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By Rabah Aal-Jafar (Iraqi writer)

Edited By Rob Gibran

June 29, 2005

Original Article (English) provided by

June 29, 2005

In her book “Silent Spring,” the American writer Rachel Carson describes to us the strangest journey of death in the toughest battle known to humanity. [Protecting the environment]. In the meantime, British author George Mikes wished he could die far from the United States, because he hated death the American way!

[Editor’s Note: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was the first book about the environment to make an impact in the popular imagination in 1972. George Mikes was a British Comedian that found fodder in examining life in other countries. His book, “How to Scrape Skies,” about the United States, included this memorable quote:

"The poor Americans are so busy defending the rights of Hindus in Pakistan, Muslims in India, Jews in Palestine, Koreans in Japan, Italians in Yugoslavia and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia that they simply cannot give a thought to Negroes in the United States.”]

In Iraq, we never experienced death the American way, nor did we know of it, until they started planting their tank shells in our guts, plowing our hearts with their war planes, and harvesting our heads with their bullets. They keep promising that the next funeral will be better than the last: Maybe the philosophy of existence, as understood by the Marines (I fight therefore I am), needs constant practice and regular proof … But if you scream out in pain and rage, they accuse you of terrorism.

It is very rare occurrence in history that a person with incorrect geographical information - by chance - discovers a new world, and then discovers that this chance discovery turns out to be the biggest, most infamous mistake in history.

This is what happened with Christopher Columbus when he sought India and China at the end of the 15^th century, but chanced upon America instead. But Columbus died without knowing how or what the consequences were of his discovery of America.

If Columbus was alive today and witnessed the scandals of abuse and torture inside the U.S. detention centers of Abu Gharib, Umm Qasr, Guantanamo, and Afghanistan, he would have discovered the magnitude of his error and headed back to Spain to be tried, and to apologize to the world for the wars, disasters and calamities that he had brought forth.

We used to think that the “Sheriff” that we saw in American movies was a truly honorable person, until the U.S. occupation, when we saw how it carelessly swallows up everything that moves, how it murders all contracts and agreements, beginning with the Law of Hammurabi and the Magna Carta, all the way to the U.N.’s Declaration of Human Rights. We realized then that the “Sheriff,” who wore two guns in his belt and carried a long rope for lynching villains and outlaws, was no more honorable than the bandits he was hunting.

When an accurate census of the victims of the American occupation is tallied, it will show that they numbered in the thousands and that they were buried in open graves, or no graves at all. This is the tragedy -- that the Iraqi people are not protected by any law, are not guarded by any mercy, and that death has become their friend and part of their daily lives.

He who will chronicle this era might be inclined to describe the calamities, the ordeals, and the difficult moments, and will discover afterwards that calamity has a womb that will bear the victims’ children and grandchildren.    

It has not been easy for us to shed all this blood and sacrifice caravans of martyrs. The reason we haven’t been completely stunned by grief over all of this killing is that we patiently anticipate and believe that death is righteous. The highest hope for a righteous man is to meet his Maker as a great man and a dear martyr.