- Today I watched a clip from CNN News, "Fit to Kill",
showing Marines shooting a wounded Iraqi man laying in the dirt. Bang-bang-bang,
and the man's body jumped as the bullets hit him. Was he a danger? They
weren't sure. A cheer went up from those shooting. The man in rags was
dead. A young Marine-blond, blue eyed was exuberant over this rush of killing.
"Awesome" he exclaimed, "I'm anxious to do it again."
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- During War War II it was found that many men would not
kill another. It was decided that upbringing, church attendance etc. had
a lot to do with this hesitancy. Plus, training at that time was merely
shooting at bulls eye targets. That all changed as targets were changed
to figures of men. Those not hitting dead center in training were made
to lay on the ground while their fellow soldiers were told to march over
them calling them unpatriotic.
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- Looking at the feverish excitement on this blond haired
boyish face (still not shaving), I felt a sickening thud, as to the making
of killers. A new generation, unchurched, in a morally decadent society-
where video games for the past decade plus have been hand to eye coordination
in shooting, aiming, blowing apart running figures. Points rewarded for
the most kills. War games now on video put you right in the virtual reality
world of shoot'em up. Of course, these games are absent a child's arms
blown off, little girls faces gone, and families blown to kingdom come.
No depleted uranium in a video, scorching winds, dirt, girt, rancid water,
and no exit ticket home.
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- Yes, today's youth are well trained and conditioned to
the thrill of killing. One game has the player in a car running down as
many pedestrians as he can. Missiles fired from ships far out to sea by
computer and bombs dropped by computer have soldiers well trained. Blood,
guts, gore, Terminators, and violent films/TV movies of every description,
are typical viewing. Lest we forget, World War II veterans were not exposed
to this. A reverence for life was still a valued character trait.
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- Americans watching War from a distance, see none of the
shredded bodies of children, families terrorized, homes broken into by
soldiers, nor do they smell the charred flesh of melted bodies by some
new cook'em micro-wave weaponry. Watching "Shock and Awe" with
a bag of pork rinds, a six-pack, and a super sized grinder stuffed with
salami, ham, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles etc., sure makes war a
lot more enjoyable.
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- No matter, that Iraqi citizens, in no way responsible
for 9-11 have been these past long months, the target of the world's super
power- stocked with enough weapons of mass destruction to send the earth
careening out of the universe. They deserve it. After all, aren't all Arabs
terrorists? They have no right to turn down occupation and democracy, that
will see them inundated with golden arches, Wal-Marts, Home Depots and
strip malls. Besides, we need their oil, for our designer lives, designer
homes, designer travel and profits for the chosen frozen corporate honchos;
who have decided that all the earth, and that within, belongs to them.
Hey, those with the biggest guns, ship, planes, bombs, etc., are the rulers.
The strongest always slap around the weakest and take what they want.
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- The enemy, no matter the newest conquest, is always seen
as sub-human and deserving of death. Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
sees no need to count dead Iraqis or rather "collateral damage".
TV shows deserts, mud villages, rag tag children and men in head coverings
and robes. "Towel heads-Sand Niggers", absent the feelings, dreams,
gifts, and talents that superior whites have. Or so, that seems to be the
message. Museums, the cradle of civilization with its irreplaceable artifacts,
libraries etc., we blew'em all up, or permitted hired looters to take the
valuables for the collector's of the world. We did manage to save the oil
ministry, and oil fields for the oil barons.
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- There is no connection, awareness, or discernment on
the part of these crusading clowns with hatchets, that a people will die
for their land, their heritage, the place of their birth. They will fight
forever. Just as, I presume, citizens here wouldn't welcome hordes of Iraqi
forces occupying Washington, New York, our seacoasts and heartland; why
would we think Iraqis, whose history far exceeds our own few hundred years
don't feel just as passionate?
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- And mostly we don't see the gifts, the awesome talents,
writings and intellect of this people. Iraq was no threat to its neighbors
and certainly not to the mightiest nation on earth. Not this desert land
absent an air force, navy, or a trained army, which Gulf War I made evident.
Rag tag peasants, forced into war, no shoes, antiquated guns, shaking and
trembling at the surrendered. So what did we do upon the cessation of the
few days of war? We incinerated these escaping peasants with their war
loot of diapers, canned milk, perfume, etc; as they tried to make it home
in busses, carts, taxis and by foot. The highway of death. Now there was
a victory to brag over. I feel nauseous at the depravity of those so devoid
of any semblance of humanity. Just sick. And sicker still when TV has them
lauded as conquering Generals.
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- And what can we give as a tribute to those slaughtered
in our name whom we cannot save from bombs and madness? No Western words
to be sure. Instead the words of Iraqi poet Baber Shakir Al-Sayyah:
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- Song of the rain...
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- In the hour before the dawn
- Your eyes are two groves of palm trees
- Or two balconies
- Passed over by the moo.
- When your eyes smile, vines flower
- And lights dance...like the reflection of the moon in
the river
- Disturbed gently by the movement of oars
- In the hour before dawn.
- As if stars throbbed in their depths.
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- The stars drown in a mist of sorrow.
- The sea opens its arms
- In the warmth of winter, the chill of autumn.
- Embracing death and birth and darkness and light.
- The shiver of a sob wakens in my soul
- And a wild ecstasy course through me, reaching the sky.
- The ecstasy of a child who fears the moon.
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- Smaller clouds are lost in the heavy dark clouds
- Which, drop by drop, disperse in rain.
- The children's giggling in the grape arbors
- Tickles the silence of the sparrows in the trees.
- Then comes the song of the rain.
- Rain
- Rain
- Rain
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- The evening yawns and the clouds continue to gush
- And pour, pour their heavy tears down
- Like a child weeping in his sleep
- For his mother whom, when he woke a year ago,
- He did not see.
- And when he persisted in asking,
- They told him,
- 'She'll be back the day after tomorrow.'
- She must come,
- Though friends whisper that she's there
- At the side of the hill, sleeping the sleep of the dead.
- Down in her own earth, drinking the rain
- Like a disappointed fisherman gathering his nets,
- And cursing the fates and the waters,
- Singing his mournful songs when the moon wanes.
- Rain
- Rain
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- Do you know what grief the rain brings?
- When gutters resound with the sad music of the falling
rain,
- And how the lonely feel a sense of loss when it rains,
- Endlessly...like bleeding, like hunger,
- Like love, like children, like death
- Is the rain.
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- I see your eyes
- Which seem to float with the rain.
- And across the waves of the Gulf lightning
- Sweeps the shores of Iraq with flashes of stars and
coral,
- As though the shores themselves would rise up
- Before the night draws over them a cover of blood.
- I cry aloud to the Gulf:
- O Gulf,
- Giver of pearls and coral and death!
- I can hear Iraq storing thunder,
- Storing lightning on mountains and in valleys.
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- And when she has finished
- She will stamp them as her own.
- The great storm left no trace in the valley
- Of the village Thamud.
- I can hear the palm trees drinking rain.
- I can hear the villages moaning, and emigrants
- Battling, with oars and rough axes,
- The storms of the Gulf and the thunder singing:
- Rain
- Rain
- Rain
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- How many tears we shed the night we departed,
- Excusing our sorrow by saying, 'It's only the rain.'
- Rain
- Rain
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- Since the days of our childhood, the sky
- Was always cloudy and dark in winter,
- And the rain beat down.
- Rain
- Rain
- Rain
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- Each drop glows
- Red or yellow, from the petals of the flowers,
- Each tear of the naked and hungry,
- Each drop of blood shed by slaves
- Becomes a smile awaiting a new mouth,
- Or a nipple pink from sucking
- Of the newborn child
- In the worlds of a new tomorrow, the world will offer
life
- Rain
- Rain
- Rain
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- Iraq's field grow green in the rain
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- I cry aloud to the Gulf.
- O Gulf,
- Giver of coral and death,
- My words return
- In the echo of a sob.
- O Gulf,
- Giver of coral and death.
- The Gulf spread its gifts on the sands.
- A foam of flaming coral
- And the bones of the drowned.
- One of the emigrants who drank of death
- In the fathomless depths of the Gulf.
- Countless serpent in Iraq drink the nectar
- Of the flowers watered by the Euphrates, the innocent
dew.
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- I hear the echo
- Ringing across the Gulf.
- Rain
- Rain
- Rain
- Each drop glows.
- Red or yellow, from the petals of flowers.
- And each tear of the naked and hungry.
- Each drop of blood shed by slaves
- Becomes a smile awaiting a new mouth,
- or a nipple pink from the sucking
- Of the newborn child.
- In the world of a new tomorrow, the world that will
offer life
- And the rain pours down.
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