Three kings and a million dead
By Ciaron O'Reilly
It has taken Hollywood nine years to acknowledge some of the truths of the 1991 US massacre in the Persian Gulf. Not that it required rigorous research to uncover the realities layed bare in the recent film Three Kings — but it was a relief to see them in such a form.
As George Clooney and co. romp through the desert in a gold fever adventure in the days immediately following the shooting war with Iraq, the audience is asked to acknowledge certain facts.
The Gulf War was a US massacre of indiscriminate aerial bombardment, there was little mutual ground combat, US forces buried alive Iraqi troops lying wounded in their trenches, the US military had control of the media, President Bush set up Iraqi dissidents for slaughter, Saddam Hussein's regime had been a loyal client and recipient of US military hardware and training throughout the 1980s.
As with most Hollywood productions Third World people serve as a disposable backdrop to the US leads, but there is a dynamic sequence juxtaposing what it's like to be an Iraqi family bombed in Baghdad and a US family bombed in suburbia.
The scene is surreal — as the greatest proponent of aerial bombardment of the 20th century, from Dresden to Hiroshima to Korea to Indochina to Panama to Iraq to Serbia to assorted drive-by cruise missile attacks in between, has never been on the receiving end of aerial bombardment.
This may go a long way to explaining such unreflective enthusiasm for the practice in the US. Aerial bombardment of civilian populations was initially denounced as a Nazi war crime and remains so. Like so many other Nazi techniques it has served the US well in the construction of empire.
For all its promise Three Kings does not end well. During the credits we are left with updates on the surviving lead characters and how they have carved out a niche in post-Gulf War mainstream America.
One could leave the film thinking that the war against the Iraqi people ended in 1991 or began and ended with the Bush presidency (he is repeatedly denounced) or that future peace could be secured by keeping the next George Bush incarnation from the presidency in the year ahead.
Who we are not updated on, are the ordinary people of Iraq depicted throughout the film. We are not told of the approximately one million Iraqi children who have died throughout the 1990s due to the continued sanctions (that's the World Health Organisation's figure).
We are not updated on the escalating cancers, leukaemia and birth deformities experienced near the irradiated fields of Iraq, where over 14,000 11 pound shells and one million half-pound bullets of depleted uranium were fired by US forces.
Addressing the ongoing war against the Iraqi people has been left to less-resourced groups. Throughout the 1990s, voices in the wilderness have consistently broken US and British legislation enforcing the deadly sanctions on Iraq. US and British citizens, including Gulf War veterans, have broken the law by taking medical supplies to Iraq. They have faced interceptions, confiscations, arrest and prosecution.
On December 19, longtime anti-war resister Phil Berrigan, Catholic Worker Liz Wolz, Jesuit Steve Kelly, and peace activist Susan Crane, broke into an air force base in Maryland, US and with simple household hammers began to disarm an A-10 Warthog. The A-10 spewed 3,500 rounds per minute of depleted uranium on the people and ecology of Iraq; the four remain in prison awaiting trial.
On this year's anniversary of the Gulf War, Treena Lenthall and I shut down the main entrance to Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory. We blocked traffic into the mine with a banner reading "Depleted Uranium Munitions Keep Killing Iraqi Kids" and a basket of photos of Iraqi and Gulf War veterans' children suffering from leukemia, cancer and birth deformities.
We were taken into custody on warrants relating to our refusal to pay restitution for uranium mining equipment disabled in our Nagasaki Day 1998 disarmament action at nearby Jabiluka uranium mine.
We presently dwell in Darwin Jail with many indigenous people whose land has been invaded by such mining interests. At Darwin port, US Navy ships dock en route to enforcing the sanctions on Iraq. In nearby seas, Iraqi refugees are intercepted and detained by the Australian government, as they flee a war we keep on waging. The ongoing war against the Iraqi people feels very real from here.
[Ciaron O'Reilly served 13 months in prison in the US for the ANZUS Ploughshares disarmament of a B-52 bomber during the Gulf War. He is presently serving 67 days for the Jabiluka Ploughshares disarmament of uranium equipment. Contact him at Jabiluka Ploughshares, PO Box 3818, Darwin 0801.]