When queried by reporters concerning
his views on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963,
Malcolm X famously – and quite charitably, all things considered
– replied that it was merely a case of "chickens coming home to roost."
On the morning of September 11, 2001, a few
more chickens – along with some half-million dead Iraqi children
– came home to roost in a very big way at the twin towers of New York's
World Trade Center. Well, actually, a few of them seem to have nestled
in at the Pentagon as well.
The Iraqi youngsters, all of them under 12, died as
a predictable – in fact, widely predicted – result of the 1991
US "surgical" bombing of their country's water purification and
sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon
which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival.
If the nature of the bombing were not already
bad enough – and it should be noted that this sort of "aerial
warfare" constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing
myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable
standard of "civilized" behavior – the death toll has been steadily
ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced
all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids,
the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the
nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives
of even their toddlers.
All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The
500,000 kids lost to date thus represent something on the order
of 25 percent of their age group. Indisputably, the rest have suffered
– are still suffering – a combination of physical debilitation and
psychological trauma severe enough to prevent their ever fully recovering.
In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated.
The reason for this holocaust was/is rather
simple, and stated quite straightforwardly by President George
Bush, the 41st "freedom-loving" father of the freedom-lover currently
filling the Oval Office, George the 43rd: "The world must learn that
what we say, goes," intoned George the Elder to the enthusiastic applause
of freedom-loving Americans everywhere. How Old George conveyed his
message was certainly no mystery to the US public. One need only recall
the 24-hour-per-day dissemination of bombardment videos on every available
TV channel, and the exceedingly high ratings of these telecasts, to gain
a sense of how much they knew.
In trying to affix a meaning to such things, we would do well
to remember the wave of elation that swept America at reports of what
was happening along the so-called Highway of Death: perhaps 100,000
"towel-heads" and "camel jockeys" – or was it "sand niggers" that
week? – in full retreat, routed and effectively defenseless, many
of them conscripted civilian laborers, slaughtered in a single day
by jets firing the most hyper-lethal types of ordnance. It was a performance
worthy of the nazis during the early months of their drive into Russia.
And it should be borne in mind that Good Germans gleefully cheered that
butchery, too. Indeed, support for Hitler suffered no serious erosion
among Germany's "innocent civilians" until the defeat at Stalingrad
in 1943.
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The essay on this page was expanded into a full-length
book - to buy Ward Churchill's Book "On The Justice of Roosting Chickens"
for $20.95, postage included - click above on the image
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