Anniversaries of Blood

Today is the one year anniversary of Baghdad falling to American troops and, frankly, Iraqis don't much seem in the celebrating mood. I'm sure you recall the months following last April when chanting "WMD WMD WMD" became, well, problematic, and the Bush Leaguers switched to a new mantra, "Mass graves mass graves mass graves." Now that Iraqis in Fallujah are having to resort to mass graves just to get their dead in the ground, I guess we'll be hearing a new chant shortly. From today's entry from Riverbend at Baghdad Burning:

Today, the day the Iraqi Puppets hail "National Day", will mark the day of the "Falloojeh Massacre"… Bremer has called for a truce and ceasefire in Falloojeh very recently and claimed that the bombing will stop, but the bombing continues as I write this. Over 300 are dead in Falloojeh and they have taken to burying the dead in the town football field because they aren't allowed near the cemetery. The bodies are decomposing in the heat and the people are struggling to bury them as quickly as they arrive. The football field that once supported running, youthful feet and cheering fans has turned into a mass grave holding men, women and children.

The people in Falloojeh have been trying to get the women and children out of the town for the last 48 hours but all the roads out of the city are closed by the Americans and refugees are being shot at and bombed on a regular basis… we're watching the television and crying. The hospital is overflowing with victims… those who have lost arms and legs… those who have lost loved ones. There isn't enough medicine or bandages… what are the Americans doing?! This is collective punishment … is this the solution to the chaos we're living in? Is this the 'hearts and minds' part of the campaign?

[...]

The American and European news stations don't show the dying Iraqis… they don't show the women and children bandaged and bleeding- the mother looking for some sign of her son in the middle of a puddle of blood and dismembered arms and legs… they don't show you the hospitals overflowing with the dead and dying because they don't want to hurt American feelings… but people *should* see it. You should see the price of your war and occupation- it's unfair that the Americans are fighting a war thousands of kilometers from home. They get their dead in neat, tidy caskets draped with a flag and we have to gather and scrape our dead off of the floors and hope the American shrapnel and bullets left enough to make a definite identification…

One year later, and Bush has achieved what he wanted- this day will go down in history and in the memory of all Iraqis as one of the bloodiest days ever...

Remember that the seige of Fallujah started over the deaths of four Americans. Four. The latest reports out of the city have over 400 Iraqis killed and over a thousand wounded. One Interim Governing Council member has resigned in protest and another has threatened to do so. How many people are we going to kill before we admit that we cannot "win" this war or, for that matter, even define what winning would be at this point?

"Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share."
- Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun, 1970.

Substitute ten (eleven? twelve? Nobody even bothers to count...) thousand Iraqis for 40 thousand Americans and look how little we have changed in three and a half decades. Still willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of human beings to get a barely noticeable income tax cut and bathe in some false national self-image of machismo. I'm off the fence now: we should re-instate the draft with no exemptions. None. For anybody.

We'd be out of Iraq within the month.