oyceter | (no subject)

Brought on by Time Magazine and I guess CNN and the other news sites which ran giant stories about the four Americans killed in Iraq...

Keep in mind that I am in general very iffy and fence-sitting on the entire issue of the US as a sort of global police force. Part of me thinks it's horrible that no one stepped in and stopped what happened in Rwanda ten years ago and part of me think things like what's happening in Iraq is a sort of response or effect of the US as police force.

And I totally get that it's awful four people were killed there, especially with the unsureness as to why they were there at all.

But I also feel kind of disturbed that the deaths of one or two or four Americans makes the front pages everywhere and generates giant articles in Time so much so that the news-phobic me knows about it, while I don't know things like how many Iraqis did we kill there?

If the names of the four people who were killed there are going to be big national news, along with their families' reactions, what about the people whose homes were invaded, who had to live with these other people in their country? I would like to know their stories. And maybe I don't because in general I'm absolutely awful at keeping up with news and politics, which is why I generally try not to make controversial political posts -- I really don't know what I'm talking about over half of the time.

It's the entire ethnic studies problem, in a way -- how to know what's "authentic," which experience is generalized or filtered through a certain ideology?

But yeah, I would like to know what people there think of us being there and of the deaths there of people of all nationalities, because I think it is a big deal that people are being killed down there -- being American does not make it more or less important.

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It's sad but true that for many Americans, only American lives seem real and important...

*growls* This is why my knee jerk reaction is against patriotism and nationalism.

People are people...

How would we like it if they were in our country, telling us what to do? How would we like it if members of our family were killed because they were in our country telling us what to do?

I realize the Iraqis are not all innocents in this situation, but given the situation as a whole, the US media seems to act as if these killings of US citizens came out of nowhere with no provocation whatsoever.

And my feelings are always ambiguous about the US being police cop to the world. Perhaps there are times when you can ask, "Why doesn't someone who can do something about this situation do something", but I think in many of the cases, we just make it worse.

Bad cop, no donut.

When I'm feeling very snippy, I want to say to the media, "What did you expect?" And it's not as though anyone deserved to be killed, it's just that some people seem to think that sending soldiers into Iraq was uniformly good and not ambiguous in any way.

Heh... I'm very on the fence, because I know that if China went over and bombed Taiwan tomorrow, I would very much like to have the US backing Taiwan militarily. But the situation gets very fuzzy very fast...

The situation does get fuzzy very fast, as to who is the good guy and who is the bad guy--that's never black and white. And of course, the US isn't some neutral party stepping in to be all heroic. We have our own self-interests, and those always come into play, and did anyone over here happen to notice that THE IRAQIS HATE US???

I know. When I read the reports in the media and am feeling snippy, I wonder, were they expecting no conflict at all?

Sigh. I'm very on the fence because I know if China bombed Taiwan tomorrow, I would like to know that the US would be willing to do something militarily, yet, the situation is always problematic.

I usually feel like I shouldn't be posting on politics if I'm not going to be posting all the time, and I don't know enough to post all the time.

But this upset me, too, so I went looking for body counts a few weeks ago. These are hard to find, since -- among other reasons -- Rumsfeld announced the U.S. was going to stop tracking Iraqi deaths early in the war. Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.org) claims over 10,000 Iraqis have been killed. I'm not sure this is credible, though of course that may be wishful thinking on my part. I'm having a hard time finding other sources. Human Rights Watch (http://www.humanrightswatch.org) lists 94 verified civilian deaths (http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/10/iraq102103.htm) in Baghdad between May 1 and September 30, but also says hundreds of civilian deaths (http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/12/us-iraq-press.htm) due to land mines were preventable, and says "more than a thousand people" were "killed or wounded." These are body counts for very specific times or causes, and I think much lower than the totals.

From looking at various sources, I get 3-5,000 Iraqi "soldiers" (not sure how this is being defined) and 2-3,000 civilians. But that could be far too low.

Oh my.

Thanks for the links -- I've been trolling around Human Rights Watch.

Sometimes I feel like it is a moral obligation to get my head out of the sand every so often, sad as that may sound.

I think a lot of Americans still think a war is a football game. They've never experienced it at home. They have no concept of what the Iraqis are experiencing, so they sit here cheering "Bring it on!" like there were going to be cheerleaders. I feel infuriated, like you, at the ignoring of the suffering of the people we are supposedly "saving."

I was actually watching a football game a bit less than a year ago, and during some break or another they brought me an Update on the War-- and I'll be darned if the little pictures and slash marks they made on the screen didn't look EXACTLY like a football play.

Both creepy and sickening.

Yikes.

Very very creepy.

Those are the people who scare me the most =(. I think I was most afraid after 9/11 when I heard people around me on campus going around yelling, "Let's bomb those f---s!" and things like that. I don't like violence.

Yea, with you on this, except that I'm not terribly iffy on the US as a global police force - I know I don't trust us to do it. Some sort of global cooperative effort, maybe, but with true checks on US power, and motivated by actually wanting peace and stopping atrocities.

I think it's very calculated on the part of the Bush Administration that we don't know how many Iraquis or other people are being killed. I don't think the death toll (which I suspect is still climbing from our destruction of infrastructure) for our invasion of Afghanistan ever got press in the US mainstream media either. Tis why I get my news from nonmainstream and/or nonUS sources.

I agree that it's very calculated, as is Bush's refusal to let the media film coffins being brought home. Most of all the families of the dead want to know that their loved one's name and sacrifice will be appreciated, and will not be forgotten-which is why the Vietnam Wall is so important to me.

Every week my church says a prayer for the soldiers in Iraq but never has for the dead Iraquis. I think that's shameful.

I think so too, along with the decision not to show the body bags of even US soldiers killed there.

I waver so much about the US as police force that I probably have whiplash or something ;). Because half the time I feel like crying out about colonialism and imperialism and cultural hegemony, and other times, I read about what happened in Rwanda, and all I can think is, "Why didn't anyone do anything?!"

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