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Fri Dec 05 2008
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Departments War in Iraq
Waiting for the outside world
by Mike Ferner
September 4, 2005
In the "old days" of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on
the threat of a global nuclear "exchange" an organization called
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) postulated what would happen if
a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb.
The doctors described utterly horrific scenarios extending far beyond the
numbers of dead and severely wounded. In plain words they described what
the few survivors would experience: a landscape that not only had
sustained unimaginable casualties, but which had also suffered the
destruction of its transportation and health care infrastructure. No
ambulances would arrive with lights and sirens to whisk away the
suffering. Doctors, nurses, blood plasma, pain killers, antibiotics,
bandages - all would be destroyed along with the hospitals and highways.
As difficult as it was to picture such a reality, the hardest thing to
imagine was that in a nuclear war there would be no "outside" from where
help will come. When every major city suffers the same fate as yours, no
one "out there" can help you. "Out there" is all gone. Instantly, in
city after city, life becomes a contaminated, pre-industrial struggle for
survival.
Fortunately for the human race, PSR's scenarios have thus far remained a
symbolic, educational exercise.
Listening to and watching the news coming out of Louisiana and the Gulf
Coast towns of Mississippi, one can sense devastation on a scale rarely
experienced in this country. New Orleans' location below sea level and
the deluge following the rupture of its levees makes Katrina's blow even
worse than when Hurricane Andrew flattened Miami.
Now we hold our collective breath to see if hospital patients can be
rescued before emergency generators are swamped. Mile after mile of city
streets are inundated. The public water supply is getting contaminated.
Desperate people wait for helicopters to rescue them from rooftops
broiling in the summer sun. My nephew, lucky enough to have
transportation and smart enough to use it in time, got out. But how long
will he be able to stay with friends in Lafayette? And what will a young
man, living month to month on a waiter's pay, do for work if the Hard Rock
Café never reopens?
And yet, as frightening as the situation is for New Orleans and the
surrounding area, there is still an "outside." People are mobilizing
assistance. It may be inadequate at first and ultimately too late for
some, but people and institutions in 48 other states are doing their best
to assist their fellow citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi.
What would it be like to endure suffering on a scale somewhere between a
nuclear attack and Hurricane Katrina - with nobody "out there" to mobilize
assistance for you? That is the case today in Iraq.
These comparisons started coming to mind last month when an inversion
trapped the people of Phoenix in a seemingly relentless heat wave. For
weeks temperatures soared over 100 degrees and 2005 literally became a
killer summer. Then I thought of what Phoenix would be like without
electricity. And I thought of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, 115 and 120-degree weather is the norm all summer. But unless
you are among the elite and have a private generator, you are lucky to get
a few hours of unscheduled power a day, frequently in the middle of the
night when demand is lowest. That is the reality for most of the four
million people in Baghdad and some 20 million people in the rest of Iraq -
this summer, last summer, and the one before that.
Water and sewer plants, thoroughly bombed by the Elder Bush in 1991, were
repaired enough to limp along under a dozen years of sanctions. As a
result, water-borne diseases became a significant health problem prior to
the U.S. invasion of 2003, and have since gotten dramatically worse. What
passes for hospital care would make even the poorest American's blood run
cold - and that's when medical facilities are operating at their best, not
overrun with massive numbers of wounded from a U.S. attack or a suicide
bomber. In Fallujah and other cities besieged by American troops,
ambulances with lights and sirens don't whisk away the wounded; they are
fired on by the U.S. military. Trucks taking pain killers, bandages and
antibiotics to medical clinics are forcibly turned away. The already
substandard water supplies are destroyed by the artillery and air strikes.
National Public Radio today featured interviews with people describing
what life is like after the hurricane. A woman from Gulfport,
Mississippi, trying unsuccessfully to hold back her tears, said that even
though people were ".amazingly resilient, some are in shock.some are
running out of clean water already.my husband has journaled every day of
his life - every single day since he was a boy - and those journals are
all gone now."
After a couple more questions, the NPR reporter thanked her sincerely for
talking with him. As her voice cracked she responded, "Thank you for
giving me an opportunity to let the outside world know help is needed."
That woman in Gulfport was not worrying about next year's Congressional
elections, just as millions of her counterparts in Iraq are not worrying
about their constitution. She, and they, are worried about having safe
water to drink in the summer heat, wondering when the electricity will
come back on, grieving journals lost forever in a flood or photo albums
lost in a midnight house raid, anxious about ever seeing their home
rebuilt, hoping somehow to find a job.
Rightly so, the massive news coverage of Hurricane Katrina's devastation
is beginning to evoke Americans' inherent compassion towards people who've
been dealt an unfair blow. If the news media did a similar job describing
the hell life has become for people in Iraq, Americans' sense of outrage
and compassion would be similarly stirred. And Iraqis could count on help
instead of bombs coming from the outside world.
---
Ferner is writing a book about his trips to Iraq, before and after the
U.S. invasion. He served as a Navy corpsman during Viet Nam and is a
member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at
mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net
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Don't forget to check out articles from 2007 and 2008War in Iraq
"White phosphorous: the U.S. used it; the U.S. says it's illegal" December 28, 2005 David Swanson
"Behind the steel curtain: the real face of the occupation" December 20, 2005 Sabah Ali
"Waiting is the hardest part" December 20, 2005 Greg Rollins, CPT
"Scotland: stop the war!" December 10, 2005 David Swanson
"Not even to save our lives" December 9, 2005 Mike Ferner
"Inconvenient journalists" December 1, 2005 Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services
"How pre-war Iraq intel was cooked" November 24, 2005 Jason Leopold
"Chalabi pushes Iran card in last ditch self-promotion offensive" November 16, 2005 The Insitute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution
"Staying a wrong course" October 17, 2005 Stephen Crockett
"US war photos" October 16, 2005 Richard S. Ehrlich
"Banging at the gates of empire -- Washington, DC; September 24-26" October 6, 2005 Peter Chabarek
"What Else Shall We Do?" October 2, 2005 Mike Ferner
"Will we use the power we have on September 24?" September 21, 2005 Mike Ferner
"The war in Iraq is increasingly unpopular and must end -- An interview with Dennis Kucinich" September 8, 2005 Kevin Zeese, DemocracyRising.US
"What eating Cindy Sheehan?" September 8, 2005 Jason Leopold
"Waiting for the outside world" September 4, 2005 Mike Ferner
"Families ask that fallen soldiers be honored Sunday by a tolling of bells" August 27, 2005 Faithful America, National Council of Churches
"Making the Iraq War and Occupation Personal" August 25, 2005 Ralph Nader
"President Bush Knows the True Reasons He Started A War in Iraq, But He's Not Going to Tell" August 25, 2005 Jason Leopold
"Armstrong bikes with president over Sheehan grave" August 25, 2005 Greg Palast
"Sheehan breakthroughs, unbridgeable divides, and taboos unbroken" August 22, 2005 David Swanson
"The people must demand peace: An interview with Tom Hayden" August 22, 2005 Kevin Zeese
"Will celebrity-addicted America miss the point? " August 18, 2005 Mike Ferner
"Jefferson would have stood with Cindy Sheehan " August 16, 2005 Thom Hartmann
"Why is violence escalating in Iraq?" August 1, 2005 Eric Straatsma, Peace Think Tank
"How the United States Marked the 3rd Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo" July 23, 2005 David Swanson, www.afterdowningstreet.org
"Someone Tell Bush That Iraq Wasn’t Responsible for 9/11 Before another War Breaks Out" June 21, 2005 Jason Leopold
"More damning than Downing Street" June 21, 2005 Paul Rogat Loeb
"Messengers of Truth: Untangling a Knot of Lies" June 18, 2005 Kevin Zeese
"How Much Proof Needed Before the Truth Comes Out? " June 17, 2005 Kevin Zeese
"Silent Death in Iraq " June 13, 2005 Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar
"Media Black Out Downing Street Minutes" June 8, 2005 David Swanson, www.afterdowningstreet.org
"Getting Out of Iraq Will Be Tougher than Getting Out of Vietnam" May 3, 2005 Kevin Zeese and Linda Schade
"No Troops, No Wars" March 24, 2005 Yoshie Furuhashi
"Iraq’s Election Will Not Guarantee Democracy" February 5, 2005 Gene C. Gerard
"The U.S. Supreme Court is AWOL on Iraq" January 29, 2005 Gene C. Gerard
Read Articles by Year: 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000

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