19/2/2006

The Evil men do.

The great French philosopher Albert Kamu said bitterly, when horrors of WW2 shocked all civilized beings “ The reign of beasts has begun “ . Not the less great American writer Ernest Hemingway said concluding in despair “ Men die like animals” .
When we were kids parents did not talk about the horrors going on in Saddam’s chambers of death in front of us in detail , but we were all warned seriously never to say anything bad about “Ammo Saddam = Uncle Saddam” OR ELSE … I remember being told that they take people who do so and they “ torture them “ , back then I was not sure what the word –torture- implicated exactly .. “ Pain .. unbearable pain” I was told . The best my imagination could come up with was an image from a pirate film I saw, where the Captain tied a mutineer sailor to a pole and bared his back and whipped him , I remember asking what is the Captain doing? -I was about six- , he is torturing him I was told ,so torture became a synonym to whipping for me back then . I grew older and friends and even relatives told me more about torture , speciously when one of my cousins got into trouble with the ( Amin = the security forces), he was locked up for 2 months after that he withdrew to a self-imposed solitary confinement for the rest of his life, he never went anywhere, no one visited him, he just used to stay in his room watching the life of everyone else but his own go on. I imagined what happened to him , although no one ever talked about it . Yet Yet Yet all those years of imagination do not compare with one image from Abu Ghraib and the streets of Basrah, proving that an image is better than a thousand words . Children now are seeing and talking about these images as a matter of a fact , although not fully understanding what is going on: “ why are those men stripped and why are they laying like that ?... “ what is that American so pleased about? why is that auntie dragging that man like a dog “ , these images are even being reflected in their games , ‘putting a bag on each others head is a new game lots of parents are complaining about nowadays ‘ .
Well well welcome to the new republic of fear . We all went through these images before, and there is nothing much to say any more .
Only one thing, Many of these torturers will go back home as war heroes I suppose , but our consolation “as helpless as we are as a nation”, is that Americans will have something to worry about each time a war hero comes to live in the neighborhood , each time he sits peacefully, medals shining on chest and all, in a park watching little girls and boys play or ride their bicycles , each time they will have to worry, what could be going on in that hero's head, is he seeing those obnoxious images again , nostalgically craving for the good old days in abu Ghraib??? Ernist Hemingway also said "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."

This reminds me of a story I read once about a Russian serial killer . He was caught after slaughtering 50 or more people. When they investigated his biography they found out that he was a sniper during World War2 and he was rewarded of course for hunting down ( those Nazi bastards) , but the war ended and the euphoria was over, and even war heroes had to go to work for a crust of bread , so the sniper had a bit of a hard time making ends meet , therefore he decided to do what he did best ; kill, and kill again till things got better.
A person that can rape , torture and humiliate another human being in the line of duty is not expected to go back to normal as soon as the war is over, “if he or she is normal to start with, that is ! “ .
As I started with the great French and American men I shall finish with - I don’t really know if it is a joke or not really- they say that the great Egyptian national leader Saad Zagloul said upon his death bed : There is no life with desperation and there is no desperation with life. Another great Egyptian leader Mustafa Kamil said upon his death bed in that loveable Egyptian accent ( Mafeesh faida : there is no use ) , may be evil is the natural status of man kind after all.

Doomsday
It seem that the last day on planet earth is approaching . I was personally planning that that day will surprise me when I’m in my late eighties, sitting in my front garden eating something soft (no teeth ) and then Bang !!! I’ll find my self in a queue waiting my turn to be punished by a sooty faced guy with a pitch-fork . Never planed it would be so soon .
Is there going to be a massive horrific war, that would wipe everything from the face of earth, leaving the survivors if any to start at year Zero . Not that it would make much difference to Iraqis. We are already there . A bit of rain floods us and leaves us out of civilization’s arena, when we go out hunting ,I mean to work or to school there is always a possibility that you may get munched by a dinosaur for lunch . But honestly I do not want life to end on the planet, I refuse to vanish in a puff of smoke even if it is high quality nuclear smoke . Iran is being extremely naughty , Hamas is on the lead and stone agers are about to rule over here. And as it has always been, when there is going to be a major war, there must be an Incident !. May be the Danish cartoons are that incident ?
I really don’t know ? Or may be that incident is Iraq , … and from Iraq it will all start… Genesis : The Iraqi Roulette .