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archives | newquaker.comSaturday, May 15, 2004
We all harbor outrage at war and past events that turn out to have engendered lasting horrors. What will my grandchildren, and their children, think of our behavior in Iraq? It is one thing to look back with an indignant judgment of past injustice, for we have both the benefit of a better perspective and the anticipation that we can avoid it in the future; it is another thing entirely to watch it unfold every day. I thought we did that in Vietnam, with body counts, massacres, new and clever ways to blow up or maim the human body, and absurd attacks on the natural order: napalm and Agent Orange will forever be linked to that conflict. Why is our memory so short and where are my friends who stood with me in opposition to that conflict? Why do we let this happen again? These questions torment me. Who will answer them? Where are the Christians who will trade love for hate and stop this degradation of the human spirit in Iraq?
Let me try to answer these questions. My grandchildren, and their children, too, will look back at this conflict as another military absurdity, and one that was sadly avoidable. I just finished an essay by Peter W. Galbraith in the New York Review of Books [vol. 51, no. 8, May 13, 2004] on "How to Get Out of Iraq." Galbraith, the first US Ambassador to Croatia, served with the United Nations in East Timor and was an eye witness to the tragic loss created through our military incursion in Iraq. In a matter of a few weeks, we took from the Iraq people and from scholars and historians treasures that cannot be restored. He said:
"I arrived in Baghdad on April 13, 2003, as part of an ABC news team. It was apparent to me that things were already going catastrophically wrong. When the United States entered Baghdad on April 9 last year, it found a city largely undamaged by a carefully executed military campaign. However, in the two months following the US takeover, unchecked looting effectively gutted every important public institution in the city with the notable exception of the Oil Ministry. The physical losses include:
The National Library, which was looted and burned. Equivalent to our Library of Congress, it held every book published in Iraq, all newspapers from the last century, as well as rare manuscripts. The destruction of the library meant the loss of a historical record going back to Ottoman times.
The Iraqi National Museum, which was also looted. More than 10,000 objects were stolen or destroyed. The Pentagon has deliberately, and repeatedly, tried to minimize the damage by excluding from its estimates objects stolen from storage as well as displayed treasures that were smashed but not stolen.
Hospitals and other public health institutions, where looters stole medical equipment, medicines, and even patients' beds.
Baghdad and Mosul Universities, which were stripped of computers, office furniture, and books. Academic research that took decades to carry out went up in smoke or was scattered.
The National Theater, which was set ablaze by looters a full three weeks after US forces entered Baghdad."
This is only a fragment of his report, which can elicit emotions not unlike those caused by viewing the Abu Ghraib photos.
I think it's not that our memory is short, but that we are really completely out of touch with America's place in the world and with our place as Christians in America. The friends who stood with me in opposition to Vietnam are now planning for retirement and have become good at the tsk, tsk of the comme d'habitude. Good food, healthy lawns, new rims on the late-model car—I mean, life just doesn't get any better than this. We let this happen again because we're no longer engaged in the world: we just look at it, watch it happen. Tsk, tsk if we don't like what we see. Just change the channel. Where are the Christians who will trade love for hate and stop this degradation of the human spirit, both here and in Iraq? That is the one question I still don't have an answer for, and it torments me.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:24 PM
David Duke and the Middle East Question. Am I the only one to see the irony in the day today? This marks the 56-year anniversary of the establishment of Israel—and today marks David Duke's exit from the Baton Rouge halfway house to which he had been sent following his release from federal prison in Big Spring, Texas, last year. Duke was sentenced to 15 months in prison for swindling his political supporters and evading taxes. While he was at the halfway house (somewhere in a densely populated black section of Baton Rouge, say his supporters), the Federal Bureau of Prisons allowed Duke to work for his organization, the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), and to drive the 130 mile roundtrip to and from his house in Mandeville. Some of that work included preparing for EURO's national convention in the New Orleans area during the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, and for his welcome-back banquet at the convention.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, more of the same "you that did to me, so I do this to you" goes on in the Middle East. Israeli helicopters killed 28 people in assaults on Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip following attacks by the Palestinian militant group that killed 13 Israeli soldiers. In Rafah, Israeli bulldozers razed Palestinian homes, crushing one person in the rubble. The Bush Administration vows to avenge the killing of Nicholas Berg, promising that the US "will pursue those who are responsible and bring them to justice." And in his Radio Address today, President Bush said: "There's only one way to deal with terror: We must confront the enemy and stay on the offensive until these killers are defeated."
And so on and on it goes, as American Christians murmur and nod and look bewildered at each other.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:36 AM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
