Was it Samuel Johnson who said 'patriotism is the last refuge of
scoundrels'? I forget. It's not important.

In any event, I support the GIs who question and dissent from their own
role in the occupation, and I assume many do. We have heard of a few
who have refused to go along, there are probably many who we will not
hear about.

Still, most of the people who have been killed in Iraq are
non-combatant Iraqi people. The current estimate is somewhere between
8,800 and 10,000, according to http://www.iraqbodycount.net/ . And the
overwhelming majority of those people have been killed by the US
military and it's government. That is a simple fact.

Audience research shows that uninterpreted object displays are not very
effective as self-directed communication. So if a museum intends to
display 'war booty', it ought to include the context. Certainly that
should include the conditions of the war; the aerial bombardments of
urban residential areas, water supplies, and power plants (all
proscribed as 'war crimes' by the Geneva Convention, btw), the cluster
bombs and maimed children. Perhaps an autographed picture of government
emissary Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein (1983), or a
list of the US, British and German firms who supplied the chemicals
used in the Iraq-Iran war. Perhaps an annotated map showing the
international oil investments near Tirkut.

-LD (aka person C)



On Monday, April 5, 2004, at 12:04 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:

> Date:    Sun, 4 Apr 2004 11:44:49 -0700
> From:    Deb Fuller <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Iraq donations
>
> --- Indigo Nights <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> You have a history here of touting the soldiers and
>> their beleagured families.  Your patriotism is
>> admirable.  But this is a multinational list with
>> folks who do not feel the same way, including some of
>> your own countrypersons.
>
> I don't want to drag this out either but let me set the record
> straight about
> my attitude towards the whole situation. I don't consider myself
> "patriotic"
> but someone who genuinely cares about all people, regardless of race,
> religion,
> occupation or nationality. I happen to believe that the average person
> out
> there is trying to do the best they can with what they've got. So I do
> get
> defensive of people who I think are trying to do their best and are at
> the
> mercy of a usually one-sided media world.
>
> In any highly controversial political situation, I find that it's an
> alarming
> tendency to jump on the "little guy" like the soldiers instead of the
> people up
> the chain of command who are calling the shots. Blame is usually put
> on the
> people who have the least control of the situation but happen to be
> right in
> the middle of it.
>

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