The Gulf War The Pentagon ordered
16,099 body bags to be shipped to the Persian Gulf to bring home dead Americans.
In the end, 15,773 of the bags were not necessary. The Iraqi
army would have needed--what One hundred thousand body bags More No one knows
or will ever know. No one has counted the Iraqi corpses(尸体). Many of them were
buried in the sand, without ceremony; some have been taken care of by
vultures. That so few soldiers in the coalition died somehow
seemed to Americans a vindication. It was even a return of their shining self,
of Buffalo Bill, who (E. E. Cummings wrote) could "ride a water smooth-silver
stallion and break one two three four five pigeons just like that." The unspoken
text was this: the nation had recovered its immunity, its divine favour, or
anyway its gift for doing things right. The victory was as satisfying as
anything Americans have done together since landing on the moon.
Would it be seemly to have a moment of silence for the Iraqi
corpses It is not inconsequential (不合理的) to kill 100,000
people. That much life suddenly and violently extinguished must leave a ragged
hole somewhere in the universe. One looks for special effects of a metaphysical
(超自然的) kind to attend so much death—the whoosh of all those souls departing. But
many of them died ingloriously (不体面的), like road kill, full of their disgrace,
facedown with the toot scattered around them. The conquered often die
ignominiously. The victors have not given them much thought.
Still, killing 100,000 people is a serious thing to do. It is not
equivalent to shooting a rabid dog, which is, down deep, what Americans feel the
war was all about, exterminating a beast with rabies. All those 100,000 men were
not megalomaniacs (夸大狂者), torturers and murderers. They did not all commit
atrocities in Kuwait. They were ordinary people: peasants, truck drivers,
students and so on... They had the love of their families, the dignity of their
lives and work. They cared as little for politics, or less, than most people in
the world. They were, precisely, not Saddam Hussein. Which means, since Saddam
was the coalition’s one true target in all of this, that those 100,000 corpses
are, so to speak, collateral (附带的) damage. The famous smart bombs did not find
the one man they were seeking. Why does the author say many of the 100,000 people died ingloriously
A．Because they had taken other people’s property by force. B．Because they were the loser in the war. C．Because the author is an American whose country won the war in the end. D．Because the author thinks the war was all about exterminating a beast with rabies.