Collateral Damage

Tuesday I attended a lecture at the Library Center presented by Mariel Caldwell who had recently returned from a trip to Jordan and Syria under the auspices of a group dedicated to facilitating dialogue between Americans and citizens of other nations. The need for that kind of activity is heightened dramatically by the lack of information obtained by most Americans about the state of the world around us.

Mariel’s tour included visits to United Nations offices, Imams and many citizens of those country’s and of Iraq. The emphasis was on the issue of refugees from the Iraq war. About one in seven Iraqi citizens has been displaced by our invasion of that country. Some because they helped American troops and so were in danger (Of these we have allowed under 10,000 into our country.); some because too many of their neighbors were of a different religious persuasion; and, some because their homes have been destroyed. None have employment because their host countries won’t allow them to compete with natives. None have enough income to last very long. None have American support in their difficulties.

Mariel also talked about the effects our depleted uranium weapons have wreaked upon the people of Iraq and showed pictures of children who have been horribly wounded by our bombing and, especially, cluster bombs. These are the ones our government considers “collateral damage” (i.e. the unavoidable side effect of war – a term made even more heinous by the fact that the war was entirely avoidable)

We are talking here about millions of people displaced from their homes.

One of the central issues is that our arrival in the country and the unrest it fomented has caused the sectarian divisions that so devastate Iraq. According to Mariel we have been fed a bill of goods about the history of those divisions in that country. I certainly fell for it, but her graphics clearly showed that the divisions were not in effect under Saddam Hussein. A map of Baghdad before and after our invasion clearly showed that the divisions were an effect of the war in that people of all faiths were widely mixed throughout the city prior to the war, but huddled in sectarian conclaves afterward.

It’s just one more example of the fact that our invasion has caused more problems than it has solved. In fact, it only solved one problem and that was the problem W’s cronies had with Saddam Hussein.

A statement I heard on NPR this morning hit me as the most ironic thing I’d heard in years in that regard. Speaking about Nouri al-Maliki’s rash action against al-Sadr’s militia last week, a past Deputy Secretary of State, who had served under Donald Rumsfeld said that al-Maliki’s action was a case of “. . . a man with an ego so big that he refused to listen to wise counsel.”

If there was ever an apt description of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and dick Cheney, that’s it. Who was it, besides W and Rumsfeld, that fired General Shinseki for his belief that the force W was sending to Iraq was inadequate? Who was it, besides W, that rejected George Tenet’s repeated statements about the lack of an Iraqi threat to the U.S.? Who was it (besides dick Cheney) who kept sifting through the intelligence reports until his toadies generated the ones he wanted to hear?

Less ego and more objectivity would do us all a great deal of good, but if we expect to find those qualities anywhere near Washington, D.C. we are living with our heads in the clouds (or somewhere else equally as vision-free)!


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle