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by
John Chuckman
June
5, 2003
The
saga of America's Private Lynch, no matter what the details of her movie-set
escape prove to be, adds only banality to needless bloodshed in Iraq.
Another
young American woman, Marla Ruzicka, went largely ignored. Ms. Ruzicka runs a
non-profit organization that works to make accurate counts of a war's civilian
dead. It is small wonder Ms. Ruzicka is not given the same coverage as Private
Lynch, since, based upon detailed field work in Iraq, she says that between
five and ten thousand civilians were killed.
Generally
in wars, total casualties, which include wounded, crippled, and lost, are many
times the number killed, often as high as ten times. I do not know what the
appropriate ratio is for Iraq, but it's not hard to see that the United States
killed and hurt a great many innocent people in a few weeks of
"precision" war.
Of
military losses, poor boys drafted to defend their homes, we as yet have no
good estimate. In the first Gulf War, between sixty and one hundred thousand
Iraqi soldiers were slaughtered. With Iraq's population being less than ten
percent that of the United States, such losses must be multiplied by ten to get
some feel for their impact on the society.
So
while Americans, thirty years later, still weep at the Vietnam Memorial in
Washington - a monument representing about sixty thousand deaths over ten years
of war - they have inflicted on Iraq, in just three weeks, that same
proportionate loss - all of them civilians. The one-sided slaughter of soldiers
in the first Gulf War represented the equivalent of the U.S. having sustained
between half a million and a million deaths just over a decade ago. No society
recovers easily from such losses of its youth.
In
a real war, a war in which most people agree there is some powerful motivating
cause, the fate of an individual soldier like Private Lynch becomes almost
unimportant. Soldiers in real wars are reduced to just about the status of
soldier-ants in a war between two ant-nests.
But
the public can be mercurial when it comes to invasions with flimsy excuses and
gas-bag ideology. Public support can shift quickly or melt away entirely, so a
little juicing-up may be prescribed. Besides, when there is almost no real news
being reported, as was true in America for Iraq, you need a little something to
satisfy the chips-and-television crowd anxious to be informed from their
couches.
Since
America's modern warriors are limited to follow-up after missiles and bombs have
reduced everything to a vision of hell, much of the touching stuff that once
inspired the home front is missing. There are no more pitiful and tragic images
of young Americans falling in what seems a worthy cause.
So
the Pentagon's prisoner-liberation simulation, like its staged statue-toppling
in Baghdad, so suggestive of news photos at end of World War Two, served
several purposes.
Is
this how a great power behaves in the early part of the 21st century?
Especially a power that enjoys reminding us at every opportunity - I suppose
because it is so easy for the rest of the world, just watching its actions, to
forget - that America stands for human rights and democratic principles? Yes,
unfortunately, that is exactly how it behaves. Only, the complete picture is
bleaker still.
Mr.
Bush at the G-8 summit in Evian, France - a summit he considered not even
attending and at which, in any event, he cut short his stay - made an effort at
grand-poohbah statesman with, "We can have disagreements, but that doesn't
mean we have to be disagreeable," a lifelessly trite line, but one
certainly ranking at the peak of this President's eloquence.
Just
a few days before (May 30), Bush abandoned the session with reporters that
customarily precedes a G-8 summit, perhaps reflecting advisors' concerns that
he would blow it with his anger when questioned about recent events. He left
the session for his tactful National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to
blow.
On
the subject of Canada, Ms. Rice gave us, "I think there was disappointment
in the United States that a friend like Canada was unable to support the United
States in what we considered to be an extremely important issue for our
security [Emphasis is mine]."
Does
Ms. Rice read the newspaper? Her words about security come within days of
reports of an interview with the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz in which he admits
the business about weapons was an excuse for invading Iraq. His admission only
punctuated weeks of reports about American forces not finding anything remotely
suspicious and America's hack chorus of national columnists swelling their
breasts to a theme about weapons not being important after all.
Canada
has never stinted in helping Americans. Canada is the kind of neighbor any
sensible people would want. But helping a scheme for "regime change"
in someone else's country, unsupported by international law, is not quite the
same thing as helping Americans.
Canada
was never called a poor friend for not helping in the many shadowy "regime
changes" the United States has conducted across the Caribbean and Latin
America. Canada's values and interests do not lie that way. Why was the
situation suddenly so different for an unthreatening small country on the other
side of the planet?
The
tough answer is that the United States government felt alone and naked in what
it was doing over Iraq. It desperately sought international approval, which it
did not get, leaving the harsh ideologues in the White House both embarrassed
and angry at being embarrassed.
Ms.
Rice went on to say differences with Canada had put bilateral relations through
"some difficult times," and "that disappointment will, of course,
not go [away] easily. It will take some time, because when friends are in a
position where we say our security's at stake, we would have thought, as we got
from many of our friends, that the answer would have been, 'Well, how can we
help?' "
Does
any honest person reading her words find them in keeping with Bush's G-8 stuff
about "not being disagreeable"? They are clearly disagreeable,
provocative, and even petty.
But
Ms. Rice went even further concerning Germany, "I can't answer the
question of whether personal relations between the President and the Chancellor
will ever be the same. We will have to see."
As
for France, "there were times when it appeared that American power was
seen to be more dangerous than perhaps Saddam Hussein," Ms. Rice said.
"I'll just put it very bluntly, we simply didn't understand it."
Well,
to put it also very bluntly, American power, when it is used to bully others,
in fact is more dangerous, far more dangerous, than Saddam Hussein ever was.
"We
have been allies in great struggles in world wars," Ms. Rice said of the
French. "The United States gave its blood to liberate France."
The
United States gave its blood to defeat rivals Germany and Japan. Liberating
countries like France was incidental, although the French have always
scrupulously, respectfully maintained America's battlefield cemeteries and
commemorated America's efforts as few others do.
The
historical fact is President Roosevelt considered governing postwar France in a
very high-handed manner. He pretty much detested De Gaulle, and France's empire
was something the Roosevelt people never stopped sneering at and preaching
about while merrily working to build one of their own. The situation was far
murkier and less heroic than Ms. Rice would have you understand, but her
purpose was to put another country on the defensive, not to teach history.
Are
the world's statesmen so dense they do not understand true danger when they see
it? Do they deliberately embrace evil? Of course not. Then, why Ms. Rice's
language if the need for invading Iraq was clear? Precisely because the need
was not clear, and it has only become even less clear now. Manipulative
language here is a substitute for thought - we are given a form of aggressive
marketing rather than an honest product - a practice to which this
administration is addicted.
Just
a week before the G-8 summit, another Bush-administration bully, Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld, gave us his version of "not being disagreeable."
Rumsfeld informed the French air force that it would not be welcome at two
upcoming international exercises.
Rumsfeld's
version of "not being disagreeable" included declaring that the
United States would heavily cut its involvement with the Paris Air Show,
traditionally the world's most important show for aviation technology. As a
Pentagon official so agreeably put it, "With troops eating military rations
in the dust in Iraq, it's not appropriate for officers to be wined and dined in
Paris."
Doesn't
that sound reasonable? So, do you think they've stopped wining and dining in
expensive Georgetown restaurants over all the fat new Pentagon contracts being
handed out these days? Or do they just quietly put aside that disagreeable
stuff about dust and rations on such happy occasions? Do you think they served
military freeze-dried rations at the President's recent $18-million dollar
fundraiser?
America's
top diplomat, that disappointing baritone of dissimulation, Colin Powell, has
gone around for weeks uttering threats and slights towards France. A couple of
weeks ago, he said the United States would reconsider its links with France
following disagreement over Iraq. Does that sound anything like being "not
disagreeable"?
On
CBC Radio some weeks ago, there was a fascinating little story. There is a
manufacturer in Quebec who actually makes some of the fancy cowboy boots
beloved in Texas. During the height of American irritation over Iraq, this
boot-maker was asked by his Texas customer to supply a written statement that
he did not personally support Canada's policy towards war in Iraq.
Can
you imagine an American's furious response at being asked such an inappropriate,
private, personal matter in a business transaction? In effect, he was asked to
supply a kind of pledge of allegiance to someone else's foreign policy.
Something
corrupt, dirty, and destructive is taking hold of America, choking even
ordinary business with the sewerage of ideology. How does one talk of
neighborliness, love of freedom, or democratic-mindedness while behaving like a
blackmailer?
John Chuckman lives in Canada and is
former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He writes frequently
for Yellow Times.org and other publications.