Collective Punishment and Hearts and Minds
Unembedded journalist Dahr Jamail writes from Iraq of the hamfisted tactics being used by the U.S. Military there, as their frustration mounts over the ever-swelling insurgency: in the al-Dora region of Baghdad, Americans have bulldozed date palm farms, refused to remove unexploded ordinance in fields until the locals deliver an insurgent in payment, have punatively cut electicity vitally needed for irrigation during planting season, and have even destroyed two water pumps and thrown them in the river. A man tells of being taken to a prison camp for 10 months, and living under a sign entitled: “The Zoo.”
A 50-year-old blind farmer laments,
“They destroyed so many of our fences, and now we have wolves attacking our animals. We are living on the food ration now, that is all. We only need to stop this hurting.”
While others listening are nodding, he continues on, “Every night I hear them come and shoot. During the beginning, when they searched our houses they didn’t steal. Now they steal from us. They didn’t hurt us at the beginning, but now they are hurting us so much!”
Collective Punishment at Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
It is clear, from this and other reports, that the American force has descended into pure xenophobia. Jonathan Schell, author of the classic book on Vietnam, The Real War, wrote a great article for The Nation a month ago, which the editors allowed Tom Engelhardt to publish on his blog, along with a short introduction. Schell cites the attack on Falluja, which left the city a smoldering, unlivable shell, as an example of a policy designed, not to win the “Hearts and Minds” of the populace, but simply to win their minds, essentially telling the Iraqis, “Cooperate with us, and do not cooperate with the insurgents, or we’ll raze your cities to the ground.”
Schell, The Battle for Minds (Forget the Hearts) at TomDispatch.com
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