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Open Letter Over the Memorial Day Weekend

By David Peterson at May 27, 2007

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   As a resource for the online public sphere, Truthout's consistently U.S.-
   centric point of view -- e.g., 980 U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq since
   memorial Day 2006; untold commentaries lamenting how the current
   regime's wars are damaging the imperial project -- not only greatly
   diminishes its progressivism.  But by saying us, us, us, it also discourages Americans -- Truthout's No. One audience -- from recognizing just how much damage they're causing not just to themselves, but the entire world.  

That the current regime's wars are damaging to the imperial project is clear, at least in the short-term; this is why so many members of the general staff have rebelled.

But unlike the Generals and the former "intelligence"-types and the principals behind the Iraq Study Group, all of whom seek to rescue the empire before it collapses, I don't look at the planet from the trigger-end of a gun, and try to figure out how to improve its aim. 
   
Question: Were those 980 dead U.S. soldiers dispatched to Iraq to help the Iraqis -- who happen to be doing almost all of the dying, please note well?  Or were the 980 sent there as killers and oppressors?  The difference is a fundamental one, it seems to me.

I know, a question like this may not make you popular at barbecues this weekend.  And anybody willing to ask it probably won't be invited onto The View.

But it sure does strike me as appropriate.  Something worth asking.  Something that any truly progressive resource would place before the American public, front and center.  Particularly over the Memorial Day weekend.  (Keep it in mind for the Fourth of July, too.)

After all, does Truthout believe that the imperial project ought to be defeated?  Or that it ought succeed -- just carried out even more effectively?

Think about it. 

Mental Health Advisory Team IV Information (Homepage), Army Medical Department, Office of the Surgeon General
Final Report: Mental health Advisory Team (MHAT) IV, Operation Iraqi Freedom (05-07), November 17, 2006 
"Mental Health Advisory Team IV Findings Released," Jerry Harben, US Army Medical Command Public Affairs, May 4, 2007

"One-Third of Troops in Iraq Support Torture, Majority Condone Mistreating Innocent Civilians," Winslow Wheeler, AlterNet, May 24, 2007 

"Study: Half of war vets have psych issues," Kelly Kennedy, Army Times, June 4, 2007 
War-Related Illness and Injury Study Center (Homepage), U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, New Jersey

"I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty," Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Post, May 27, 2007
"Historian Reflects On War and Valor And a Son's Death," Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2007 

"'Good Riddance Attention Whore'," Cindy Sheehan, Daily Kos, May 28, 2007
"Cindy Has Earned a Rest," William Rivers Pitt, Truthout, May 30, 2007

"Cindy Sheehan," ZNet, February 8, 2006

David Peterson
Chicago, USA

Update (June 17): How does one best convey what misleadingly is referred to as the human cost of the U.S. war on Iraq?  (Misleading, that is, because, short of pathology, human beings and costs are categorically distinct.  Human beings are never costs.   Human beings are goods in themselves.)

Anyway.  Does one count and memorialize the number of U.S. casualties?  Does one do likewise for Iraqi casualties?  For both?  Is there a difference? 

My own position has always been closer to the second of these two exhibits:

Eyes Wide Open, American Friends Services Committee mobile exhibit, first opened in January, 2004 

Dreams and Nightmares, American Friends Service Committee mobile exhibit on life and death in Iraq

In its statement on the latter of these two exhibits, the AFSC -- as good an organization as there has been working in the States since World War I -- tells us that it is "a memorial to Iraqis who have lost their lives in the war and occupation. With photographs, names and personal stories, it conveys the unseen side of the war in Iraq -- the tragedy being experienced by everyday Iraqis. Careful estimates put Iraqi deaths at more than at 655,000 -- most of them civilians."

On the other side, consider (on top of the hyperlinks I've provided above): 
"The War Inside," Dana Priest and Anne Hull, Washington Post, June 17, 2007 (as posted to Truthout).

Just remember that throughout all of this important literature about the mental damage caused to U.S. troops, the point of view remains wholly Amerocentric. -- Peace, most assuredly, is not. 

For something truly vast, imagine, instead, what kind of mental and emotional wounds our brave heroes are inflicting on the populations of the countries that the United States has invaded.

 

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (5)

Person

Andrew Bacevich is a guy

By Ajit, Ajit at May 29, 2007 02:50 AM

Andrew Bacevich is a guy who wants to run the empire efficiently. I read his review of Noam Chomsky's book "Hegemony or Survival" in Washington Post. It was so ridiculous.

Now in the post article he claims both he and his son were doing their duty. Oh really! Some people never learn anything. Every True Sucker for every oligarchy throughout history said the same thing. Just doing their duty. The way these people treat something like Nation as some homogeneous entity is very impressive.

Bacevich opposes Iraq War for the simple reason it is unwinnable. If US is winning he couldn't have cared less for the war.

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Person

Mandatory amnesia

By Kissenger, Clark at May 27, 2007 20:02 PM
Mandatory amnesia and selective horror is part of the package of Imperialism, regardless of who goes down that lawless path. John Newsinger covers both issues well in his new book on the British Empire (which to confirm his thesis has been totally ignored by mainstream media in UK).

Only on rare occassions and for external reasons--such as at the Battle of Omdurman, where the value of the machine gun against massed charges was realized and the ratio of deaths, 1:200, held important military implications--does the Imperial power tally native deaths.

For anyone interested in the topic, following are links to MP3 audio interviews. The first is John Newsinger on the British Empire, and the second is a comparative analysis of modern empires, including--hopefully--the last one left in the business.

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Person

Fox News

By Kissenger, Clark at May 27, 2007 17:41 PM
Fox News reported of the “disputed” and “controversial” Lancet Iraqi 600,000+ death figure, that “at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings”: Fox News This reminds me of the Vice President Cheney's 1% doctrine: which seems to say to me that you have a 99% chance of being wrong when you act, or that one out of 100 jurors is necessary for a guilty verdict (and this doctrine is still taken seriously in some circles- e.g. Stephen D. Krasner - NB: Policy Planning Staff). SK: I too thought that Adorno's “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” comment was either misunderstood or misplaced. To quote Sylvester Stallone: “Rambo isn't violent, I see Rambo as a philanthropist.” I like David's line better, “I don't look at the world from the trigger-end of a gun.” I'm not sure if humor is appropriate in the presence of so much death: maybe black humor. US-centrically, we should support our troops' lives, not their misguided mission, by pulling them out of Iraq ASAP, IMO. Hopefully, the lives saved would not just be our own (for too many, it's too late for new memories).

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Person

Worthy and unworthy corpses

By Kissenger, Clark at May 27, 2007 17:22 PM
David, I hear an implication that, when you just count "your own" dead, you are revealing your own myopic selfishness. It's one of the first things a foreigner notices after a few weeks in the US. If, say, a ferry sinks in the Baltic and 60 lives are lost (5 of whom are American), the US media will headline "Five Americans Die in Ferry Disaster." Anywhere else the headline would be "60 Die in Ferry Disaster." I discovered very early that Americans (even supposedly enlightened ones like readers of this blog I daresay) don't see how ghastly this is, how grisly. The only good thing about it is that it's a clear, unambiguous signal--even clearer in its unconscious savagery--of what American culture is really like, a deep dark warren of selfish greed always ready to harden into atavistic sadism. Poe got it right at the very start. T

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Person

Next year at the same time

By Kissenger, Clark at May 27, 2007 14:15 PM
Next year at the same time we'll be celebrating further progress in the promotion of Democracy.

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