Press Action

Common Humanity

Posted 04/15 |

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This is a thought-provoking piece, to say the least. The popular narrative of U.S. policy towards Iraq is that the U.S. wants to help Iraqis, especially because three U.S. presidents in a row asserted without evidence that the now-deposed dictator of their country was a threat to the U.S. Funny how it works. If we are told to hate you long enough, a good portion of us, if not most, will come to believe your “freedom” is of greater worth than that of people in countries that we are supposed to ignore.

What I’m curious about is the extent to which the “helping Iraqis” line has come to be believed. I suspect that it isn’t widely held on intellectual level because there are just so many problems with it, including why the loss of Iraqi lives is not publicly acknowledged as, at the very least, an unfortunate event that had to be done for the sake of “freedom,” “security” or whatever the buzzword is at the moment. It is as if they don’t exist, and that the public either doesn’t know about these deaths, and injuries, or they do and just don’t care, realizing that all the rhetoric about “fighting for freedom” is a cruel joke. I suspect the latter is more common, but those in the former category, it would seem, merely need to get more information about “the world” in order to come to oppose U.S. foreign policy.

Posted by micah holmquist from on 04/15 at 04:24 PM