4000
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
4000
This, is a mosaic made by somebody online of George W. Bush and John McCain. It has always been a mind-boggling question as to how they actually made these mosaic pictures, the kind of patience and determination involved is simply amazing. As amazing as this picture is, it is important to look at what this picture is made up of. If you look closer at the little pictures, you are not going to recognize the faces, not even with a magnifying glass pressed up against the screen of the monitor. You are not alone though, because there are only a handful of people out there in the world who might recognize a face or two in this picture, simply because they are nameless soldiers who have died in Iraq ever since the war started five years ago. That is not to say that they are nameless in real life, they are nameless because nobody other than their family and friends know who they are. People like us, people all the way our side of the world are going to look at these men and women with blank eyes, not knowing any of them. This picture is made up of the 4000 faces that have died ever since the war began, and we don't know the names of any one of them. Not one.
It has been five years now, five years since America decided to invade Iraq. Ever since that fateful morning in 2003, Operation Shock and Awe marked the beginning of an seamless end, a war that is still being fought until this day for a cause not a lot of us are very clear of any longer. The death toll in the U.S. military surpassed 4000 just yesterday, a few soldiers were killed by a bomb planted at the side of the road in a residential neighborhood in the middle of Baghdad. So they were blown into shreds, and nobody knows their name. In the month of February, television networks spent a grand total of 3% of the total air time talking about the war in Iraq, and the majority of that 3% was to talk about Prince Harry and his heroic return from the frontline. Nobody likes to hear about dead soldiers now, they happen on a daily basis. Nobody likes to hear that the country sent 4000 soldiers out to die in a foreign land and away from their loved ones. After all, if your own government is responsible for the deaths of 4000 people, do you really want to know?
It is difficult to picture 4000 people, it is such an incomprehensible number. If I put all the people I have ever met in my life, the ones that I have had interactions with, I'm not sure if I can come up with 4000 faces, let alone 4000 names. It is difficult to picture 4000 people, but I guess a rough gauge would be a rock concert, that'd be a good reference I suppose. Just picture half of that crowd dying right in front of yours eyes, and the dead bodies piling on top of one another like dead pork at a wet market. That'd be how many soldiers the Americans have lost in Iraq ever since it all began. I forgot who they were, or which state they were from, but a few people came together ever since the beginning of the war and decided that they'd be responsible for filling up a grass field with white flags, with each flag representing a dead soldier. The end result was a field covered in little white flags, and they have already ran out of space after the 4000th soldier died yesterday night. It gave the other people a visual reference on how much people have passed away for a cause that not a lot of people are sure about. They talk about freeing the people of Iraq, liberating them from tyranny and such. But then the big bad guy has been captured from within a hole, more than 80000 Iraqis have been killed in the process, and we still have yet to find weapons of mass destruction. WMD my ass.
The war in Iraq cost $5000 every second, statistically speaking. After reading the last sentence, one American's annual salary might have been spent in Iraq, and another man's salary might have been wasted for a lost cause by the end of this sentence, maybe even two. More than money, human lives have been spent in Iraq for a reason the rest of the world are unsure of. But of course, none of us are protesting against the false tyranny that is the Bush administration, because nobody dares to stand up against the Big Brother, everybody is supposed to love him. George Orwell saw that coming, and he wrote the book 1984 that depicted the eventual fate of the world in the 21st century. It is true that the rest of the world are afraid, I think we really are. "Either you are with us, or against us." the president said more than five years ago, and now I am thinking if North Korea is really as bad as he has made it out to be. Seriously, if he is looking for a terrorist, he'd only need to look into a mirror.
It is disturbing to know that the news of the 1000th soldier dying is still fresh in my mind, like a movie I saw last weekend in the cinema. It just doesn't feel that long ago when the death toll officially became a four digit number, when the troops that perished became just a part of a statistic, and nobody cared about them any longer. Those numbers became milestones, and we are just adding on more and more to that number because we are "short of an exit plan". It is said that killing one man will land you in a prison. Killing ten men will land you in an insane asylum. But if you kill 4000 men, people might look at you and say," Hey, not bad!" Even more disturbing, is probably the answer of the defense minister to this whole issue. Himself, along with his boss, orchestrated this daylight massacre and earned large wad of money and stuffed them into their secret overseas account. And all he could say about the situation was," So?"
If presented with this mosaic, I don't suppose George W. Bush is going to see those 4000 faces at all. He is going to see himself, and John, and maybe complain about how crooked his nose looks in the picture. He is going to overlook the pictures of the dead soldiers, kind of like how you'd ignore the green dots in an eye-test and concentrate on the orange dots forming a number or an alphabet in the middle of the picture. Ignorance is bliss, and that is what he has convinced himself to do, and what the rest of the world have as well. We have ignored what he did for way too long, so much so that we do not think that there is anything wrong with have 4000 fathers and sons, mothers and daughters dead in the middle of nowhere. To put things into perspective, America has been involved in this mindless war longer than they have been involved in the second world war. To put things into deeper perspective, the terrorists that orchestrated 9/11 killed 2000 odd people on that one morning. So yeah, do the math.
It is a year of change, it really is. The oppositions are rising back up and defeating the old ways. We first saw the opposition party in Malaysia giving the ruling party a slap in the face, a wake up call. Then the opposition party in Taiwan thrashed the ruling party in their election by winning by a margin of more than two million votes. Very soon, the opposition party in America is going to reclaim what they had more than eight years ago and bring the country into a new direction - more importantly, to bring the troops home. I have been watching a lot of videos with Barack Obama, and let's just say that he is the only thing Rosemary and I can truly agree with. This is the man that can, well, change. Before that comes along, however, I wish for these soldiers to rest in peace, and may their names be remembered by people in the years to come. Even if it was for a lost cause, at least there was faith and passion involved in their deaths. Just pick a name off that list, and remember it. Just one name, at least one. I think that is the least that they deserve.
The name that I have picked to remember for the rest of my life is: Albert Bitton.
He died under hostile fires, on the 20th of February, in Baghdad.
What about you?
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 4:55 PM.
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3:13 AM
I am not saying that I am for or against the war in Iraq. I have heard and studied both sides of the arguement in -great- detail. I can say that I think you are wrong in saying no one cares about those soldiers who have died, that their deaths are unimportant. Just like I think it is wrong to say that the deaths of many innocent people in Iraq is unnoticed. I know that living outside of America you see us as complacent-- and we are, to an extent-- but neither do you see the people who aren't.
I have many friends serving in Iraq. I have lost one. I do support our troops. They need it.
I think it is also important to note, just like many have noted, we cannot just up and walk out. There are many sides to this situation you are leaving out or you are not familiar with. Rather or not people disagree with Bush, that is no longer the problem.
You probably won't post this. Which is fine. I just wanted to say that in spite of the fact that you called my president a terrorist, which is in essence calling me one-- rather or not I agree with Bush, and I make no claim that I do or don't-- is a really ugly mark, Will.I hate war. I hate that innocent people, on both sides, are affected by the things that go on. I hate reading things like what you have written, or what other people write, which provokes more hate and more problems instead of solving it. I just hate-- well, hate.
I know how naive and silly that sounds. I am not trying to push buttons or make you mad. I wish that things in this world were better. I wish that things were different, not just with things in my country, but around the entire world.
Anyway...I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say anymore, except that war and hate in any manner-- physically, silently, not silently, even written-- it just sucks.