Alternative Perspective
 Victims of Freedom & Peace
Issue 39, September 9, 2003
Compiled by Madhukar Shukla

 Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the highly monopolised mainstream media.
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In any war, I read somewhere, there are no victors; there are only the vanquished and the dead. As is also normal, when the post-war history is written (whether as reported by the mainstream media, or created by the United Nations, which violated its own charter to retrospectively sanction the invasion/occupation of Iraq), it is from the point of view of the victor - invaders become liberators, and war becomes peace...Nevertheless, any war, even if fought under the guise of "freedom and peace", claims its own victims - often unreported, and subsequently forgotten...
This issue of Alternative Perspective, appearing after more than two months, is a snapshot on different kinds of victims which freedom and peace has claimed in Iraq...



Note: The URLs of sources used in the text are numbered and given at the end of the Newsletter.

In This Issue:
  • "We don't feel like Heroes anymore"
    It is both ironic and pathetic: in the aftermath of war, the sense of heroism vanished just as quickly as the victory was achieved. In just 3-4 months of the victory, the liberators no longer feel the pride, but are hit by the sense of futility and deception of an unnecessary misadventure. The initial welcome turned into suspicion and resentment, the victors became the hunted, and it is natural that most want to return home[1]. What is somewhat even tragic is that being a veteran of a victorious war is no guarantee of a welcome back home either[2]... Or maybe on second thoughts, in a country, where of 23% of the 2.5mn homeless citizens are war veterans, this should not be so surprising either...
    http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1060084742325390.xml

  • Some Deads are Not Worth Counting
    Of course, we all know that more soldiers of the liberating army have died since the war was officially declared over (189 to be precise), than those killed during the war (135). This death count is known, because these were lives - or deaths - which seemed worth counting and reporting. They belonged to the liberators/ occupiers, and can be "explained" in the semantic matrix of war (e.g., ambush, insurgency, attack by remnants loyalists, etc.). The "collateral damage" of 37,000 "liberated" civilian Iraqi lives (not the soldiers) is somehow not considered as worth reporting by the mainstream media. In fact, as this story shows, in many cases, these killings lack a coherant explanation - a "how" and a "why"[3]... and therefore, there is no way one can ascribe a "meaning" to these deads (and correspondingly, to these lives). From the media coverage point of view, they are just pointless occurances...
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski35.html

  • Free, At Last!!!... and Without a Job
    It defies the economic logic to destroy a country with less than $30bn GDP in a matter of just 3 weeks, and then spending more than $1bn/week to maintain the occupation[4] - so that its "reconstruction" can be achieved (which, of course, will take more money). People have been losing jobs because of their membership to Baathist Party (notwithstanding the fact that in the previous regime, one could get a job only if one was the member of the Baathist Party!!). For others, with salaries being cut to half, unemployment soaring to 60%, and industries closing due to lack of electricity[5], freedom has come as an imposition of the Devil's choice.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1032172,00.html

  • Radiation: The Legacy of Liberation
    DU, or Depleted Uranium, is a hard robust metal, and very efficient in piercing through bunkers, tanks, and thick concrete shelters. Naturally, it is intelligent to use DU to make weapons such as Bunker Busters. Unfortunately, it is also radioactive, and has high toxicity.... During the Gulf War, DU weapons were used; the war veterans contracted the mysterious "Gulf War Disease", and the incidence of deformed child-birth and cancer increased in Iraq[6]. The post-war Iraq is again littered with these harbingers of liberation. So even if one is not sure if this war to liberate Iraqi people leads to democracy, freedom, peace, etc., one legacy of this war for liberation will certainly impact the coming generations.
    http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html

    ... and lastly

  • The Ultimate Victim: Sanity
    Lao-Tse said that knowing one's enemy is the ultimate strategy. But if a war is fought on ignorance and deception, the result can only be a mess; in this case, a deception which will only increasing "cycles of violence"[7]... there is nothing much to add...
    http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030901&s=acockburn


    Other Sources Quoted in the Newsletter:
    [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1015711,00.html
    [2]: http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/233/metro/Battle_continues_for_veteran_home_from_war+.shtml
    [3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/27/international/worldspecial/27CIVI.html?ex=1063252800&en=0180bbe6e10af341&ei=5070
    [4]: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/usatoday/20030908/ts_usatoday/11816872&e=4
    [5]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56034-2003Aug27.html
    [6]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/227559.stm
    [7]: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/25/1061663732767.html


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