The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, with its 225,000 or more deaths in 11 countries, shocked the world; so, in recent weeks, has the devastation wrought by a powerful cyclone (and tidal surge) that hit the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar. It resulted in at least 78,000 deaths (with another 56,000 reported missing) and a display of recalcitrance on the part of a military junta focused on its own security while its people perish. Similarly, a devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province that hit 7.9 on the Richter scale and whose tremors were felt 1,000 miles away has swept into the news. Its casualty count has already reached 51,000 with unknown numbers of Chinese still buried in rubble or cut off in rural areas and so, as yet, untallied, and an estimated five million people homeless.
These are staggering natural disasters, hard even to take in, and yet it’s a reasonable question whether, in terms of damage, any of them measure up to the ongoing human-made (or rather Bush administration-made) disaster in Iraq. Worse yet, unlike a natural disaster, the Iraqi catastrophe seems to be without end. No one can even guess when it might be said of that country that an era of reconstruction or rebuilding is about to begin. Instead, the damage only grows week by miserable week and yet, as has often been true in the last year, Iraq continues to have trouble even cracking the top ten stories in U.S. news coverage.
River of Resistance, by Michael Schwartz and Tom Engelhardt
This piece sums up an idea that was on mind for some time. The ability to disassociate to this extent is really astonishing, even Tom Engelhardt is disassociating himself from what is happening in Iraq, blaming instead the Bush administration.
Disassociating from the past is done on even a grander scale, while the West obtained and still enjoys great wealth thanks to a history of bloody conquest it demands now that China “Free Tibet”; completely disregarding, not only the current round of colonial ventures, the bloody history of the West itself:
In 1865 Great Britain began secretly mapping Tibet. Trained Indian surveyor-spies disguised as pilgrims or traders counted their strides on their travels across Tibet and took readings at night. Nain Singh, the most famous, measured the longitude and latitude and altitude of Lhasa and traced the Yarlung Tsangpo River.
The authorities in British India renewed their interest in Tibet in the late 19th century, and a number of Indians entered the country, first as explorers and then as traders. Treaties regarding Tibet were concluded between Britain and China in 1886, 1890, and 1893, but the Tibetan government refused to recognize their legitimacy and continued to bar British envoys from its territory. During “The Great Game”, a period of rivalry between Russia and Britain, the British desired a representative in Lhasa to monitor and offset Russian influence.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the British and Russian Empires were competing for supremacy in Central Asia. To forestall the Russians, in 1904, a British expedition led by Colonel Francis Younghusband was sent to Lhasa to force a trading agreement and to prevent Tibetans from establishing a relationship with the Russians. In response, the Chinese foreign ministry asserted that China was sovereign over Tibet, the first clear statement of such a claim.
On July 19, 1903, Younghusband arrived at Gangtok, the capital city of the Indian state of Sikkim, to prepare for his mission. A letter from the under-secretary to the government of India to Younghusband on July 26, 1903 stated that “In the event of your meeting the Dalai Lama, the government of India authorizes you to give him the assurance which you suggest in your letter.” The British took a few months to prepare for the expedition which pressed into Tibetan territories in early December 1903. The entire British force numbered over 3,000 fighting men and was accompanied by 7,000 sherpas, porters and camp followers.
The Tibetans were aware of the expedition. To avoid bloodshed the Tibetan general at Yetung pledged that if the British made no attack upon the Tibetans, he would not attack the British. Colonel Younghusband replied, on December 6, 1903, that “we are not at war with Tibet and that, unless we are ourselves attacked, we shall not attack the Tibetans.
Despite the mutual agreement, the British expedition did kill large numbers of unprepared Tibetan soldiers and civilians. The biggest massacre took place on March 31, 1904, at a mountain pass halfway to Gyantse near a village called Guru. Colonel Younghusband tricked the 2,000 Tibetan soldiers guarding the pass into extinguishing the burning ropes of their basic rifles before firing at them with the Maxim machine guns and rifles. The Tibetan casualties, according to Younghusband’s account, were “500 killed and wounded.” Others have claimed that the Tibetan casualty was as high as 1,300.
According to the British, their intention was to disarm Tibetan soldiers who were being surrounded. The slaughter was triggered by the Tibetans who fired the first shot. But the accounts of those who pulled the triggers make it clear that the British had the intention of killing as many as possible. “From three sides at once a withering volley of magazine fire crashed into the crowded mass of Tibetans,” wrote Perceval Landon. “Under the appalling punishment of lead, they [the Tibetans] staggered, failed and ran…Men dropped at every yard.”
The British soldiers mowed down the Tibetans with machine guns as they fled. “I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire, though the general’s order was to make as big a bag as possible,” wrote Lieutenant Arthur Hadow, commander of the Maxim guns detachment. “I hope I shall never again have to shoot down men walking away.”
In a telegraph to his superior in India, the day after the massacre, Younghusband stated: “I trust the tremendous punishment they have received will prevent further fighting, and induce them to at last to negotiate.”
History of Tibet, Wikipedia [my emphasis]
