September 30, 2005
This is a quick post to show you that sometimes bloggers can make a difference.
I first read the War Porn story concerning Chris Wilson's nowthatsfuckedup website on Whatreallyhappened.com. They linked to a story on the East Bay Express.
This then led me to Just World News, a blog run by a war journalist and analyst, which had extensive material on the pornographic website.
Eventually CNN did a piece.
The BBC did a piece, which was short on content.
The Guardian ran an op/ed
Aljazeera's English website did a piece.
The New York Times
played along. The NYT says they were not able to reach the website
administrator. It may be he has gone underground for a while.
But
there are fears that this may get swept under the rug. Some Iraqis I
have spoken to no longer have faith in the US justice system as applied
to Iraq.
In a related matter, a US judge ordered the release of
more pictures from Abu Ghraib. You know, the ones of abused and
tortured Iraqis.
Seems there are 87 more of them in addition to four video cassettes.
Are they going to be played at a theater near you?
The US military said the release of the visual material would aid in Al-Qaida recruitment and hurt efforts in Iraq.
Yes,
indeed, thousands of people who have had their homes destroyed in
aerial assaults, seen their kin torn to pieces by precision bombing or
been raped, beaten, and tortured (thanks to proxy security apparatus)
will only be moved to fight once they see the videos.
That's all they had been waiting for.
Typical
arrogance from the US military. This isn't Hollywood. It isn't the
latest violence-filled game on your console, spawning a new generation
of dumbed down fodder warriors.
We Iraqis don't live in some
fantasy-depicted realm where music is played in the background by some
unseen orchestra as we trod through life.
We love life and live
it accordingly. We love our children and hold them close to our hearts
and if they are killed by a trigger-happy Joe Blow, we do not need to
wait for video confirmation to be angry, to shed tears, or to oppose
the invader.
And if our loved ones are killed by foreign
terrorists, or home-bred ones, we remember who opened Pandora's Box
when they came to "liberate" us from the "thug" in power. The
liberation has now multiplied the thuggery; whereas we knew where the
thug was and how he operated, every hellhole now has its resident thug
in Iraq.
We love the land that brought us forth into the world.
We farm and toil it as if it were the finest masterpiece sculpted from
clay - a Michelangelo, a Botticelli, a Rembrandt. It is our palette.
We
know from our literature that peoples around the world would resist a
foreign occupation vehemently. The Americans fought the British
imperialists. The French fought the Nazi occupiers. The Finns fought
the Russians. The Russians fought the Nazis - 24 million Russians gave
up their lives so that Mother Russia would be free of the Nazis. And
they sacrificed their own homes and burned down their villages to deny
the occupier sanctuary.
They did not wait to watch video cassettes.
But the US just does not get it.
Today,
according to the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, US forces
"brutally" arrested a 20-year-old girl in Falluja. Her father and two
brothers had been arrested months earlier. (The quote is a translation
of the word they used to describe the arrest)
I can't confirm
this story as of yet or its specifics, but if it is true, well ...
Iraqis obey the honor system. A cousin, distant or close, or his
cousin, or a neighbor or a typical Iraqi who witnessed the arrest will
be moved to action.
The earth is our palette. We know the consequences of not planting the seeds every season, or harvesting.
As you reap, so shall you sow.
Indeed.
Postscript: Criticizing Riverbend:
Some people come to this blog preaching to me how the people of Iraq will determine their future. It is now up to the people of Iraq to make their choices and live with the consequences. Then they begin to cut into what I say and into what some other Iraqi bloggers say.
I
am Iraq. Riverbend is Iraq. And other bloggers like us are Iraq. We are
products of its past and we are its future, whether you like it or not.
But
when Iraq says things that don't conform to your flag-waving,
holier-than-thou, God-talked-to-Bush, freedom-is-awesome psyche, you
start to look for "other" Iraqis or criticize us for not looking to the
future.
Are you so infantile and arrogant that you really do not think we are looking to the future? This is our land, it is our home.
Are you so obtuse as to tell me that you care about Iraq and the rest of us Iraqis don't?
Where was your bleeding heart when we were burying our dead in the irradiated soil your tax dollars paid for?
Where
was your voice of reason when our children were born without eyes,
without noses, without skin thanks to all the spent depleted uranium
casings? You said you cared for the Shia under the oppression of Saddam
Hussein. But it was your weapons that cursed them for generations.
Where
were your protests when our elderly died because heart disease medicine
was not available thanks to your humane sanctions regimen?
Where
were you when our children drank infested waters because the US
military was compassionate about the Iraqi people and bombed all our
water purificaton systems?
Where were you during shock and awe?
If you really care so much, then get off your chair and go to Iraq.
I walked your streets, your neighborhoods, why can't you walk mine?
I learned your language, your methods, and your mannerisms, why can't you learn mine?
Maybe then, you might learn that freedom cannot exist without justice.
And justice cannot exist without accountability.
It's
the accountability that has you all riled up. You, the US military, and
a large chunk of my-country-right-or-wrong Patriots.
History does not belong to you. Nor to the victor. Empires rise and fall.
|
