US precision bomb hits Baghdad market: at least 15 liberated from life
(english)
nukeemall 2:59am Wed Mar 26 '03
article#304095
(BBC) 1030: Iraqi officials say a busy Baghdad market has been hit in an
air raid. Staff with Reuters say they have counted at least 15 burnt
corpses next to three badly damaged buildings.
1030: Iraqi officials say a busy Baghdad market has been hit in an air
raid. Staff with Reuters say they have counted at least 15 burnt corpses
next to three badly damaged buildings.
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=304095&group=webcast
Comment...
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
01:00 p.m.
Collateral Damage & a thought
experiment
Many dead and wounded in Baghdad market. I will never, ever,
for the life of me, be able to understand how the very people who speak
sadly and regretfully of "collateral damage" while supporting
this war can sleep at night. I mean, I know how the Woo Hoo! Let's
Kill Us Some A-rabs! brigade sleep at night; they have nothing even
vaguely appropaching a conscience. No, I'm talking about the otherwise
decent people who support the war. Are the innocent victims that foreign,
that other that they cannot imagine themselves, and those they
love, in their place?
Try this thought experiment: You hate the government of your country. A
lot. All manner of vicious, horrible things have been rained down upon
you by said government. Your government eventually goes too far, and
turns its aggression on a neighbouring country, which leads many other
countries to go to war with you to stop it. They rain down fire and steel
upon your army and your fellow citizens, and, while they're doing it,
encourage you to rise up against the brutal tyrannical regime you've been
suffering under for a long, long time. A regime, which, incidentally,
they'd been supporting until this most recent event. Some significant
number of your fellow citizens do just that, and then, when the
cease-fire is arranged, these other countries just shrug and say,
"not my problem, guv," and walk away, leaving the
insurrectionists to their fate, which is horrible: the tyrannical regime
brutally suppresses them. More death, more misery. Everything is the same
as before, only worse.
Twelve years pass. The regime the countries who went to war against you
to stop is still very much in power, and is still as brutal as ever, and
on top of all your other problems, there are incredibly strict sanctions
imposed upon your country, making it difficult to get enough food to eat,
or medicine when you and your loved ones and neighbours and friends are
ill.
In the meantime, a year or so previously, a bunch of nutters unleashed an
appalling terrorist attack on by far the biggest and most powerful of the
countries imposing sanctions on you. Over the course of time, and against
all evidence, this country insists that your brutal despot of a
leader is somehow tied to the group that the big, powerful country says
attacked its blameless citizens. A group, incidentally, known to
despise your tyrant, and vice-versa.
For months now, the countries formerly ranged against you have been
arguing among themselves about the possibility of going to war against
your poor, broken country. The big, awesomely powerful country, and its
closest ally, which certainly punches above its weight category in the
general scheme of things, are growing increasingly bellicose, and
resorting to some pretty scummy tactics to get their way. You know your
country, fucked as it is, isn't a real threat to anybody. You're too
poor, too broken by sanctions and the previous war. You hate the regime
no less, but you also know what happened the last time around. War,
suffering, and when the other countries got tired of the war, they went
away and left you to your fate. You can't trust them.
And, anyway, you may hate your government, but you love your country. You
have an incredibly proud heritage and history. Civilisation, as much of
the world knows it, started in your beloved country, between your
two rivers, and you are justifiably proud of this.
In spite of the best efforts of countless people and countries, the big,
powerful country, its smaller, but still pretty powerful ally, and a
handful of other countries they've bribed or bullied for token support,
begin attacking your country. In an utterly terrifying display of might,
they entertain themselves and their friends by bombing the almighty hell
out of your capital city. Oh, sure, they say they're targeting their
bombs very carefully, but that makes it no less terrifying, and, in the
way of these things, civilians are made homeless, and sometimes hurt or
killed by these bombs. You are wondering, every day, if the next bomb to
go astray is going to go astray on you, or your children, or your
friends, or even that guy down the street you don't particularly like,
but hell, he's got kids and a wife, and well, you don't want to see any
of them hurt, when it comes right down to it. Your brutal dictator seems
to be doing just fine. His regime is intact. And you still don't like
them, but you don't like the bombs even more. And you begin to get angry,
really angry, at the people bombing you. Haven't you suffered enough
already? What's wrong with these people? Why are they doing this? No,
really, why? You know they don't give a damn about making your
life better, whatever they might say. You feel helpless and angry, and
they won't stop bombing you!
Then you begin to hear news of resistance. The countries bombing the hell
out of you had been pretty flagrant in saying, before this started, that
it would be a fast victory, that they'd beat your poor, starving country
swiftly and with little cost to themselves. You are, in spite of the
grinding poverty and oppression you've lived under, proud of your country
and its history. Some of your fellow citizens -- and it doesn't really
seem to matter right now who they are, you just know they're yours -- are
putting up a hell of a fight. They aren't rolling over. The forces
against you can't seem to take your cities, even though they're rolling
around in the desert pretty freely. Fine, bah, let them have the desert.
Your miserable bastard of a tyrant shows up on television, and, in a
change of his usual style, praises you all for the glorious resistance
you're putting up, and also, while he's at it, invokes the God you
devotedly believe in, and to whom you've been praying for deliverance.
And you look at the tyrant, and think, better the devil you know. He's a
bastard, but he's our bastard. And you look at your kids, and
imagine them, maimed or dead, and hey that could very well happen. And
the bombs keep falling.
So, tell me: what do you do?
http://mindthegap.pitas.com/
