Down South Perspective

STATES OF DENIAL (Part Two)
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
–George Orwell

Aside from Bob Woodward, there’s another journalist who used to have a modicum of integrity but who is now a sniveling toady of the powers that be: Christopher Hitchens. In the April, 2006 issue of Vanity Fair Hitchens describes how Bush and Tony Blair, in a meeting back on April 16, 2004 were discussing the possibility of bombing the Al Jazeera office in Qatar, Al Jazeera being a news organization that’s critical of Bush/Blair. Hitchens mentions this in the context of his trying to get U.S. citizenship, saying that since he had once visited an Al Jazeera office, he might be considered to have had “contact with suspected-terrorist targets”; he infers that this wouldn’t look good on his citizenship application.

What Hitchens seems to have forgotten (since he doesn’t see fit to mention it) is that blowing up the offices of a news organization is at the very least a war crime, most likely outright aggression (since Quatar is a neutral country in the “war”), a crime for which Nazi’s were executed. Assuming that deaths would have resulted from the bombing Bush and Blair were discussing, Hitchens also seems to have forgotten that fellow journalists, if it’s appropriate to label Hitchens thus, would have been slaughtered; this seems to bother him not a whit, nor does it occur to him that if Bush has no problem in murdering journalists who do no agree with him, Hitchens himself might eventually be a target, should he ever revert back to his critical views of Bush and his gang. (Plus, he is, currently at least — like the Al Jazeera folks he sees no problem in murdering — a foreign journalist.)* (Please scroll to the bottom for the footnotes; it's best if you do this as you go.)

I find this chilling. Be advised, though, that I am not chilled that Bush would conspire (with another head of state) to murder journalists – biz as usual. What is chilling is that Hitchens’ state of denial** could be so deep-rooted that he doesn’t notice the implication thereof (that he himself might someday be a Bush/Blair target of assassination).

A more serious upshot of the state of denial phenomenon – which is the standard mode for not only individuals (Hitchens, say)*** but various sociopathic closed systems (the media, say) – is that it can have disastrous effects on the agenda that motivated the lies that are at the bottom of the denial in the first place. An obvious example is Bush’s catastrophic “miscalculation” that the Iraqis would welcome his invading force “with open arms.” Although it’s unlikely that many tears were shed over the toppling of Saddam, consider the history – meaning the real history, not the perception-managed media rewrite of it (via Bob Woodward, for one) – of U.S. involvement with Iraq over the past quarter century. Here’s a very brief recap, and let’s try to Put Ourselves In An Average Iraqi’s Place:

In 1991 the U.S. attacks your country, and, aside from killing who knows how many rank and file soldiers,**** destroys the civilian infrastructure (to create chaos and desperation amongst the populace), which (oh-by-the-way) is a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions, plus the U.N. Charter (both of which the U.S. not only signed but largely formulated). So “collateral damage,” a.k.a. civilian deaths, are not only due to direct military action but also the long-term effects of no power (hospitals need it), a dearth of potable water and so forth.  Then, the war “won,” for the ensuing decade the U.S. subjects your country to more civilian infrastructure destruction, plus illegal economic sanctions (defined by international law as “economic terrorism”) that result in the deaths of 500,000 people, virtually all civilians, a high percentage of which are infants and young children (who are most in need of the unavailable food, medicine, potable water, etc.). These sanctions were supposedly meant to weaken Saddam.

Since the decade-long de facto slaughter of your countrymen took place mostly during the Clinton presidency, let’s see what his Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, had to say about it. Albright, when asked on 60 Minutes if the deaths of a half million civilians was worth the effect, she replied, “Yes, we think it was worth it.”***** She and her boss thought it was “worth it” in the face of the warnings of virtually every Middle East authority that the sanctions would in fact strengthen Saddam, not weaken him. And, as predicted, the sanctions had nothing to do with Saddam’s exit. I wonder if Clinton/Albright still think those half million corpses were “worth it.” How about you, in your Average Iraqi persona? How are your arms doing? Do they feel like “opening”?†

Then, in 2003, came Bush’s “Shock and Awe,” which for you and your loved ones translated to “Death and Maiming,” mostly via indiscriminate bombing of urban centers.  (Here, as an Average Iraqi, you might also recall the 2003 “Cut the head off the serpent” smart bombing of a civilian restaurant that killed 18 civilians, missing Saddam, who was lunching elsewhere.)

Although, again, there is no official body count for “unworthy victims” like you and your countrymen, we have to assume that as a result of military action and economic sanctions the total dead from U.S. “policy” toward your country since 1991 is approaching one million.

But, Bush’s perception management machine would argue, the U.S. has rid your country of a brutal dictator; that is not arguable, right? In Putting Ourselves In an Average Iraqi’s Place, let’s go along with this argument and assume that we hated Saddam with a passion; let’s even assume we ourselves were tortured by his regime and, further, lost a loved one via his mass murdering of dissidents.

There’s another problem here, though, for the “open arms” theory: Unlike with Bob Woodward’s “definitive history” of U.S. relations with Iraq, in our little recap we’re going to leave in the decade of the 1980s, which was when the worst of Saddam’s crimes were perpetrated. (I refer to Woodward’s Plan of Attack, in which he omitted the decade of the 1980s from his history of U.S./Iraqi relations. Presumably, Woodward did this because during the 1980s the U.S. and Saddam were close allies.)†† So for you as an Average Iraqi, the memory of Saddam and his inhumanity is inextricably tied to direct U.S. support, even to the torture we personally underwent; the equipment and methods having been at least in part CIA supplied. (The torture of course continued on during the U.S. occupation, at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.)

And if in your Average Iraqi persona you’re a Kurd or have Kurd loved ones – and since no one (like Bob Woodward) rewrote history for you — you will likely remember that the helicopters with which Saddam dropped poison gas on you or your loved ones were supplied by the United States, as were the chemical components used to make the poison gas. This was in 1988, with foreknowledge of what Saddam would use the choppers and chemicals for.†††

Yes, if you include the 1980s in your history of U.S. relations with Iraq the total number of Average Iraqis dead as a direct result of U.S. “policy” comes to well over a million. And we’re not even counting the failed 1991 coup against Saddam (after the first Gulf War), in which the rebellious forces seeking to overthrow Saddam were put down with the help of the U.S. military.††††Deaths of the anti-Saddam forces are estimated in the tens of thousands. Perhaps in your Average Iraqi persona, at least one of the anti-Saddam rebels was a loved one.

Point being: Aside from the handful of toadies installed in the new puppet regime, it’s difficult to imagine even one Iraqi, Average or otherwise, that has not been subjected to U.S. “policy” – a friend or loved one killed by violence or economic sanctions, or  maimed or tortured.

One million equals about 1 in 25 Iraqis dead. If translated to the U.S., which has about ten times the population of Iraq, we’d be contemplating 10 million U.S. citizens killed.

Can you wrap your mind around that number?

A question for Bush and his gang: What state of denial were you living in with your “open arms” theory? (A similar question for Bob Woodward: What State of Denial were you living in that you failed to point out any of this in your definitive books on the Bush presidency and its relations with Iraq?)

One more question for both Bush and Bob: Are you really surprised that 95% of the “insurgents” in Iraq are Average Iraqis, and that in their “open arms” are cradled AK 47s or RPGs?

An observation: It’s one thing for Bush and his gang (with the collusion of Bob Woodward) to rewrite history, to perception-manage the truth behind their greed-driven empire-building, but quite another when they themselves believe the rewrite. We are now going beyond the world of the normal, healthy State of Denial Woodward (plus Hitchens, plus most of the American public) inhabit.

We are now exiting that State of Denial and entering the state of full-blown insanity. 

Okay. Just one more (I CAN’T HELP MYSELF!). Click here to go to State of Denial (Part Three). 

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