-Caveat Lector- http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=21027
Arab News SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY Whom do you pin the medal on? By Fawaz Turki Published on 12 December 2002 Consider the tomahawk, that ax-like weapon with a piece of bone or metal inserted at the top, that was used by Native Americans to fight, albeit futilely, early American settlers who encroached on their ancestral land, their water resources, and their food supplies in the prairies of the Old West. Then consider the Tomahawk, a deadly missile that, in February 1991, hit an air-raid shelter in Baghdad, killing hundreds of civilians. For many centuries, soldiers went to war to fight each other one on one, on neutral ground, celebrating the idea of close combat with an enemy that matched them in armor. Bravery was the measure of man, and death in battle in pursuit of a cause was seen as a noble end to a life. Many cultures, including that of classical Arabs, that had disdained, for example, use of the bow and arrow as a weapon used in warfare, echoed the Homeric hero. “My way,” we read in the Iliad, “is not to fight my battles far away from my enemies.” Long-range killing is a comparatively recent phenomenon in human history. To enlist technology in the service of the application of force against a perceived enemy, often with tragic consequences, is to enlist it as a weapon of mass destruction. Combatants in World War II, and American B 52s in Vietnam, dropped massive tonnage after massive tonnage of bombs, from great heights, often at night, on areas where women and children slept. This kind of warfare conduces inevitably to moral callousness in society. So consider in that regard when, last Sept. 26, Israelis had one of their American-made Apache helicopters (another appropriation from Native Americans) hovering high above Gaza in pursuit of a yellow Mercedes that they had already marked with a “laser stain.” Around noon that day, the gunship fired two 100-pound Hell-fire anti-tank missiles (great name, no?) at the car, aiming to kill one of its occupants, Muhammed Deif, a Hamas militant, but ended up instead killing two of the passengers and injuring 43 passersby, including 15 school children, some seriously. Deif, though bloodied, escaped. Two months earlier, going after another Hamas official, Salah Shehadeh, yet another Apache gunship, again hovering high in the sky, above that same strip of misery in occupied Palestine, dropped a one-ton bomb on an even more crowded neighborhood, in the dark of night, killing Shehadeh, yes, but also 16 men, women and children, virtually all of them as they lay asleep in their beds. As international castigation of Israel poured forth, the debate among its military planners, according to reports in the Israeli media, was not about the moral callousness of these acts but over whether the missiles aimed at Deif were sufficiently large and lethal, and if not, why not. A moral abyss beckons a society that has absorbed, as if by a process of osmosis, that kind of application of force in pursuit of political goals. Or in pursuit of material gains. Take the issue of why the US — a country whose arsenal of weapons evolves rapidly, and its deadliness exponentially, between one war and the next — is going to invade Iraq. Till quite recently, the public debate was dominated by how America’s chief interest in going to war against Iraq was to save the world from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and, perhaps as a dividend, to bring “regime change” to the country, with the end result of rewarding it with the blessings of Western democracy, John Lockian liberalism and economic prosperity. Does that profession of intent pass the smell test? Except for those lost souls demonstrating in their European capitals, and in Lafayette Park in Washington, holding up slogans like “L’argent pour l’ecole, pas pour la guerre du petrole,” and “No blood for oil profits,” few people thought to use the O-word. In recent days, commentators have taken up the issue in the mainstream press, namely whether or not the US has really manufactured this whole crisis with Iraq in order to grab its oil and flood the market with it, thereby bringing a drop in prices, and providing an opportunity for American oil companies to get in line to sign contracts with a country that has 11 percent of the world’s reserves. Some strategists, and not just those writing in the pages of Nation magazine, have even argued that there is a more elaborate plan afoot: If Iraq, which is now producing a fraction of its capacity, were to pump oil in a post-Saddam era at a rate to match its reserves, this could end Saudi Arabia’s domination of world oil markets. (Saudi Arabia has 25 percent of the world’s proven reserves, the largest anywhere.) Why would America, you ask, concoct such a diabolical plan? Well, because it could. And at little cost. When an exceedingly sophisticated nation like the United States, that employs an equally sophisticated community of researchers constantly engaged in enhancing the effectiveness of its weaponry, goes 12 years without war, it brings to the next round of combat new weaponry never tested before. And you test that weaponry on people because by now, inured and coarsened, you see people in poor, Third World countries as mere conceptual abstractions. And, yes, what’s happened to bravery in battle these days? Whom do you pin a medal on? Surely not the soldier, that schmuck pushing buttons on his computer in his air-conditioned cockpit. More logically you pin the medal on that Apache helicopter that had done all the fighting for you. Though I have lived in Washington for the last 28 years, I’m not aware of an Arlington Cemetery anywhere in our capital city devoted as a burial place for brave twisted metal. In the figurative language of Native Americans, to make peace with the world around you is to “bury the tomahawk.” Maybe these folks, in their ancient wisdom, are saying something to us. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Arab News Opinion 12 December 2002 Copyright © 2002 ArabNews All Rights Reserved. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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