by Don Nash, Unknown News
Aug. 2, 2005
The extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing -- doesn't that sound better than just your simple genocide or crimes against humanity? Sounds like the kind of subject matter one could talk with the wife and kids about over dinner. Goes down easy, and avoids all the messy details. The devil is always in the details.
Genocide sounds so ... technical. It always sounds so mass murder-ish. It's the bloody and grisly side of human hatred, with the blood splattered all over the place, and bodies stacked up somewhere like so much cordwood. Body parts strewn about here and there, with the wet sticky bits hanging on things that were never intended to have wet sticky bits hanging on them. Civilized folk don't appreciate having to witness wet sticky bits hanging on things that proper folk might just use every day.
Genocide is something that happens in Rwanda or Darfur. In the Balkans, the genocide became ethnic cleansing. Now, doesn't that go down easier? "Ethnic cleansing" almost sounds civilized, whereas "genocide" always sounds so icky.
That's what civilized folk do: Put the different and slightly more palatable name on some horror that proper folk don't want to acknowledge or believe.
Remember when George Bush unleashed Armageddon on Saddam Hussein and Iraq? Armageddon sounds better than preemptive war doesn't it? Armageddon almost sounds like some kind of a divine mission. Why, a divine mission is exactly what George Bush told America and the world he was doing to Iraq. Slaps an angelic smiley face on blitzkrieg.
Wasn't it exciting to watch the 24-hour "shock and awe" news cycle as Donny Demonic rained precision destruction on downtown Baghdad, and all over Iraq? You see, Donny Demonic (that would be Donald Rumsfeld) works for George Bush. Or is it the other way around? Given the somewhat dysfunctional nature of the Bush war machine, one can't be quite sure.
The key, to slapping a perky smiley face on preemptive war and death, is the spin. Atrocity and horrendous devastation are much easier to feel comfortable about and watch through the 24-hour news cycle, if it's wearing a happy cutesy smiley face. All the president's men came out and told America what a happy and noble cause Bush's preemptive war on Iraq would be. Lies are so much easier to swallow when they're coated with spin and wearing a perky and cutesy smiley face. That and the Good Heavenly-keeping Seal of Approval.
A spoonful of sugar and atrocity goes down, in the most delightful way. So, you end up with 'Mary Poppins does ethnic cleansing'.
A preemptive war of deceitful naked aggression is magically transformed into "Operation Iraqi Freedom." There America, you can swallow that can't you? It's the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing. One doesn't even have to consider all of the innocent Iraqi men, women, and children that have been mercilessly slaughtered by the United States of America. The Iraqi dead have been ethnically cleansed, and Iraq is now a much better place.
Well, certainly Iraq is a much better place! Iraq is now ethnically cleansed and democratically free to pursue an entirely new democratic process called civil war. So isn't that just the way it goes with lying presidents and prime ministers that take it upon themselves to wage wars of aggression using the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing? The intended target of Operation Iraqi Freedom turns around and ungratefully falls into a civil war after being so heroically liberated by the precision lies of presidents and prime ministers.
Using the extraordinary illogic of lying presidents and prime ministers, "building democracy" is in very real fact a civil war. A much anticipated civil war that was in the very least, completely expected.
The extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing tends to leave those that have been cleansed in, well, a bit of a mood. I suppose that all of the murder and destruction could put off even the most even-tempered of people. Toss in a realization that the reasons for the Iraqi cleansing were wholesale fabrications, and one could muster up an attitude. It would be fair to guess that mustering an attitude is realistically more like, if the Iraqi people didn't hate the Americans and the British before the preemptive war, they sure as hell hate us now.
The sovereign nation of Iraq was not in possession of weapons of mass destruction, as both Bush and Blair insisted it was. Iraq was not implicated nor indicted for the American tragedy of September 11, 2001, though Bush ceaselessly hints that it was. Iraq did not have nuclear weapons, contrary to the clear implication made by Bush, Blair, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Fleischer, and Fox.
Isn't that just the luck of the draw? Iraq was preemptively invited to receive the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing, and the once-sovereign nation of Iraq is falling into civil war, and sectarian division will be the ultimate end. Many, many ethnics will be cleansed.
Donny Demonic maintains that, "democracy is a messy process." But no, Donny, that's not it at all. Wars of naked aggression are messy. Wholesale genocide and slaughter are messy. Considering that the lies used to go all preemptive on Iraq in the first place, the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing radiates an ominous glow of "Where's the accountability?"
Therein lies the devil in the wanton details. George Bush and Tony Blair willfully lied the U.S. and the U.K. into one of humanity's more egregious cleansings. There was absolutely zero legal justification to wage that extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing on Iraq and the Iraqi people.
A monumental error of this magnitude demands international justice be met out. Bush and Blair are war criminals, and the destruction these men have wrought on Iraq is inexcusable. How one might spin inexcusable into something modestly more palatable, remains to be spun.
Now we come to the diplomatic hypocrisy from the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing. Apart from the initial protests and world grumbling about Bush and Blair's war of aggression on Iraq, the global community, through the stellar example that is the United Nations, just wants the Iraq atrocities to go away, and we should all be quiet. Discussions about accountability are maintained by the people that were in opposition to the Iraq madness in the first place, but global diplomatic circles are eerily silent about Iraq, the genocide, the illegality of the war, the war profiteering, and the criminality of supposedly democratic world leaders and their predisposed determinations to destroy any nation/state that comes up for democratic preemption.
The international indications are that Bush and Blair will get away with the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing they've worked on Iraq. It shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone. Israel gets away with their ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, always. Yes, yes, I'm fully aware that the U.S. continually vetoes sanctions that come up in the U.N. concerning Israel. My response to the global diplomatic circles is, fix the damn problem. Apply some pressure to the U.S. and the U.N. Security Council and hold Israel to account. Hold the U.S. and the U.K. to account.
But then again, genocide only happens in places like Rwanda and the Darfur. Anywhere else, the atrocity becomes the extraordinary lightness of ethnic cleansing, and the world can walk away from wholesale slaughter and destruction with a smile on its face, a song in it's heart, and no sense of global responsibility whatsoever.
Those that are in opposition to international murderous insanity are simply those icky radical types who always are in protest to war and death and those things that truly elevate humanity to the heady heights of butchery. Just put a perky happy smiley face on the inhumanity, and everything is fine.
© by the author.
What do you think?
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A spoonful of sugar and atrocity goes down, in the most delightful way.
So, you end up with 'Mary Poppins does ethnic cleansing'.
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