Global Policy Forum

By Matthew Riemer

By Matthew RiemerYellowTimes.org Americans love tragedy. In fact, there's nothing like a good tragedy to bring out the buzz words and rhetoric. In America, tragedies are just like the latest Hollywood blockbusters (themselves wildly exaggerated versions of some real-life event). There's the hero (what's a tragedy without a hero), the innocent victims (who never knew what hit them), and the villains (those not quite human humans). But perhaps more important than the tragedy itself is the remembering and commemorating that follows, inevitably turning tragedy into commodity and spectacle.

There's the ribbons of all sizes and shapes. There's the hook-onto-the-back-window-of-your-car mini American flags. Then there are those nifty stickers that use the pentagonal shape of the Pentagon and the twin monoliths of the World Trade Center to write out 9/11. Jingoistic slogans like, "These colors don't run," "We will never forget," "America: love it or leave it," and simply "Remember", presented as if it were a command, round out the fanfare.

On the one-year anniversary of September 11th, in an obnoxious display of self-indulgence and self-absorption, the names of all those who died in the attacks were read in alphabetical order. Bizarre rituals such as this reflect Americans' preoccupation with tragedy and their apparent desire to perpetuate it bitterly in the national consciousness.

In a similar exercise on Memorial Day, interspersed with the quaint tinkling of piano keys, National Public Radio read the names of Americans killed in "Operation Iraqi Freedom" intermittently throughout their midday news show, Here and Now, bringing us to the most telling aspect of this cultural obsession: Only dead Americans count. There was no stirring, televised ceremony to honor the Iraqi dead after the first Gulf War; there was none held during the last thirteen years for all the young, sickly, and poor Iraqis who succumbed under the austerity of sanctions; and, once again, there's been none for the dead of "Operation Iraqi Freedom", and there won't be.

Now, if that was the only problem, we could chalk it up to ethnocentricity. Unfortunately, it's not. It's been taken to a new level. America won't even allow the enemy an anonymous and silent death. America wants to deny that the enemy is even killed during conflicts. And American culture shuns the notion of caring about how many enemy soldiers were killed or, more significantly, how many civilians were killed. We need only turn to America's latest aggression to see this phenomenon displayed with great clarity. To wonder how many dead Iraqi children there are now lying unburied in the desert is to be a "bleeding-heart liberal," or an "enemy sympathizer," or, in the words of the hysterical and ignorant, a "commie." Why is there such a visceral and rather nasty reaction from many Americans when one emphasizes the importance of the dead of other nations?

Imagine if France or some Iraqi official during the war had said that American casualties were insignificant and that there was no need to identify the dead or determine how many actually died? Bill O'Reilly would be spewing hate into the camera over at FOX, flanked by some emotionally maladjusted, fuming ex-military man babbling about honor and the "finest men."

On Memorial Day, NPR's Neal Conan, host of Talk of the Nation , cut off a caller who mentioned that all those killed in America's wars, foreign civilians and soldiers alike, should also be honored and remembered. Conan reprimanded the caller, indicating that this wasn't what the show was about; instead, the show was about remembering American veterans. Evidently, such observations as the caller made are heresy on the "liberal" NPR. Conan, as well as most national news personalities, is not interested in the fact that while less than 100,000 Americans died in Vietnam, over a million Vietnamese did.

If America respects life and freedom as much as the rhetoric surely indicates, why aren't U.S. government agencies in Iraq identifying dead Iraqis, notifying their families, and bringing closure to all these lost lives? Why isn't Washington or the media at large interested in how many Iraqis were killed during the war? And why do bureaucracies like the Pentagon attempt to discredit those who offer independent estimates of the number of dead? If statistics or numbers aren't from the mouth of CentCom or the New York Times , which has now resorted to having certain stories approved by the Pentagon, then they are the result of conspiracy mongers.

If America wants to honor those who have lost their lives in military conflicts and properly remember war so that future generations will adequately grasp its horror and significance, then it must care a great deal about the number of foreign soldiers who are killed. America must also show great concern over the number of Iraqi (or Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, or Somali) families that lost children and grandfathers and aunts: individuals who had nothing to do with keeping their governments in power and never once hurt the United States. As long as American culture continues to indulge in its own grief in a spectacle of selfishness, while simultaneously denying the recognition due others who have suffered far greater losses, Memorial Day will remain an empty, pretentious event carried out by the world's most arrogant nation.

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