Infernal Affairs: Fallujah Revisited in Ukraine

The massive, mad destruction being inflicted across Ukraine brings to mind this passage from Italo Calvino, which I'd quoted in an article I wrote about George W. Bush's Guernica-like destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. "The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." As detailed in the article, Bush's forces bombed medical centers (to prevent bad PR from pictures of wounded civilians) and slaughtered countless innocent people after declaring the entire city a "free-fire zone" where anyone moving could be killed.

We can only pray that Putin stops short of the frenzied, murderous incineration that Bush wrought upon Fallujah, in the illegal war he launched after months of deception, threats, outright lies and misinformation – exactly, point by point, as we've seen in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. Everything Putin has done so far in Ukraine, Bush (and Blair) did tenfold in Iraq. Yet both Bush and Blair walk free, living in vast wealth and comfort, treated as honored and honorable elder statesmen, even after openly committing what the Nuremberg Tribunal called "the supreme international crime, encompassing all others in its wake": a war of aggression. Perhaps Putin took note of this as he plotted his own war of aggression: "They got away with it; why can't I? Maybe after I've killed hundreds of thousand of innocent people in a senseless act of moral depravity, as Bush and Blair did, I too can get a hug from Michelle Obama. And a knighthood from the Queen."

All three of these men – and their myriad followers, accomplices and sycophants – are of the inferno. (As are those now bombing Yemen into starvation and near-genocide, an ongoing atrocity armed and abetted by Obama, Trump, Biden, Cameron, May, Johnson and their parties.) Even as we focus on the plight of those under assault in Ukraine right now, doing whatever possible to help stop the wanton carnage and aid the victims, we must not close our eyes to the inferno elsewhere: within our midst, within our past, within our present; perhaps even within ourselves. We must heed Calvino and refuse to accept the inferno, wherever and however it appears, and instead make space for all that is outside the hell we create for each other on earth.

Not Back in the USSR: Putin Bashes Communists for Betraying Russian Nationalism as he Launches War

I’m surprised more attention hasn't been paid to the virulently anti-Soviet nature of Putin’s speech justifying his attack on Ukraine. The general idea has been that Putin hankers to restore the Soviet Union and its system. His past statements that the fall of the USSR was an unmitigated catastrophe is adduced as proof of his "communist" leanings. On the right, he's denounced for this, while on the left, some count it in his favor. But his speech showed just why he thinks the Soviet Union’s fall was so tragic: because it reduced Russia's ability to dominate the peoples of the USSR.

To Putin, the Union was an extension of Russian nationalist power, which was diminished by its collapse. This was the "tragedy," not the loss of an internationalist socialist state. But he went further. The USSR itself was fatally flawed, he said, precisely because it "wrongly" sought (or at least claimed) to give equal weight to all the peoples in the Soviet Union instead of exalting Russian supremacy. 

Putin denounced Lenin and Stalin by name for their crimes against Russian nationalism (or "Great Russian Chauvinism," as the Soviets used to call it). He stressed the perfidy of the "Bolsheviks" and their internationalist outlook. In Russian nationalism (and Ukrainian fascism), "Bolsheviks" very often becomes a code-name for "Jews;" Putin was deliberately playing with this trope to fire up nationalist sentiment. "Bolsheviks" brought us to this crisis; "Communists" gave away sacred Russian territory: people who weren't "real" Russians. Putin is no Communist, no leftist; he is, at heart, a crude nationalist (and predatory capitalist), who, like all nationalists, mixes genuine grievances with vainglorious fantasies about the specialness, the "exceptionalism," of one's own people: a concept rooted ultimately in ethnicity and "race." (Like Tucker Carlson’s racist blathering about “legacy Americans," etc.) 

Of course, nothing Putin is doing excuses the crimes and hypocrisies of so many of those denouncing him, such as the US/UK elites who have committed, cheered, countenanced and/or forgiven monstrous crimes of their own systems, like the mass-murdering war of aggression against Iraq and the mass-murdering sanctions and theft of national wealth that Biden is now inflicting on Afghanistan, etc. Their atrocities are  legion. 

But their crimes don't excuse similar crimes committed by others. Nor does the presence of unsavoury elements in Ukraine (such as the Azov battalion and the Banderaites) give moral justification for an attack on Ukraine, any more than the depredations of Saddam's regime "justified" the horrendous war crime against Iraq. To decry a precipitous military action by the rightwing regime in Moscow doesn't mean you now automatically credit everything (or anything) that the proven liars and death-dealing militarists in the US/UK have to say, nor that you must ignore their part in fomenting this crisis and the fact that their own policies in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Kosovo, etc. have given Putin a template to follow and precedents for "justifying" his use of violence to pursue political ends. 

But already the "discourse" is veering into the ditch of "either-or": denounce the attack on Ukraine, and you're an imperialist Western stooge; denounce the crimes and hypocrisies of the West and you're a Putin-loving Trumpist traitor. But it is entirely possible to stand outside the political/media establishments of nation-states and try to view things from the perspective of enduring principles, such as Chekhov's belief in "freedom from violence and lies, no matter how these two manifest themselves," and to judge events accordingly. 

Here we must look away from the nabobs nattering in DC and London, and turn to wiser, more considered voices, like that of Martin Kimani, Kenya’s ambassador to the UN. His speech to the Security Council, before the broader attack on Ukraine, rightly condemns Putin’s action but also carries within its moral penumbra a condemnation of all such attempts to impose national agendas on others by force. Rooted in the African experience of colonialism, his forthright statement carries none of the hypocrisy of the US/UK, which have literally laid waste to vast swathes of the earth and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in military interventions in this century alone. 

A clip of Kimani’s speech quickly went viral. But it is telling that the clip omits his explicit condemnation of “powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard. Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight. It has been assaulted today as it as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.”

This is the deeper perspective, borne out of direct experience with the fallout from “dead empires,” that we need to attend to.

Permanent Wave: The Lies About "Living With Covid"

 Sitting here in my 8th day of isolation with symptoms barely abated, let me say that "living with Covid" in the sense now being used in the US and UK – i.e., dropping even the pretense of fighting the disease – is not going to mean "a return to normal." It will mean a permanently diminished world with chronic uncertainty in every aspect of life: in the supply chain, the healthcare system, in schools, business, arts & entertainment, in personal life. It means surrendering to a disease that kills people at 10 times the rate of the flu and infects far more, every year, year after year. To really "live with Covid," as opposed to simply surrendering to it, we would have to transform our societies in the most profound way, at almost every level. It would be a million miles away from the old “normal.” 

Just in practical terms, we would have to expand and upscale public health infrastructure to an extent unfathomable before now, so it would have the flexible capacity to deal with the flood of Covid cases that will strain the system year after year, “endemically,” from now on. And this expanded public health system would have to be a genuinely public one; it could not be concerned with “value for money” (UK) or profit margins (US), because it would need to have large-scale (“inefficient”) redundancies built into it, reserves of resources and personnel to meet the cyclical crises caused by living with a disease that is much worse than the flu.This healthcare expansion would also have to include provision for dealing the effects of Long Covid in an increasing numbers of people. And massive funding for research into disease prevention and treatment – again, on a non-profit basis to ensure the widest possible reach for any breakthroughs.

“Living with Covid” would also mean restructuring the economy to accommodate constant interruptions to the supply chain, to services, to all normal business operations due to constant staff shortages from recurring Covid outbreaks. It would mean vast restructuring of educational systems, with resources built in to deal with endemic teacher shortages, particularly in winter, with new infrastructures for ventilation and spacing, with mental health provision to support students who lose classmates to Covid (a small number, but something that will become routine as the living-with-Covid years go by). It would mean an expansion of sick leave provisions for employees who will face the likelihood of repeated Covid bouts throughout the year, and any cumulative effect these might have on their longterm health. It would entail transformations in government budgeting priorities, to ensure there was always funding to step in and provide effective support for individuals and businesses, schools and other institutions during waves of outbreaks, and in the constant, general attrition that will result from Covid being a constant fact of life. 

In short, if our governments genuinely intended to “live with Covid,” these are just some of the profound transformations we would have to see in our society, our government and our individual lives. These are the kinds of things that we’d be seeing governments beginning to address right now. But take a look at the United States. Take a look at Great Britain. Do you see anything even remotely like a serious attempt to come to grips with what “living with Covid” would really mean? No you do not. What “living with Covid” means to the UK government, to the US government, is, in essence, simply this: “We don’t care if you live or die, or what quality of life you have, as long as a sufficient number of you keep going to work and buying things to maintain our elites in their monstrously unjustified domination of society.” 

It is impractical, impolitic and undesirable to live in some clamped-down “biosecurity state” on a permanent basis. If Covid really can’t be eradicated (we haven’t even tried to do this, of course, but still), then yes, we’ll have to learn to “live with it.” But this will in no way be a return to “normal.” The “normal” is gone and is not coming back. The question is whether we will re-order our societies to provide the best possible life for the greatest number of people in these altered circumstances or just meekly accept a vastly diminished, unjust world geared to the greed of the privileged few. The bipartisan elites of the US and UK are showing us clearly which of these futures they prefer.

Kairos in Cairo: Seizing the Moment of Moral Courage

I was among the million people who marched through London on February 15, 2003, to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq. I don't think anyone in the crowd thought a single march would stop the Anglo-American coalition from launching a war of aggression, but most felt it was important that the widespread anger and dismay at this murderous course of action be embodied, literally, on the streets, by a broad cross-section of the public.

This was done. And it was not totally unimportant, as an act of bearing witness. But now, years later, the people of Egypt -- especially the young people -- have shown us what a small, feeble act that 2003 march really was, and how we all let thuggish leaders play us for fools. We showed up, we marched, we massed -- then we quietly went home, back to our lives, and let the brutal machinery of aggressive war roll on.

What would have happened had we possessed the courage and commitment that the Egyptians are demonstrating today? What if we, like them, had refused to go home, and had stood our ground, thronged in the center of London, day after day, railing against a regime bent on aggressive war: "the supreme international crime, only different from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of all the others," as Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal put it. (It also added: "To initiate a war of aggression is a crime that no political or economic situation can justify.")

Day after day after day, the Egyptians have withstood the blows of a vicious police state, the savage attacks of paid goons, the strain, exhaustion and deprivation of constant vigil under threat of arrest or death -- and still they are standing there, more and more of them all the time, in a remarkable, near-miraculous display of moral courage that will undoubtedly topple the criminal regime, despite the desperate, clueless delaying tactics that Hosni Mubarak pulled on Thursday night.

But in London on that long-ago day, which now lies behind us across a surging river of blood choked with the bodies of a million innocent dead, we simply melted away in the course of an afternoon. A single day; a few hours; a few speeches -- then nothing. How Blair and Bush and all the militarist apparatchiks must have laughed at that! "Let them have their little march. Who gives a shit? Give them their permits, redirect the traffic for them, let them wave their signs. What does it matter? When it's over, they'll just go home, and we can get on with our business."

But what if we had stayed? By the tens of thousands if not the hundreds of thousands? What if we, like the Egyptians, had gotten in the way of business as usual, and brought more and more pressure to bear on the system, forcing the issue of aggressive war on the public consciousness, unavoidably, day after day -- and by this, as in Egypt, forcing officials of the system to declare where they stood? How badly would the power structure and its functionaries have been shaken? How many of the latter would have been emboldened to begin at least asking questions and demanding more information about the senseless rush to war? How many indeed might have voted "no confidence" in a government so deeply enmeshed in a scheme of deliberate deception aimed to perpetrate mass murder?

Maybe it would not have stopped the war. There's no way of knowing now. But we have seen in Egypt and Tunisia how an explosion of mass moral courage -- and physical courage -- can tear a hole in the zeitgeist and make a space for new realities, for transformations which seemed unthinkable only days before. Such kairotic moments (to borrow Tillich's phrase) are rare, and if they are not seized, the window closes. There we were, a million people in the center of London, of all classes, all races, all creeds, all professions, united against war. Kairos hung heavy in the air, like the invisible pressure before a thunderstorm.

But we turned away. We let it go. The moment passed. "And the war came."

That's why February 15 will remain nothing more than a brief footnote in a long, still-churning saga of atrocity and slaughter, while January 25, the day the Egyptians first took to the streets -- and stayed in the streets -- will be honored for generations as a landmark of human liberation.

Silent Surge: A Shocking Act of Political Violence

Americans showed their remarkable collective wisdom once again last week, when a shocking act of violence was met with a steady calm across the political spectrum. Indeed, it seemed the entire country was united in a steadfast effort to downplay any disturbing implications of the despicable act and to keep doggedly to business as usual.

We speak of course of Barack Obama's latest "surge" in Afghanistan: his third such escalation of the murderous militarist misadventure in that ravaged land, now heading toward its 10th year of American occupation. Yes, while everyone -- including our leading progressives -- were occupied first with the sight of the orange vulgarian John Boehner waggling the sacred Speaker's gavel then with the latest mass shooting by an American following what George Bush called "the path of action" (i.e., the pursuit of politics by deadly violence) -- the Nobel Peace Laureate was sending 1,400 more troops into the killing fields of Afghanistan.

This move guarantees that there will be an "uptick" in civilians deaths, to borrow the hideous argot of Vice President Joe Biden during the very first Obama "surge" -- which took place less than a month after Obama's inauguration. More killing, more resistance, more extremism, more grief and hatred, more corruption and war-profiteering -- but what of that? These have been the results of every "surge" in the Terror War, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia to Yemen to Pakistan -- and to the many other fronts in the "secret war" of death squads, bombings, kidnappings, gun-running and other terrorist acts that Obama has escalated to mind-boggling heights, and which he is now further entrenching and consolidating with a brand-new HQ for "Special Ops." ("Wetwork Central," perhaps?)

But let us not, in this moment of national grief -- when the Laureate is linking hands across the aisle with the orange vulgarian, putting aside political vitriol in a new spirit of comity (which will doubtless culminate in the bipartisan gutting of Social Security and other such acts of "serious," savvy governance)-- be too critical of our leaders. For surely the main intent of this latest "surge" is not the increase in killing, corruption, chaos and sorrow in Afghanistan (although that will be the inevitable result). No, the primary goal of this act of violence by the Peace Laureate is to provide cover for his political posterior later this year, when he announces the beginning of the long-promised, much-vaunted "drawdown" of troops in the Bactrian satapry.

Can't you see it now? The deadline for the July 2011 "drawdown" approaches. There are earnest articles in the New York Times and Washington Post and other establishment redoubts examining the "internal battles" within the administration on whether Obama will keep his promise to begin winding down the war or else acquiesce to the desire of the "hawks" to maintain troop levels. The agonizing moral debates in the inner circle will be judiciously leaked to favored reporters. Progressive bloggers will enter the fray, calling on the president to be true to his word -- or else this time they really, really, really will be .... really sort of upset with him. The deadline arrives, Obama steps into the pressroom, or into the Rose Garden, or onto the stage at a military base, and he announces .... "The drawdown has begun. Our promise to the American people has been kept."

Then there is rejoicing throughout the progressivosphere ("I've criticized Obama a lot and I'm sure I will again, but you have to give the man credit on this one!") and raging throughout the rightosphere ("Another act of treason by the surrender monkey -- and no, that phrase is not racist!"), and judicious nodding of centrist heads ("We'll just have to wait and see how this plays in Peoria, Jim."). Then you will read down to the fifth or sixth or seventh paragraph in the Times story on the drawdown, and you'll see something like this:

"The first drawdown might be small in overall numbers -- Pentagon officials say that approximately 1,400 troops will be withdrawn over the next two months -- but it is a highly significant milestone. Administration officials are already calling it a political 'home run' for the president ..." And so on and so forth in the usual manner.

In other words, this latest "surge" is a way to increase troop numbers now so that a few troops can be withdrawn later in a symbolic act that will still leave the pointless war-profiteering boondoggle operating in high gear until the cows come home.

It is the kind of bloodsoaked cynicism that only a Nobel Peace Laureate could pull off. And it will doubtless be greeted with hosannas from our progressives ... who in any case will still be ranting about crosshairs on a website -- while ignoring the innocent people being blown and shot to bits by their champion in Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere in his relentless surging of the Terror War.

Note: To understand the deeper implications of this latest escalation, see this remarkably powerful article by Arthur Silber on Obama's last surge. It is a deeply informed and moving essay. And while you are there, please consider contributing to Silber's website. He is in very poor health, and the website is his only means of support. His voice is vital; help him if you can.

Mondo Inferno: The Endless Echoes of America's WMD Atrocity

For years, I have been writing about the American use of chemical weapons in the savage assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in late 2004. The results of this deployment of WMD began emerging a few months later. The clear evidence of chemical weapons damage among the civilians of the city -- uncovered by Iraqi doctors working for the American-backed government -- was scorned and dismissed at that time, including by many stalwart anti-war voices, apparently frightened that such "extremist" charges would somehow detract from their own "reasonable" opposition -- perhaps even cost them their perches in the mainstream media.

(Oddly enough, my own pieces on the matter were also appearing in the mainstream media -- the pages of The Moscow Times, the decidedly centrist, pro-business, English-language newspaper in the Russian capital, which supported my column from all attacks, including heavy hints from the American embassy that it should be dropped.)

In any case, the evidence of American WMD in Fallujah kept mounting, year after year, until finally, in mid--2010, even the BBC's most respected voices were reporting on the effects of the chemical weaponry -- primarily on the children of Fallujah, some of whom were not yet born when the attack was launched.

Even without the WMD, the attack itself was one of the most horrific events of the still-unfolding act of aggression in Iraq. Presented in the U.S. press as an old-fashioned, gung-ho, WWII-style "battle," it was in fact a mass slaughter, largely of trapped civilians; almost all of the "terrorists" and "insurgents" in the city had long escaped during the months-long, oddly public build-up to the assault. It seemed clear that the intent was not to quash an insurgent nest, as stated, but to perpetrate an act of condign, collective punishment -- primarily against civilians -- in order to terrorize the rest of Iraq into submission. As I noted at the time of the initial attack in 2004:

"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."

This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. ....

One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. ...

So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.

The wanton, unnecessary destruction of Fallujah is one of the central stories of our time. Yet it is almost entirely forgotten, especially among the people in whose name this vast crime was committed. But the marks of this atrocity live on in its victims. Over the holidays, while America's high and mighty were making merry, yet another detailed study was released confirming a major spike in birth defects in Fallujah following the attack. The Guardian reports:

A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.

The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja's genetic health. ... The findings are likely to prompt further speculation that the defects were caused by depleted uranium rounds, which were heavily used in two large battles in the city in April and November 2004.

... One case documented in the report is of a mother and her daughter who after the 2004 battles both gave birth to babies with severe malformations. The second wife of one of the fathers also had a severely deformed baby in 2009. "It is important to understand that under normal conditions, the chances of such occurrences is virtually zero," said Savabieasfahani.

...Birth-defect rates in Falluja have become increasingly alarming over the past two years. In the first half of 2010, the number of monthly cases of serious abnormalities rose to unprecedented levels. In Falluja general hospital, 15% of the 547 babies born in May had a chronic deformity, such as a neural tune defect – which affects the brain and lower limbs – cardiac, or skeletal abnormalities, or cancers.

No other city in Iraq has anywhere near the same levels of reported abnormalities. Falluja sees at least 11 times as many major defects in newborns than world averages, the research has shown.

The new report follows on the harrowing findings reported by the BBC and The Independent (but strangely omitted from the American media) in mid-2010:

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

As I noted at that time:

The background here is good as far as it goes, but it omits the salient point of that mutilation of American mercenaries; it followed a series of security shoot-em-ups that killed a number of innocent civilians in Fallujah. The attacks on the Blackwater mercenaries were a violent reprisal for murders committed by foreign agents in the midst of an illegal act of military aggression. But, as always, the American revenge for the attacks was vastly disproportionate: an entire city destroyed, thousands of people killed -- and generations of terrible suffering for innocent children -- all to get "payback" for four mercenaries.

The Independent reported in July:

In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."

As I noted then, the effects of these wonder-weapons were, to borrow Barack Obama's term for the Bush Regime's "surge" in Iraq, "an extraordinary achievement." From the Independent:

The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

A city whose birth defect rate is 11 times the world average. A city where children are suffering from cancers "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors" -- indeed, where the increase in leukemia is far greater than among the first victims of American WMD. O where are our great American moralists, who rant and rage at the exposure of a nipple or the thought of gay sex? Why have they not seized on this terrible crime "against the children," this horrible, criminal overreach of "big government?" O where are our great American progressives, who stood so tall and proud against the American war machine when it was led by an embarrassing vulgarian, but now occupy themselves with handwringing and bead-counting about the political fortunes of his bloodstained predecessor, now perpetrating his own mini-Fallujahs week after week against defenseless villagers in Pakistan?

I'm going to finish by repeating my conclusion of the July 2010 piece. Hell, I might just repeat it every six months from now until kingdom come:

I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the "continuity" of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by god I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth. 



From 2004 (see original for links):

"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space." -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

"Why Aren't You Dead Yet?" The Enlightened War Policies of the Peace Laureate

One of the most important stories of the day continues to be almost universally ignored, both by the corporate media and most 'progressive' bloggers, eternally absorbed with the shallow and pointless factional foolery amongst the cliques at the imperial court. But Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com has continued to shine a high, harsh light on this sinister development, which is adding a vast storehouse of anguish, hatred and violence that will be the Peace Laureate's chief legacy to future generations.

We refer of course to the Obama Administration's escalation of air strikes in Afghanistan. As Ditz has been noting for some time, the coming of the media-sainted General David Petraeus to take direct command in the contentious satrapy has seen a spike in civilian deaths, as the vaunted "counterinsurgency" expert has "loosened the reins" that had temporarily curtailed the constant dropping of heavy ordnance on civilian residential areas.

Ditz has been doing an expert job of lacing together the few scattered mentions of the Obama-Petraeus Luftkrieg in the American press, along with the considerably more copious coverage in foreign papers. The picture emerging from this pointillist approach is grim: not only are American forces dropping more bombs and killing more civilians, they are increasingly dismissing all reports of collateral carnage as "Taliban trickery." As Ditz notes in his most recent report (see the original for links):

... the Obama Administration is said to be further escalating its air war in Afghanistan, and officials are confirming a “loosening of the reins” of the restrictions on air strikes. Officials warned that the McChrystal rules, aimed at reducing civilian deaths, meant “some officers were exerting excessive caution, fearing career damage if civilians were mistakenly killed.” With Petraeus now in charge, concerns about killing civilians have faded.

Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that a heartwarming indication of the deep humanitarianism that lies at the heart of America's ever-reluctant war machine (whose blood-greased gears are inscribed with the noble motto: "More in Sorrow Than in Anger")? It was the possibility of "career damage" that made American officers act with "excessive caution" with respect to civilian casualties -- not the horrific thought of taking an innocent human life, not an apprehension of the destructive, unbearable sorrow of the survivors, not even the savvy realpolitik notion that killing civilians only multiplies your enemies and makes them fight harder. No, it was terrifying idea that they might miss out on some of the lifelong perks and privileges of higher rank in our militarist state, if they overstepped the very minimal "restraints" put in place by Gen. Stanley McChrystal -- a former commander of death squads and torture centers in Iraq -- before his sacking.

Meanwhile, the lies about the level of civilian killing keep coming. As Ditz notes, even as Obama officials mouth drivel about the civilian death toll dropping, the Pentagon's own official statistics show that the Americans "are actually killing considerably more civilians than in 2009" -- 11 percent more, to be exact.

This is precisely the same kind of crude and blatant perversion of the truth that incenses our good progressives when it is churned out by the genuinely loathsome corporate toady, Glenn Beck. But it raises few hackles when it is employed by Obama and his minions -- who, unlike Beck, are not only regurgitating vicious nonsense but are also killing actual innocent human beings, right here and now, and not in some future "Republic of Gilead" under Mullah Beck and Prophetess Palin, or any other of the rightwing dystopias so feared (and promoted) by progressive fundraisers.

But lying about the death count is only part of the pernicious story. Even those Pentagon stats which belie Obama's Beckian propaganda only count the deaths that the American humanitarians are willing to admit to publicly. The earlier Wikileaks dump about Afghanistan detailed a number of cases of civilian killings that American forces catalogued -- and kept quiet. And of course, the Afghan survivors of bombing runs and night raids come forth in a steady stream to testify about the death and mutilation of their loved ones and the destruction of their homes.

But, as Ditz reported last week, many American officials are now systematically dismissing any testimony of Afghan civilians deaths that come from ... actual Afghan civilians. Indeed, the Marine commander of the violent Helmand district of Sangin says that "every single instance" of civilian deaths in his district is caused by the Taliban -- despite a flood of complaints from locals about American berserkery since taking over control of the district from the British.

The US denies the allegation of the killings, but admitted that they don’t both the investigate the vast majority of the complaints because they assume them to be “Taliban propaganda.” The commander of the Marines is the district says that the Taliban are to blame for “every single instance” of a civilian casualty in the district.

The US took over the district in September from British forces, who had been holding it for years and expressed concerns that any good will they built up with the locals would quickly be lost when the more aggressive US troops took over and started launching operations. It seems this fear is panning out.

Indeed, tribal elders regularly complain to the Marines about the killings. Officials said no investigations would be taken on the basis of the elders complaints, and said the fact that the elders haven’t been killed by the Taliban was “proof” that they were in league with the Taliban and the complaints were a trick.

So there you have it, the essence of humanitarian war as waged by Nobel Peace Laureates in the 21st century: The fact that you're not dead yet proves you are an enemy.

Is it any wonder that civilian casualties are soaring under the aegis of such an enlightened philosophy?