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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
27, 2003
Somebody Blew Up Baghdad
Bush
Plays MacDill
By ANTHONY GANCARSKI
And
on the sixth day, the Lord gave us a double-digit body count. AP reports
an Iraqi Defense official claim that 14 civilians were killed by 2 US
cruise missiles that hit the Al-Shaab section of northern Baghdad. As
the report puts it, "the area consists of homes and about 30 shops,
mostly inexpensive restaurants and auto repair shops."
Sounds like auto
repair is going to be the least of the survivors' worries. These folks
undoubtedly will have funerals to get all gussied up for, and then there's
the ceremonial grabbing for supplies from the outstretched white hand
of a US serviceman. And the kissing of Ahmed Chalabi's ring when he
helicopters in with Michael Jackson, Bono, and Chris Hitchens, of course.
But, yeah, anyway, a few civilians died for Democracy.
But no one really
knows how it happened. Fox News pin-up Geraldo Rivera maintains that
they could be US missiles, but blames the whole nasty business on a
sandstorm. CentCom is ducking responsibility. Good thing this was just
an military mix-up and not, say, a paternity suit. Because "we
don't know that those are ours" rarely flies in court.
But God knows this
war isn't about legalities. This war, like Bush said Wednesday at MacDill
AFB in Florida, is all about helping out the "long-suffering Iraqi
people." But this campaign of unabashed generosity, which we here
in America call "shock-n-awe", has run into some obstruction.
Not Tom Daschle
type obstruction, where one does a press conference with a flow chart
and a weatherman's pointer and a grimace like the "Before"
picture for a Metamucil print advert. No, this here is real obstruction.
With guns mounted to pick-up trucks, and the cold, steely determination
of natives struggling to repel an unwanted horde of invaders.
Because that's exactly
what American troops are. The mendacious US media can dredge up Iraqi
atrocities from the Reagan era all it wants; left unmentioned by them
is our role in facilitating a war between Iran and Iraq with no benefits
for the people of either country.
Left unmentioned
as well, amidst the constant barrage of interviews with retired generals
and Presidential pep rallies at military bases, is the fact that this
Iraqi war is a result of consistent failures of statesmanship by the
Washington government, which clearly lacks the ability to resolve its
own conflicts without the use of decisive force.
Two shooting wars
in two years of President Bush, Secretary of State Powell, Rumsfeld,
Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice, and their policy experts and assorted
hangers-on. Two of these, and more to come.
It's antithetical
to the American character, assuming there is still such a thing. The
sight of the President at MacDill stumbling through his lines yet again,
posing like a tough guy in front of a wall of the sort of poor men and
women who die for the rich. Never before has he looked so ill at ease
in the role, so much like a CEO running late for his pedicure, as when
he confused Afghanistan for Iraq during the speech. Good thing he didn't
say Iran, or Michael Ledeen's performance bonus would've kicked in.
Bush's lips betrayed
him, and those poor soldiers behind him, but enlightened the American
people. The twitching form of the Commander-In-Chief suggests that he's
starting to see why folks used to say that war was hell, and that people
were better off avoiding fights they weren't prepared to finish.
Iraqi men, whether
regular soldiers or just civilians, don't miss the symbolism in the
US mounting its news models to the hoods of tanks and allowing them
to provide play-by-play of the stirring march of Baghdad. They see the
casualness with which US talking heads justify an assault on their homeland
in its proper context; as an unmistakable, ritualistic humiliation.
For how can it not
be humiliating? How many times are we going to be subjected to effectively
pornographic images of debased Iraqis before we understand exactly why
they are there? They aren't there to inform us, but to manipulate us.
To provide a pretext for an authoritarian imposition of "American
idealism" with unprecedented, catastrophic force.
Anthony
Gancarski's columns run regularly in CounterPunch. Emails are
welcome at ANTHONY.GANCARSKI@ATTBI.COM
Yesterday's Features
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
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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