Orfa’s Story
In today’s Guardian, a mind-wrenching story about one woman’s experience of being liberated in Afghanistan. Another one for an English fop in Washington and his Returned-from-the-Dead admirers to ignore. Both concur in spirit the words of Colin Powell when asked about the number of Iraqi people who were killed by US Americans in the 1991 Desert Storm campaign: “It’s really not a number I’m terribly interested in.� (200,000 people, incidentally). So much for the link today promoting Julian Baggini’s article attacking the (apocryphal) figure of the “postmodern professor” who claims “that which does not exist in the media does not exist in reality”. 200,000 is a figure as obscure as the 25,000 civilians killed directly or indirectly as a result of the Afghan invasion. Coincidentally, neither figure appears in the mass media. As a result, for those proud of their adherence to Objective Reality providing us with “a wide range of argument and opinion”, it seems that yes, it did happen in reality, but no they’re “not terribly interested in” what actually happened.
Interestingly, Baggini writes “Postmodernism does not just reject the idea of objective truth, it celebrates that rejection and advocates an ironic detachment from any issue which seems to take the idea of truth too seriously.” One might bear in mind such an attitude when reading those sites promoting ironic detachment from the story of the Afghan woman - if not also complete ignorance - as they cheerlead similar atrocities on another population of foreigners without access to camcorders.
Other SpikeMagazine.com posts of interest:
- Aletheia
- 17 more dead in July bombing
- Truth, delayed, again I had to laugh. Arts & Le…
- Percy’s Portraits - More Wyndham Lewis
- It needs repeating
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