Does anybody in this country get it?
Doesanybody understand what the United States is on the verge of doing?
Experienced, respected food aid organizations warn that even before the bombingof Afghanistan began on October 7, some 7,500,000 Afghans were -- through agut-wrenching combination of poverty, drought, war, dislocation, and repression-- atrisk of starving to death this winter. When the bombing began, almost alldelivery of food from the outside world stopped. Now, roads and bridges aredestroyed, millions more people are dislocated, and the snow is steadilyapproaching from higher elevations and from the north.
For weeks, aid organizations, along with voices from throughout the region, havebeen begging the United States to call off its bombing campaign, at least forlong enough so that aid agencies can conduct the massive transfer of food intoand throughout Afghanistan that is necessary to prevent death on a scale theworld has not seen in a long, long time.
Seven and a half million people at risk of dying in a matter of months. That'sthree times the number of people Pol Pot took years to kill. Thirty-five timesthe number that died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, combined. If 5,000 died onSeptember 11, we're talking the equivalent number of deaths to ten World TradeCenters, every day, for 150 days. Slow, painful deaths. Entirely avoidabledeaths. Deaths whose sole cause is not the United States, but most of which canstill be prevented -- except that the United States is refusing to allow them tobe prevented.
It repulses me to say this, but I suspect a lot of Americans don't care. They'drather see the United States "get" Osama bin Laden (though there's noactual evidence that we're any closer to that today than we were two months ago,and probably the task is harder as he becomes more popular and protected).
An apocalypse of this scale is simply unimaginable to most of us: no food, in acountry with no roads left, no vehicles, displaced people, lost relatives, wherethe winters are too cold to walk or ride a donkey even to an adjoining villagewhere there might be food. It's a long way from driving to the nearest Safewayor drive-thru lane when you're hungry. But a lot of people in this country donot care that a staggering number of innocent people are on the verge of beingcondemned to death, or that most of the world will blame the United States,correctly.
We should care. If the object of this war was to thwart terrorism -- to bringexisting terrorists to justice, and to isolate them politically and culturallyso that others won't throw in their lot -- in less than a month, the UnitedStates already has perpetrated one of the most abject failures in militaryhistory.
It still does not know where any of Al-Qaeda's leadership even is. It ison the verge of succeeding in its goal of creating a unified Afghanistangovernment -- unfortunately, Afghans are uniting behind the Taliban, as warlordafter warlord sets aside long-standing differences to stand shoulder to shoulderto fight the American invaders. Tens of thousands more young Muslim men arelining up to cross the borders into Afghanistan to join them. The ones thatsurvive the experience will carry a lifetime of hate: living, breathing proofthat within a month, America bombed a country but lost its war in spectacularfashion.
That's today. What will happen if millions of Afghans die this winter? How muchfuture terrorism will the dunderheads of the Bush Administration have inspiredthen? If several million Islamic sisters and brothers starve to death, innocentcivilians trapped between winter and the rage of America, how many of Islam's1.2 billion adherents -- or the five billion other people on earth -- are goingto take George Bush's proclamations about eradicating "terrorists" and"evildoers" to heart, and label him, and us, as the prime examples?
In less than two months, the United States government has gone from the moralhigh ground of being victimized by one of the most heinous crimes in worldhistory, to being within a week or two of quite visibly committing a crime somuch larger as to obliterate the world's memory of September 11.
Remarkably, almost nobody in the United States seems to have either noticed,understood, or cared. While even progressives wring their hands over theambiguity of a war fought under the auspices of America's legitimate right todefend itself, a situation is unfolding in which there is absolutely no moralambiguity at all, and for which many people will want to hold each of us asaccountable as the world held post-war Germans. Where were you? What did yousay? How could you allow this to happen? Or, a more likely reaction in theIslamic world: Why should millions of you not die as well? America will have setout to isolate one man, and instead killed millions and isolated itself. Andmuch of the world will not rest until we are brought to our knees.
Seven and a half million people. The snowline is creeping down themountainsides. The food is almost gone. The infrastructure is in shambles. Therewill be no "independent verification" of the body count. There wasn'tin the Holocaust or Rwanda or Cambodia, either. The judgment of the world didnot need one. The clock is ticking. Where were you?
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(WorkingForChange.com GeovParrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, InThese Times and Eat the State! By arrangement with Znet)
