Bloggence, Cunning, Exile

New Orleans & Baghdad

When the US military first filed in to occupy New Orleans, the news anchor on CNN said that they were ordered to hold their guns down in a particular way, because "we don't want this to look like Iraq."
This semi-conscious parallel between occupying a country on the outskirts of the New World Order vs occupying a city in the belly of the beast was offered without a trace of irony or cognizance.
The mission of the military is not to rescue but to protect the system of private property -- practically and in principle. Thus one held a gun to the head of a woman who had taken pants from a store for her family: "Drop the clothes!" She dropped them and they floated away in the flood waters. The pants themselves were no doubt covered by business insurance and were not the real concern. The issue is the Idea of private property which underpins the capitalist enterprise. The status quo wants that protected above all, even at the cost of human lives.
Thus the similarity between these two occupations.


P.S. From Ted Rall's essay :

"It only took a few days for New Orleans to descend into anarchy, for the survivors of Katrina to lose hope, for disgusted Americans to conclude that their leaders are too staggeringly stupid, incompetent and uncaring to protect them from bad weather, much less a terrorist attack. Now think about this: the citizens of cities under U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan have been suffering under similar conditions, exacerbated by an identical lack of planning by the same U.S. officials, for nearly 900 days. New Orleans is Baghdad plus water minus two and a half years.

Still wondering why they hate us?"

posted by E. Heroux @ 12:00 PM