Rummy & Lidice

While Americans are horrified by the torture pictures and Rumsfeld's mismanagement, the U.S. army has killed over 600 humans in Fallujah. The victims' sin was to live in a city where U.S. contract mercenaries were caught and put to death.

The U.S. media is unperturbed by the mass killings in Fallujah. It hasn't mentioned, for example, the obvious parallel to Lidice, where 170 Czechs were killed to avenge the death of Reinhard Heydrich (the German counterpart to Paul Bremer). The Nazi occupiers believed that someone from Lidice was involved in Heydrich's killing. Their bloody response against the people of Lidice was held up by our media, and media everywhere, as a "crowning symbol of fascist despotism." Lidice and its collective punishment became a synonym for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The U.S. public is almost entirely unaware of its own Lidices. The media actively helps narcotize us. In this case, the drug of choice is to make prison sadism and Rumsfeld seem like the Big Story. The obvious parallels between Fallujah and Lidice are ignored, and Fallujah is covered as if it were a battle, fought heroically by our brave boys, rather than a massacre of civilians.

By getting us absorbed in punishing the prison sadists, or in firing Rumsfeld, the media helps provide the pain killer of possible reform, while the tumor of occupation continues to metastasize.

Acknowledging the atrocity of Fallujah, by contrast, would point toward ending the invasion and occupation. For the mainstream, that's verboten.