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CounterPunch
August
13 / 19, 2002
The Unbearable
Lightness of Bombing
by Hamit Dardagan
"Might makes right until they've
seen the light."
"Send The Marines"
Tom Lehrer
Be it in Afghanistan or Vietnam, Cambodia or Panama,
Iraq or Kosovo, Libya, the Sudan or elsewhere, US-led bombing
is always in some way associated with the word light:
Like a skilled surgeon avoiding arteries,
"surgical" US bombing scrupulously avoids civilian
casualties, so that the civilian death-toll is light,
or as light as can be expected.
When these surgical bombs do hit a civilian
artery (so to speak), American "investigators" will
make light of victims' claims, saying
things like "Where are the bodies?" or "There
should be more blood." [The
Guardian.] You could say that here, "Might makes
light."
When US bombing is at its most indiscriminate,
as in the practise of "carpet bombing" or the use of
"daisy cutters" and "cluster bombs", it is
given lighter coverage in the mainstream US media.
In comparison to their laser-guided cousins, the effects of these
far more numerous and destructive bombs barely see the
light of day. This is presumably because masonry being
expertly pulverized makes for light viewing, while
humans suffering the same fate do not.
At any rate, it's a safe guess that most
US-led bombing transforms the young, the old, the tired, the
poor and huddled masses at the receiving end into light
sleepers.
To allay any misgivings, such bombing
is always pursued from a very high moral ground, ensuring that
its overall impact on the American psyche is light.
(What this high moral ground is, no one can explain, but it can
be assumed to be related to and approximately as substantial
as a thousand points of light.)
The bombing is almost as invariably performed
from a very high altitude, so that American bomber casualties
are as light as air supremacy allows (although
you might be pulled off the air for pointing this out; political
incorrectness has its limits, after all).
Performed in a timely manner, it permits
politicians facing uncomfortable domestic scrutiny to get
off lightly by providing searing prime-time distractions
and a convincing illusion that the country is in a shooting war.
Indeed it seems that the latest, Afghan bombing campaign has
cast the current light-headed, light-touch,
lightweight US President in an entirely new
light (apparently, just nodding at a handful of advisors
is no longer regarded as light work).
It sets light to the paper
on which the Geneva Conventions are written, such as the onerous
provisions that would prohibit the US and its allies from performing
massacre by aerial bombardment of mutinous (but completely trapped)
POWs.
It lightens the workload
of diplomacy, as a President who carries (and wields) this big
stick can speak unintelligible nonsense and still be clearly
understood in every corner of the planet.
However despite these advantages US bombing
is never undertaken lightly (although that may
depend on what your definition of "is" is). Instead
it is always conducted in the guiding light of reason.
(Or more accurately, "reasons"; reasons which may be
fully revealed later but are rarely admitted. Usually these can
be traced to eyes lighting up with dollar signs.)
Finally, it must always be remembered
that American bombing is the greatest hope for the forces
of light against the forces of darkness, in so far as
US bombs flash more brightly and widely and often than any others.
In this sense American bombing is truly a light unto the
world.
And what a miraculous light
that is: so supremely illuminating when unleashed in its ultimate
form, that a blind girl many miles from the epicentre of a nuclear
blast was reported to have seen it. No rapture can do such wonders
justice, for in the words of its first witnesses,
"No man-made phenomenon of such
tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects
beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing
light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It
was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. It lighted every peak,
crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity
and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined."
[http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/trinity/wd_press.txt]
Who knows? Perhaps the day will soon
arrive when such sights will be glimpsed again, albeit all too
briefly, by those fortunate enough to be there. [http://www.psr.org/NPRfactsheet.html]
Hamit Dardagan can be reached at: hamit@onetel.net.uk
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August 14
/ 19, 2002
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