Cockburn
/ St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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Today's
Stories
April 29
Patrick Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
| April
29, 2004
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto
The
Banality of Evil
By GREG WEIHER
You
can well imagine that living there was like a slow descent into hell.
First
there were the growing numbers of refugees, those dispossessed by the
occupiers with their army and their tanks, ultimately irresistible.
Two or three families at a time lived in warrens that were not adequate
for one.
The infrastructure
was, obviously, inadequate also. The water was dirty, utility service
sporadic to non-existent. Food and medicines had to be smuggled in and
medical facilities were seriously overtaxed. “The hospital was
set afire,” read a diary entry, “the shrieks of those trapped
in the flames could be heard for blocks around, even above the crash
of shells and bombs.” Though it was a war crime, the occupiers
didn’t hesitate to attack hospitals.
A black market sprang up. People did whatever they could to get by.
Economically they were dependent on the occupiers, so some worked for
them, accepting whatever they were offered for wages and biting back
their curses. They were then reviled when they returned to their own
quarter.
Eventually
they cordoned them off, did their tormentors, segregating them behind
a wall. This is how you recognize the despicable ones, when they round
up the vulnerable, the defenseless, the innocent victims of history,
push them into a corner, and declare “You have to stay there!
You are not fit for any other place!” This is the way it was,
of course, in the American South, and in the Bantustans of South Africa.
It was
utterly predictable that after they had been herded into their reeking
hovels, the occupiers took their houses, apartments, fields, furniture.
Eventually
they fought back, though they knew it was futile. They died in far greater
numbers than did their tormentors, but they forced an accounting. They
were outnumbered and lightly armed, irregulars facing one of the world’s
most formidable military machines, and they held out beyond hoping.
When their arms were gone and their ammunition was spent, they fought
on with knives and rocks. The dignity of that accounting was enough
to make the fight and the eventual dying worth it.
A woman
who lived through it said “What we grieve for is not the loss
of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and
gestures . . . ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for
. . . not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on
living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self worth . . . an ordinary
life.”
What history
is this? Is it the imagined history of Fallujah, one that will be spoken
and ultimately written after the city is thoroughly scourged by the
American Marines? There are similarities. There are the hospitals that
have been closed or cut off by the Americans, the firing on ambulances,
the difficulty of getting food and medicines, the senseless killing
of innocents, the isolating of the outcasts behind barbed wire and a
hail of bullets.
It could
certainly be the history of the Intifadas in Israel for all of the same
reasons, not to mention the tanks and invincible arms of the occupiers,
the lop-sided casualty counts, the appropriation of property, and the
obdurate futility of seeking an ordinary life in the West Bank and Gaza.
In fact,
it is a description of the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto and the persecution
of its occupants. What strikes me most about this description is exactly
that it has so much in common with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians
and America’s treatment of the Iraqis.
The Israelis
and the Americans ply their bright, polished justifications for grinding
down those left vulnerable by history. America styles herself the City
on the Hill, the indispensable nation. But there is nothing here that
rises above cliché. Germany celebrated its future as the Thousand
Year Reich, too. It boils down to nothing newer than armies marching
across the corpses of hapless victims. It recalls nothing so strongly
as Arendt’s “banality of evil.”
It is
such a worn and tawdry story.
This description
of the suffering of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto draws heavily on an account
broadcast on The Writers’ Workshop on April 19, 2004.
Greg
Weiher is a political scientist and free-lance writer living
in Houston, Texas. He can be reached at: gweiher@UH.EDU
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