NSC Editorial Comment
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| Ray Stevenson |
We frequently see or hear in today’s media, the casual, "oh-so-cleverly" but basically correct observation that "truth is war’s first casualty". That rather sinister adage, is used by pundits to hide or perhaps resurrect at least a small part of shredded and shriveled bits of humane conduct…even compassion surviving among humans…after it is blown to pieces by those who make war. Perhaps it could assist media workers whose conscience is damaged by being forced to transmit the ghastly killing sprees and criminal results created by the "coalition of eager and willing" that have saddled war and its crimes on confused by essentially innocent lives of ordinary humans. This remains true whether in Iraq, or any other place where hundreds of millions have died under incoherent violence (en extremus) created by the warlords of super-profiteering Imperialism.
As never before media "exposure" has become integral to the "psychological warfare" exercised by the war makers…all too often assuming the proportions of the "Big Lie" of Nazi infamy. Another ancient edict says "he who pays the piper calls the tune". Thus, even a cursory scrutiny of corporate monopoly controls of "public information" in every form of media broadcast and publication…where ever "war" produced by corporate bosses exists, "public information" is presented in the form of "body-counts", bloody and enormous tragedy, plus depraved depiction of bottom of the heap misery pain and death. Also presented as "colour" exposure are exploits of begrimed and uniformed killers. All are of top "media" priority. The inter-monopoly media competition dictates and ever-descending spiral into the noxious display of the most obscene and the totally inhuman.
As a general rule, respect of dismembered, splattered, burned or evaporated corpses comes last in the litanies of "modern war" while "show-biz" reports show gross mutilations and indignities on fellow humans. Too often such reports are top run priority for the mass media "coverage." "Ghastliness" supersedes all "respect" in ghoulish inverse proportions. Much too rarely are important, or relevant inquiries broadcast or brought on stage. Such "inquiries" would bolster and enhance democratic activity and participation in public affairs. As examples – What inherit quality of war is it that produces and magnifies loss to the species of cooperative and respectful inter-human relations??? Or again: why are state trained "killers" in uniform, calmly pressing "bombs away" buttons at altitudes of 30,000 or more feet portrayed as "heroic" or "patriotic" as they send off death to such victims never seen, miles below…or less "heroically"…as a marine…just blast them to eternity with H.E.??
Even more insistently, other, inexplicable questions arise…who is really responsible, what possible reason exists for our species cast away while "at war" our humanity, our compassion our human sense of protecting life and dignity??? Illumination of such questions by the mass monopoly "media" for the most part is heavily biased, blurred and hyped –(or non--existent) in the ongoing Imperialist USA-British oil inspired invasion of a sovereign state of Iraq without legal endorsement of the United Nations. This predatory "war" is presented as though there was no "history" of Imperial "oil" exploitation and ravages in Iraq or the Middle East…or otherwise is "conveniently forgotten"…
Nevertheless we cannot properly place primary or sole responsibility on "working journalists" for this state of affairs. That rests squarely on broadcast monopolies and media such as NBC who summarily "fired" Peter Arnett…of more or less "impeccable" references as a "war correspondent". We are indeed encouraged and satisfied to have received a 14-page dispatch by Mark Francetti of the "Times" (London) that arrived on AOL Canada, mlucas3545@aol.com on March 31, 2003. The headline reads: "US Marines turn fire on civilians at bridge of death"… in Nasiriya, Iraq, dated March 30th. We take the liberty of using some quotes because the dispatch rings with truth and authenticity…opening the door to at least some answers in the bedeviled "Imperial oil war"…
"My footsteps felt heavy… as I walked slowly toward the bridge at Nasiriya. A horrific scene lay ahead. Some 15 vehicles…blocked the road. They were riddled with bullet holes. Some had caught fire and turned into piles of black twisted metals. Others were still burning. Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying n the road or in the nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave…There mistake was trying to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the Coalition’s supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American Marines with orders to shoot anything that moved. One man’s body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound…
"Down the road, a little girl, no older than five and dressed in a pretty orange and gold dress lay dead in a ditch next to the body of a man who may have her father, half of his head was missing. Nearby, in a battered old Volga car, peppered with ammunition holes an Iraqi women, perhaps the girls mother – was dead…A US Abrams Tank nicknamed Ghetto Fabulous drove past…"
Leaving the scene, Lieutenant Matt Martin came besides the writer. His eyes "filled with tears" as he asked Franchetti:
"Did you see that…did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried her as best as I could, but I have no time. It gets me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice…"
"Martins distress was in contrast to the bitter satisfaction of his fellow Marines, as they surveyed the scene. "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy" said Corporal Ryan Dupre…" Only a few days earlier these had still been the bright eyed, small town US boys with whom I had crossed the Iraqi border…"
To read all fourteen pages of Franchetti’s dispatch in like having to eat, sleep and live in a stifled unventilated room with putrefying bodies and the sights, flavors tastes, smells and horrors of Dante’s Inferno multiplied and wrapped in the stench and grime of death. Described is an exchange of heavy fire between the Iraqi guns and the US Marines when they "crossed the second bridge to the northeast of the city". He writes in detail of the death of two Americans… 2nd Lieutenant Fred Pokorney, 31… from Washington State, and Fitzgerald Jordan, a Staff Sergeant from Texas. His narrative says:
"Now, Pokorney, Jordan and their comrades lay among unspeakable carnage. An older Marine walked by carrying a huge chunk of flesh, so maimed it as impossible to tell which body part it was. With tears in his eyes and blood spattered over his flak jacket, he held the remains of his friend in his arms until someone gave him a poncho to wrap them with…"
"As night fell, two tanks and three AAV’s were placed at the north end of the third bridge…and given orders to shoot at any vehicle that drove towards the new American positions…Next morning I saw the result of this order – the dead civilians, the little girl in the orange and gold dress…"
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"Suddenly, some of these US young Marines who had crossed into Iraq with me reminded me of their fathers' generation. The trigger happy grunts of Vietnam…they were drained and very dangerously aggressive…Mike Brooks was one of the commanders who had given the order to shoot at civilian vehicles…he told me he had been writing a diary, partly for his wife Kelly…with their sons Colin, 6, and four year old twins Brian and Evin. When he came to jotting down the incident about the two babies getting killed by his men he couldn’t do it. He said that he would tell her when he got home…"
Soldiers and the military, now including women, are trained by Governments to kill…or be killed…by some designated "enemy" usually properly "demonized". That is the legacy of war dating back through centuries of time. The effects or results of the "trained killers"…or those they kill, or seek to kill…have been carefully distorted, hyped, smoke-screened or otherwise hidden under mountains of "official" war making verbiage. The real "killers" of Imperial monopoly economic pomp and circumstance…or in Imperial high political office will sanctimoniously suggest they console themselves in satisfactions they glean from the lie of "victory"…or "the justice of their cause". For the dead, for the "living dead"…the killers who may (or may not) survive, no such "panaceas", or comforts are likely to come their way. For soldiers of Imperial aggression possibly some phony "glories" will emerge on media such as CNN, but easement of conscience by "forgetting" via sheer longevity is certainly unlikely. The society that embraces and persists in an age-old problems arising from horrors of Imperial war, competitive conquest for territory, resources, or simply the hog’s share of "super" profits is a society reeling today in multiple, unresolveable internal crisis. It can only disguise itself in the dirty clothes of "super" lies designed to confuse and confound the people world- wide. For instruction…ask George "Dubya" Bush and his froth-mouthed entourage…
In this day and age, science and modern technology…nuclear, chemical, biological and other…have provided ample, incredibly savage militarized means to assure a virtual suicide for our species…if not a total wipe-out of life on our little "Mother Earth" space ship…
Given the proliferation growth of cynicism, hypocrisy and greed among Imperial-monopoly ruling circles who deem themselves as "all powerful", the human species cannot any longer afford to permit this current and ongoing scenario of vicious de-humanizing war activity. The gangster-like contempt for international law, human life, while forms of total developing violence-based immorality must be expounded from global life and destroyed. Of immediate and particular tolerance and importance is the international requirement arising from the illegal "might is right" projection of war between "oil" monopolies. The most advance in International Law stated in the UN Charter from the many millions of excruciating death rolls resulting from war in the past century, can not be ignore and spat upon by those who today have sent high-tech "killing machines" and superior "fire power" into he desert sands of Iraq and the Middle East, primarily, for the oil corporate monopolies advantage, power and pelf.
War, as the "legalized instrument of state policy" (read: pre-emptive Imperialist war") to resolve inter-state conflict must be made illegal and outlawed. Let that be set down in the clearest terms in an amended United Nations Charter. War, the age-long curse of common people in the "resolution" of conflicts not of any real consequence to them, has now reached levels of inhumanity and immorality that demands forever banning its use in aggression and plunder.
Let all humanity speak now with one voice… "NO MORE WAR!"
P.S. Extended in appreciation and thanks to Mark Franchetti for his integrity and courage in his dispatch "on war". We wish him "success" with all editors and publishers who "accept" his seminal work…
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