A Man-Made Tsunami(Why are There No Fundraisers for the Iraqi Dead? )

A Man-Made Tsunami
Why are There No Fundraisers for the Iraqi Dead?

by Terry Jones

I am bewildered by the world reaction to the tsunami tragedy. Why are newspapers, television and politicians making such a fuss? Why has the British public forked out more than £100m to help the survivors, and why is Tony Blair now promising "hundreds of millions of pounds"? Why has Australia pledged £435m and Germany £360m? And why has Mr Bush pledged £187m?

Of course it's wonderful to see the human race rallying to the aid of disaster victims, but it's the inconsistency that has me foxed. Nobody is making this sort of fuss about all the people killed in Iraq, and yet it's a human catastrophe of comparable dimensions.

According to the only scientific estimate attempted, Iraqi deaths since the war began number more than 100,000. The tsunami death toll is in the region of 150,000. Yet in the case of Iraq, the media seems reluctant to impress on the public the scale of the carnage.

I haven't seen many TV reporters standing in the ruins of Falluja, breathlessly describing how, in 30 years of reporting, they've never seen a human tragedy on this scale. The Pope hasn't appealed for everyone to remember the Iraqi dead in their prayers, and MTV hasn't gone silent in their memory.

Nor are Blair and Bush falling over each other to show they recognize the scale of the disaster in Iraq. On the contrary, they have been doing their best to conceal the numbers killed.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0111-30.htm

$200 billion we're spending in Iraq might actually be spent on the people of Iraq.

Not my opinion, mind you, but I am confident that a lot of people share that belief.

We are at war. We can't rebuild the cities and infrastructure of the enemy. It doesn't make sense. Any pretense of doing so (and there is some) is just a way to steer more funds to the likes of Halliburton.

Let's see. Bomb a city. Build the city back up. Oops, there are angry people there, might be a terrorist hiding under the bed, let's bomb it again. And so on! A great way to relieve the taxpayer of every last dime and to fund the B.F.E.E. but not a very practical exercise that does any good to the victims of war.

We have to end the war first. Then rebuild. The tsunami is over. Rebuilding serves a practical purpose. The war is not over. Rebuilding is just getting funding for Bechtel and the like to soak the taxpayer multiple times for rebuilding the same buildings!

The human tragedy in Iraq is terrible indeed. But we won't end the tragedy of wars of invasion by making it MORE profitable for the war profiteers. Indeed, we would give them incentive to operate more and more such wars.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

the only way to have WON this war would have been to have gone in destroying as little of the social infrastructure as possible, and started IMMEDIATELY improving things for the folks living there. Had we the intelligence and foresight to handle Iraq in that fashion the initial insurgency would never have been able to tak hold.

the current fighters are not the "initial insurgency" in my mind - they are more and more the average Iraqi trying to force us out of their country precisely BECAUSE we have made life for the average Iraqi immeasurably WORSE not better since the invasion.

They gave us a little leeway at first, and we have failed miserably. Fallujah has proven how out of touch our military solution is.

300 thousand people have lost their homes, livelihoods, and many thousands have lost their loved ones in that fiasco - which surely will swell the ranks of the insurgency.

We flattened the City of Mosques. How's that for winning hearts and minds?