The Super Bowl of war

So in Iraq the US has what many call a Vietnam. There are a lot of parallels you can draw between the two wars and a lot of people are doing so. They’re the ones using the word “quagmire” a lot. It’s a detrimental term meant to reflect poorly on the one caught in the “quagmire” (the US). It also serves to dehumanize the opponent as a sucking force from which the US should disentangle itself before more harm comes to it. The harm inflicted on the country being called the quagmire is implicitly pushed to the background.

Interesting parallels can also be drawn between US colonization of Iraq and the continued Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands. I’m defining colonization as the act of bringing new land under an existing country’s administrative control. In both cases, it’s done by overwhelming military means. In both cases, all existing inhabitants are terrorists or potential terrorists or aiding and abetting the enemy. In both cases, civilian targets are allowed in that any kill is defined as a non-civilian target (was potentially aiding and abetting terrorists).

The logisitics are slightly different: Iraq is much larger and will therefore take much longer to encircle with a wall. So, let’s turn instead to the military means being used in the invasion of Iraq. Get Out Now by John Pilger (Common Dreams) discusses the number of people killed since last March. As the US approaches a death toll of 600 soldiers, its own “tremendously precise” attacks “…have now killed at least 11,000 civilians, according to Amnesty [International] and others. … The overall figure, including conscripts, may be as high as 55,000.”

What of the means? What of the fearsome firepower commanded by the US? Pilger talks of “10,000 American troops [who] have … died” since the last Gulf War from exposure to the “[s]olid uranium … used on shells”. The damage to Iraq was, predictably, much worse:

“Tens of thousands of Iraqis − men, women and children − were contaminated. Right through the 1990s, at international symposiums, I watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense and ask, plead, for help with decontamination … describing the deaths and horrific deformities, and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic.”

That was the last Gulf War, in the early 90s. In the new war in Iraq, the weapon of choice is still depleted Uranium. Apparently the horrors of this weapon fell on deaf ears and the damage done to the conquered territory, its people and the conquering soldiers is well and truly all the same to those pulling the strings. To what other conclusion can you possibly come?

“During last year’s invasion, both American and British forces again used uranium-tipped shells, leaving whole areas so “hot” with radiation that only military survey teams in full protective clothing can approach them. No warning or medical help is given to Iraqi civilians; thousands of children play in these zones. The “coalition” has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to send experts to assess what Rokke describes as “a catastrophe”.”

With this refusal, the massive propaganda machine rolls forward, perhaps more inexorably than the military one, covering tracks, denying rumors, disallowing evidence and suppressing the truth. There will be no analysis of the ‘hot zones’. In a fear years, we will simply deny that they ever existed. No wonder it’s hard to find weapons of mass destruction. The geiger counters must be popping pretty much everywhere over there by now. Liberation indeed.

Also predictably, the soldiers are imbued with a certain bloodlust, being spurred onward to use any means necessary to subdue these fiends, these enemies of America. They’re so lost in their commands, they don’t even notice that they’re conquering a land 6000 miles from the US: a proposition hard to interpret as defense of US borders by any but those most indoctrinated and hardened to the influx of logic and morals of any kind.

Witnessing Fallujah’s Suffering (AlterNet) describes attacks that violate the Geneva conventions, because the vehicle “might” be carrying weapons, it must be stopped:

“An ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver’s side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have most likely hit the driver’s chest (the snipers were on rooftops, and are trained to aim for the chest). I also saw a second ambulance, again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield.”

A long story from April 11th − Falluja is an on-the-spot report from a British reporter who was in Falluja during “the savage reprisal that has killed 600 Iraqis, including an estimated 200 women and over 100 children”. All, ostensibly, for the murder of 4 US civilians. He tells of riding with the ambulances and of being shot at in an ambulance:

“The ambulance has been repaired four times after bullet damage. Bodies are lying in the streets because no one can go to collect them without being shot.”

Sure, it might actually be an ambulance, going to pick up an “18-year-old girl, shot in the head” or “a child of about ten … with a bullet wound to the head … [or] A smaller child is being treated for a similar injury in the next bed.”. But you can’t be sure with these people, when the US Marines interpert “Anything under forty five. No lower limit.” as fighting age.

It’s this dehumanization of the enemy that always works wonders on the death tolls. Everybody’s a legitimate target because the enemy is, to the very last person, evil beyond reckoning, and wouldn’t hesitate to exact even worse atrocities if given half a chance. So you have to do it to them first. It’s our only chance of survival, don’t you see? Once US troops are in harm’s way in a foreign land, they are allowed to do anything to protect themselves; there are no morals to consider, survival is at stake. The question of why they are in harm’s way is a traitorous one. The question of who put them there and why, more so.

Do US troops deserve to die more than the people they’re fighting when they’re conquering foreign land? Well, they are the ones doing the invading, regardless that they’re “just following orders”. The people they are fighting are “just defending their homes against an invading army”. Whose cause is more noble? I’d say it’s pretty clear.

Witness the sheer glee that this article, Marines Use Low-Tech Skill to Kill 100 in Urban Battle (NY Times), exhudes over the skill of our killing machines. All moral considerations are long since thrown out the window at the Times. There is no hand-wringing about all the death and destruction our boys are visiting on today’s victims and that we, with our tax dollars, our constantly fueling.

The article starts off by defining the resistance for us as having “an acute willingness among insurgents to die” and the commander there said that “A lot of these guys were souped up on jihad”. See how strange these people are? How can we ever hope to understand them? They seem willing to die for their cause, whatever that is (how can we, as Westerners, ever plumb the insane depths of the Middle Eastern terrorists’ mind?) Did you ever see Starship Troopers? Everyone on this planet is a ‘Bug’ to a well-programmed American soldier.

The Times goes on to gleefully portray how movie-like the whole assault on Falluja was (see above about the Iraqi civilian death-toll):

“They were throwing a whole lot of lead at us, and we were throwing a whole lot back.”

Ohmygod! I’m on the edge of my seat! Hold on, hit Pause, I gotta take a leak and get some more snacks. You want a brewski?

“marines punched “mouseholes,” just big enough for gun barrels, in the brick walls of the homes they occupied. They also smashed windows to scatter shards of glass across the front steps. … This is classic urban warfare,“ said Maj. Gen. Jim Mattis, commander of the First Marine Division. “It’s all the stuff World War II taught us, along with Korea, Vietnam and Somalia. People will be studying Falluja for years to come.”

See how cool this is? What a learning opportunity? There speaks a man who doesn’t really expect to die in this conflict; he knows his weaponry far outpowers that of the enemy. If all else fails, call in an air strike to ‘soften them up’ a bit. Just like in all the movies. But, despite the overwhelming artillery advantage, the Marines are careful to weave in the last Hollywood cliche: the underdog.

“It’s their Super Bowl,” said Maj. T. V. Johnson, a Marine spokesman. “Falluja is the place to go if you want to kill Americans.”

Thanks for bringing us back down to Earth there, NY Times. I’d forgotten that the US is losing one soldier for every 100 Iraqis killed. I hope the Marines can overcome these harsh odds and somehow, nonetheless, prevail.

And thanks for the sound bite: ‘Falluja is the Super Bowl of Iraq’. I can hear the scribbling of the next generation of American history textbooks being prepared for the next generation of brainwashed youths/soldiers.