Sunday, November 14, 2004

[1840 - Claude Monet born in Paris]

Fallujah Liberated

Lieutenant General John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was reported to have proclaimed today, "We have liberated the city of Fallujah." Proof that even our Marines, (at least the senior officers), have mastered the art of Newspeak, and are politically correct. Tell us, General, sir, what are we going to call all those "grunts" you command on the ground now? Anyway, if the General is right, it is time to do the numbers. On the plus side, we have conquered a city that was symbolic of the resistance to the US occupation of Iraq, and eliminated a refuge for insurgents, (many of whom had already moved on). We have exacted revenge for the killing and public mutilation of four US civilian contractors last April. We have also shown the uppity UN Secretary General who is boss when he had the temerity to warn us not to assault Fallujah because it might jeopardize the Iraq election schedule. We have furnished CNN, Fox, and other cable news channels with weeks worth of what Chris Hedges correctly calls war porn. Then too, one of our battle weary Marines was photographed with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and was instantly dubbed the new Marlboro Man. As for our stated purpose in going into the city, which was to pacify it so that elections could be held in January 2005, the jury is still out.

On the debit side of the ledger, we have lost over three dozen of our bravest and most loyal warriors. Several hundred more have been wounded, some maimed for life. General Sattler knew better than to use the term "light casualties," as he might have said in the old days before we became so sophisticated about how to characterize such matters. Casualties are light unless you are the parent or spouse who answers a knock at the door to find two uniforms and a chaplain standing on the front porch.

In addition, about 1500 Iraqi insurgents and an untold number of civilians have died. These people don't look or talk exactly like we do, but they are, after all, members of the same race. [Where are you pro-lifers when we need you?] We have fostered some bloody Sunni uprisings all over Iraq, and made Sunni participation in the upcoming elections considerably more doubtful. We have reduced a city of 300,000 to rubble. [Guess who will pay to rebuild the city while our US infrastructure continues to decay?] We have unmasked Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi as a US surrogate by forcing him to order the assault on the city, thus destroying any pretext of legitimacy for the interim government. We have also reinforced the image of the United States as a brutal conqueror and occupier throughout the Middle East.

There was apparently one bright spot in all this. It was reported that the pink dress on the lifeless body of a small child decorated a curb in one of the otherwise drab, rubble-filled streets of Fallujah.

Poor William's Newspeak Glossary

liberate - to conquer, capture or destroy. As in Rome liberated Carthage, and was later itself liberated by Barbarians, or as in liberate the city of Fallujah.

Pro-lifers - groups of anti-abortion activists who vigorously oppose the scientific use of undifferentiated embryonic stem cells but are nowhere to be found when real people die.

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