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He picked himself up. The first thing he notices is the smell. Then the noise. Then the screams. He hears a voice but can’t make out if it’s male or female. It cries out for its ‘mother’ but is soon silent. He hears growls of pain and sees blood and body parts. He joins a que trying to file out into the daylight. He collapses among the smoke and rubble but before he drifts into unconsciousness, he notices how fast the dust soaks up the blood draining from the gash where his left arm used to be.
In March 2003 a terror of unimaginable horror was unleashed on the people of Baghdad. I remember watching the news and feeling “shock and awe” as bombs exploded in the dark, throwing up sparks and fire. I remember wondering how many innocent lives were being snuffed out while the military commentators on the talk shows and current affairs programs boasted about “precision bombing”, “surgical strikes” and “limited collateral damage”. Fast forward two years and hundreds of British families, along with the families of tourists and itinerant workers, mourn the “collateral damage” they must now cope with.
Over the last few days acres of press and hours of airtime have been dedicated to the victims of this latest terror on White shores. Talking with one friend, he reminded me of the ‘worthy victim’ syndrome that infects our media and society. The ‘collateral damage’ in places like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq are not worthy victims because they are ‘generalised’ into a seething mass of evil barbarians who, in the words of our alternative prime minister, Kim Beasley, are “sub-human”. Anyone who looks like the caricatured stereotype propagated by the vested interests is lumped into the category of ‘terrorist threat’.
After thousands of years we haven’t really come that far as a species have we? In today’s world, with all its ‘gee-whizery’, high-tech stuff, 24 hour TV, radio and internet, I find it outrageous that we remain, collectively, as ignorant as we do. Why is it that none of the mainstream media is asking why? Why is it that we, collectively, wish to remain ignorant when the possibilities of understanding are yet to be realised? Why?
Why, after two years of occupation, the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis and who knows how many Afghanis has ‘peace, democracy and security’ not ‘taken’ in those countries? Why aren’t simple questions such as that posed by Ed Harriman of the Guardian not addressed? On the day the bombs went off in London, the Guardian published Harriman’s article, “So, Mr Bremer, where did all the money go?”
Paul Bremmer was the PR hack turned George Bush’s special envoy to Iraq in the wake the illegal invasion and bombing. He was in charge of an Iraqi funded bankroll that totalled some $US34 billion and that was, supposedly, set aside for the redevelopment of the nearly destroyed nation. By the time Bremmer left, in June last year, he had overseen the spending of $US20 billion dollars of Iraqi money. Bremmer personally oversaw the spending of over $US8 billion for which he has no receipts. While children died in ill-equipped hospitals because water treatment plants went un-repaired and civilians were shot at roadblocks, no one among the vested interests cried for them or tried to find out why the Iraqi people were turning against the occupiers.
On June 5 the New Yorker ran a special report titled “Outsourcing Torture”. We already know that “security contractors” are in great demand in the prisons holding ‘detainees’ in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. We also know that these “security contractors” are responsible for the torture, abuse and deaths of prisoners held under their watch. These contractors make phenomenal money while their employers, private firms contracted to the US and British governments, remain protected by ‘commercial in confidence’ clauses that prevent them being investigated by congressional or parliamentary committees. We also know that word of the treatment of the prisoners, most of whom have been illegally detained, has spread across the globe.
We now find out that the supposed bombers in London last week were “of Pakistani origin”, whatever that means. The news reports I’ve heard and read note that these men, if they were the bombers, were British born. In other words, the radicalisation of these men began in their home nation. No matter how you twist the story, if these British born men were the perpetrators, then the act is not international terrorism but domestic terrorism in the same mould as the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, the Una bomber, Theodore Kaczynski and our own, home grown, Martin Bryant of Port Arthur infamy.
On top of this we have the most dangerous man in the world, George Bush, still trying to link the ‘necessity’ of invading Iraq to the 911 events. Even though there remains no credible, rational, logical evidence to link Iraq and Afghanistan to 911, Bush, Blair and Howard are still allowed to spout their absurdities and a compliant and seemingly brain dead media allow them to get away with it. When they ask, ‘why do they hate us?’, the only honest response should be, “because we deserve it.”
That might seem harsh. However, if we continue to allow Bush, Blair and Howard to argue that “we” are spreading a message ‘of hope through peace and democracy’ then we have to answer to the demands these concepts place on us. If we truly believe that in a democracy our leaders are elected by us and make decision based on the mandates we allow them, then surely if the ramifications of those decisions blow back in our faces we cannot absolve ourselves and say, it had nothing to do with me! If we allow illegal invasions of sovereign states based on lies and deceptions and the state sponsored terrorism that is war to be perpetrated in the name of ‘peace’, then we have no recourse to pleas of innocence when our loved ones are in the firing line of zealots – no matter what the colour of their skin or nature of their personal religious beliefs.
The short story I opened with could equally apply to the experience of some in the London underground or a café in Baghdad. There is no distinction between the suffering and misery that people will feel whether they be at home in Fallujah or Hounslow or Sydney or Newark. The fear and pain and tears and blood are all the same. The ugly dying. The terrible sights. The nightmares that will never cease. All these will be common. They are the emotions and responses that make us all human. The anger that boils and bubbles because of the loss and grief and pain is also a shared human trait.
Blood speaks no language. It circulates through us mixed, down through the years, so that all of us share a drop of each other in our veins. We are linked inexorably to both those who died and those who killed them. What we need to try to do is understand both. So long as the wealth of Iraq and Afghanistan is appropriated ‘in our name’, the power of that single drop of blood will remain supressed. While we turn our backs on the pain of the Palestinians, the Karen in Burma, the Chechens and the other repressed people of the world, we will never get to share in their joy and will be consigned to live in perpetual fear.
Your blood is as worthy as my blood. “Their” blood is as worthy as “ours”. “Our” blood has no more worth than “theirs”. In death and dying there is no ‘them and us’. We all become ‘we’. While I am distressed by the deaths and maimings in London, I feel exactly the same way when I hear about deaths caused by Israeli soldiers or those caused by torture carried out ‘in our name’.
Perhaps the time has come to ask the hard questions of the Bremmers and their bosses and find out why it is “they” should not hate us for tearing out the wealth of their nations to line the pockets of a few who, currently, reside in ours. With our government committing more troops to Bush’s “crusade” we must demand that the war end. Until we do, blood will continue to flow not only in “our name” but also in “our” streets.