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Recent
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April
9, 2003
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
David Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
April
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Killing the Messengers: It Doesn't
Matter If It's Deliberate or Accidental
Richard
Lichtman
Dr. Phil in the Trenches
John
Brown
Why Uncle Ben Hasn't Sold Uncle Sam:
a Former Foreign Service Staffer on Bush's Policy Failures
Ben
Terrall
Report from the Oakland Docks: "The
Cops Had No Reason to Open Up on Them"
Jason Leopold
FERC and Wall Street: Conversations
May Have Violated Federal Law
Anthony
Gancarski
Conyers Heeds the Call on Perle
Linda Heard
Journalists Die, the Networks Lie, Iraqis Ask "Why?"
Ahmad
Faruqui
Wallowing in Hypocrisy
Wallace
Gagne
Baghdad Babble
Harry
Browne
Report from the Protests at the Bush/Blair
Summit
Larry Kearney
I Understand There's a Boy in
a Baghdad Hospital
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/8
M. Shahid
Alam
The Israelization of America
April
7, 2003
Todd
Chretien
Wooden Bullets & Grenades: Oakland
Cops Attack Peace Protesters and Dock Workers
David
N. Gibbs
Spying, Secrecy and the University:
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Harry Browne
War and Peace Summit a Royal Farce
Gideon
Levy
America is Not a Role Model
Diane
Christian
A Scene from an Obscene War
Jules
Rabin
Remembering Deir Yassin
James Davis
Oddsmaking in Dublin: Will Bush
Shake Gerry's Hand?
Robert
Fisk
The Twisted Language of War
Patrick
Cockburn
Slaughter on the Road to Dibagah
John
Mackay
War and Art
Seth Sandronsky
Wars and the Color Line
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/7
April
5, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Iraqi Humanitarian Relief is
in Shambles
Anne
Gwynne
A Drowning in Salem
Uri
Avnery
Roadmap to Nowhere
Chris
Floyd
Hell for Leather: Bombs, Bullets, Bibles and Bush
William
Cook
Would You Have Sent Your Son (or Daughter) Off to War If...
Gila
Svirsky
A Busy Day for Bulldozers
Mike Ferner
Back from Baghdad: What Next for the Peace Movement?
Joanne
Mariner
Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
from the Lord
Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
Aluf Benn
After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
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Mary
Ellen Peterson
Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
Adam Engel
Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
Poets'
Basement
Tripp, Albert, Katz
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
Norman
Madarasz
Canada and the War
April
4, 2003
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
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Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
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Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
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April
3, 2003
Uri
Avnery
A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
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David
Vest
Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
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Colin Powell Telemarketer
David
Lindorff
Takoma: the Dolphin Who Refused
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Michael
Roberts
War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
Baroud
Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
Antonowicz
Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
Weir
Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
Bruce
Jackson
Hating Wolf Blitzer's Voice
Eliot Katz
War's First Week
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/03
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April 10,
2003
Before
You Become Too Flushed with Victory
Think About Ali Ismaeel Abbas
By DAVID KRIEGER
We don't view war in the right way. Our television
networks discuss strategy and show pictures of bombings, artillery
fire and advancing troops. Rarely do they show pictures of the
victims, and particularly of the children who are killed, maimed
and orphaned. But war is about children as well as about soldiers
and strategy. Take, for example, the story of Ali Ismaeel Abbas.
Ali is 12 years old. He is in Kindi hospital
in Baghdad with both of his arms blown off by a missile. His
mother, father and brother were killed in the attack. His mother
was five months pregnant. Ali asks the reporter from Reuters,
"Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors
can get me another pair of hands?" It is heartbreaking.
The reporter for Reuters, Samia Nakhoul
writes, "Abbas' suffering offered one snapshot of the daily
horrors afflicting Iraqi civilians in the devastating <U.S.-led>
war to remove President Saddam Hussein."
Or, take this report which appeared in
The Guardian in London: "Unedited TV footage from Babylon
Hospital, which was seen by the Guardian, showed the tiny corpse
of a baby wrapped up like a doll in a funeral shroud and carried
out of the morgue on a pink pallet. It was laid face-to-face
on the pavement against the body of a boy, who looked about 10."
The report continued, "Horrifically
injured bodies were heaped into pick-up trucks, and were swarmed
by relatives of the dead, who accompanied them for burial. Bed
after bed of injured women and children were pictured along with
large pools of blood on the floor of the hospital."
At the hospital, a stunned man said repeatedly,
"God take our revenge on America."
But on American television we see none
of this. The newscasters chatter endlessly about strategy and
victory, and engage in inane ponderings about whether Saddam
is dead or alive. Their human-interest stories are about American
or "coalition" casualties. There is virtually nothing
about the victims of the war, including children like Ali.
We need a new way of understanding war,
in terms of children, not strategy. We need to understand war
in terms of its costs to humanity rather than in terms of victory
alone.
Wouldn't it be refreshing to have our
newscasters talking to pediatricians as well as political pundits,
to professors of international law in addition to retired military
officers? Wouldn't it be meaningful to have reporters speaking
to us from Baghdad's hospitals as well as from their positions
embedded with our military forces?
Ali Ismaeel Abbas told the reporter who
visited him, "We didn't want war. I was scared of this war.
Our house was just a poor shack. Why did they want to bomb us?"
Lying in his hospital bed, Ali told the
reporter, "If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit
suicide." Tears ran down his cheeks.
The next time you hear our newscasters,
our political leaders or our pundits celebrating our "victory,"
think about 12 year old Ali in his hospital bed. He is only one
of potentially thousands of children who have paid the price
in life, limb and loss of parents in what Dick Cheney calls "one
of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever conducted."
David Krieger
is president of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation. He is the editor of Hope in a Dark
Time (Capra Press, 2003), and author of Choose Hope, Your Role
in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age (Middleway Press, 2002). He
can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org.
Today's
Features
Doug
Lummis
Saving Private Lynch: Hollywood and
War
Susan
Davis
The New York Times and the Peace Movement
David Vest
Smoking Gun? You're Watching It
John
Chuckman
America's Sovereign Right to Do
as It Damn Well Pleases
Akiva
Eldar
Gary Bauer and AIPAC: an Unholy Alliance
with the Christian Right
Ray
Hanania
Suicide Bombers without the Suicide:
Racism, Hypocrisy and the War on Iraq
David Lindorff
Secret Bechtel Docs Reveal: Yes,
the War Is About Oil
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/9
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