American news outlets provided extensive -- and mostly laudatory --
coverage of Marla Ruzicka after she died in Baghdad on April 16. The
humanitarian aid worker’s undaunted spirit and boundless dedication had
endeared her to a wide array of people as she strived to gain
acknowledgment and compensation for civilians harmed by the war in Iraq.
Ruzicka was determined to help Iraqi victims and loved ones. “Their
tragedies,” she said, “are our responsibilities.” Her funeral, at a church
in her hometown of Lakeport, Calif., was a moving occasion as friends and
co-workers paid tribute to a woman whose moral energies led her to take
great risks and accomplish so much in a life of 28 years.
By all accounts, she was a wonderful and inspiring person. Yet after
I left the funeral, some key themes of the media eulogies and other
testimonials kept bothering me. We were being encouraged to celebrate
Marla Ruzicka’s life, her work and her message. But -- in the context of a
continuing war -- what was her message?
There may be no more succinct summary than the words that Ruzicka
wrote just days before she died, in an article published posthumously with
a Baghdad dateline in USA Today: “In my dealings with U.S. military
officials here, they have shown regret and remorse for the deaths and
injuries of civilians. Systematically recording and publicly releasing
civilian casualty numbers would assist in helping the victims who survive
to piece their lives back together.”
During the last two years of her life, Ruzicka found an accommodation
with the American military. In sharp contrast to previous antiwar
activism, she didn’t oppose the U.S. war in Iraq. “I decided not to take a
position on the war but to try to do the right humanitarian thing,” she
told the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2003. Increasingly, she found
common ground with the Pentagon.
Humanitarian principles and justice certainly demand “compensation”
for the wounded and for families of the dead. Such measures are morally
right -- but woefully insufficient. We should never forget that it is
impossible to truly compensate for a life that has been taken. Solutions
require a halt to the wounding and killing, not just fulfillment of
financial obligations after each tragedy.
In the United States, the mainstream news coverage of Marla Ruzicka
would not have been so favorable if she had been a vocal opponent of the
U.S. military occupation during the past two years. It was not only
Ruzicka’s warmth and charm that endeared her to American generals in
Baghdad and policymakers in Washington. It was also the reality that her
work came to be understood as pragmatically helpful to the war effort.
Five days after Ruzicka died, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy
Rubin wrote: “Civilian casualties are an inconvenient stain on the story
line of Iraq liberation.” The column went on: “Ruzicka understood that
helping civilian victims is not just the right thing to do, but also is
militarily essential.” When Iraqi civilians die from Pentagon firepower,
the deaths stir emotions “that will make young men think about attacking
U.S. soldiers.”
After Ruzicka’s funeral, the Los Angeles Times noted that “her
efforts, carried in Congress by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), resulted in an
unprecedented $30 million in aid to victims.” But Congress has just put
about $80 billion more into the war pipeline, and there’s a lot more of
such supplemental funding on the horizon. Today, the formula in place
provides for millions of dollars to “compensate” for deaths and wounds
inflicted on Iraqi people -- and billions of dollars to keep killing and
wounding them.
This spring, before and after her death, Ruzicka’s work was
instrumental in exposing the fact that -- contrary to Washington’s
longtime claims -- the U.S. military has been quietly documenting many of
the Iraqi civilian deaths caused by the Pentagon’s forces. Is the
emergence of this information a step in the right direction? Yes. But at
the same time, media spin promotes the illusion that the U.S. war effort
in Iraq is becoming evermore compassionate and life-affirming. Such story
lines are good public relations for a massive U.S. military operation that
continues to injure and kill more Iraqi people.
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Norman Solomon’s latest book, “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death,” will be published in early summer. His columns
and other writings can be found at:
www.normansolomon.com
