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By MC12
This is the headline you didn't see in the Amerikan newspapers when the U.$. military forced more than a quarter million people from their homes in Fallujah, Iraq, in a futile attempt to weaken the anti-Amerikan uprising.
Fallujah had a population estimated at 250,000 to 300,000 at the time of the Amerikan invasion (1). The population of Iraq is about 24 million (2). That means 1.1% of the Iraqi population lived in Fallujah before the invasion.
To find a metropolitan area in the U$A of comparable relative size, look at Seattle, Washington. The Seattle metro area, which includes Tacoma and Bellevue, had a population estimated at 3,122,000. That is 1.1% of the total U.$. population of 288,369,000 (3).
What happened to the population of Fallujah is that it was driven from the city before and during the Amerikan invasion. The clueless Amerikan media can't seem to get the magnitude of this crime into their heads. Consider this exchange between NPR's Scott Simon and his correspondent in Iraq from Weekend Edition Saturday on December 18. This is the entire transcript:
SCOTT SIMON (Host): In Iraq, outside of Baghdad, US Marines are continuing their operations against insurgents in the city of Fallujah. NPR's Mike Shuster is with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Fallujah just outside the city. Mike, thanks for being with us.
MIKE SHUSTER (Reporter): Hi, Scott.
SIMON: And what can you tell us--what do you know about the situation in the
city?
SHUSTER: Well, what we know is what's developed over the past week. The
Marines had firm control of Fallujah after the November battle. And for the
last week or so in November, it looked like they were going to sweep the
city clean and then begin the rebuilding process and the resettling process.
But in the last 10 days it's either that insurgents have re-infiltrated the
city or that some were hiding in the city and have come out to fight again
and attack Marine combat teams that are going through the town once again.
It's estimated that maybe a hundred or 200 insurgents are there. And six
days ago they surprised a couple of platoons of Marines and looks like in
two incidents seven Marines were killed so they stopped taking reporters
into the town this past week. And there are low-level but serious combat
operations continuing.
SIMON: If the city has been surrounded by US troops who were trying to seal
it off, is there any idea how some insurgents may have gotten in or do they
assume all of them just stayed in attics or basements or something?
SHUSTER: Well, actually the theory is that some of them stayed in tunnels.
There is some kind of tunneling system under Fallujah that they prepared
before the Marines invaded. The Marines have put a kind of noose around the
city and there are checkpoints on all the roads going into the city. But at
nighttime it's very dark here and the insurgents are locals and I think they
know how to make it across the desert. So it's reasonable to assume that
some may have re-infiltrated despite the cordon that the Marines have put
around Fallujah.
SIMON: Michael, can you tell what it's like for people who live in
Fallujah to live day by day?
SHUSTER: ITAL No one is living in Fallujah, Scott. Almost all the civilians
have left. It's impossible to live. There's no water. There's no
electricity. There's no food. And many, many of the buildings and houses
have been flattened. All--most of the residents of Fallujah went to other
cities to live with other Iraqis while this happened and some went to
refugee camps not too far back. There's a lot of talk about bringing them
back, resettling them. There have been various comments from the Iraqi mayor
of Fallujah and the Iraqi government officials in Baghdad that this process
is going to start soon. But the Marines tell you -- it's not clear how that
can happen, as long as there's continued resistance and continued attacks on
Marine teams in Fallujah so I think that that process is -- that process of
resettling is still unclear when it will start.
SIMON: Mm-hmm. Michael, have Marine commanders imparted to you or
are you otherwise able to make some kind of judgment now about what the
strategy on the ground seems to be for US forces?
SHUSTER: The strategy is to sweep through the town again, apparently through
almost all the buildings and homes again. And this has been going on for the
last week or 10 days, to flush out these insurgents. And it means going
house to house. The Marines did it once right after the battle and it looks
like they have to do it again. And it was apparently during an operation
like that six days ago, where the Marines were going into a house --
sometimes they open it with their -- they kick down the door, sometimes they
use grenades, but when they were going in, apparently there were insurgents
inside, and they were surprised, then several Marines died. It's that kind
of dirty work, house by house, block by block, street by street.
SIMON: NPR's Mike Shuster speaking with us from Camp Fallujah, the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force. Thanks very much for being with us.
SHUSTER: You're welcome, Scott.
Note the part in italics above. Simon knows he's supposed to "personalize" the story, so he asks about daily life. But when the reporter's answer reveals the horrific crime committed by Amerika, Simon has no response except "Mm-hmm," and he doesn't follow up. Instead, he changes the subject to the future Amerikan strategy.
Perspective affects perception. While the jingoist Amerikan always thinks of Amerikan well-being first, the scientific perspective allows us to compare apples and apples. We can see that the Amerikans emptied out a city the relative size of the Seattle metropolitan area, and compare that with other atrocities or crimes -- revealing the scale of imperialism's crimes. Our revolutionary determination then drives us to right these wrongs by working to eliminate the system that systematically produces them.
Notes:
1. Boston Globe 11/15/04, p. A1.
2. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/maps/
3. Statistical Abstract of the United States, at http://www.census.gov.