In the "old days" of the U.S. peace movement, when many people focused on
the threat of a global nuclear "exchange" an organization called
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) postulated what would happen if
a major American city was actually blasted by an atomic bomb.
The doctors described utterly horrific scenarios extending far beyond the
numbers of dead and severely wounded. In plain words they described what
the few survivors would experience: a landscape that not only had
sustained unimaginable casualties, but which had also suffered the
destruction of its transportation and health care infrastructure. No
ambulances would arrive with lights and sirens to whisk away the
suffering. Doctors, nurses, blood plasma, pain killers, antibiotics,
bandages - all would be destroyed along with the hospitals and highways.
As difficult as it was to picture such a reality, the hardest thing to
imagine was that in a nuclear war there would be no "outside" from where
help will come. When every major city suffers the same fate as yours, no
one "out there" can help you. "Out there" is all gone. Instantly, in
city after city, life becomes a contaminated, pre-industrial struggle for
survival.
Fortunately for the human race, PSR's scenarios have thus far remained a
symbolic, educational exercise.
Listening to and watching the news coming out of Louisiana and the Gulf
Coast towns of Mississippi, one can sense devastation on a scale rarely
experienced in this country. New Orleans' location below sea level and
the deluge following the rupture of its levees makes Katrina's blow even
worse than when Hurricane Andrew flattened Miami.
Now we hold our collective breath to see if hospital patients can be
rescued before emergency generators are swamped. Mile after mile of city
streets are inundated. The public water supply is getting contaminated.
Desperate people wait for helicopters to rescue them from rooftops
broiling in the summer sun. My nephew, lucky enough to have
transportation and smart enough to use it in time, got out. But how long
will he be able to stay with friends in Lafayette? And what will a young
man, living month to month on a waiter's pay, do for work if the Hard Rock
Café never reopens?
And yet, as frightening as the situation is for New Orleans and the
surrounding area, there is still an "outside." People are mobilizing
assistance. It may be inadequate at first and ultimately too late for
some, but people and institutions in 48 other states are doing their best
to assist their fellow citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi.
What would it be like to endure suffering on a scale somewhere between a
nuclear attack and Hurricane Katrina - with nobody "out there" to mobilize
assistance for you? That is the case today in Iraq.
These comparisons started coming to mind last month when an inversion
trapped the people of Phoenix in a seemingly relentless heat wave. For
weeks temperatures soared over 100 degrees and 2005 literally became a
killer summer. Then I thought of what Phoenix would be like without
electricity. And I thought of Baghdad.
In Baghdad, 115 and 120-degree weather is the norm all summer. But unless
you are among the elite and have a private generator, you are lucky to get
a few hours of unscheduled power a day, frequently in the middle of the
night when demand is lowest. That is the reality for most of the four
million people in Baghdad and some 20 million people in the rest of Iraq -
this summer, last summer, and the one before that.
Water and sewer plants, thoroughly bombed by the Elder Bush in 1991, were
repaired enough to limp along under a dozen years of sanctions. As a
result, water-borne diseases became a significant health problem prior to
the U.S. invasion of 2003, and have since gotten dramatically worse. What
passes for hospital care would make even the poorest American's blood run
cold - and that's when medical facilities are operating at their best, not
overrun with massive numbers of wounded from a U.S. attack or a suicide
bomber. In Fallujah and other cities besieged by American troops,
ambulances with lights and sirens don't whisk away the wounded; they are
fired on by the U.S. military. Trucks taking pain killers, bandages and
antibiotics to medical clinics are forcibly turned away. The already
substandard water supplies are destroyed by the artillery and air strikes.
National Public Radio today featured interviews with people describing
what life is like after the hurricane. A woman from Gulfport,
Mississippi, trying unsuccessfully to hold back her tears, said that even
though people were ".amazingly resilient, some are in shock.some are
running out of clean water already.my husband has journaled every day of
his life - every single day since he was a boy - and those journals are
all gone now."
After a couple more questions, the NPR reporter thanked her sincerely for
talking with him. As her voice cracked she responded, "Thank you for
giving me an opportunity to let the outside world know help is needed."
That woman in Gulfport was not worrying about next year's Congressional
elections, just as millions of her counterparts in Iraq are not worrying
about their constitution. She, and they, are worried about having safe
water to drink in the summer heat, wondering when the electricity will
come back on, grieving journals lost forever in a flood or photo albums
lost in a midnight house raid, anxious about ever seeing their home
rebuilt, hoping somehow to find a job.
Rightly so, the massive news coverage of Hurricane Katrina's devastation
is beginning to evoke Americans' inherent compassion towards people who've
been dealt an unfair blow. If the news media did a similar job describing
the hell life has become for people in Iraq, Americans' sense of outrage
and compassion would be similarly stirred. And Iraqis could count on help
instead of bombs coming from the outside world.
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Ferner is writing a book about his trips to Iraq, before and after the
U.S. invasion. He served as a Navy corpsman during Viet Nam and is a
member of Veterans For Peace. He can be reached at
mike.ferner@sbcglobal.net