Other People's Blood

[Guest guest]

SharinSharAlike

Thu, 8 Jun 2006 18:52:29 EDT

[AggressiveProgressives] Read this one -- APATHY AND IGNORANCE

 

 

 

Don't miss today's quotes at the end of article. Bob Herbert of the NY

Times - one of my favorites for saying it like it is.

 

 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13539.htm

 

 

 

Other People's Blood

 

By BOB HERBERT

 

06/08/06 " New York Times " -- - For the smug, comfortable, well-off

Americans, it doesn't seem to matter how long the war in Iraq goes on

- as long as the agony is endured by others. If the network coverage

gets too grim, viewers can always switch to the E! channel (one hand

on the remote, the other burrowing into a bag of chips) to follow the

hilarious antics of Paris, Britney, Brangelina et al.

 

The war is depressing and denial is the antidote. Why should ordinary

citizens (good people, religious people, patriots) consider their role

in - and responsibility for - the thunderous, unending carnage? Enough

with this introspection. Let's go to the ballpark, get drunk and boo

Barry Bonds. The nation is in deep denial about Iraq. For years the

president and his supporting cast of arrogant, bullying characters

have tried to put the best face on this war. They had no idea what

they were doing when they ordered the invasion of Iraq, and they still

don't. Many of the troops who were assured that the Iraqis would

welcome them with open arms are now dead. And there's still no plan.

 

Paul Wolfowitz, who fashioned the phony intellectual underpinnings of

this catastrophe, told us that Iraqi oil revenues would cover the cost

of reconstruction. He was as wrong about that as the president was

about the weapons of mass destruction. (And as wrong as Dick Cheney

was last June when he said the insurgency was in its last throes.)

 

Here are the facts: The war so recklessly launched by the amateurs in

the Bush White House has already taken scores of thousands of lives,

and will ultimately cost the United States $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

 

No one has been held accountable for this. While Mr. Bush's approval

ratings are low, the public has been largely indifferent to the

profound suffering in Iraq. This is primarily for two reasons: Because

most Americans have no immediate personal stake in the war, and

because the administration and the news media keep the worst of the

suffering at a safe distance from the U.S. population.

 

The killing of American troops is usually kissed off with a paragraph

or two in the major papers, and a sentence or two, at best, on

national newscasts.

(Imagine if someone in your office, sitting at a desk across from you,

were suddenly blown to bits, splattering you with his or her blood.

You wouldn't get over it for the rest of your life. This is what

happens daily in Iraq.)

 

The many thousands of Iraqis who are killed - including babies and

children who are shot to death, blown up, or incinerated - remain

completely unknown to the American public. So not only is there very

little empathy for the suffering of Iraqis, there is virtually no

sense among ordinary Americans of a shared responsibility for that

suffering.

 

Despite the frequently expressed fantasies expressed by President Bush

and some of the leading politicians of both parties, the idea of a

U.S. victory in Iraq is an illusion. The nightmarish violence is

rising, not receding. Iraq is not being pacified. A suicide bomber

blew himself up in a bustling market in Basra over the weekend,

killing 27 and wounding scores. On Sunday,

20 people were stopped and pulled from their vehicles on a highway

near Baquba and shot to death.

 

John Burns, writing in yesterday's New York Times, told us: " The death

toll in one of the most grisly recent attacks, in the village of

Hadid, near the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba, rose to 17 on

Tuesday when the police delivered nine severed heads to the Baquba

morgue in the fruit boxes in which they were found in the village. "

 

Eight other heads had previously been found.

 

Instead of beginning to pull our troops out of Iraq, we are sending

more in. The permanent Iraqi government, which was supposed to be the

answer to everybody's prayers, is a study in haplessness. Abu Musab

al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's man in Iraq, remains at large. (As does Osama

bin Laden, somewhere in Pakistan.)

 

As was the case with Vietnam, the war in Iraq is a fool's errand.

There is no clear mission for American troops in Iraq. No one can

really say what the dead have died for. And yet the dying continues.

 

When it all finally comes to an end (according to President Bush, on

somebody else's watch) we'll look around at the hideous costs in human

treasure and cold hard cash and ask ourselves: What in the world were

we thinking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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