Called Human?
Today is Friday, 20 March 2009.
On this date in 2003, the Bush-Cheney regime and the Republican Party launched the criminal war of aggression to conquer and annex Iraq.
While the USA/USE doesn’t keep anything approaching accurate records of the Iraqi dead (do exterminators compile a life total of rats and other vermin?), independent sampling and statistical extrapolation indicate the number of Iraqi dead is approximately 1,000,000, overwhelmingly civilians.
For the purpose of illustration, I assign the value of 5 feet as the average height of Iraqis. (Thus taking into rough account babies, toddlers, adolescents, shrunken elderly, dismembered corpses, etc.)
Placed end-to-end, the number of Iraqi corpses manufactured by the Bush-Cheney-Republican war-of-aggression machine would extend from Washington, D.C. to 112 miles west of Saint Louis, Missouri.
The Persian poet Saadi, of the 13th Century C.E., wrote this poem:
“Bani A’dam”
The children of Adam are the limbs of one body
That share an origin in their creation
When one limb passes its days in pain
The other limbs cannot remain easy
You who feel no pain at the suffering of others
It is not fitting for you to be called human.
(Translation by Marizeh Ghiasi, a Montreal student born in Tehran. Find it, with the original Persian script, at http://ghiasi.org/2008/02/the-children-of-adam/. I discovered it today in “The Lede” blog of The New York Times.)
On this date in 2003, the Bush-Cheney regime and the Republican Party launched the criminal war of aggression to conquer and annex Iraq.
While the USA/USE doesn’t keep anything approaching accurate records of the Iraqi dead (do exterminators compile a life total of rats and other vermin?), independent sampling and statistical extrapolation indicate the number of Iraqi dead is approximately 1,000,000, overwhelmingly civilians.
For the purpose of illustration, I assign the value of 5 feet as the average height of Iraqis. (Thus taking into rough account babies, toddlers, adolescents, shrunken elderly, dismembered corpses, etc.)
Placed end-to-end, the number of Iraqi corpses manufactured by the Bush-Cheney-Republican war-of-aggression machine would extend from Washington, D.C. to 112 miles west of Saint Louis, Missouri.
The Persian poet Saadi, of the 13th Century C.E., wrote this poem:
“Bani A’dam”
The children of Adam are the limbs of one body
That share an origin in their creation
When one limb passes its days in pain
The other limbs cannot remain easy
You who feel no pain at the suffering of others
It is not fitting for you to be called human.
(Translation by Marizeh Ghiasi, a Montreal student born in Tehran. Find it, with the original Persian script, at http://ghiasi.org/2008/02/the-children-of-adam/. I discovered it today in “The Lede” blog of The New York Times.)
posted by HH at 10:38 AM
2 Comments:
As I recall, the Nazis kept pretty good records of who they exterminated in the gas chambers
Pretty good, but not exhaustive. Sadly, the fate of many is unknown. But, if anyone were to keep such records, wouldn't you know it would be the Germans? (I take liberty to say this, being of Austrian ancestry myself.)
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