Dahr Jamail: "Reason for Their Death Is Known" - powerful stuff, chilling

[Bozita]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050306J.shtml

    "Reason for Their Death Is Known"
    By Dahr Jamail
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Wednesday 03 May 2006

    Death in Iraq. It is relentless and incessant.

    Know what it is like when scores of your fellow citizens are being killed every single day while the world proceeds unheedingly on? As a journalist I've had but a taste of that poison during my eight months in Iraq. Try it out: be an Iraqi for a day, into your fourth year of being occupied, humiliated, tortured and killed, doing all you can just to survive.

    All communication with my Iraqi friends is punctuated by and smattered with their use of the words "praying," "God," and "Insha'allah" (God willing). Perhaps there is need to invoke something else altogether?

And all the dead air is alive. With the smell of America's God.
- Harold Pinter, "War With Iraq"

    On one of the days when multiple car bombs drained the blood and souls of scores in Baghdad, my closest friend wrote from there: "Dahr, This is a very sad letter I'm writing you as a friend. My tears are coming down due to the humiliation, suffering, frustration, thwarting defeat and discomfiture we the Iraqi are living in. Please let people know some of the news of what is happening to my country, my people and my religion."

    Death lurks everywhere in Iraq today. Keeping up with the numbers of dead is impossible. A doctor working at one of the larger hospitals in Baghdad recently called it a "camp" because the courtyard of the hospital is constantly filled with members of the Shia Badr militia, who continue to carry out their death squad activities of killing Sunnis and rival Shia. "The Badr are all over the hospital, looking for people," said the doctor. "The injured brought here sometimes die before even reaching the ward, because the Badr are being obstacles for us. One of the men running our morgue was killed by the Badr. My friends are warning me to be careful, to keep my mouth shut."

more...

[magellan]

1. I don't know what to say

Nothing seems adequate. It just goes on and on.

K&R.

[Oversea Visitor]

2. Someday all this will be known to the world

SOMEDAY and hope it is soon
The longer it take the deeper the hole
The darker the deed
The worst the crime
And the harder to forgive

Someday soon

It is like lies
You need more lies to cover a lie
Then more and more and more and KABOOM

[jeanarrett]

3. And most people in America don't give a shit anyway.

Fill up the SUV, off to Walmart. . . to buy more useless shit to try and fill that big, empty hole in their souls.

[magellan]

4. Uh, right.

If everyone would stop buying SUVs and shopping at Walmart, everything here and in Iraq would be fine.

:eyes:

[The Stranger]

5. It is a start.

Kicked and reccomended.

[sojourner]

7. The poster seemed to use those activities as larger symbols of the

American consumerism that helps numb the senses of citizenry who are oblivious to world affairs, brought up as they are in a world where they are entitled and superior to all who are defined as "different" - be that ethnicity, nationality, sexuality...
and in fact, if American's weren't so self-absorbed, you bet your sweet patooty things would be better here and abroad. They wouldn't have let themselves be lied into an unjustifiable war, they wouldn't suffer their civil rights to be abridged so cavalierly, and they wouldn't tolerate the ineptitude of a fake president who is here only to enrich himself and his buddies.

[magellan]

10. Using larger symbols is the problem

Why not just say "consumerism" rather than stereotyping. Labels are lazy and divisive.

[sojourner]

15. you're entitled to your opinion. i disagree.

large symbols communicate pretty dang well. but i get it that it isn't your preferred style. still, it was your comments that seemed divisive to me.

and which is lazier, demanding that others speak in the way that you decide they should, or making the effort to understand what they're saying?

[jeanarrett]

9. Wow, you sure inferred a lot from my few meager sentences

as to what I meant. A whole lot of people I know don't give two shits about what's happening in Iraq--as long as it doesn't affect them personally. They don't have time to worry their "beautiful minds" with those pictures of little Iraqi kids with burned and blown off arms and legs, as long as their little junior has the latest version of the Ipod Nano so he can be better, cooler and prove that his mommy and daddy make more money than yours does. I have five kids and I see it every day--little American kids trying to prove who's family is richer and better. Do you know how many moms I see dropping their kids off in front of the school each morning in Hummers? And their kids won't walk five feet, they wait until they can pull directly in front of the doors so their poor kiddies don't have to walk. Most Americans are self-absorbed and like I said, don't really care what's happening in the rest of the world or another state, really, as long as it doesn't affect them personally in any negative way.

AND yes, you can bet on it that if they weren't so self-absorbed, maybe they would be paying attention to what the criminal in the Whitehouse is doing and we wouldn't be in Iraq. They think by driving Hummers and buying all that needless stuff and voting for Shrub somehow puts them right up there in that exclusive, superior class that the Bushbots believe they belong to and the rest of us can suck dirt. The only people they are fooling is themselves and they are raising their children to be just like them. They are in for a rude awakening someday and I'm sure will be the first ones screaming and whining about "their rights being take away." In the meantime, who cares?

Oh, and don't forget the most important news of the day--what happened on the latest episode of LOST or American Idol. Oh my gosh. . . I missed both. I can't believe I was able to get to sleep.

Edited for grammer

[magellan]

11. I'm in no way arguing that your elaboration is flawed.

But with respect, stereotyping isn't a constructive way to present your case.

[sojourner]

8. It's like Caesar said --

to keep the citizens quiet, provide circuses and bread.

WOW! Look at us, we have circuses (every sort of cable entertainment channel possible + infotainment pretending to be news), bread (McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell...) AND Walmart!! Wooo Hooo! Oh yeah...and SUV's!!!! Iraq? Where's that and who cares anyway?

[cassiepriam]

13. Bingo, right on! Holes in our souls, what is left of them.

How can we go on with life as usual when we are killing, maiming, torturing so many innocents?

It just doesn't seem possible that Americans are so cruel and heartless. But it is true, we obviously are. The bloodbath is in our name and we have paid for it.

[Bozita]

14. Agreed ... except for "we have paid for it"

Our children and grandkids will pay for this war. I'm afraid the true cost will be greater than the money and interest.

[cassiepriam]

16. Yes, the true cost can not even be estimated at this point.

And I don't just mean financial. And yes it will go down for many generations.

[DrDebug]

6. Don't know what to say except for Kick and Recommended

[Blue_In_AK]

12. I love Dahr Jamail...

He's from here.