Some things you just never get over

Photo:

An Iraqi supporter of Shiite radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr flashs a paper reading, "No, No America" in Baghdad. Thousands of supporters of the anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr protested the occupation of Iraq, six years after the toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue symbolised the fall of his regime.

(AFP/Ahmad al-Rubaye)

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Some things you just never get over

After all, when you are dead, you’re dead. There is no ‘bringing you back’ or ‘do-overs’. All that can be done is to notice and to remember. And to say ‘never again’.

But there will be an ‘again’ in this situation, since ‘again’ is happening daily, although not in as bad of way. And ‘again’ is planned to continue for years to come. (It’s going to cost us a lot of money too, but that is the least of it.) I guess ‘never again’ only applies to prior acts of horror that some other country committed, not our country, and not for today.

Getting the people responsible for these hideous acts of evil to even notice what they have done is almost impossible. And some are so blinded by their prejudices that they insist that evil is good – black is white, up is down, violence is security, war is peace. We destroyed the village in order to save it.

People have argued with me that the US troops are somehow doing something good in Iraq when what they are actually doing is destroying a country that never even threatened us. That is what a military is supposed to do - destroy the enemy and their ability to hurt us. Except that Iraq was not an enemy, and using the US military for police work against mass murderers makes more murderers than it gets rid of.

But there are some among us who do notice, some who record, some who point out, some who fully realize the horror and the evil and that there are some things you just never get over. I am one of those people, but I am one of the least of them. I notice via a computer screen, I record on blogs, I point out to a mainly deaf and blind audience. I do not risk a thing, other than some sleep. I do not risk a thing, other than a sense of disgust towards my fellow humans who are responsible for this evil and do not notice – or worse, argue that this continuing evil is good for the victims.

I guess there will always be the stupid among us.

And there will always be those who are willing to perpetrate the evils they are told to do.

But there is one man, Laith Mushtag, who choose to risk his life and record the evils. He went into Fallujah five years ago and took photos of what happened there in the American assault on this city, done in revenge for the killing of four American mercenaries (that some like to call ‘security contractors’). He wrote about his experiences as a photo journalist in an article called “Fallujah never leaves my mind” today.

Here is what he said about Americans:

I don't hate them, I don't want vengeance, I just wish they had understood what they were doing.

I have that same wish.

He talks about his experiences five years ago this month, in Fallujah:

One day, I think it was April 9, 2004, someone with a loudspeaker in Fallujah's main mosque said: "The Americans will open a gate and women and children can go out."

As soon as he had finished, all the women and children of Fallujah tried to find a car to leave the city but when they were in the streets, the US forces opened fire.

There's a picture that I cannot forget. An old woman with three children, I saw her on the street and took a picture of her and the children.

She said: "We don't have any men here, can anyone help us?" Many of the men from Fallujah worked in Baghdad, once the city was sealed off they could not get back to their wives and children.

So, some men helped her, I decided to film the scene and then I sat down to smoke.

Ten minutes later, an ambulance came down the road. I ran to follow the ambulance and when they opened the door, I saw the same woman and her children - but they were in pieces.

I still remember the nurses couldn't carry the woman because she was in too many pieces, people were jumping back when they saw it. Then, one nurse shouted: "Hey, she looks like your mother."

In the Iraqi language that means: "She could be your mother, so treat her like you'd treat your mom." Everyone stood up and tried to carry a piece because they needed to get her out quickly, because the ambulance was needed for other people.

So, an old women and her three children are stuck inside Fallujah, he films them just before they flee, and a few minutes later they are dead. Some things you just don’t get over. I know enough about what has happened in Iraq since March 2003 to know that he speaks the truth. He may have the date wrong – it may be that those are her grandchildren or nieces or nephews instead of children – but the gist of the story, the underlying overwhelming human suffering, is true. The fact that US troops in Fallujah shot women and children is true. Over 600 civilians died in the first assault on Fallujah. In November 2004, many more died. Soccer fields were turned into grave yards.

This is what America did.

And those who lived through the assault also have wounds beyond belief. Imagine living through this:

We heard people screaming inside the hospital, because they did not have any drugs left. They had to cut legs without anything at all.

Leith Mushtag worked for Al Jazeera, and he was one of two cameramen who were unembedded in Fallujah that fateful April in 2004. He says that they did not come close to really recording the events that happened – it was a job bigger than 12 cameramen. But he tried. And today he lives with the memories:

When I think of Fallujah, I think of the smell. The smell was driving me crazy. In a dead body, there is a kind of liquid. Yellow liquid. The smell is disgusting, really. It sticks in your nose. You cannot eat anymore.

And you can't get the pictures off your mind, because every day you see the same: Explosion, death, explosion, death, death.

After work, you sit down and notice there are pieces of flesh on your shoes and blood on your trousers. But you don't have time to ask why.

The full article is here.

Current pictures of Iraqis and their lives today are here.

There was a major anti-US occupation demonstration this week. They burned Bush in effigy. They carried signs saying “NO NO AMERICA”.

But the one five years ago was much bigger. They burned Bush, Blair and Saddam in effigy that day.

And a recent poll in Iraq showed that Iraqi opinions on the US occupation have not changed. They want the occupation to end.

The latest poll, by the BBC and ABC in February, shows that nothing has changed in the longstanding majority view that the occupation forces (British as much as the Americans) have not been a bastion of security. They have been the problem more than the solution. Sixty-nine per cent said they had "done a bad job". Forty-six per cent think they should leave Iraq before the end of 2011, while 35% said the timetable is right. Less than 20% want them to stay longer. One reason is that Iraqis by a 53% majority view the US as still running the country. Another is that 59% already think Iraqi forces are capable of providing sufficient security.

Information on the ongoing occupation in Iraq, and the ongoing tragedy for the Iraqi people, is here. More civilians killed by US firepower this month and last….. and every month. For six years now.

And planned to continue until December 31, 2011 at least. I would bet it will continue until the last drop of oil is gone.

And, and the killing of civilians is happening in Afghanistan too. The US claimed to have killed ‘insurgents’ but one of the dead is a baby boy.

Quote

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.