Text of your Cole article(his articles are lost easily if not copy and pasted as he does not give URLs for individual articles)
( Pre-Commentary:But first in remind that in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia our death by Napalm bombs and other incendiary bombs, by cluster bombs and by carpet bombing numbered in the millions.
As Harold Pinter spoke in his Nobel Sepech, America has somehow conned the world into not recognizing we are a country that exports ATROCIY. i say we should be known as The United States of Atrocity. Those that can salute an american flag are people, in the main, in dark ignorance of our real and hideous history . Starting with slavery and the systemactic attempted total genocide of native americans to the savagery of the Pinkertons, in the employ of our Corporate gods.
The raging days of the KKK, and mass lynchings by "nice respectable white people". People that after a lynching then had party times to socialize and celebrate their atrocity(that's the hard truth).
Those that believe in American Exceptionlism are indeed american racist supremacist that have merged their value system with Zionism.
That is why Israeli HardCore Zionism and American Exceptionalism fit so nicely.
That is why it is easy for Obama to go into a fanatic rant for Israel(one that would make the most fanatic zionist be pleased ) as American Exceptionalism and Zionism have become indistinguishable. Why? Because both draw from the same source the Old Testament, the original blueprint for The Chosen, The Exceptional, a religion based of racial purity that could, because they were favored by God go out a kill ever man woman and child of people not them.
Germany itself was only following the self-righteous supremacist blueprint of a people the presumed they had a special , for them only, Covenant with God.
For those that think this is BS, you haven't read the Old Testament
Also the vast majority of every hideous aspect of within The Koran came DIRECTLY from the Old Testament, as Mohammed acepted the Old Testament as the word of God, and the history of God began with the God of Abraham, that sadistic sicko, asked Abraham to kill his own son to prove he was LOYAL and Obedient to the ME ME ME, i God, the MEGALOMANIAC.
Now when Abraham went to slaughter his son(Sword raised); The G of A said "just kidding", just testing to see if you are blindly obedient , one of my BOTS--teehee.
Just go to this site and read if you dare.
The Dark Bible
Atrocities (only a few)
Back To Table Of Contents
Babylon is fallen
David slaughters them
Decapitate them!
Gideon slaughters
God buries them alive
God kills the firstborns!
God sends pestilence
God slaughters blacks
God's threat to kill
Godly head wounds
Godly mass murder
Kill all unbelievers
Kill man, woman, infant
King David's holocaust
Moses' mass murder
Nail his head!
Raping and killing
Shed the blood
Slaughter of innocents
Slay old and young
Stone the woman!
The survivors
Utter destruction, 1
Utter destruction, 2
Washing feet in blood
Blue words represent Bible quotes
nobeliefs.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------end commentary--max)
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Real State of Iraq
American television loves natural disasters. The Burmese cyclones that may have carried off as many as 200,000 people offered the cameras high drama.
The floods in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri along the Mississippi River, which have wiped out thousands of homes, have been carefully detailed hour by hour.
But American television is little interested in the massive disaster blithely visited upon Iraq by Washington. Oh, there is the occasional human interest story. Angelina Jolie's visit sparked a headline or two. Briefly.
By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. This conclusion can be reached more than one way. There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids by US fighter jets and helicopter gunships on densely populated city and town quarters.
In absolute numbers, that would be like bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.
Only, the US is 11 times more populous than Iraq, so 310,000 Iraqi corpses would equal 3.4 million dead Americans. So proportionally it would be like firebombing to death everyone in Chicago.
The one million number includes not just war-related deaths but all killings beyond what you would have expected from the 2000-2002 baseline. That is, if tribal feuds got out of hand and killed a lot of people because the Baath police were demobilized or disarmed and so no longer intervened, those deaths go into the mix. All the Sunnis killed in the north of Hilla Province (the 'triangle of death') when Shiite clans displaced from the area by Saddam came back up to reclaim their farms would be included. The kidnap victims killed when the ransom did not arrive in time would be included. And, of course, the sectarian, ethnic and militia violence, even if Iraqi on Iraqi, would count. And it hasn't been just hot spots like Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk. The rate of excess violent death has been pretty standard across Arab Iraq.
As for the Iraqis killed by Americans, like the 24 civilians in Haditha, the survivors are not going to be pro-American any time soon. The US can always find politicians to come out and say nice things on a visit to the Rose Garden. But the people. I don't think the people are saying nice things in Arabic behind our backs.
The wars of Iraq-- the Iran-Iraq War, the repressions of the Kurds and the Shiites, the Gulf War, and the American Calamity, may have left behind as many as 3 million widows. Having lost their family's breadwinner, many are destitute.
Although it is very good news that the number of Iraqis killed in political violence fell in May to 532 according to official sources, the number was twice that in March and April. And,it should be remembered that independent observers have busted the Pentagon for grossly under-reporting attacks and casualties. If someone shows up dead and they aren't sure exactly why, it isn't counted as political violence, just as an ordinary murder. Attacks per day are measured by whether the mortar shell scratches any US equipment when it explodes. If not, it didn't happen. McClatchy estimated a year and a half ago that attacks were being underestimated by a factor of 10.
By the way, isn't is a little odd that the death rate fell in the month of the Great Mosul Campaign? I conclude that either it can't have been much of a campaign or someone is cooking the death statistics.
But over 500 a month dead in political violence is appalling enough. The Srebenica massacre in 1995 killed 8,000. At the average rate of death in Iraq this winter and spring, a similar massacre will have been racked up in 2008. In the Northern Ireland troubles over 30 years, about 3,000 people died, and it was widely considered a bad situation. That death toll is still being achieved every 6 months in Iraq according to the official May statistics.
And, of course, by the rule of 11,that death toll would be like nearly 6,000 Americans dying in political violence every month, or 72,000 a year. (Note that this 72,000 figure would only be political deaths, since it does not include criminal homicides). The annual total murder rate in the US is about 16,000, including political violence, what little there is. The US is one of the most violent societies on earth, and Iraq in May makes it look like a pacifist convention.
In these situations, typically 3 persons are wounded for every one killed. In Iraq, I suspect it is higher, because US bombings and guerrilla bombings are such a big part of the violence. But let us be conservative.
That would mean 3 million Iraqi wounded in the past five years.
Equivalent to 33 million Americans wounded, that is, the entire state of California crippled or in bandages.
As for the displaced (i.e. homeless), they amount to a startling 5 million persons. There were 1.8 million internally displaced in January of 2007, and by December it had risen to 2.4 million. There are 2.3 million externally displaced, 2 million of them in Jordan and Syria.
In fact 5 million displaced persons is almost the entire population of nearby countries such as Jordan or Israel! 5 million is about the number of Jews in Israel, for instance. In absolute numbers, that is how many Iraqis are living in some other country or some other province, having lost their homes.
Some 1.4 million Iraqis are stuck in Syria, many becoming increasingly penniless. Another 500,000 to 800,000 have been displaced to Jordan, which has now closed its borders to them. Please read this excellent piece of reporting, which points out that the US has done diddly squat for these millions of people upon whom it has visited a world class catastrophe, neither allotting meaningful amounts of aid nor admitting more than a token number as immigrants. Sweden has admitted 40,000 Iraqis, nearly 4 times what the US even plans to. Please write the Senate and the Congress and demand that something be done for these, our victims.
40% of Iraq's middle class is outside the country.
Very few of the refugees abroad have returned, only a few thousand. Only 12% of the returnees say they are going back because they think it is safe now, according to UN border polls.
The refusal of the refugees to return makes me suspicious of the good news stories about security improvements in Iraq. There is an Arabic proverb that "The people of a house know best what is in the house."
2 Shiite brothers who returned home to Baquba an hour northeast of Baghdad were just kidnapped and killed by Sunnis.
5 million displaced Iraqis would be like 55 million displaced Americans, or the equivalent of everybody in California and New York combined
American commentators peculiarly lack a social dimension to their analyses. So if PM Nuri al-Maliki sends some troops up to Mosul and the guerrillas there lie low for a while, that is "progress" and "good news." Well, maybe it is, I don't know.
I do know that the apocalypse that the United States has unleashed upon Iraq is among the greatest catastrophes to befall any country in the past 50 years. It is a much worse disaster over time than the Burmese cyclone or the Mississippi floods.
You won't see it on television very much these days.
Even if it gets better, it won't get better very fast for all those millions wounded, widowed, orphaned, and displaced; as for the 1 million dead, as they say in Arabic, God have mercy on them (Allah yarhamhum). Maybe it will get better sooner for the politicians in the Green Zone. They are the sort of people that the think tanks in Washington seem to care about.
Juan Cole. |
