EDITORIAL
Friendly fire
You mustn't even whisper it. You don't love this war? Then
keep your mouth shut. Bush Inc. has spoken. There will be no
opposition. No, not even shouting at the television set.
But it is so hard not to. The Pentagon news hour is on
again. The screen looks like a crude video game. Crosshairs
move over the target--a fuzzy rectangle of some kind. The
object explodes and the flyboys cheer. It's all a game. No one
has been hurt. Our team won and theirs lost.
Those who find news from non-U.S. sources read about
hundreds of innocent villagers killed by U.S. bombers. Afghani
and Pakistani hospitals full of injured people who weep as they
tell of whole families being wiped out. But the images of
suffering have been cleansed from the media here.
But what is this? Suddenly we find out that these bombs
kill. One dropped accidentally on "our" troops and blew them to
bits. Three Special Forces soldiers killed plus five Northern
Alliance Afghans. Thirty more injured. But even this is played
as a heroic fantasy, clean and dreamy. They died from "friendly
fire," you know. One imagines passing through the Heavenly
Gates in a warm glow as angels strum their harps and Saint
Peter gently waves the Star-Spangled Banner.
Wake up. This war is down and dirty. "Operation Infinite
Freedom" is infinitely horrible, a war against the oppressed
peoples of the world--yes, Bush promises to make it that broad
and long--that won't bring freedom there or here. Meanwhile, a
killer is stalking the mean streets and country lanes back
home. Unfortunately, the Office of Homeland Security is too
busy rounding up Arab men to notice that millions are losing
their source of income and are staring into an abyss of
poverty.
National security. Safety. These are the catchwords used to
grease the war machine. They roll easily from the lips of
Rumsfeld, Stufflebeam, Ashcroft and the rest of the crew, as
easily as they write the checks to Boeing, Raytheon and General
Dynamics. So they take young men and women away from their
families and send them to kill and be killed on the other side
of the world. And they further enrage and torture billions of
human beings whose combined wealth doesn't add up to what 440
billionaires and millionaires have salted away.
How can we keep quiet? How can we not fight to change the
world?
Reprinted from the Dec. 13, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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