November 2004

November 24, 2004

Yesterday

From the "The More Things Change" department: a brief look back at the United States' very first "Clash of Civilisations".

After thousands of rounds of ammunition had turned the air blue and thick with gunsmoke, 173 people lay dead, most still in their lodges. The soldiers then cut the bindings of the lodges, collapsing them, and burned them with the people still inside. They gathered up all the food, weapons, and supplies they could carry and rode off toward Fort Shaw, driving the band's horse herds before them.

Although the numbers became a matter of controversy, it is clear that most of the dead were women and children and old people. [Colonel E.M.] Baker, in his report of the incident, claimed that all but fifty-three were abled-bodied warriors, which even by army standards is an absurd body count. Most reports state that a great many of the able-bodied men were out hunting. The winter had already been cruel, many were hungry, and the hunters were out to get meat. Perhaps a more realistic breakdown of the dead was in a report submitted to his superiors by W.A. Pease, the Indian agent: Only fifteen of the dead Indians had been fighting men between the ages of twelve and thirty-seven, while ninety were women and fifty were children. One suspects that the rest of the dead were old people. -- James Welch, Killing Custer, p. 33

Happy Thanksgiving.

November 14, 2004

"So Far, We've Blowed Up 600 Niggers And A Hospital..."

November 10, 2004

Race War or Class War?

Although the troubles in Iraq have only drawn a cautious official response from Muslim countries, including the Arab League asking the U.S. not to invade Fallujah, a far deeper impact has been made on Muslim masses across the globe, where increasingly they are becoming motivated to take up arms in support of the Iraqi resistance.

One can't but ask why it is that only Muslim masses are becoming motivated to take up arms in support of the Iraqi resistance?

Once upon a time, masses from all corners -- including from the United States -- converged on Spain to take up arms against the Fascists.

Seventy years later, as the Iraqi Resistance makes an heroic stand against an invader every bit as vicious and brutal as its predecessor (even more barbaric, really: the Nazis never used radioactive munitions, though surely they would liked to have had them at their disposal), where is the new Abraham Lincoln Brigade?

Why are not Americans and Europeans taking up arms in support of the Iraqi resistance? Why is not an American Refusenik movement, along the lines of the Israeli movement refusing to take part in "the missions of occupation and repression", beginning to take seed in Iraq?

Granted, the ideologies of many people comprising the Iraqi Resistance doesn't exactly inspire the same romantic wanderlust as the Spanish Anarchists -- nor even of the NLF or the EZLN. And, granted, many of those that might be inclined to such an undertaking are predisposed to nonviolence.

So then, why aren't Europeans and North Americans by the tens of thousands descending upon Iraq to bear witness against, and hopefully discourage, the Empire's depredations?

Is Donald H. Rumsfeld going to give the order to bomb hospitals and residences knowing there is white skin in them? Yeah, probably. But will the grunts carry out such orders? Not as likely.

November 09, 2004

Postcards From Fallujah

U.S. Army doctors try to stabilize a four-year-old child with schrapnel wounds to the head who was brought from Fallujah to a military hospital in Baghdad, Iraq Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. The 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad's Green zone is preparing for the possibility of high casualties from this week's Fallujah offensive.(AP Photo/John Moore)

An Iraqi man buries his brother who was killed by an air strike in Fallujah, Iraq (news - web sites), early Monday, Nov. 8, 2004. U.S. forces stormed into the western outskirts of Fallujah early Monday, seizing the main city hospital and securing two key bridges over the Euphrates river in what appeared to be the first stage of the long-expected assault on the insurgent stronghold. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

November 08, 2004

Postcard From Fallujah

An Iraqi doctor treats a wounded 2-year-old boy after he was brought to the hospital when his house collapsed during an air raid, conducted by the U.S. forces in the western city of Falluja, on November 6, 2004. Rebels shot dead 21 Iraqi policemen in cold blood on Sunday, a day after killing 34 people in attacks on security forces, in a clear show of force ahead of an imminent U.S. offensive on insurgents in Falluja and Ramadi. Picture taken on November 6, 2004. REUTERS/Mohanned Faisal