Bomb After Bomb A Violent Cartography

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/zinn12152007.html


Weekend Edition
December 15 / 16, 2007



A Violent Cartography
Bomb After Bomb
By HOWARD ZINN

This essay serves as the introduction to Bomb After Bomb: a Violent Cartography, a collection of drawings illustrating the history of bombing by elin o'Hara slavick. o'Hara slavick is a professor of art at the University of North Carolina. More of her visionary work can be viewed on her website. AC / JSC

Perhaps it is fitting that elin o'Hara slavick's extraordinary evocation of bombings by the United States government be preceded by some words from a bombardier who flew bombing missions for the U.S. Air Corps in the second World War. At least one of her drawings is based on a bombing I participated in near the very end of the war--the destruction of the French seaside resort of Royan, on the Atlantic coast.

As I look at her drawings, I become painfully aware of how ignorant I was, when I dropped those bombs on France and on cities in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, of the effects of those bombings on human beings. Not because she shows us bloody corpses, amputated limbs, skin shredded by napalm. She does not do that. But her drawings, in ways that I cannot comprehend, compel me to envision such scenes.

I am stunned by the thought that we, the "civilized" nations, have bombed cities and countrysides and islands for a hundred years. Yet, here in the United States, which is responsible for most of that, the public, as was true of me, does not understand--I mean really understand--what bombs do to people. That failure of imagination, I believe, iscritical to explaining why we still have wars, why we accept bombing as a common accompaniment to our foreign policies, without horror or disgust.

We in this country, unlike people in Europe or Japan or Africa or the Middle East, or the Caribbean, have not had the experience of being bombed. That is why, when the Twin Towers in New York exploded on September 11, there was such shock and disbelief. This turned quickly, under the impact of government propaganda, into a callous approval of bombing Afghanistan, and a failure to see that the corpses of Afghans were the counterparts of those in Manhattan.

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

[seemslikeadream]

2. Baghdad, Iraq, 1990 -

[seemslikeadream]

3. I offer these maps as protests against each and every bombing.

Artist Statement
This particular selection of drawings from the ongoing series - in which 60 are complete – focuses on the Middle East for several reasons. First, I want people to understand the history, context, and level of suffering in this region as a result of our foreign policy. Second, Iraq is THE pressing issue of the day. We are engaged in a war that was never really a war but an invasion, occupation, unjustified attack – call it what you will. All I know is that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of our military actions that bring more profit to the greedy and less welfare and peace to the world. Third, as one regional example, you can see how war births other wars. War NEVER brings peace. Like in so many other regions, as you can see in the world map, the United States fights wars to maintain its global dominance, its imperialist vision, its capitalist nightmare.
Do bombing campaigns make the world safer or free from terrorism? Or do they just increase the death toll, the already high levels of fear and anger, the rage and endless grieving in this world? Can any deadly bombs distinguish between an innocent civilian and a terrorist, a child or a soldier, a wedding party or an ammunition facility?
Maps are preeminently a language of power, not protest. I offer these maps as protests against each and every bombing.



http://www.ackland.org/art/exhibitions/faculty/2007/slavick.php

[scarletwoman]

4. "..we, the "civilized" nations, have bombed cities and countrysides and islands for a hundred years"

We are the biggest terrorists on the planet.

k&r
sw

[seemslikeadream]

5. Philadelphia, the Firebombing of M.O.V.E., May 13, 1985,

Philadelphia, the Firebombing of M.O.V.E., May 13, 1985, for Ramona Africa and Mumia Abu-Jamal, "11 men, women, and children are burned alive, along with an entire city block, when the Philadelphia Police Department drop an incendiary bomb (200 lbs. of gasoline with a detonator) from a police helicopter onto the roof of M.O.V.E.'s building because the separatists refused to come out and face the police firing squad." - John Africa


http://criticalspatialpractice.blogspot.com/2007/05/elin-ohara-slavick.html

[leftchick]

6. K&R for Howard

and SLaD and all of the TRUTH TELLERS!!!!

:)

[seemslikeadream]

7. Haiti

Haiti, 1959, (for Aristide, Stan Goff, and my father), "The U.S. military mission in Haiti, to train the troops of noted dictator Francois Duvalier, used its air, sea and ground power to smash an attempt to overthrow Duvalier by a small group of Haitians aided by some Cubans and other Latin Americans." - William Blum, Rogue State

[seemslikeadream]

8. Haiti

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4810982