Carnage in Iraq and elsewhere:Mind-boggling sadism [Archives:2006/953/Opinion]
Hassan Al-Haifi
The days go by and the counting is difficult to keep up with: “45 corpses found around the streets of Baghdad”; “10 heads severed found off the road leading to Bakuba”; “Scores killed as the Israeli Defense Forces unleash their rockets of death upon residential areas in Gaza and the West Bank”. 40 die as Americans attack a suspected gathering of Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in a mosque (most of the casualties were innocent civilians)”. These are just parts of some of the daily reports emanating from blood stained Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. Yet, no one can come up with an explanation to satisfy the curious questioner as to how and why all this senseless disdain for human life is allowed to flourish. We do not even have any clue as to who are the perpetrators and what is their goal from all this madness. This carnage, while mostly inflicted on mostly innocent Iraqis, Afghanis and Palestinians knows no national identities.
Even elements of the diplomatic community are not spared the immunity from the hapless fate of death that could hit upon anyone walking the streets of Baghdad or even driving on armored vehicles. Death has been stamped on the entire map of Iraq thanks to a senseless invasion supposedly deemed to bring back the aura of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What happiness is there, when you sleep at night not knowing whether you will wake up the next day to enjoy perhaps one more measly breakfast of dates and milk because you are unemployed and can't afford to buy a pack of cornflakes that the invaders brought along with them? Death in Iraq can come in any random way: American bombers supposedly cleaning up suspected terrorist outposts in the middle of nowhere. Oops, it turned out to be an innocent wedding which ended with 24 helpless innocent men, women and children, who may not even have had a chance to have their last supper. All in the name of Jesus was this war brought upon Iraq. Yet, any man of faith knows well that Jesus would never have any part of this kind of crazy fanaticism that has entered the White House. No, Jesus is much kinder than to let his name be smeared with the blood unleashed by any fanatics, Jews, Gentile, or Moslem. Yet all these spiritual inclinations are savoring in the bloodshed we see being unleashed in Iraq and elsewhere in the region (And now Somalia has entered the bloodletting) and for what cause? Nobody really knows now. Oh sure, in Iraq, Saddam is out of the way, but we are being led to believe that his only crime was to have those who tried to kill him executed. We know Saddam did more than that, but all those other crimes are with the complicity of the very forces that are now supposedly bringing justice to Iraq.
Justice in Iraq! Where did that come from? The death count is approaching five hundred per week and the entire world is led to believe now that there was more justice in the days of Saddam than we are seeing under the stars and stripes that have turned the Tigris-Euphrates valleys into rivers of blood and untreated sewage, thanks to the destroyed infrastructure by the forces that unfurled the stars and stripes all over the Fertile Crescent.
How can life in Iraq be assumed to have been made better thanks to the American invasion, when the facts of life have been turned into only facts of death? Death by “collateral damage”; death by roadside bombs, death by snipers, death by sectarian strife, death by blown up cars, the list is endless, but the result is all the same: death – the end of peace, the end of tranquility and the end of life. That is how it is in Iraq, that is how it is in Afghanistan and that is how it is in Palestine, where death has been a way of life for the Palestinians for eighty years. It seems that natural death has been taken out of the obituary pages of the newspapers of these helpless lands. But, the American President and his cronies think that they can sleep more securely now, because death has been moved away to the gentle hills of Mesopotamia, Gaza and Afghanistan. In America and Israel, the pursuit of happiness goes on undisturbed, while the legions of death unleashed by these two monstrous evil powers carry on with their disgusting pleasures.
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[archive-e:953-v:14-y:2006-d:2006-06-08-p:opinion]
