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A Quiet Protest of War
by C. L. Cook
The streets of my home town are quiet today. On March 20ths past, hundreds made to the streets, a cacophony of whistles and drums, and the honking horns of passers-by who, while not in the train agreed, the bombing and killing of people for the resources their foreign lands hold is wrong.
by C. L. Cook
The streets of my home town are quiet today. On March 20ths past, hundreds made to the streets, a cacophony of whistles and drums, and the honking horns of passers-by who, while not in the train agreed, the bombing and killing of people for the resources their foreign lands hold is wrong. It is still wrong, but no-one is marching here today.
It was on this day, seven years ago, America's heroes, and her willing collaborators, waiting in the deserts of Kuwait and the airbases of Italy and Turkey and Diego Garcia mobilized to war to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, the next Hitler poised, we were assured, to launch chemical attacks against Great Britain, and ready to spring mushroom cloud surprises on the Homeland.
It was on this day, seven years ago, America's heroes, and her willing collaborators, waiting in the deserts of Kuwait and the airbases of Italy and Turkey and Diego Garcia mobilized to war to rid the world of Saddam Hussein, the next Hitler poised, we were assured, to launch chemical attacks against Great Britain, and ready to spring mushroom cloud surprises on the Homeland.
All this possibly occurring, Mr. Blair of Downing St. said, within forty-five minutes.
The United Nations weapon inspection teams had already been pulled from the wrecked country, despite protestations. They steadfastly claimed there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD's) in Iraq. They said they knew this because they had supervised the destruction of the gasses and other poisons America and Germany, and other willing collaborators had sold to "friend" Saddam that he better terrorize the territories around him and kill many more Iranians, Kurds, and others deemed undesirables by his patron.
The inspection teams had been on the ground since Hussein's great defeat a decade and more earlier, and they had stayed throughout the long siege that saw so many children needlessly die for want of medicines the embargo forbade. Remember Madeleine Albright, the woman filling the boots now occupied at the State Department by Hillary Clinton, who answered famously when asked if the estimated half-million children perished because of the blockade were worth the price, "Yes"?
Albirght said of the sanctions campaign her nation led, back in 1996: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
Today, Afghani children slaughtered "accidentally" fetch some hundreds of dollars apiece - as much as two thousand American dollars, depending on the negotiating skills of their surviving relatives. No doubt Hillary too thinks it a hard choice, but a price worth paying.
The inspection teams had been on the ground since Hussein's great defeat a decade and more earlier, and they had stayed throughout the long siege that saw so many children needlessly die for want of medicines the embargo forbade. Remember Madeleine Albright, the woman filling the boots now occupied at the State Department by Hillary Clinton, who answered famously when asked if the estimated half-million children perished because of the blockade were worth the price, "Yes"?
Albirght said of the sanctions campaign her nation led, back in 1996: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
Today, Afghani children slaughtered "accidentally" fetch some hundreds of dollars apiece - as much as two thousand American dollars, depending on the negotiating skills of their surviving relatives. No doubt Hillary too thinks it a hard choice, but a price worth paying.
Those Afghanistan numbers are recently publicized. What figures Iraqi parents receive for their dead children wasn't told, as Iraq is the accomplished mission, consigned now to second banana status, a forgotten side-kick in the Global War on Terror (renamed).
Disappeared from press scrutiny, such as it was, the country rendered to bits, its people scattered to the winds, whose beginning of the end is marked age 7 today; it's anniversary is fittingly marked by silence.
Disappeared from press scrutiny, such as it was, the country rendered to bits, its people scattered to the winds, whose beginning of the end is marked age 7 today; it's anniversary is fittingly marked by silence.
Iraq's absent mourners, once numbering in millions across the globe, are each at home today remembering, while the streets of this town, and too many others remain quiet.
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