had been flying over the village for the last three or four days.

"I ran out and saw planes were dropping bombs," said Zaman, 40, who lost two sons and a daughter. "I saw my home being hit."

The attack was the latest in a series of strikes on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan, unexplained by authorities but widely suspected to have targeted terror suspects or Islamic militants.
...

Will anyone investigate? Will there be compensation -- even though neither would comfort these distraught parents. Will there even be an "oops, sorry about that" ever uttered?

How can we just kill dozens of people like that? No accountability, no remorse. What would the officials who make these decisions say? That war on terror is complicated and sometimes civilians get in the way? Would that be what Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the alleged target of yesterday's attack, would say about attacking the Towers on 9/11?

If these decision to destroy villages on the other side of the world are defendable, let the men and women who make these decisions please stand up and defend them.

P.S. I'm sorry. The missile had hit a "compound." That explains it all. ::slaps forehead::

Do you notice how what the CIA says is reported as fact --it was a compound-- what the people affected say is always hearsay --the villagers said women and children were killed--.

Posted by zeynep at 08:33 AM | Comments (2)

December 03, 2005

Pat Down -- to Help Make the Passengers Feel "Secure"

TSA just announced new "pat down" procedures in airports. I am looking at my paper copy of the Washington Post and it has a picture showing exactly which areas are off-limits (the picture is not included in the online article). The news is, apparently, it is now okay for the screeners to touch the back of the passenger's thighs.

A new pat-down procedure calls for more attention to arms and legs, including touching the back of the mid-thigh.

So, attention, attention terrorists. You are now allowed to hide those dangerous objects also in your mid-thigh. Just make sure not to place them in all the clearly illustrated areas that you will not be pat down. We mean business.

Seriously, do these pat downs have any purpose other than make passengers feel more "secure"? (Besides the occasional inappropriate groping?)

Posted by zeynep at 04:19 PM | Comments (1)

November 17, 2005

So Who Is Going to Invade Iraq to Destroy These Weapons?

Hmm, yeah, it does sound bad when you put it that way:

Let's review:

The United States went to war citing Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons appetite as one excuse. Remember Paul Wolfowitz's comment to Vanity Fair interviewer Sam Tanenhaus: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason . . ."

The advertised large chemical weapons stockpiles, the "renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosarin), and VX" nerve gas and the active atomic bomb program weren't there.

Saddam never used chemical weapons against U.S. forces. But now U.S. forces admit using weapons with chemical properties against Iraqis.

On Tuesday night, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed to BBC radio that white phosphorus munitions were used during attacks on enemy forces inside Fallujah.

"When you have enemy forces in covered positions that your high explosive artillery rounds are not having an impact on," Venable was quoted in the Daily Telegraph newspaper of London, "one technique is to fire a white phosphorus round into the position because the combined effects of the fire and smoke will drive them out so that you can kill them with high explosives."

Venable added that such use of incendiary weapons "against enemy combatants" is a permitted use.

Venable apparently failed to brief others that the official line had changed.

"U.S. forces do not use napalm or white phosphorus as weapons," Robert Tuttle, former car salesman turned U.S. ambassador to Britain, wrote in Tuesday's Independent newspaper.

Posted by zeynep at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)

November 16, 2005

Routine

This has become routine, almost. Wake up and learn what new atrocities are uncovered. Front page news, trickling in from many direction. The latest is white phosphorus use on urban areas:

It's part of our conventional-weapons inventory and we use it like we use any other conventional weapon," added Bryan Whitman, another Pentagon spokesman.

Venable said white phosphorus is not outlawed or banned by any convention. However, a protocol to the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons forbids using incendiary weapons against civilians or against military targets amid concentrations of civilians.

The United States did not sign the protocol.

White phosphorus munitions are primarily used by the U.S. military to make smoke screens and mark targets, but also as an incendiary weapon, the Pentagon said. They are not considered chemical weapons. The substance ignites easily in air at temperatures of about 86 F (30 C), and its fire can be difficult to extinguish.

U.S. forces used the white phosphorus during a major offensive launched by Marines in Falluja, about 30 miles (50 km) west of Baghdad, to flush out insurgents. The battle in November of last year involved some of the toughest urban fighting of the 2-1/2-year war.

Venable said that in the Falluja battle, "U.S. forces used white phosphorous both in its classic screening mechanism and ... when they encountered insurgents who were in foxholes and other covered positions who they could not dislodge any other way."

He said the soldiers employed what they call a "shake-and-bake" technique of using white phosphorus shells to flush enemies out of hiding then using high explosives to kill them.

The Italian documentary showed images of bodies recovered after the Falluja offensive, which it said proved the use of white phosphorus against civilians.

But, you see, it makes perfect sense. There were no civilians in Fallujah. If they were there, they were insurgents. Therefore we did not use incendiary weapons against civilians.

Posted by zeynep at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

November 08, 2005

Ancient Hatreds, It's in their Blood, Etc.

You'd think there'd be wall-to-wall coverage of a story like this. It has all the elements, tragedy, tension, forgiveness, death, happy endings, children, dead and resurrected.

The parents of a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli soldiers have donated his organs to three Israeli children.Ahmad Khatib, 12, was carrying a toy rifle when he was gunned down on Thursday in the West Bank town of Jenin.The soldiers, who were conducting a raid, had mistaken him for a militant.

The boy died on Sunday but three Israeli girls underwent surgery to receive his lungs, heart and liver.

Ahmad's father Ismail Khatib said the decision to donate the organs was influenced by the act his 24-year-old brother died while waiting for a liver transplant.

Mr Khatib hoped the gesture would send a message of peace to Israelis and Palestinians.

He said: "In our religion, God allows us to give organs to another person and it doesn't matter who the person is."

The father of 12-year-old Samah Gadban, who had been waiting five years for a heart, called the donation a "gesture of love."

Riad Gadban said: "I want to thank him (Mr Khatib) and his family. With their gift, I would like for them to think that my daughter is their daughter."

The Schneider Children's Medical Centre in Israel reported that a 14-year-old Jewish girl has received Ahmad's lungs and a seven-month-old girl was given his liver.

Israel has a chronic shortage of donor organs that many medical officials attribute to Jewish religious taboos against such donations.

It was on page 24 of the Washington Post and a few mentions buried here and there. To make front page, it would have had to have been the other way around, I suppose. Something about Muslim prejiduces and ancient hatreds, and how we must save them.

Posted by zeynep at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2005

Counterinsurgency: Another Name for "You're in the Wrong Country When..."

Here's an interesting bit from this week's NYT magazine story about the killing of an Iraqi youth -- the two unarmed men, cousin, were forced to jump into the Tigris. Zaydoon Fadhil died that day, an incident I wrote about earlier.

But that's not what I want to talk about here. Note this passage below:

But as a consequence of its overwhelming power and prowess, the American Army is not likely to face an enemy similar to itself. It is more likely to face guerrillas. Guerrilla wars typically begin when a smaller army is confronted by a larger one, forcing it to turn to the advantages it has: its ability to hide amid the population, its knowledge of the local terrain, its ability to mount quick and surprising attacks and then melt away before the larger army can strike back. This is more or less the case in Iraq, as it was in Vietnam, yet the leadership of the American Army is still wary of preparing the bulk of its troops to fight a guerrilla war. Most American soldiers are trained to use maximum force to destroy an easily identifiable enemy. Waging a counterinsurgency campaign, by contrast, often requires a soldier to do what might appear to be counterproductive: use the minimum amount of force, not the maximum, so as to reduce the risk of killing civilians or destroying property. Co-opt an enemy rather than kill him. If necessary, expose soldiers to higher risk. In the American Army, that sort of training is mostly relegated to forces like the Green Berets, who account for a small percentage of the Army's manpower.

"It's a chronic problem that runs deep in the DNA of the Army," says John Waghelstein, a retired colonel in the Special Forces who helped to conduct the American-backed counterinsurgency campaign in El Salvador. "The Army has never taken counterinsurgency seriously. The Army's doctrine hasn't changed since the 1840's." At the Army's Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., attended by all American officers hoping to rise above the rank of major, students must pass a rigorous program consisting of roughly 700 hours of instruction. Of that, not a single required course focuses on how to fight guerrilla wars.

For one thing, the constant need to fight counterinsurgencies is portrayed as a consequence of the size of our Amry. But that is not it at all. It is simply because we are fighting against populations, who by nature aren't armies, in their own soil. The key passage is this: "Guerrilla wars typically begin when a smaller army is confronted by a larger one, forcing it to turn to the advantages it has: its ability to hide amid the population, its knowledge of the local terrain, its ability to mount quick and surprising attacks and then melt away before the larger army can strike back."

Think for a minute. Why can they hide among the population and we can't? It's not the size of the army. The U.S. army could well hide among the population in this soil if we were attacked by a foreign nation. It is simply this: we fight and/or support unpopular wars in foreign countries.

And this is another way in which media bias works. They portray things as consequences of things that are at most questionable and often plain wrong. It's just stated as fact: our Army is large so we fight guerilla wars. Not: our "enemies" fight guerilla wars because they can, and we can't because we are foreigners.

And maybe that's just too hard for the U.S. Armed Forces to even admit this fact to themselves so that they could do it better:

Waghelstein says that the Army's leaders actually decided to de-emphasize counterinsurgency following Vietnam. When Waghelstein was an instructor at the Command and General Staff College, the school eliminated several courses that dealt with guerrilla war or turned them into electives, he says. Kalev Sepp, a retired Special Forces officer and a counterinsurgency adviser to the American command in Iraq, told me: "It's a cliché that the Army is always fighting the last war, but with the American Army, that's not true. When the Vietnam War ended, the Army tried to pretend it never happened. The typical officer in the military knew far more about the Battle of Gettysburg than he did about Vietnam. Initially, in Iraq, they were just making it up."

Posted by zeynep at 07:31 PM | Comments (1)

October 23, 2005

Lady Boys and Burnt Corpses on Video

More from Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The Pentagon announced Wednesday night that the Army had started a criminal investigation into allegations that American soldiers in Afghanistan had burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and then used the charred and smoking corpses in a propaganda campaign against the insurgents.

The events were shown on an Australian television program, broadcast there on Wednesday night, depicting what is described as an American psychological operations team broadcasting taunts over a loudspeaker toward a village thought to be harboring Taliban fighters and sympathizers, according to a transcript of the program. It was posted on the Web site of the Special Broadcasting Service, http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/. An American soldier, an Afghan soldier, and two Taliban had just been killed in fighting there, the transcript of the program said.

According to the program's translation of the taunts, which were delivered in the local language by American forces on the scene, a soldier identified as Sgt. Jim Baker, said: "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

From what I understand, there is video of this:

The program's video was taken by Stephen Dupont, a freelance Australian photojournalist who was embedded in the American unit to document its operations. Mr. Dupont's photographs from the region have been widely published.

In a separate interview posted on the network's Web site on Wednesday, Mr. Dupont said soldiers from an unidentified airborne unit appeared to believe they were doing the right thing in laying the corpses of the two dead Taliban toward Mecca, and then setting them on fire.

The video shows flames swirling around two charred corpses, their legs and arms outstretched, and a group of five American soldiers watching from a rocky ledge.

Posted by zeynep at 12:17 AM | Comments (1)

October 17, 2005

Ignorant Fools

I have lost track of the number of stories of this kind:

Helicopters and warplanes bombed two villages near Ramadi in western Iraq on Sunday, killing about 70 people, the US military says.

It said all the dead were militants, although eyewitnesses are quoted saying that many were civilians.

One of the air strikes hit the same spot where five US soldiers had died on Saturday in a roadside bombing.

The US statement said a group of insurgents was about to place another bomb, although local people deny this

Somehow, the dead and the survivors can never figure out their proper designation. Surely, we can't leave Iraq until they do.

Posted by zeynep at 07:09 AM | Comments (5)

October 13, 2005

No, Not the Smurfs!

Seeing that cuddly blue cartoon characters might elicit more sympathy that cuddly black babies, UNICEF just launched a new ad campaign, which apparently got strong reactions in Belgium where it was debuted recently:

The reasoning is pretty straightforward. Of course, they had to tone it down because one cannot show smurfs mutilated, as that would invoke too strong reactions:

Philippe Henon, a spokesman for Unicef Belgium, said his agency had set out to shock, after concluding that traditional images of suffering in Third World war zones had lost their power to move television viewers. "It's controversial," he said. "We have never done something like this before but we've learned over the years that the reaction to the more normal type of campaign is very limited."

Belgium prides itself on being the home of some of the world's most famous cartoon characters - from Tintin to Lucky Luke and the Smurfs, known to the Dutch- speaking half of the country as "Smurfen" and as "Schtroumpfs" to Belgium's French speakers.

The advertising agency behind the campaign, Publicis, decided the best way to convey the impact of war on children was to tap into the earliest, happiest memories of Belgian television viewers. They chose the Smurfs, who first appeared in a Belgian comic in 1958.

Julie Lamoureux, account director at Publicis for the campaign, said the agency's original plans were toned down.

"We wanted something that was real war - Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head -but they said no."

You can see the video in Flemish at this site -- click on Video. The very upsetting smurf video is preceeded by the kind of images that do not move the world anymore: injured and mutilated black children. (You can also see it what seems to be a better connection here, Flemish original dubbed over in French.)

I must say, I think it's a very good idea.

It's just very, very sad that this is what it takes.

P.S. It turns out they only show it after 9 pm to not upset children. I'd say children should see this. Maybe not when they are three, but certainly by the time they are old enough to learn about the world.

Frankly, I'm for showing it all. Maybe not around the clock, but often enough so that we cannot forget or ignore the reality. It's certainly happenning to the people who have no choice and no escape, why should we be allowed to escape even the slightest exposure to their reality?

Posted by zeynep at 12:22 PM | Comments (3)

October 06, 2005

Really, why on earth could they hate us?

What a puzzle, it all is. What could possibly be the reason?

Boeing and its joint-venture partner Bell Helicopter apologized yesterday for a magazine ad published a month ago — and again this week by mistake — depicting U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque.

"It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell," reads the ad, which ran this week in the National Journal and earlier in the Armed Forces Journal. The ad also stated: "Consider it a gift from above."

The ad appears at a time when the United States is trying to improve its image in the Muslim world and Boeing seeks to sell its airplanes to Islamic countries.

And why is Boeing apologizing? What else do people think that piece of machinery is meant to do, deliver bread and roses?

And what is that throwaway line in the story, "the United States is trying to improve its image in the Muslim world"? Oh, is that what this Operation Iron Fist is about? Good to know.

Posted by zeynep at 08:36 AM | Comments (4)

September 24, 2005

War Porn

A site has been noted in couple of blogs, a site where soldiers post their own war porn, pictures of Iraqis they killed, in order to get access to conventional porn. Billmon has a long post explaining how this site has basically convinced him we must withdraw immediately -- notwithstanding all the qualms one may have about what will become of Iraq...

The site was first written up in the Nation. Don't click on it if you don't want to see what blown up heads and charred bodies really look like -- with smiling U.S. soldiers posing next to them and with comments like "where's the barbecue sauce?" It's basically a porn site that promised access for free to soldiers who posted pictures proving who they were. And so they posted these pictures, their war trophies, their porn. (It's really hard to look at. At least read the Nation article first and if you do look, I'd advise not being in a hurry. It's not easy to recover from, if recover is the right word. Let me rephrase: it takes some effort to breathe again.)

I just came back from the D.C. rally where the main slogan was "Support the Troops." There were more than a few references to the torture and the killing done us but the overwhelming majority of the posters were simply: "support the troops, bring them home." At this point in history, I'm for any reason, anything that stops what we are inflicting on that country.

But must we all be so blind to the nature of our actions in Iraq? Lots of people argue "we" have some obligation to Iraq, "we" must not withdraw so quickly, "we" must first set things right at least a bit.

(Let's for the moment ignoring the imperialist assumptions underlying those comments: "we" somehow have a duty to be somewhere where we are not wanted at all.)

Well, if the "we" in question was composed of the people who put forth these statements in earnest maybe there'd be something to talk about. But, at this point in history, all those arguments put forth by the bleeding-hearts-unite-for-Iraqis crowd are effectively blind to the imperial, murderous nature of what the real we, our troops, are doing over there. Whether they are blind out of naivete or out of imperialist ideological assumptions does not really matter, not at this point in history anyway.

And yes, support the troops in this sense: we must recognize what is happening to hundreds and thousands of men and women so that we may react to it appropriately rather than pat them on the back and thank them for "serving." Many have obviously become deeply dehumanized, and have carried a racist, callous culture to its outmost conclusion. They kill, they take pictures, they smile for the camera.

Is it their fault they were sent there, in this war based on lies and deception? Let's just say no to that, even though we must also honor the concscientious objectors who showed that one can say no. We can simply acknowledge that most of them didn't join thinking they'd get to blow up people -- although we must also acknowledge some did.

But there they are, murdering and torturing. There is no getting around that fact, because getting around that means not seeing the people of Iraq as people. Not seeing what they are doing means participating the the imperial supremacy --which is more complicated than racism simply based on skin color-- which allows men to kill, and sometimes smile.

And they are killing and torturing, often just for sport, and not because they are "undertrained" or because it's policy or because they are trying to extract some intelligence. Torture, simply put, seems to release tension for these soldiers. from the latest report from the Human Rights Watch, which is worth many posts on its own:

Posted by zeynep at 09:05 PM | Comments (5)

September 20, 2005

We Shoot and Leave

Al Jazeera has some more info on the British reasoning which goes like this: the occupation forces have full immunity and impunity and that's that.

Declining to comment on why two armed British nationals disguised as Iraqis would be in Basra, the Ministry of Defence told Aljazeera.net it didn't matter if both men were out of uniform with no identification.

"Iraqi law requires any coalition force members to be handed back - once it was established they were foreign soldiers, they should have been handed over.

"There was even an order from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior that both men should have been released," the spokesman dded.

...

Asked whether the raid suggested that using force in Iraq to achieve an objective was acceptable, the defence official said the "vast majority of Iraqis in Basra are law-abiding".

Read between the lines: the British do not have to be law-abiding. Also, the British keep saying things like they simply broke a single wall, as if that would be okay. It's not even the truth.

Unfortunately they weren't released and we became concerned for their safety. As a result a Warrior infantry fighting vehicle broke down the perimeter wall in one place.

Umm, okay. Except this time there are some pictures. (I know, I know they are doctored. Would the British government ever lie?)

Again, remember, these British citizens shot at people and at least one person, a police officer, is dead. As many as four might have died during the British raid. But those are minor details. To make news in Iraq, the number dead has to be in there digits or one foreigner has to have bandages in his head.

Posted by zeynep at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2005

You Know You Are Occupied When...

You cannot arrest people who shoot at your policemen, and keep them under arrest. A foreign army bulldozes the walls of your prison, takes away their countrymen, allowing about 150 other prisoners to escape.

In a dramatic show of force, British soldiers used tanks to break down the walls of the central jail in this southern city Monday and freed two Britons, allegedly undercover commandos arrested on charges of shooting two Iraqi policemen, witnesses said.

...

About 150 Iraqi prisoners also fled as British commandos stormed inside and rescued their comrades, said Aquil Jabbar, an Iraqi television cameraman who lives across the street from the jail. Earlier Monday, demonstrators hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at British tanks, and at least four people were killed.

The fighting in the oil city of Basra, 340 miles south of the capital, erupted after British armor encircled the jail where the two Britons were being held. During the melee one British soldier could be seen in a photograph scrambling for his life from a burning tank and the rock-throwing mob.

Oh, I'm sure someone will say that Iraqi justice system is not fair, not reliable, people cannot be left in their hands, etc. All of that may well be true and I certainly am not one to somehow think if someone is under arrest, that's that and nothing can be questioned. But that does not answer for those alleged British soldiers under arrest: after all they were not abducted from Britain while they were minding their own business. They were in Iraq, armed, "undercover," shooting at people in the street.

According to Iraqi authorities, these men fired at Iraqi policeman at a checkpoint, and that sounds very feasible to me. After all, which Iraqi has the right to ask the western Man to stop at a checkpoint? None, of course, and if they are so bold as to make such a demand, you must shoot back.

Of course, these men were apparently also undercover, dressed in Arabic garb.

In a statement released in London, Reid did not say why the two had been taken into custody. But the Iraqi official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said their arrests stemmed from an incident earlier in the day.

The official said two unknown gunmen in full Arabic dress began firing on civilians in central Basra, wounding several, including a traffic police officer. There were no fatalities, the official said.

The two gunmen fled the scene but were captured and taken in for questioning, admitting they were British marines carrying out a "special security task," the official said.

But, still the Iraqis on the scene should have just sensed that these were Western Military Man on a "special security task" and stayed cleared of them. Don't they know better, these natives?

Posted by zeynep at 09:09 PM | Comments (1)

September 17, 2005

Amazing Restraint

A few days ago, it was day laborers. Yesterday, a bomb went outside a Shiite mosque killing dozens. Today a bomb in a market in the poor Shiite part of town, killing at least 30.

A car bomb ripped through a market in a poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad at sunset Saturday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 38, police said.

...

Interior Ministry police Maj. Falah al-Mhamadawi said an explosives-packed car was parked in front of fruit and vegetable stands in the market at Nahrawan, about 20 miles east of Baghdad, a poor suburb heavily populated by Shiites.

He said at least 30 people were killed and 38 wounded.

I'm losing count but the death toll in last week seems to be closing in on five hundred. There have lately been some attempts by the Sunni clerics to try distance themselves from this vicious campaign. But, overall, I must say that I am surprised by the restraint that the Shiite clergy has been able to impose upon their community.

Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant who claims to lead Al Qaeda in Iraq, has taken responsibility for some of the worst violence. He declared war on Shiites in retaliation for a joint Iraqi and American offensive on the northern city of Tall Afar.

The declaration so shocked Iraqis that even the Muslim Scholars Assn., an organization of hard-line Sunni clerics with alleged ties to the insurgency, demanded in a statement issued today that Zarqawi "retract these threats" because it hurts the Sunni Arab cause.

"It harms the image of jihad, obstructs the success of the resistance in Iraq, and leads to more innocent Iraqi bloodshed," the statement said.

Iraq's Shiites have grown increasingly angry about the violence directed at them. But in Najaf, prayer leader Sadr din Qubanichi of the Imam Ali shrine, the most revered holy site in Iraq, asked followers to turn the other cheek.

"Submitting to one's passion and confusion will bring us to domestic sedition and eventually lead us to failure," Qubanichi, a disciple of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, told worshippers. "We must go forward, be patient and carry on building the new Iraq."

This point was also reported by the Post:

Shiite preachers addressed the violence in their Friday sermons.

In Sadr City, Abdul Zahra Swaiedi condemned "the mass killings and explosions that target innocents all over Iraq," saying they were meant to distort the image of Islam. Swaiedi accused American forces of supporting the attacks to justify the U.S. occupation. "No to terrorism, no to terrorism," Shiite worshipers chanted in response.

There was no call for retaliation. In Baghdad's Buratha mosque, which is linked to Iraq's main Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Dhia Edeen Ahmadi urged restraint in his sermon.

"The aim of this criminal wave of killing is to draw us into a sectarian war, but that shall not succeed," Ahmadi said.

He urged Shiites to stay focused on national elections on Oct. 15 and Dec. 15, when Iraqis are to vote first on a new constitution and then a new government. Shiites, who make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, have strong hopes of seeing their aims prevail in the balloting.

"We know who they are. They are the thugs of the Saddam regime who are trying to avenge their loss after losing power and the nice, affluent life they had," Ahmadi said of the insurgents, referring to the decades when Iraq was ruled by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party. "But history will not go back. This is our destiny, and no matter how many are killed, whether hundreds or thousands, we shall not turn back."

Pretty amazing, if you ask me. Yes, obviously, they are making the correct calculation both politically and morally that drowning the country in blood will not help anyone. Still, how many instances have we seen where the majority group manages to hold back a campaign of fury and vengeance for so long, while their people get killed in places of worship, markets, neighborhoods, schools, just going about their business.

Posted by zeynep at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2005

... a suicide bomber lured a crowd of day laborers gathering for work to his minivan and then blew it up...

At least a hundred are dead today in Baghdad, most of them in Shiite neighborhoods.

The attacks began when a suicide bomber lured a crowd of day laborers gathering for work to his minivan and then blew it up just before 7 a.m., killing at least 80 people and wounding 160 in Kadhimiya, a Shiite neighborhood.

Think about this. If the account is to be believed, this person lured day laborers --poor, hungry for work with only the crime of being Shiite-- into his van and then blew it up.

I don't think we have understood that this too is a large part of what is going on in Iraq. I believe our occupation is making the situation worse, much worse without providing any security for the population. But our occupation is not the only grave problem in Iraq right now -- and it's all tangled up in a very ugly way.

Posted by zeynep at 07:49 AM | Comments (2)

September 11, 2005

Don't Blame Me, Ever

It's the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Many commentators were noting that Bush got a boost out of his 9/11 performance. He did not deserve it; yelling through a bullhorn is not necessarily a noble act. In fact, there is a similarity between that disaster Katrina. In both cases, the handling of the situation was both incompetent, manipulative and callous towards large populations of people: in Iraq, Afghanistan, lower Manhattan, and in New Orleans.

Both times people lost, Halliburton and Bechtel won. In both times, this administration did not pull the trigger, but laid the ground for events that pretty much ensured disastrous consequences through a mix of acts of omission and comission.

But, don't blame the administration. No. Never. They only hold the executive power, the military, the purse strings, the legislative branch, and are moving steadily towards taking over the judicial branch. What makes you think it's all their doing?

Posted by zeynep at 07:42 PM | Comments (1)

August 29, 2005

Torture Yes, Poverty-Alleviation No. (Otherwise Known as Our Foreign Policy.)

There are two developments I have been meaning to write about, but have not found the time to do them justice. Fortunately, Body and Soul has covered both. The first is about the outcome of the case for the gruesome torture and murder of a taxi-driver in the Bagram base in Afhanistan.

Punishments were handed down for four American soldiers involved in the brutal murder of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram prison:

One soldier has been sentenced to two months in prison, another to three months. A third was demoted and given a letter of reprimand and a fine. A fourth was given a reduction in rank and pay.

A reminder of what happened to Dilawar:

Mr. Dilawar was a frail man, standing only 5 feet 9 inches and weighing 122 pounds. But at Bagram, he was quickly labeled one of the "noncompliant" ones.

When one of the First Platoon M.P.'s, Specialist Corey E. Jones, was sent to Mr. Dilawar's cell to give him some water, he said the prisoner spit in his face and started kicking him. Specialist Jones responded, he said, with a couple of knee strikes to the leg of the shackled man.

"He screamed out, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' and my first reaction was that he was crying out to his god," Specialist Jones said to investigators. "Everybody heard him cry out and thought it was funny."

Other Third Platoon M.P.'s later came by the detention center and stopped at the isolation cells to see for themselves, Specialist Jones said.

It became a kind of running joke, and people kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."

A three month sentence.

The soldiers apparently weren't the only ones who thought the way they treated a helpless and innocent man was a joke.

Read more here.

The other is about the U.N. Millenium Summit to be held in September. Apparently, the US, led by Bolton, has basically decided that the summit should not be about the Millenium Development Goals, poverty, climate change, and all the other things it is about. To that end, John Bolton submitted "750 amendments to the draft and called for immediate talks on them" -- only three weeks before the summit. Read more about them here, or simply remember this tidbit:

U.S. complained the section on poverty was too long.

Posted by zeynep at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2005

The Political is Personal

When Cindy Sheehan returned from her ailing mother's side back to Crawford, unbeknownst to her, the protesters had erected a "large banner depicting her son's face."

You can see the depth of her heartbreak in the following picture, snapped as she cried upon seeing her child's face, all of a sudden, right in front of her.

Much has been written about how she is using her personal tragedy for political ends. Of course she is, and what is more honorable than that -- instead of withdrawing from the world into her personal pain, she is trying to find a way to prevent further wrongs and further surrow. In the end though, however political her actions are, they are also deeply personal. How could it be any other way? And it is not just that the personal is political, as the feminist insight goes, but political is personal, always, at some level. Sooner or later, as the so-called political starts descending down from the abstract --from the decisions, budgets, slogans-- into individual lives, the values embedded in that which is called "political" start to have real impacts on real human beings, as individuals, families and communities.

I can't help thinking, though, if Casey Sheehan had lived, would he have taken a life that would leave an Iraqi mother as heartbroken as his own mother is? Will his legacy be the power his mother has displayed as she refuses to budge from her drive to stop other people's children from killing or being killed?

This is up to us, of course, as it was beautifully put in Archibald MacLeish's poem (which I recently came across in the Vietnam War documentary "Regret to Inform.")

They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished

no one can know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,

they will mean what you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for

peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,

it is you who must say this.

We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.

Posted by zeynep at 11:18 PM | Comments (2)

August 10, 2005

New Force of Nature

Empire Notes has an important commentary on the anniversary of the atomic bombings:

And yet, in a way, horrific crimes as the bombings of Dresden and Tokyo were, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were worse. First, of course, because they started the nuclear arms race and brought us to the point where we can actually annihilate ourselves. Second, because of the radiation and lingering effects.

But there's another way, and it's hard to talk about logically. Freeman Dyson, in his autobiography Disturbing the Universe, talks about his experience. He worked as an analyst for British Bomber Command and, over the years, became completely disillusioned with what he called this "crazy game of murder." Then one day, after he was out and the war for him was over, he picked up a newspaper and saw the headline, "New Force of Nature Unleashed."

It's always struck me that, of all the headlines put up on August 7, that one is somehow the most profound. Even now, reading it sends a chill down my spine. To discover some of the most profound secrets of nature and use them to incinerate over 200,000 men, women, and children is unspeakable in some way that goes deeper than logic.

Posted by zeynep at 08:07 AM | Comments (1)

August 08, 2005

That word was Nagasaki

"I had to add, though, that I knew a single word that proved our democratic government was capable of committing obscene, gleefully rabid and racist, yahooistic murders of unarmed men, women, and children, murders wholly devoid of military common sense. I said the word. It was a foreign word. That word was Nagasaki."

Posted by zeynep at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

August 06, 2005

Loved Ones of 9/11 Victims Apologize to Victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bombings

To be read in Hiroshima on August 6th, in closing ceremonies of Stonewalk, 2005. [Stonewalk 2005 was a 34-day walk from Nagasaki to Hiroshima where Japanese atomic bomb survivors [Hibakusha] joined family members of those killed on September 11th in pulling a two-ton granite memorial stone dedicated to the unknown victims of war everywhere.]

Pulling the granite stone from Nagasaki to Hiroshima

Statement of apology to the Hibakus