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Please don't call it "Victory"

Yesterday, as I stood with the Women in Black vigil in front of the Capitol, as I have done weekly and recently daily since 9/11 -- to mourn people killed by violence and oppression and to insist that there are better ways than war to solve human disputes - a man dressed in a dark blue suit, shouted "Too bad your guy lost!"

I realized he had formulated the strange notion that standing for peace was the same thing as taking Saddam Hussein as a hero. It is not.

I have yet to meet a peace activist who celebrates mass murder, though many a legislator enables it. War is failure. It occurs because people are too freaked out to find alternatives to the carnage it unleashes against civil society.

The only way to win a war is to keep it from occurring. So don't talk to me about victory.

On a scale of 1-ten, Iraq's military prowess would rank about minus nine thousand and America would rank a billion. They didn't use weapons of mass destruction. Anyone surprised? And yesterday, Baghdad fell to chaos.

Those swell photos of the statue tumbling? About thirty Iraqis, twice as many US soldiers, a city square closed off. According to, for instance, "The Independent," my favorite UK paper, it was staged. It was even quickly edited, the US flag scare mask stripped quickly away to be replaced by a film loop of revelers.

The hospitals in Baghdad are closed because of looting. Foreign embassies have been destroyed while US soldiers sat by watching. Surprised? Surprised that one of the first ones to go belonged to Germany? This is a violation of the Geneva Convention. Surprised? Shops, schools, and the entire bureaucracy have been stripped of furniture, equipment, even light bulbs. US troops have, however, found a way to protect the Ministry of Oil. Surprised? Civil society has gone mad. And some industrialists and American military personnel are going to fix that? Doesn't sound very liberating (or even very likely) to me. Not a victory I choose to savor. Maybe we weren't really trying to liberate Iraq? Or have we simply failed to do so?

Or maybe we invaded Iraq to disarm them? That justification has melted away in the media, probably because they had no weapons of mass destruction, as UN inspectors maintained all along. Still I thought that's why the President said we had to go. Or were we just trying to get Saddam? No one knows where he is. Surprised? Iraq is vastly more complicated than "one bad guy." Surprised?

Why did we invade Iraq again? American industrialists will get the contracts to rebuild, using Iraq's oil to pay for it. That's cold. But not really cool. Sort of unfair really. I have a hard time being proud of it. Or being proud of how we disarmed Iraq right before we delivered "shock and awe." More like Tyson against a shackled third grade child than a fair fight.

The death toll rises every moment people who are injured can't get medical help, every second there is no water that is not polluted. Nothing here seems victorious to me.

I asked the man who shouted at me yesterday if he wanted some information. He didn't. Surprised?

If an elephant steps on an snail and kills it, is that a victory? If an adult rapes a child, is that one? If the largest military force ever created overwhelms a cap gun, is that a victory?

I say we need to get some people into public office in America who have an inkling of the value of international law, civil society, civility, justice and fairness. That's the sort of victory I'd celebrate. Let's get our Constitution back. That would be a victory America could be proud of.

Susan Bright
4/11/03
<sbright1@austin.rr.com>

 

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