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Recent
Stories
April
18, 2003
Uri
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Operation "Syrian Freedom":
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Jorge
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"They Died Trying to Become
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Mickey
Z:
Coalition of the Unindicted: Only Losers Get Tried for War Crimes
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Syria and the Road to World War IV
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Matania
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Jews Like Us
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My Lai Revisited
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Support Our Euphemism
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War Web Log 4/18
Website
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April
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Michel
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April 19,
2003
Pillaging the
Baghdad Zoo
Animals,
the Other Collateral Damage
by
MICKEY Z.
According to the Bahrain Gulf Daily News (April
18, 2003) looters have emptied Baghdad zoo of its animals "Monkeys,
bears, horses, birds and camels have disappeared, carted off
by thieves or simply left to roam the streets after their cages
were prised open," the paper reported. "More than 300
animals are missing--only the lions and tigers remain."
And the big cats are starving.
This news got me thinking about an earlier"shock
and awe" campaign.
On February 13-14, 1945, Allied bombers
laid siege to the German city of Dresden. With the famous animal
trainer, Otto Sailer-Jackson ran the extremely popular Dresden
Zoo. As the bombing commenced, Sailer-Jackson was forced to consider
the standing Nazi order that if human life was endangered, all
carnivores must be shot. However, before he could take the lives
of his beloved big cats, a new wave of bombers set the zoo ablaze.
The animal trainer recalled the scene:
"The elephants gave spine-chilling
screams. Their house was still standing but an explosive bomb
of terrific force had landed behind it, lifted the dome of the
house, turned it round, and put it back on again... The baby
cow elephant was lying in the narrow barrier-moat on her back,
her legs up to the sky. She had suffered severe stomach injuries
and could not move."
Three hippopotamuses were drowned when
iron debris pinned them to the bottom of their water basin. In
the ape house, Sailer-Jackson found a gibbon that, when it reached
out to the trainer, had no hands, only stumps. Nearly forty rhesus
monkeys escaped to the trees but were dead by the next day from
drinking water polluted by the incendiary chemicals. For those
animals that made it to the next day, the assault was far from
over. A U.S. aircraft pilot came in low, firing at anything he
could see was still alive. "In this way," Sailer-Jackson
explained, "our last giraffe met her death. Many stags and
others animals which we had managed to save became victims of
this hero."
When a man or woman acts in a particularly
repulsive manner, they are commonly and derisively called "an
animal." Like most everything, we humans have it backwards.
Mickey Z.
is the author of The
Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet
and an editor at Wide Angle.
He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
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