Peter Boyle
A little while back, Green Left Weekly received an email along these lines: "One question. Will the Left be as outraged by the Paul Johnson beheading pictures yesterday, as [they were by] naked Iraqi prisoners? Put it into perspective you fools. Which one would you prefer?"
Then came a predictable sequel: "So today we have another beheading, a Korean this time, yet the Left is still suprisingly silent ... I'm sure we will only continue to hear about the 'torture' of prisoners. I continue to wait for a relative outrage [sic] from the Left. Any wonder why most Australians take you guys for fools."
The writer probably doesn't deserve a reply, but perhaps it is worth using one to address the moral buffeting and bludgeoning currently being experienced by many broadly progressive-minded people in Australia and other rich capitalist democracies.
Firstly, my gut response to the pictures of torture and beheadings is that they repulse me, they sicken me.
But they also make me angry and stronger in my opposition to the occupation of Iraq and the terroristic "war against terrorism" being waged by the governments of the corporate boardroom barons.
"But which would you prefer?", asks the writer of the email. That's a seriously loaded question, but let's repose it: What if the many civilians (including children and babies) who have been decapitated in recent wars by sophisticated and not-so-sophisticated bombs manufactured, distributed and sometimes dropped by the pillars of our very respectable and democratic Western capitalist system had been photographed and put on the internet, side-by-side with the pictures of Nicholas Berg, Paul Johnson and Kim Sun-Il? Which would you prefer?
What if all the executed and tortured bodies of the millions of victims (in just recent history) of the many horrible dictatorships that are installed and propped up by the "respectable" and "democratic" governments of the rich West were placed beside those shocking beheading pictures? Which would you prefer?
Too much horror? Then just select pictures of the human rights cost of each billion dollars of profit made by a major oil corporation. Try Nigeria, Saudi Arabia (at least 1100 official beheadings there in the last 20 years according to Amnesty International) or Iraq. Which would you prefer?
None of it, I would say. But surely it is not enough to wring one's hands at the horrible brutality in the world today — we have a duty to understand it and then to do what we can to combat it.
In an article published in the June 19 International Herald Tribune, Akhmed Zakayev, exiled deputy prime minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, asks: "How can anyone then be surprised that our youth — a brother whose sister was raped, a son whose father was tortured to death — do not heed our sermons of moderation, and join the ranks of desperate suicide avengers?"
Zakayev explained: "I am perhaps one of the few who was not really impressed by the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison. For I come from the part of the world where humiliation, torture, rape and murder in the name of the war on terror is a daily routine while exposure, apology and punishment of the perpetrators is an unattainable dream.
"The Russian war in Chechnya has left 180,000 civilians dead, 17 percent of the population and twice as many homeless. Thousands of innocent people kidnapped by Russian soldiers disappeared without a trace. Some were ransomed to their families, alive and dead. Some were found in mass graves, disfigured by horrible torture."
Zakayev ended with a part-plea, part-warning: "Today a prayer for Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya is offered in a single breath in every mosque in the world. Bush apologized for Abu Ghraib and said he will work to revive the Middle East 'road map'. Does that mean that he has given a thought to what is happening in the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims? If so, I would very much like to hear him apologize for an ally who is 'doing evil' while hiding behind America's cause.
"I would like the US president to say to the Muslims: The slaughter of your kin in Chechnya is not what we mean by democracy. The killings, the torture, the humiliation are not part of the war on terror. The wish of a small people to live in freedom and dignity is not punishable by death.
"Then, possibly, the world will make a first small step back from the total clash of civilizations toward which Bush's double standards and empty rhetoric are pushing the human race."
If the wars of terror against Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq continue, then sure as anything we will continue to be shocked by another suicide bombing, another execution of a hostage. We are shocked and horrified by all this brutality. But which side should we take if we want to stop its escalation? The side of the rich and powerful? Or that of those they oppress?
From Green Left Weekly, June 30, 2004.
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