[Peace-discuss] When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

[Brussel Morton K.]

By WILLIAM BLUM

When is a holocaust not a holocaust?

When the perpetrators call it a victory.

Although the "surge" has failed as policy, it appears to be  
succeeding as propaganda. It seems to be the only thing that  
supporters of the war have to point to, and so they point, and they  
point, and they point. Allow me to point out that while there has  
been a reduction in violence in Iraq -- now down to a level that  
virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and  
intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and  
occupation -- we must keep in mind that thanks to this lovely little  
war more than half the population of Iraq is either dead, crippled,  
traumatized, confined in overflowing American and Iraqi prisons,  
internally displaced, or in foreign exile.

Thus, the number of people available for being killers or victims is  
markedly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken  
place in the country (another good indication of progress, n'est-ce  
pas?). Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special  
enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with  
their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has  
also gone down; and the powerful movement of Shiite leader Muqtada al- 
Sadr has had a cease-fire in effect for many months, unconnected to  
the surge. On top of all this, US soldiers, in the face of numerous  
"improvised explosive devices" on the roads, have been venturing out  
a lot less (for fear of things like ... well, dying), so the violence  
against our noble lads is also down. Remember that insurgent attacks  
on American forces is how the Iraqi violence all began in the first  
place.

Just imagine -- If the entire Iraqi population over the age of 10 is  
killed, disabled, imprisoned or forced into exile there will probably  
be no violence at all. Now that would really be victory.

No American should be allowed to forget that Iraqi society has been  
destroyed. The people of that unhappy land have lost everything --  
their homes, their schools, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their  
jobs, their careers, their professionals, their health care, their  
legal system, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their  
security, their past, their present, their future, their lives. But  
they do have their surge.

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA  
Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's  
Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.
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