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Recent Stories
March 26, 2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz----------------Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
29, 2003
Random Thoughts
War,
Bush and the Jesus Tortilla
By BRICE ABEL
On
the tram to the C gates for my flight this afternoon, some woman said
“They’ve started the ground war already.” There was
a smile on her face and a gleam in her eye looking like ‘Oh goodie!
Now the fun begins.’ It was her theory that this was the reason
for the extra security at the airport today. I didn’t notice any
difference. I replied to her cheerful announcement with “I guess
that son-of-a-bitch Bush couldn’t wait for his own deadline, could
he.” Boy, who knows how to piss in the party punch like I do?
There were shocked stares and plenty of glares my way, but it was silent
in the tram to the C gates for the rest of the trip.
On
Sunday I went to a prayer vigil for peace. There were about two-hundred
of us gathered around a dry fountain in front of the Federal Court House
at 7:00 that night. We held candles. We sang songs. We heard prayers
from Catholics, from Episcopalians, from Native American Shamans, Jews,
Moslems, and even an Atheist offered up some happy thoughts. I couldn’t
help but think this is hopeless—he’s going to do it anyway.
One heckler came by in the middle of the one of the prayers and started
shouting something about a “preemptive strike.” We drowned
him out with a rousing course of We Shall Overcome. We showed him. But
George launched his war anyway.
After
the prayers and songs, the heckling and overcoming, we moved from the
fountain to form a line on the sidewalk facing Las Vegas Boulevard—the
idea being that people driving the famed strip needed to be aware of
our “non-violent action.” One person at the rally objected
on the grounds that this action was a vigil, not a demonstration. It
seems to me that all public prayer is a demonstration of one thing or
another; think of George Bush somberly bowing his head in church on
the Sunday before he ordered the bombing of Iraq.
The
anti-war organizations in Las Vegas plan on meeting in front of New
York New York at 6:00 on the day the war breaks out. I guess that’s
today. I wanted to be there, but I’m on a flight to Reno right
now and will not be available to protest war. It can’t be helped;
I have to help open a bowling stadium there. One has to have priorities.
During
the last Bush administration, when he had his war with Saddam, I was
a student at Notre Dame. Not a lot of students there were in opposition
to that war either, but those of us who were protested anyway. On the
day when old George launched his Iraqi war I took to wearing a black
arm band. I wore it every day until the end of the war. I was known
on campus as “the guy protesting the war.” Occasionally
people asked me questions, I would respond. It was a small thing, but
something I could do. At that time, as I recall, 75 or 80 percent of
the American public were supportive of the first Bush war. Now it’s
only 65%. I supposed that there is some consolation in knowing that
the ranks of the sane have increased over the last twelve years.
I had
a lovely dinner tonight with my boss and two of my colleagues. I had
the triple cut lamb chops and the spinach salad. I eschewed the red
potatoes and homemade peasant bread as I’m on the Atkins diet.
But it was a celebration of the successful opening of the bowling stadium
so I did taste the sorbet and had a glass of the ninety dollar bottle
of wine we shared. What was it the abbot used to say on feast days in
the monastery? Oh yea, I remember: “Too bad about the poor!”
Too bad about the bombing in Iraq today. Yes, well that nasty Saddam
is going to get what he deservers! So true. What did he do again? I’m
not sure, pass the bonbons please.
Smart
bombs minimize collateral damage. Stupid presidents and a wool covered
public maximize it, however. Who thought of that term anyway? Collateral
Damage. I guess it’s easier for Tom Brokaw to say than something
like “Women and children blown to bits.” Likewise, it flows
better than “Elderly couple buried alive under the rubble of their
home for three days before they finally died.” Of course, the
phrase “Four year old boy’s leg amputated without anesthesia”
will damage the ratings of any six o’clock news broadcast. And
it’s tough to sing God Bless America when there’s a picture
of the rotting corpse of someone’s seventeen year old son on TV—even
if he was someone’s Iraqi son. Thank heaven the news media and
the public relations department of the military keep us protected from
these things.
I guess
we can call the death of innocent people collateral damage while eating
triple cut lamb chops because in point of fact, on the shores of this
country, we’ve never really faced the horrors of war. I wonder
if we had ever suffered the same level of death and destruction the
French did in WWII would we be so quick to dismiss them as obstructionist,
or would we be more like the British with 80% of us standing in opposition
to out-of-touch leadership? Well we’re not like the British at
all! We’ll order Freedom Fries rather than French Fries at McDonalds
and that’ll show those Frogs!
I bought
my first country western music the other day—something by the
Dixie Chicks. I don’t know what it is, I haven’t listened
to it. I still can’t tolerate country western music. But anyone
who pisses off the whole state of Texas deserves a twenty dollar contribution
from me. I agree with the Dixie Chicks; I’m ashamed of George
Bush. But unlike them—I’m not sorry I’ve said it.
“WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, WEAPONS
OF MASS DESTRUCTION” Said enough times it justifies everything.
The logic we’ve been convinced of is that any country that may
have WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION and that we feel may possibly threaten
us in the future we are justified in “preemptively” striking
to disarm and overthrow. I’m wondering if the French, knowing
that we have WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, and considering that George
Bush has all but said that they are no longer our allies, might feel
threatened by us and thus justified in preemptively striking Washington
DC and removing Bush from power. I for one might feel liberated if they
did.
The
war might last a week, a month, maybe three. It doesn’t make much
difference. No one doubts the outcome. It’s only the aftermath
that comes into question. But right now in these first few hours of
Iraq’s suffering, it’s the arguments we used to justify
it that are important. There is little room for ambiguity on the matter—one
is supportive of it, or one is opposed; very little grey here. Personally,
I can only come back to the theological ground in which my Christian
faith is rooted and ask does this meet the test of a “Just War”?
Clearly, the answer is no. But “Just War” is a theory of
theologians and philosophers. The real question a Christian has to ask
is ‘what would Jesus say?’
In
one of his Tales of The City books, Armisted Maupin tells the story
of Mary Ann Singleton, heroin and budding reporter, who was assigned
to cover the Holy Week story of Jesus Tortilla. It seemed that an apparition
of Christ had been discovered in a tortilla by a pious Mexican lady
in the East Bay area. A slow news day, the media’s hunger for
an Easter story with a novel twist, and poor Mary Ann’s low seniority
in the reporter pool landed her the choice assignment. Hours of work
trying to back light the edible savior in order to film it, nearly failed.
A spokesman for the church wouldn’t return her calls. A TV priest
wouldn’t comment. And the discoverer of the sacred pan doesn’t
speak English. In the end, for all of her hard work, Mary Ann’s
story ends up as the last 30 seconds of a San Francisco local news cast—no
one pays attention, an amusing footnote at the end of a slow news day.
What
would Jesus say? We don’t care. We will pay more attention if
he shows up in a tortilla than in the faces of the innocent dead.
Brice
Abel lives can be reached at: brice@counterpunch.org
Yesterday's Features
Daniel Wolff
A Road Trip in Wartime
Chris
Clarke
We Never Spit on Any Baby Killers
David Lindorff
Saddam, a Hero Made in Washington
Pierre
Tristam
Icarus on Crack: American Hubris and
Iraq
Jason Leopold
Richard Perle: the Enterprising Hawk
Saul
Landau
Technological Massacre
Carol Norris
The Mother of All Bombs
Riad
Abdelkarim, MD
Iraq War Lingo 101
Adam Engel
Schlock and Awe
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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