The Poor Dead: The Relative Value of Human Lives

The Poor Dead

The Relative Value of Human Lives

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

It is apparent that the value of your life depends to a great extent on the country whose passport you hold. If you are, say, a Yemeni, Filipino, Afghan or Sudanese, your life is near zero in worth, so far as the world at large is concerned. But if you are from a country that wants to protect its citizens, and that desire is backed by economic clout or military muscle, then you stand a good chance of being looked after by your native land.

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And, to be unpalatably honest with ourselves, there are very few of us who do not consider some individuals or even entire peoples to be inferior because of their religious practices, skin color, place of birth, national characteristics, ethnic habits, dietary practices, or anything, really, that makes them different from the 'normal' (read, 'perfect') person that we fondly imagine ourselves to be.

When Leslie Stahl of CBS asked Madeleine Albright on May 11, 1996 if the deaths of half a million Iraqi children because of US-induced UN sanctions were "worth it", Albright replied "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it." Would she have said that if the kids had been white? Certainly, this was a staggeringly cold and horrible utterance, but one wonders how many people -- and in how many countries? -- supported her point of view. Because it is only us silly sentimental liberals who took exception to her endorsement of actions that would have had King Herod think admiringly about appointing her as chief infanticide advisor.

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But we shouldn't blame fatheads such as Buck Buchanan the Third for being so gross as to announce that the number of Iraqi casualties had been exaggerated and that dead Iraqis weren't really dead because their deaths had been "staged". He and his ilk really believe that everything the US says is Right, and everything that foreigners say is Wrong. He has probably never seen the photograph of the weeping, blood-covered three year-old Iraqi girl whose parents had just been killed by a merciless hail of fire from trigger-happy soldiers. The general and his merry jet-jockeys, after all, bomb from 30,000 feet and never see the results of their slaughter. It's just a video game to the boys upstairs. And, as the general and all Pentagon propagandists assure us, their bombs never miss. They are smart bombs.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughley12052005.html

but it would be worth the world to eradicate them all for ever.

:kick: