Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya: Worthy Victims and Unworthy Victims

 

Trafalgar Square, London, 8 October 2011, Video by Harry Fear TV

At the very moment we are here, the United States, Britain, and France are bombing a city in Libya called Sirte.  There are 100,000 people.  Day and night, residential buildings, clinics, schools have been hit with fragmentation bombs and Hellfire missiles. . . .  The media refer to Sirte as a true Gaddafi stronghold.  The Channel 4 reporter in Libya describes the attacks as “cutting off the head of the snake.”  For such heroic journalists, there are two types of humanity in war: there are worthy victims and unworthy victims.  The people of Sirte are unworthy victims, and therefore they are expendable both as people and as news.  In Iraq the people of Fallujah were also unworthy victims.  American Marines, helped by the British, killed some 5,000 people there. . . .  As Harold Pinter would say . . . none of it happened.  It didn’t happen even as it was happening.  It didn’t matter. . . .  We’ve had ten years of such crimes that didn’t happen, that didn’t matter. . . .  The war on Afghanistan was a fraud right from the beginning, just as the attack on Iraq was a fraud and the invasion of Libya is a fraud.


John Pilger is a journalist and filmmaker.  The text above is an edited partial transcript of his talk at the London anti-war protest on the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the war and occupation of Afghanistan.


 

var idcomments_acct = ‘c90a61ed51fd7b64001f1361a7a71191’;
var idcomments_post_id;
var idcomments_post_url;

| Print