May 26, 2012
This
is Memorial Day weekend, a time when we Americans remember our dead –
especially our war dead. And in this decade-plus of perpetual war, which
started with a terrorist act (not an act of war) that killed nearly
3,000 civilians here, another 6,500 American military personnel have
died in our two wars. Add to that the journalists, NGOs and other
American civilians who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have lost
around 10,000 Americans to these wars. That’s a lot of deaths to
remember this Memorial Day.
However, that is not the extent of the dead of our wars. Although we
do not remember the deaths of enemy military on our memorial day, we
might do well to at least remember the civilian deaths, since it was our
own civilian deaths on 9/11 that were used to justified the two wars we
were in for most of this decade. Estimates on Iraqi civilian deaths
range from 68,000 to 100,000; add to that an estimated 4,000 civilian
deaths in Afghanistan and, with our drone campaigns, in Pakistan and
Yemen. These may not be “our” war dead, but they are most certainly the
dead of our wars. And, like our own civilians on 9/11, they did not ask
for what happened to them; they were ordinary mothers, fathers, sisters,
brothers and children living ordinary lives when they were attacked. We
do not know the exact numbers of these dead (as we do our own) for they
are the collateral damage – the two most disgusting words in the
English language, as far as I’m concerned – about whom General Tommy
Franks famously said, “We don’t do body counts.” Yet their loss has
caused the same anguish to their loved ones and friends that our dead
have caused us.
So, why would I feel it important to remember these dead of our wars
on our day of remembrance for our war dead?
First, because they are
fellow human beings and there is a grave danger to our own humanity when
we dismiss them, as our government would, as collateral damage. I’m
convinced that a good part of our own internal strife over these wars
comes from our unwillingness to come to grips with this. Look deeply
into the eyes of our returning combat veterans and you will see this
same strife, even in those who deeply believed in these wars. This is
the human cost of war – not only to our “enemies”, but to ourselves.
Second, even as we remember our own dead from these wars, the Empire
is fully ready to go on to the next war with Iran. We have surrounded
that unlucky country with military bases over the last few years, filled
the Arabian Gulf with warships and shipped billions of dollars of new
arms to Israel even though Iran has not attacked us, does not have one
single nuclear bomb and does not have the means to deliver it, if they
were capable of building one in the next few years. Yet, with all our
angst about being “dragged” into war once again, we ordinary Americans
never stop to ask ourselves how it is, that an Empire that is truly
unwilling could be dragged anywhere.
Why? Because we cannot, will not, see these dead of our wars in the
same way we see our war dead – fellow human beings, brothers, sisters,
family. And until we do, we will be constantly propagandized to send our
own into the meat grinder of the dying Empire’s wars. The toll of our
war dead will go ever higher, as will the dead of our wars across the
world. The human cost of war will continue to rise as the financial
costs mount until –perhaps with this next war – the Empire finally
collapses and we, too, have become the dead of our wars. Who will be
left to mourn our war dead, then?
[Reposted from original article: Our War Dead and the Dead of Our Wars]
