The strong response from New Zealand and Australian media continues. Below is a 9-minute clip of Otterman’s chat with ABC Radio National’s Fran Kelly:
And below are links to three more radio interviews:
Hack, Triple J, ABC Radio National, 25 May 2010 [@13 min, 5 sec]
PM with Mark Colvin, ABC Radio National, 24 May 2010
The Wire with Angus Jowitt, 95bFM, 17 May 2010
Check out Ludwig Watzal’s review of Erasing Iraq on MWC News:
For almost two decades the US and its “willing executioners”, especially the United Kingdom, have persecuted war and aggression in Iraq. They turned a county that was once the most secular of Arab countries, in which nation resources were used to increase literacy, industrialization and womenemancipation, that it was a major center of Arab learning – students from all over the Arab world went to study in Baghdad, into a living hell…
This reviewed book is the first that gives the victims of occupation a voice and documents the war crimes, the crimes against humanity and other atrocities, which have been perpetrated upon the Iraqi people by the Western quest for hegemony and domination. In the presence of this disaster the book leave the reader with two justified conclusions: Immediate withdrawal and massive financial compensations. For these war crimes, the perpetrators have to be brought to the International Court of Justice.
In this TV interview with 3NEWS’ Liz Puranam, Michael talks about the Obama Administration’s expansion of war in Afghanistan and continuation of Bush era torture policies:
[Otterman] believes the use of torture will continue even though the US has a new president.
“The torture policies under Bush, some of them have been stamped out – things like water boarding are not used. But sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation – these are still authorised for military interrogators to use under Barack Obama.”
Otterman adds the Obama administration has accelerated some of Bush’s policies in the Middle East. The pre-election promise of change was an empty one.
“The left was largely co-opted by his message of change and you don’t see people protesting the expansion of the war in Afghanistan,” Otterman says.
“You don’t see people protesting the use of drones and things like that. Whereas if Bush had pursued these policies, there would be a lot more flak.”
Otterman’s book tour through NZ has garnered strong coverage in the media and local blogs. Check out:
“Michael Otterman on Erasing Iraq,” by Christine Linnell, Lumiere Reader:
The basic question of “What do Iraqis think?” is what moved Otterman to write the book in the first place. “Some people supported the invasion and some people were against it, but I never met an Iraqi who was for this type of prolonged occupation,” he said. “At the very most, people thought Saddam would be overthrown and then Iraqis would be allowed to chart their own path.”
“The Casualty Count of War,” by Andrew Stone, NZ Herald:
“We have a responsibility in the US, as a country which prosecuted this war, to know what the costs are. We need to know at a very concrete level if our methods were successful.
“If our bombing campaigns and the people we supported on the ground yielded a death count of 600,000 or so, that should give us pause and we should reconsider the methods we used and the reasons we went to war at all.
“Without knowing the human cost – not just the body count but the other costs too – we’re almost blind, we don’t see what the effects of this war really were.”
“Michael Otterman: The ‘unforseen, unthinking consequence’ of Erasing Iraq,” by bronnypop, Christchurch City Libraries Blog:
The session was riveting, and had a deeply appreciative and attentive audience (apart from the dear old ladies sitting next to me, who on discovering which session they had wandered into, said rather loudly, “Oh, dear! That doesn’t sound very nice!”). Nice it wasn’t, but compelling it certainly was, with Sean Plunket making some (rather brave, I thought) comparisons between what is going on in Iraq today, and the Holocaust. As it turns out, however, Otterman’s own father and grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and he is more than happy to discuss the similarities and differences.
“Israel and Iraq questions provide double whammy,” by Janet McAllister, NZ Herald:
Otterman, interviewed by Sean Plunket (who just about kept his own ego in check), started with stats: Nearly five million Iraqis have abandoned their homes since 2003 – the largest movement of people in the Middle East since 1948 (when Israel became a state).
He visited Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan to ask: “What do Iraqis think?” He found that, to many minds, the war had been continuous since 1991, in the form of “genocidal sanctions”. Iraqi views of Saddam were mixed but views on the American occupation since 2003 ranged from bad to worse.
Otterman said ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq had undergone “sociocide” – “the killing of [their] way of life” – since 2003. He called it “evil”.
“Forgotten Victims in a Post 9/11 World,” Books In the City, Auckland City Libraries:
Both [Otterman and Loewenstein] pointed out the failure of the mainstream press to expose the full (and continuing) extent to which torture is being used by the U.S military, and the misleading nature of “Orwellian euphemisms” used such as “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and the ultimately sourceless context of any content that begins with “Administration officials say…”. These misleading tones were entrenched in compromised media outlets such as Fox News which operated as commercial businesses.
The lack of coverage was also down to the covert nature of the U.S Government’s military legislation, authorising torture techniques like sense deprivation and sleep deprivation in places outside of the U.S such as Guantanamo Bay, some methods of which were still authorised under the Obama regime; not to mention the increasingly common phenomenon of “embedded jourrnalists” whose reporting would inevitably be heavily partisan.
An op-ed in The Khaleej Times– the most widely read English newspaper in the Gulf– has featured Erasing Iraq. It’s author, Neil Berry, writes:
In Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage, three Australian humanitarians, Michael Otterman, a freelance journalist, Richard Hil, a specialist in peace and conflict studies, and Paul Wilson, a professor of criminology, detail the suffering visited on Iraqi people as a result of the 2003 war and of the protracted US-British sanctions that preceded it.
Drawing on the testimony of Iraqi bloggers, they convey a heart-rending sense of a country first on the brink of war, then under assault and finally in ruins. Exposing the hollowness of claims that Iraqis are now free from the violence and insecurity engendered by the US-British invasion, the book makes the case for charging Blair and former US President George W. Bush with war crimes seem overwhelming.
The authors of Erasing Iraq pay tribute to the resilience of Iraqi people but their book raises the question whether there will ever again be stability in a society where on authoritative estimates there have been more than a million civilian deaths.
In an emotional foreword to their book, the journalist Dahl Jamaal points out that an occupation that has cost over $800 billion has led not just to loss of life on a barely imaginable scale but to 2.2 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2.7 million refugees.
Meanwhile, he reports, over $13 billion has been misplaced by the Iraqi government at a time when $400 billion is required to repair the wrecked infrastructure of a country in which unemployment vacillates between 25 and 70 per cent. Jamail adds that in Baghdad—a city where car bombings remain commonplace and disease is rife—normal life does not exist.
Otterman, Hill and Wilson write with passionate outrage about the ‘Sociocide of Iraq’ – the total onslaught on the lives of its people, culture and very identity that the country has endured thanks to the actions of its Western occupiers. For the devastation inflicted on Iraq has not been confined to human slaughter. It encompasses in addition the wholesale destruction of Iraq’s cultural property, its museums, archaeological sites and ancient libraries. The authors quote Dr Sad Sander, Director General of the National Library and Archives of Iraq, as saying that what has been lost formed Iraq’s historical memory and cannot be compensated. It is also the case that the losses in question are losses for all mankind and that the self-styled beacons of civilisation, the United States and Britain, bear the blame for them. Erasing Iraq mocks Tony Blair’s frantic insistence that he has nothing to apologise for over the Iraq war.
For the latest Erasing Iraq tour dates, click here.
In this in-depth interview with the New Left Project, Michael discusses his views on challenges still facing Iraqi refugees, the declining violence in Iraq, and the concept of sociocide. He writes:
The term ‘sociocide’ was coined by Johan Galtung, but the concept was really developed by sociologist Keith Doubt in reference to war crimes in Bosnia. In Doubt’s view, sociocide is a deliberate form of collective violence directed upon lives, homes, and communities — plus cultural traditions and historical memory. In my book I argue the American project in Iraq constituted attempted sociocide. I employ the term not just due to the body counts alone, but also because of the intentional nature of the destruction.
The US-engineered sanctions were directed at the Iraqi people — engineered to make them suffer. The 2003 invasion also features elements of specific intent — especially in regards to Iraqi cultural destruction. When US troops stormed Baghdad, they were under orders not to stem looting at libraries and museums. It was not for lack of troops. US troops were stationed near the Baghdad Museum and the National Library, among other important sites, but were not directed to protect them. The only sites initially protected by US troops in Baghdad were the Oil Ministry and Ministry of the Interior. US commanders reportedly viewed the looting as a good thing. Unchecked looting was viewed as a means to help undermine the Baathist regime. There was also a sadistic belief held by commanders on the ground that the more chaos that occurred initially, the more the Iraqi people would appreciate the relative security and order later imposed by the US. This never really happened. And in the process, thousands of priceless artifacts that speak to our shared humanity — after all, the Tigris and Euphrates marked the earliest cradle of advanced civilization — were simply destroyed or stolen. This was a direct attack Iraqi culture, and humanity as a whole. Still, it was not a total sociocide. Iraqi culture still thrives amid all the challenges of the past two decades. The term attempted-sociocide is apt.
For more, click here.
A selection of photos Michael Otterman shot in 2008 of Iraqi refugees in Syria was published within Ending War, Building Peace– a new book by University of Sydney Press. In addition to the photos, the book, edited by Lynda-ann Blanchard and Leah Chan, includes chapters from Richard Hil, Donna Mulhearn, and Jake Lynch, among others.
Click here to check out Pluto’s Erasing Iraq site– links to US and AU sales are not yet active, but will be soon!
Can Journalism be Truly Objective in War? The Case of Mosul
Roundtable | HELO with WFA, Nash, Ayad, Ali Kurdistani, Susan Hayward, Theo Dolan, Mike Otterman, Thanassis Cambanis, and You, Oct-Nov 2009
Q: Can journalism ever present a truly objective picture in war, with Mosul as an example? If journalists and other seekers of truth simplify, or report only on the most urgent events, does that distort the picture of the event and the city? How can journalism get closer to the truth when it sometimes must be brief on a subject so complex?
Mike Otterman, Author of the forthcoming book, Erasing Iraq, journalist and a human rights consultant in New York, www.michaelotterman.com: Interesting questions to consider; they really strike at the heart of what’s wrong with journalism today, and perhaps how to fix it. In my view, journalism cannot be purely objective in any area—education, healthcare, crime, education–so why should war be any different? Read the rest of this entry »