This is a thought exercise.
A military superpower imposes an economic embargo on a country, severely weakening its civilian infrastructure and decimating the health of its population. This superpower then drops bombs on a populated urban center in order to oust an unfriendly dictatorial government, and ground troops are sent into the country. The dictatorial government then captures, and possibly tortures and executes several prisoners of war from the superpower country, in direct violation of international standards and treaties.
A state practices daily military incursions into its surrounding territory, often killing civilians. One soldier kills an international peacekeeper with a bulldozer; other soldiers shoot children going to school. A person living in the surrounding territory straps explosives to his body and enters the territory of the state. He blows himself up on a crowded bus and kills 14 people, including several children.
Dozens of people pour into the streets of a city to protest government actions abroad. Some of the people block traffic, destroy property and create disturbances to shut the city down. Police officers are called in, beating protesters with clubs and attacking them with tear gas and pepper spray. Many people are sent to the hospital, and others are sent to jail without medical attention.
Who should live and who should die? Who is right and who is wrong? Who is guilty and who is innocent? What is war and what is peace?
In order to justify our government's war in Iraq, we must believe that American lives are worth more than Iraqi lives. If you believe our mission in Iraq will prevent Saddam Hussein from conducting future attacks against Americans, then you can not avoid the conclusion that we are killing Iraqis to save ourselves. If you think that this war is meant to "liberate" Iraqi people from oppression, ask yourself why we have spent the last 12 years killing them with sanctions for the sake of our foreign policy strategy. If we truly valued the lives of the people of Iraq, the way that we value the lives of our families and friends and fellow Americans, we would not be able to entertain the notion that killing them en masse is a good idea.How much is an Iraqi life worth to you?
Further analysis leads me to the conclusion that U.S. funding for Israel requires that we value Israeli lives and our ongoing strategy in the Middle East more than Palestinian lives; that the violent squashing of civil protest requires that we value the lives of people who support of the status quo and the appearance of peace and stability more than dissenters lives, and that fundamentally, we are willing to place different values on human beings and on our own strategic interests and kill and maim accordingly.
The American press has ceaselessly bombarded us with reports of troops killed and captured in battle and tortured by the Iraqi military. Unsurprisingly, they have ignored reports of casualties from our bombing campaign in Baghdad. We have also been inundated with reports of Palestinian suicide bombings, and yet the media has largely ignored coverage of Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians.
There has, however, been limited coverage of the murder of Rachel Corrie, a white American peacekeeper, by an Israeli soldier. This attention is more than Palestinian deaths receive, so perhaps her skin makes her worthy of notice even as her politics make her life less important.
What is it that allows us to seriously maintain the delusion that we can value individual lives based on their skin color, religion or strategic importance? Before we get in line behind the president and support murder; before we send one more dollar of military aid to Israel; before we buy one more item from a company that does business in Sudan or pays slave wages; before we prepare for the terrorists acts that will undoubtedly be launched at us by the children whose families we destroy through our foreign policy, we should ask ourselves one important question.
Think about the things you value in your own life: Your dreams, your future, the people who love you and whom you love. Think about how tragic it would be for your friends and family to lose your love, your dreams, and your future. Do the people of the world have any less of the things that make life valuable to you?
Think about that as the bombs fall.
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