"A human being materialized out of the gloom, an eerie, unintelligible chant issuing from what was once its lips. Stumbling, weaving, then falling to its knees and crawling, it crept toward us. It was a child - boy or girl I couldn't tell - and its charred skin was literally melting, leaving a trail of viscous fluid in its wake. Its face had no recognizable features. The top of its skull shone through the last layer of scorched membrane on its head. Not more than ten yards from us it fell on its side, its kneecaps exposing like the yolks of poached eggs. It twitched once or twice in the dust, gave a final wheeze, then went still in the puddle of molten flesh that formed around it in the dust ... Later it was run over by a car. No one would ever know what happened to that child." (Thomas Kiernan, The Arabs, 1978)
With grim and moving imagery Kiernan's words reveals the true horrors of American-made phosphorous bombs that rained down on unarmed Lebanese villages and Palestinian refugee camps. Like the Arabian child he describes being eaten alive by modern war technology, multitudes of people have suffered similar horrifying fates as victims of other wars.
1991 Iraq War - Ghost from the Past
It has been many years since the highly sensational 1991 Persian Gulf War stunned the whole world with its dark and eerie drama. The great suspense (but never the reality) was captured live for millions of viewers, peering curiously into electronic screens in their safe homes, far away from the scene of many nightmarish acts. No one really knew what was exactly going on down there in Iraq, way below, not even the pilots flying high above the marks of their targets. Of course, no one still knows, except those who were there, and many of them are not alive to tell the tale.
And yet -- as with most modern tragedies -- the horrendous event now seems a mere ghost, brought alive only through a second resurrection of yet another attack by George Bush Jr. (whose father initiated the first 1991 war when Saddam Hussein invaded oil-rich Kuwait). Saddam Hussein, a man many Iraqis hated, became confused by Americans with the average Iraqi citizen.
Known as one of the most sterilized wars in history (due to censorship of photos and information) the 1991 Gulf War had much support, and came across as a very clean and antiseptic war. This was far from truth and laid the seeds of an awful plant that would take root only later, in 2003.
Perhaps worst of all, the 1991 Persian Gulf War was never questioned or thoroughly investigated with much depth, certainly not by those who waged it. The UN sanctions against Iraq seem tantamount to the crime of genocide, as hundreds of thousands innocent Iraqis perished during that time through starvation, including many children. Indeed, it was a massacre. Some estimates place the 1991 death toll at over one million Iraqi dead from the UN sanctions alone, although no one really kept track of Iraqi deaths.
1991 Iraqi Casualties
Ramsey Clark in The Tragedy of War as an End in Itself said,"In response to the question how many [Iraqi] soldiers and civilians were killed in Iraq in the war, General Colin Powell told the New York Times on March 23: 'It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.'"
Perhaps Powell should have been interested in the figures as it's an ugly remark for the pages of history, reminiscent of brutal Indian killers of the Wild West who, in their arrogance and ignorance, never saw a Native American as a human being.
Reduced to dire poverty and mass starvation the Iraqi people suffered unspeakably. Post-traumatic stress disorder contributed heavily to the destruction of healthy lives. Children were dying everywhere and many desperate mothers, widowed from the heavy casualties, turned to prostitution (in a country where women are heavily judged on sexual morals) in order to help keep their families alive. Disease and mortality rates soared while the rest of the world did not know or care.
With Iraq's infrastructure completely destroyed in 1991, the famously ancient Tigress and Euphrates rivers, heavily contaminated and polluted, became toxic. Many thousands of Iraqis perished from their bombed water supplies; the embargo even prohibited common medications (such as enough needed antibiotics) for treatable diseases. Iraqi civilians, including countless children, were held down as they screamed in hospital rooms to have their shattered legs and decaying arms amputated by doctors who could offer no anesthesia or pain killers.
Leading up to the 900 Billion Dollar War
After 2003, the country of Iraq became torn apart and fragmented by opposition groups born of unending chaos. Bombed back to the Stone Ages (a boastful mantra by Americans in 1991), Iraq became a very dark vacuum; a void is always quickly filled, as the saying goes.
Iraq lay in utter chaos when Western democracy was imposed on it from without. Certain things cannot be forced and democracy is one of them -- the use of force is directly antithesis to the very concept of democracy. Iraq became the target for a war of democracy and the word thus lost its very meaning.
This veiled attempt to occupy a country's resources is not the genuine democracy being sought in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, where masses of people are rising up against dictorships from within. This doesn't mean Iraqis do not want democracy or freedom, but a foreign power certainly cannot create a movement of the people.
Freedom as a Right
Civilians should not suffer for a dictator’s crimes, but they always do. In contemporary warfare more civilians are killed than soldiers. In the case of Iraq, soldiers had to fight or be executed. If humanity is to evolve, one must remember to recognize (and clearly differentiate) a people from the politics of a government. The former is a soul, the latter an institution.
The enemy feared in war is not even a human one, but a political one; thus conflicts are not id
eally fought with weapons haphazardly destroying humankind, wildlife, and the earth. Before rushing to use human bodies as perishable sacrifices, man must first do battle with his heart, his morality, his spirit, and his mind.
Everywhere on earth sane people (regardless of race or creed) wish to enjoy a life free from the specter of war and its attendants. There is no basic difference between the needs of different people living in one world. After all, freedom is not only an American ideal, but the birthright and aspiration of all living creatures.
Sources
- Voices from Our Conscience, Death in the Land of Two Rivers (out-of-print book), P. Mari, 1995
- The Tragedy of War as an End in Itself , Ramsey Clark, March 8, 2003.
- .The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Global War on Terror Operations since 9/11, Amy Belasco, Specialist in U.S. Defense Policy and Budget, September 2, 2010, CRS Report for Congress.
- Review of Iraq Sanctions And Washington's Iraq Policies
- America: A Beacon, Not a Policeman, Review of Iraq Sanctions and Washington's Policies
- World History Archives, The History of Economic Sanctions on the Republic of Iraq (1991-2002)
Paula Marie Deubel - Published author/writer/journalist/poet I've always written under the pen name "P. Mari," an abbreviation of my full name. I have ...
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