[Media-watch] Boston Globe 7 Jan 05 - Victims we don't count

Tue Jan 11 14:24:31 GMT 2005

Dear Media Watch Friends,
a happy new year to all of you!
Enclosed an article from the Boston Globe 7 Jan 2005
"The 'tsunami' victims that we don't count" 
Derrick Z Jackson asks why America doesn't count the
victims in Iraq - 'the tsunami was us,' he writes in
the Boston Globe.
Really good stuff.
All the best 
Sigi

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/01/07/the_tsunami_victims_that_we_dont_count?pg=full

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/01/07/the_tsunami_victims_that_we_dont_count?pg=full
DERRICK Z. JACKSON
The 'tsunami' victims that we don't count
By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  January 7, 2005
SECRETARY of State Colin Powell tours tsunami-stricken
Banda Aceh and says, "I cannot begin to imagine the
horror that went through the families and all of the
people who heard this noise coming and then had their
lives snuffed out by this wave."

Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, issued a resolution that said:
"The tsunami disaster constitutes a humanitarian
tragedy of incredible proportions. . . . My heart goes
out to the victims of this tragedy."

Last and hardly least, President Bush said: "The
devastation in the region defies comprehension. . . .
Our flags will fly at half-staff to honor the victims
of this disaster. We mourn especially the tens of
thousands of children who are lost. We think of the
tens of thousands more who will grow up without their
parents or their brothers or their sisters. We hold in
our prayers all the people whose fate is still
unknown."

In the abstract, the outpouring was appropriate. In
context, the sympathy was a stench unto itself. Tens
of thousands of people die by an act of nature and we
say we cannot imagine the horror. We say it defies
comprehension. We call it a catastrophe.

In Iraq we kill off thousands, perhaps tens of
thousands of innocent civilians with our own hands,
and we reject any attempt to comprehend what we have
done. Countless Iraqi civilians are homeless. We call
it liberation.

Bush quoted all the numbers for the tsunami in
speeches this week: 150,000 lives lost, including
90,000 in Indonesia; perhaps 5 million homeless;
millions vulnerable to disease. That stands in
hypocritical contrast to the refusal to count the
Iraqi civilians killed in his invasion over false
claims of weapons of mass destruction and the
crime-ridden chaos of an occupation that did not plan
on an "insurgency."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Iraqi
commander Tommy Franks both said, "We don't do body
counts." Then, right in our faces, Powell said
civilian casualty figures were "relatively low."
Central Command spokesman Pete Mitchell hailed the
invasion for its "unbelievably low amount of
collateral damage and needless civilian death." Paul
Bremer, Bush's former civilian reconstruction envoy,
said, "We have freed people with one of the great
military battles of all time, in a period of three
weeks, with almost no collateral damage, very few
civilian deaths, and they are now free."

The White House left the counting to journalists,
doctors, think tanks, and human rights groups. The
numbers range from conservative guesses of 3,200 in
the first few weeks of the war and occupation
estimates ranging from 15,000 to 100,000. No matter if
the number was 3,200 or 32,000, this atrocity of
silence makes the torture in Abu Ghraib pale in
comparison.

No flags have been flown at half-staff for Iraqi
civilians. There have been no moments of silence in
Congress. There have been no speeches by Bush mourning
"the tens of thousands of children who are lost."
Americans have not been asked to think of the "tens of
thousands more who will grow up without their parents
or their brothers or their sisters."

In a nation that supposedly reelected Bush on "moral
values," there have been no prayers from the White
House for "all the people whose fate is still unknown"
in Iraq. This was a bipartisan hypocrisy. Even Nancy
Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, fell into the
trap of favoritism, fueling the appearance that this
war was a religious crusade.

At the beginning of the war she said, "We pray for the
swift and successful disarmament of Iraq with the
least possible loss of life among our forces and the
civilians of Iraq." But then she closed her message
with: "May God bless our courageous forces and their
brave families. May God bless the president of the
United States. And may God bless America."

Not once did Pelosi or any American politician say in
the last two years, "God bless Iraqi civilians" or any
variant. Only one time has Bush uttered "God bless the
people of Iraq," and that was in announcing Saddam
Hussein's capture. Not once has he asked God's
blessing for the courageous civilians and the families
of Iraq who had no choice but to brave our bombs.

Let us do what we can for the victims of the tsunami.
But no matter how much we weep for them, no matter
what donations we spare, the offerings will not spare
us from history's judgment, if not God's. Lugar said
his heart goes out to the victims of the tsunami. No
hearts have gone out to Iraqi civilians in this
heartless coverup.

Powell said of the tsunami, "The power of the wave to
destroy bridges, to destroy factories, to destroy
homes, to destroy crops, to destroy everything in its
path is amazing." He said, "I have never seen anything
like it in my experience."

Yes, he has. It was in Iraq. The tsunami was us.

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