(US bombing of Baghdad, 2003)
This year, 2011, marks one hundred years of air bombing. Now, guess which country did the bombing and which native population were bombed?
Italy did the first air bombing, and the victims were Arabs in the town of Tagiura, near Tripoli. And a nearby oasis of Ain Zara was also bombed on that day. These bombs were dropped by Lieutenant Carvotti, and there were over eight tons of bombs dropped on that day.
I found out about this in Tom Engelhardt’s book THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR. He got it from a book called A HISTORY OF BOMBING. So, for a hundred years, humans have been dropping bombs on fellow humans. And the reason for this initial bombing? Revenge and collective punishment, all because those Arabs did not want to be occupied by a foreign army. Some things just never change.
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| If you listen to Democracy Now!, you may have heard my Uncle Ghazi's voice the last time I did. My uncle Ghazi was Chief Electrical Engineer for the entire country until he retired in the nineties. The last time I heard his voice, it was crackling through a small bedside radio on the day the invasion began, when Amy Goodman interviewed him from his home. I shall never forget laying there, hearing Ghazi's unshakeable, dignified voice, when Amy asked him what he and his family planned to do, "Will you leave town, or...?", and he responded, "What can we do? We are expecting our first grandchild in the next two month we will gather the family and take them into the basement until the bombing stops." Arundhati Roy, also on line from India, burst out in tears thoroughly disturbed that Americans could hear such a testimony and not do everything possible to stop the war that would begin a mere three hours later. Still composed, Ghazi went on to say that he did not blame all Americans for the acts of their administration ... he understood how a people, any people, and in this case the Americans, can be systematically disinformed. |
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