What's left of it.
[The attack on Falluja] was one of the most horrific events of the still-unfolding act of aggression in Iraq. Presented in the U.S. press as an old-fashioned, gung-ho, WWII-style "battle," it was in fact a mass slaughter, largely of trapped civilians; almost all of the "terrorists" and "insurgents" in the city had long escaped during the months-long, oddly public build-up to the assault. It seemed clear that the intent was not to quash an insurgent nest, as stated, but to perpetrate an act of condign, collective punishment -- primarily against civilians -- in order to terrorize the rest of Iraq into submission.One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. ...So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.
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The wanton, unnecessary destruction of Fallujah is one of the central stories of our time. Yet it is almost entirely forgotten, especially among the people in whose name this vast crime was committed. But the marks of this atrocity live on in its victims. Over the holidays, while America's high and mighty were making merry, yet another detailed study was released confirming a major spike in birth defects in Fallujah following the attack.
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The new report follows on the harrowing findings reported by the BBC and The Independent (but strangely omitted from the American media) in mid-2010.
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US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.[...]
[Falluja is a] city whose birth defect rate is 11 times the world average. A city where children are suffering from cancers "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors" -- indeed, where the increase in leukemia is far greater than among the first victims of American WMD. [...] O where are our great American progressives, who stood so tall and proud against the American war machine when it was led by an embarrassing vulgarian, but now occupy themselves with handwringing and bead-counting about the political fortunes of his bloodstained predecessor, now perpetrating his own mini-Fallujahs week after week against defenseless villagers in Pakistan?
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I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the "continuity" of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by god I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth.
"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.I will not forget Artica Salim. I will not forget Fallujah. I will not "move on." I will not become part of the inferno. – Chris Floyd
I have never felt that aggressive about bearing witness - more like beating a drum knowing that I’m probably the only one hearing it, and wondering if that’s just masochistic . But from the inception of the atrocity of the attack on (laying waste to, really) Falluja, I felt a specially intense despair about the loss of any sense of morality on the part of my countrymen in particular, but also the world in general. At that point, I began keeping a blog devoted to that special Hell, and I must say I am indeed still amazed at the lack of attention paid it, even in light of the continuing reports of the condition of the people there. At the time, it was used as a source of pride and a rallying point for the pretense that our soldiers are over there protecting our freedom here. Once that was spent, we had no more use for it.
Perhaps if each American adult had to adopt, raise, and care for one child orphaned or afflicted by the war, we’d make our government stop.
Don’t worry. We don’t even have to look at them.
