In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

“My brother is dead, and I helped kill him”

Jill

A heart-wrenching, must-read piece.

Our media covers the deaths of American soldiers fairly regularly — but we don’t often hear about the tens of thousands of Iraqis who we’ve murdered. Nine-year-old Ali was only one of them. And because we’re tired of hearing about Iraq — I’m tired of hearing about Iraq — I can’t help but feel a little bit complicit in this.

Posted in War

16 thoughts on “My brother is dead, and I helped kill him”

  1. I don’t know. It seems a bit “look at MEEEE” in its assumption of a moral guilt that frankly seems misplaced. The guy hasn’t magically created an effective anti-war movement, or taken up arms against the government to stop the war, or something, so it’s his fault there’s this individual tragedy in Iraq? At that level of responsibility it’s my fault that millions are dying in Africa, and I really should apologize for melting all those glaciers…

    Taking responsibility for our country’s actions is a good thing, but when we’re opposed to those actions, our failure to be in control of the whole world doesn’t really translate into the bad outcomes of the actions being our fault. This fellow didn’t “help kill” his friend; he tried his best to help him, and failed. Failure isn’t always fault.

  2. Yeah, I agree. I’m really tired of the church celebrating the violence of their crucifixion story and explaining away war and pillaging as common practice in their holy book. Then, when they start feeling guilty about the reality of violence, they conveniently forget that the voices of the evangelicals were the loudest in support of invading Iraq in the first place.

    What the holier-than-thou Christians should do is start from within the church and start preaching tolerance and respect for women and children. Kinda like the guy they’re named after.

  3. I am just so sad that a child died painfully, in terror, and that his brother is grieving an incredible loss. The politics/religious aspects aside- a child died. And that just sucks.

  4. RE: Kim, Three Dollar Bill,

    This priest is doing his best to reach out to people of other faiths and promote peace and understanding. Why are you attacking him? Surely he is doing more than YOU are (or most of us are) in that regard.

    Besides, the point here is how brutal this war is, and what it has done to real people, like that little boy, Ali, and his brother.

    When I read stories like theirs, I have a few immediate thoughts.

    1) Why, WHY didn’t we stop this war before it began?

    2) Why is our criminal regime still in power?

    3) I will be very, very angry if the next president does not press for prosecutions of members of the Bush Administration. –not because war crimes trials bring back the dead (obviously they don’t), but because they do put a dent in the culture of impunity that allows those in power to commit such crimes in the first place.

  5. I’m very surprised by the first two comments. Our democracy was used to elect the people who decided to completely obliterate the Baghdad infrastructure and disband the Iraqi army. Our tax dollars paid for the instruments that killed upwards of 90,000 Iraqi citizens. Do you honestly think we have no moral obligations to the Iraqi people?

  6. OK two things:

    1) I think it’s really difficult to make claims for personal responsibility with regards to people that opposed the war and did what they could within their powers as citizens to speak out and stop it. I definitely would not place blame on people solely for the country they live in and hold citizenship to, I think that is very basic.

    2) I also think it would be a huge shame that talking about these things should only amount to sentiments of guilt and not translate into concrete actions-not just to speak out against the war in general, but in organizing to deal with the effects of this war, and helping and compensating those that have been affected by it. Unfortunately, I think the anti-war movement has been focusing on the withdrawal part and neglecting the effects part.

  7. To me, the ultimate question isn’t “would things be better in Irak if we stayed or if we left?” but “why are we assuming it’s up to us to decide what is best for Irak?” It is the height of arrogance (the kind of arrogance that got us into this in the first place) for us to assume that we know best for another people in their own country.

    Mike said this in the comments and I think that says it all.

  8. I can see my comment came off as more of an attack than it was meant to be. I only agreed with Three Dollar Bill about the ‘sensational’ headline this preacher gave to his article. It seemed to celebrate violence.

    But what I was mostly trying to say was that starting change from home is the best way to start affecting culture. There just seems to be a huge divide between #1 on the pastor’s list ,”Pray”, (to the same God giving orders throughout the Bible to declare war) and denouncing violence.

    I don’t, of course, disagree with anything the pastor said in his blog entry, it just came off as ironic, and a little bit late.

    Miss Sarajevo: I’ve done field work in post-war and post-communist reconstruction and I can understand your frustration.

  9. No matter how “tired” you feel, your government is murdering innocent people in Iraq. For no apparent reason. Just so you know, the people that Americans refer to as “the rest of the world” are more concerned about Iraqi civilians than casualties among the invading occupants.

  10. MS, I am not attacking the priest; I am sure he is a good and decent person. I just don’t think that his placing himself as the central moral actor in this drama is appropriate. He, perhaps quite naturally, wants to be an important player in the story he is reporting. But he isn’t an important player, and he should recognize his peripherality.

    Prefer Not To Say, of course we have a moral obligation to the Iraqi people. That doesn’t mean that this priest “helped kill” this young boy.

  11. There’s the thing, Hilda- Americans (and I hate generalizing) for the most part don’t know/care/ are aware, other than the 4000 dead American soldiers. On “our side”- it’s like a ballgame mentality with the numbers. Our current administration refuses to release accurate information regarding those Iraqis killed, wounded, displaced, etc. Everything I’ve read of the potentially accurate figures just horrifies me.

    And while there is now a larger opposed the war than for it, until the very human costs and damages are known, the average American will not see what exactly the Bush administration has done. And frankly, I’m not sure, as long as THEY can keep their heads planted in the sand on this, that they would care even if they knew. It is an absolute travesty.

  12. I agree with Kim that the best way to effect long-term change is to start at home with a genuinely reflective non-violent way of life. So I applaud her for saying that. But it seems like a long-term solution that won’t affect the genuinely desperate landscape of Iraq for decades. What to do in the meantime?

    Three Dollar, I understand your reservations about the priest equating doing nothing with killing people. Would it be possible to understand his heightened rhetoric as perhaps a necessary strategy in a society that has no discourse of *collective* responsibility? The anti-war movement will say “It’s not our war, we didn’t want it.” The right will say “If you’d just let us continue, it wouldn’t be so bad.” And still no one will be able to feel a sense that this thing happened, it happened at the hands of our nation, and our membership in the nation obliges us to make it right.

    Thanks to everyone who critiques the anti-war movement for constantly spotlighting American casualties, as if the Iraqis didn’t count. It makes me feel less crazy for thinking the same thing.

  14. prefer, I’ve long held the belief that if accurate numbers of casualties on both sides had been released on an ongoing basis, the WORLD would have forced this war to end within the first year, with economic sanctions against the US.

    Shut down the goods coming into the US, shut down the oil, shut down the money- but of course, it would never happen. We have too many countries by the short hairs. Can you imagine what the response would have been if another country had been the aggressor in Iraq with the same results of human lives lost or wounded?

    I think if we knew the real number of war dead and injured, it would drive us insane.

  15. I agree that it’s absurd to focus exclusively on the American casualties of the war—-but I also think that since 9/11 a lot of Americans have a “better them than us” mentality—-so talking about Iraqi casualties isn’t going to move them very much. I’ve come to expect very little in the way of empathy or compassion from our society.

  16. There’s a really thin line between taking responsibility for your own actions and outright narcissism. I don’t know where this stands.

    But on topic of casualties. Shit, I hate to see anyone die. War is just bad. Have we gone over this one before?

Comments are currently closed.