There Are No Walls to Blame in Global Holocaust

Author: Shahan Mufti

A wall outside the Dachau Nazi Extermination Camp reads the following:

"Do not look inside: By looking inside you put yourself in grave danger"

It was signed by the SS. And I realized looking at it how Adolf Hitler was able to continue his agenda of murders and killing for years. The common German didn't know, and for one moment I felt envious. Envious of their obliviousness. Envious of the walls they could place blame on 50 years after the Holocaust finished. I only wish I had those walls today, right now, for the amount of blood on the hands of my government is atrocious.

Decades from now I wonder what the age of American hegemony will be recorded as. What will the chapter on America look like? I wonder how the military aid to Israel every year will be documented. How the ruthless propped up dictatorships in Latin America that have left a continent in social ruins, will be remembered. How the nuclear attacks on Japan and generations of disfigured newborns will be justified. How the disregard for environmental accords will be deemed. How the use of depleted uranium to cause cancer in generations of Iraqis and Balkans will be written down. How the function of an elite terrorist organization like the Central Intelligence Agency will be justified. I wonder what the chapter on America will look like. And I wonder what we, the 'freedom loving people,' will say to the destroyed world as they stare at the blood dripping from our hands. Surely there will be no walls to blame.

As a citizen of this empire I am afraid that very soon I will be holding my head down in shame with the rest of 'the peace lovin' folks of the United States', once true peace does come to Earth. The peace when human life will mean more than collateral damage and some stock on Wall Street. Yes that peace. What will Americans like us say about our great nation then? The Germans blamed the walls … they could not see over them. Decades from now I will have no walls to blame. I can see.

I can see dead and disfigured Iraqi babies every day on the front page. I can see dismembered Afghani children on television. I can see dead Palestinian babies with holes through their torsos in magazines. I can read that the chemicals used to make biological weapons in Iraq came from a factory not far from Washington, D.C. I can see our government mocking the Kyoto accords. I can see our fighter planes bomb hospitals and drainage systems to carry out large-scale murder. I can see and even contribute to our military building up to a size where it could wipe out the population of the world — seven times over with our very own weapons of mass destruction.

When I receive my paycheck next week I will cringe to see the amount of taxes listed on it. I will know that, yet again, my labor earnings have gone to a worthy cause. They might as well just list them down for me:

One Palestinian young man killed with a gun you supplied, five Iraqi children because of the medicine you stopped from getting in, one Colombian family at the hands of the paramilitary holding an arm you supplied, two Afghani families wiped out because of a misdirected 'smart' bomb that you helped build, one Mexican worker in a mequiladora of a multinational you own a stock for. I would find it much more helpful than dollar figures and abbreviations.

Americans are faced with a choice at this point in history. We can keep ourselves wrapped in the cozy blanket of lies that is supplied to us, while our representatives extend their mission to murder millions across the globe in our name. Or we can face the truth and stand up in the face of this regime of corporations and sick men that has made a mess of our world. Who have created a world where murder of other humans has become not only acceptable, but also admirable. Where the use of weapons to create multiple disfigured, mutilated human generations is applauded as a 'victory' and forgotten. Where we can debate for hours how many innocent children, who were not even conceived at the time ofthe Gulf War it is okay to murder to justify the sanctions on Iraq and where our Secretary of State can actually answer that half a million children's lives is a good number. A world where we can debate how many Afghan families it would be okay to displace and ruin to justify the hunt for one man who we once created and Rambo fought for. A world where we can justify to ourselves that the richest 200 people in the world have more assets than the two billion poorest. A world where humans have been turned into such sheep that fundamental human emotions like love and hate are based on invisible lines drawn on maps by old colonial powers instead of lines drawn by one's own soul. A world where a child with hopes, aspirations and love for her family, friends and her pet is ripped to shreds of flesh one afternoon when hit with a daisy cutter bomb and called collateral damage by Rumsfeld. A world where we can watch her being called collateral damage while eating our meals around a television set and not even blink.

I want to no part of this world in a tailspin. I wish to withdraw support from the government of corporate bosses and murderers and ask the world be handed back to the collateral damage — also known as human beings.