I watched Crossfire today, and the Republican guest blamed liberal media for helping the insurgents by reporting the truth in Iraq.

December 21, 2004 @ 9:03 pm | Comment

Hey, America. Do you remember Vietnam and Iwajina, how about Saipan.

If something is not seeming familiar here, then American schools really are letting the nation down when it come to teaching history. Maybe there should watch Black Hawk Down, then again maybe they should read the book instead.

This is the way wars go when your camped in the middle of a hostile population.

America has faed this kind of situation in just about every war that it has fought since the end of the liberation of France and still it seems surprissed. Well boys, you’re not liberating Paris from the Nazi anymore, your ocupying it .

No matter how good the intentions of the people back home are and how heroic they think that their soldiers are being, American soldiers are seen as an army of occupation wherever they go, even if they believe that they are liberators.

The people of Iraq want to be free, but they don’t want American backed politicians and they don’t want American ideologies replacing their own.

The harder Ameirca pushes the harder people will resist, and each time America ‘clamps down’ it will be seen as a sign of US malintent.

The US can’t win a war like this, it can’t win a

December 22, 2004 @ 10:22 pm | Comment

Richard

This isn’t murder, its legitimate resistance. Killing an enemy soldier during a time of war is still legal.

Yes it is wrong and yes it shouldn’t have happened, but like it or not, America is occupying a foreign country.

The same country that cheared on partisans and counter revolutionaries in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and lets not forget the IRA, is now facing partisans its self. One boot, one other foot.

If these were Kosovan morters landing in a Serbian camp, or even shots from a pro democracy forces in an African dictatorship you would be cheering it as a blow against tyrany.

December 22, 2004 @ 10:29 pm | Comment

ABC, you should be ashamed of you.
Stop.

December 23, 2004 @ 8:47 am | Comment

These aren’t pro-democracy forces, these are pro-Saddam and pro-terrorism forces against the perspective of a democratic future for Iraq. Can you see the difference? Maybe not.

December 23, 2004 @ 8:57 am | Comment

In this case, ACB, I must strongly disagree. Strongly. The US, for all its faults and screw-ups, are attempting a noble goal. I think they did it all wrong, but their cause was a good one, if poorly conceived and executed. They do not deserve to be murdered, and this was an act of murder, nothing less. We have begged the insurgents to lay down their arms and participate in elections. They have responded with some of the most barbaric butchery of innocents we’ve seen in many years. It is inexcusable, and they are acting to halt freedom and ensure the return of Saddam-era tyranny.

Tragically, I think they may well win thanks to Rumsfeld’s incompetence. And if they don’t, Iraq may well become a theocracy, which won’t be much better. But the slaughter of soldiers who are trying to ensure peace as best they can is unforgivable. To hell with them all — the insurgents who commit acts like this are monsters.

December 23, 2004 @ 9:09 am | Comment

«And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who – for the first time ever in their region – are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, “These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age.” They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It’s time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for».

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/23/opinion/23friedman.html?ex=1104797890&ei=1&en=6ab75b6198ad364f

Wake up, guys.

December 23, 2004 @ 9:15 am | Comment

JJ, I agree with the Tom Friedman article you cite. Our goal for Iraq is good, even though we would never have done it if there was no oil there. My concern is that after Abu Ghraib and Fallujah we can never win the hearts and minds necessary for people to trust in the elections and accept years of inevitable occupation. So I am made miserable because we are now caught in a classic quagmire, where there’s no way out without a lot of pain. And it wasn’t necessary, and I can never forgive Bushco for getting us into this mess.

December 23, 2004 @ 9:48 am | Comment

“even though we would never have done it if there was no oil there”

… if there was no september 11 here

“after Abu Ghraib and Fallujah we can never win the hearts and minds necessary for people to trust in the elections”

Iraqi people associate (rightly) Abu Ghraib to Saddam, not to US. It was an awful mistake but not a great blow for iraqi hearts and minds in my opinion.
Fallujah was a legitimate fight against a criminal stronghold. Iraqi people know it very well.

“we are now caught in a classic quagmire, where there’s no way out without a lot of pain”.

Iraqi people and US have a common objective and a common enemy. So, we’re not caught in any quagmire.

“And it wasn’t necessary”

Sorry, democracy in ME is necessary.

December 23, 2004 @ 10:11 am | Comment

What on earth did the invasion of Iraq have to do with September 11?? I really don’t have patience for such stupid statements — go to Little Green Footballs if you want to talk like that.

And if democracy is necessary for you, do you believe we should also invade China, and everyplace else where there’s not a democracy? Who ever said it’s the US’s role to bring democracy to everybody? I believe in democracy, but do we bleed America to death to bring democracy to a country that is in no way ready for it?

December 23, 2004 @ 10:30 am | Comment

As Kos says today:

“Bush sends the troops into battle, claiming he had no choice. But Saddam had caved on every Bush demand (inspectors were allowed back in, his long-range missiles were being destroyed).

“No WMDs are found. No ties with Al Qaida are found. No military capable of threatening Iraq’s neighbors is found. Saddam’s army collapses quickly and the country’s defenders retreat into “insurgency” mode.

“Bush declares mission accomplished. Bush taunts the insurgency. The insurgency kills our men and women. The commanders on the ground scream for more troops. They scream for armor. They scream for protected mess halls. Those screams fall on deaf ears.

“More soldiers are killed. 1,320 Americans, 74 Britons, seven Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 19 Italians, one Latvian, 16 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and nine Ukrainians. The wounded number in the five figures.

“Never mind the innocent Iraqis who have been “liberated” to death. And while we scream about Saddam’s torture chambers, we create new ones of our own.

“So thousands die, for a war built on false justifications, managed poorly, with underequipped, undermanned, and under-armored forces. And to add insult to injury, we’ve had to pay for this mess, to the tune of $200 billion.

“So who sent our troops into Iraq on false pretenses? Who sent them in unarmored? Who refused to provide enough troops to stabilize the country effectively? Who taunted the Iraqi opposition with “bring ’em on”? Who approved the American-branded torture chambers? Who has rewarded the secretary of defense who has negligently ignored the armor shortage in Iraq?

“And who keeps them there as they continue to die?”

Bush, that’s who.

December 23, 2004 @ 10:58 am | Comment

Wasn’t Japan’s pre WWII intention of creating a pan east asian propsper zone noble? Japan, after all, did help “free” people in Indonesia and elsewhere from their colonial masters. What about CCP’s notion of freedom that it repeatedly touted prior to taking over China? It is the action and its conseqeuences that form the basis of judgement, not intention, which is difficult if not impossible to gauge. Otherwise, every criminal can argue that his or her intention was good and get off
the hook.

Speaking about murder, peking duck
needs to clearly define what constitutes a murder. If killing soldiers in time of war, especially killing foreign soldiers conducting military operation against and without the consent of local people, be considered murder, then what about the Czech’s assasination of Nazi officials? And what about the killing and burning of PLA soldiers by Beijing citizens around June 4th, 1989? Do you term those killings as “murder” as well? Self-righteousness and american exceptionism are the key factors that contributed to the Bush’s reelection and the mess that is seen in today’s Iraq.

Peking duck, you deserve credit for initiating discussions in the website. There is nothing wrong with sticking to “american-right, enemy-bad” faiths, and no one can be objective at every issue. But there is a cost associated with it. Wishful thinking at home and brutal reality at the fronts will eventually confront each other, like they did during the Vietnam war.

December 24, 2004 @ 9:26 am | Comment

FYI, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t take on the “America right, enemy wrong” attitude — I have condemned this war constantly, and believe we fucked up at every turn. But to say it’s acceptable for suicide bombers to murder our troops as they eat lunch — I can’t accept that. Those troops are there for what was a noble purpose gone bad by mismanagement and lack of foresight. They really were greeted with flowers on their first days in Iraq, and then we screwed up terribly, unforgivably. But these soldiers don’t deserve to be maimed and murdered, and although I hate this war and its leaders, I must say “Fuck you” to anyone who rejoices in the deaths of our young men, no matter how wrong we are.

December 24, 2004 @ 10:07 am | Comment

Now that the die has been cast, Saddam’s regime deposed and the coalition forces are occupying the country of Iraq, how should we regard those who are still attacking the occupiers who are targeting anyone they consider to be assisting the United States? This seems to me to be what is at the heart of the matter – to be what is at the heart of this debate.

What I am about to argue I suspect we upset and anger many people, but it is a view which many people who regard themselves as humanitarians currently hold, particularly outside of the United States. What I am about to argue is the position held not only by the Noam Chomskys and John Pilgers of this world, but also of so many other observers – “ordinary” people who come from a wide diversity of professions and backgrounds, and whose views can be found printed in large numbers in the letters to the editor section of many of the world’s mainstream newspapers, like The Guardian of London, or The Sydney Morning Herald, and so on. It is the view of Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) just as it is the view of the majority of people who reside in the Middle East.

What all of these people just mentioned above maintain, and it is what I also maintain, is that the present Iraqi “resistance” is incredibly important and that the world now depends on it to win. If the US military machine and the Bush administration can suffer something like a defeat in Iraq, then they can be stopped – they can be stopped from invading other countries, other possible targets, like Iran or Syria for example.

What we have in Iraq right now is, I suppose, the equivalent of a kind of Vichy Government being set up. And historically, resistance to this type of situation has always been atrocious, has always been bloody. It has always involved terrorism.

You can imagine, as the Australian journalist John Pilger says, “if Australia or American had been occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War, the kind of resistance there would have been, the kind of terror tactics that would have been employed.”

I think the situation in Iraq is so dire that unless the United States is defeated there that we’re likely to see an attack on Iran, and possibly even on North Korea, and so I think what happens in Iraq now is incredibly important. It is important for the United States to be defeated in Iraq militarily – and this, I know, is the outcome that most of the world is hoping for.

Let us consider who these “insurgents” really are. Are we talking about the remnants of the Baathist regime, or are we talking about foreign mujahadeen? Are we talking about anyone that’s prepared to pick up a gun or to set off a bomb?

We should not, if we wish to remain logical and fair, employ a different standard of looking at what a resistance is in Iraq to anywhere else, as FYI has quite rightly already pointed out.

The resistance to the US occupation, which is an illegal one, comprises of at least twelve groups. The US corporate media originally tried to tell the world that these “insurgents” were all Saddam remnants for a long time, and yet now that Saddam has been captured, the resistance has actually become intensified.

The truth is this: there are at least twelve groups, they are all very different, there are groups within the Shia even, but what they are all united about, quite clearly, is getting rid of a foreign invader and occupier from their country.

And as I say, historically, be it in Algeria or in Vietnam, or France during the Second World War, it is going to be atrocious and bloody.

Now, are these resistance fighters all Baathists, as j.j., another contributor to this website, has already tried to convince us of?

Well, there’s a great irony here because what the United States is doing right now is retraining, or rather rehiring, 10,000 of Saddam Hussein’s most vicious security people. The CIA are training these people to actually put the finger on who the resistance are, so what you have going on in Iraq now is a kind of re-Nazification, the same sort of thing that went on in Germany after the Second World War. Noam Chomsky for one, has commented quite of a lot on this of late, and many others too, all of whom support this assertion with the weight of strong empirical evidence.

Many people might question the legitimacy of these resistance fighters to target young Iraqi men queuing up to join the Iraqi police. But once again, historically, all resistance movements have said if you’re going to collaborate, then you are a target.

Now of course, the killing of innocent people can’t be condoned under any circumstances, but in all resistances, it happens. And these young Iraqi men, who are out to join this Gestapo-like police force, are not really all that innocent are they? – in fact, they are among some of the most vicious people one could hope not to ever come across.

As John Pilger says, “The United States has singled out all of Saddam Hussein’s top security and intelligence people. He ran one of the most effective security, yes, Gestapo’s in the Middle East. They’ve taken them and these people are now training 10,000, paid for by the CIA, to effectively do for the Americans what they did for Saddam Hussein.”

Now, am I saying that those Iraqi men, who line up outside of police stations looking to be recruited to get a job in what is clearly a dire economic climate, are legitimate targets? The answer is no, I’m not saying they are legitimate targets. But, to a resistance, they are legitimate targets, yes.

But the resistance is nevertheless a resistance which I think we all depend upon. If the rest of us watching this, those of us who worry about what a rampant United States is going to do next – and we should all be worried about that (Americans especially) – then we need to ask ourselves, and millions of people all over the world have asked themselves – how can that be stopped?

Well, one place where it is going to be stopped, or at least entrapped, or something will deter it, is, unfortunately, and I repeat unfortunately, in Iraq, because although Americans will be killed, most of the people killed are going to be Iraqis, and that is also what happened in Algeria and in Vietnam – especially in Vietnam.

O.K. I can already hear the protests of many! How can I possibly say, effectively, that the rest of the world now must depend upon a resistance which is prepared to send a truck bomb into the United Nations, which is prepared to bomb civilians who are celebrating on their holiest day in holy cities like Karbala, who is prepared to send suicide bombers to kill US soldiers while they’re sitting in a tent eating their lunch? How can I possibly take this line?

Well, look, let me make one thing very clear here. I most certainly do not want to see American or British solders killed in Iraq. What happened to those soldiers in Mosul for example, while they were sitting in their tent eating their lunch, represents not only a terrible tragedy for those individuals, in that their lives have been sadly cut short, but of course it is also a terrible tragedy for their families and friends, and it is a terrible loss and tragedy for America; for the world even. But it is equally tragic when Iraqi civilians are blown to pieces by falling bombs while they are sitting in their homes, eating their meals. A few months ago, researchers writing for The Lancet (the world’s most prestigious medical journal) estimated that at least “100,000 Iraqi civilians” have died as a result of either US bombing or of having been caught up in the crossfire.

The litany above is truly awful and horrifying, yes. But you cannot fail to miss the source of all this violence. And the source of all this is the invasion and occupation itself, an unprovoked and illegal invasion and occupation, and a bloody one, by the US and Britain which has caused the deaths of, in the latest conservative estimate, of 100,000 Iraqi civilians – which is right now causing the deaths every month of 1,000 children from cluster bombs, which is causing the most pervasive contamination from a variety of toxic weapons such as depleted uranium – which will go on destroying people’s lives for generations to come.

This is the source – this is the main violence in Iraq. Surely nobody can seriously try to argue against that.

I mean, sure, there is all of this horrific violence that is occurring against anyone who is perceived to be in any way supporting the US occupation, but all of this violence is a reaction to the occupation. We need to look more at the source of all of this violence, and that, quite clearly, is the US invasion and occupation itself.

I’m not saying that two wrongs make a right. I’m not suggesting that anybody ought to rise to the call of a revengeful God. And I know what you might be thinking – that there are other forms of resistance. There is peaceful resistance, to start with. Mahatma Ghandi did not resort to bombing?

But tell me – how do you mount a peaceful resistance to an invading force, which Human Rights Watch a few months ago described as out of control, as rapacious, which has bought a kind of murderous street fighting, which killed, in their ‘Shock and Awe’, up to 55,000 people? – and that occurred before the real occupation even begun!

Robert Fisk, the independent correspondent, claims that something like between 500 to 1,000 Iraqis are killed indirectly as a result of the American presence every week in that country.

Now, how can anybody say that they should all just sit down and say to the Americans: “Sorry! But you must go.”

At any rate, there are also a lot of people actually opposing the US occupation peacefully, but this is never reported. It is deliberately censored. If you follow the reports of many of the human rights observers in Baghdad, you will read that there is an enormous amount of peaceful resistance going on, but on the other side of the resistance – and it’s one resistance – there is also fire being fought with fire.

I’m not saying that I approve of this method of fighting fire with fire. In fact, I can’t approve of, under any circumstances, the killing of innocent people.

But you have to understand why it happens.

American and British troops who are in the occupying forces, are for the resistance, legitimate targets (regardless of whether they are eating their lunch or not) because the American and British troops are illegally occupying their country. Any foreign occupier of a country, military occupier, be they Germans in France, Americans in Vietnam, the French in Algeria, wherever, the Americans in Latin America, I would have thought, from the point of view of the local people – be they Americans in America – if America had been invaded and occupied by the Japanese, then the occupying forces, from the point of view of the people of that country, are legitimate targets.

Richard – I’m sorry, but I just cannot accept your view that the United States has invaded and is occupying Iraq “for noble purposes”. Very few Iraqis will see it this way, and I can assure you, that most people throughout the rest of the world do not see it this way either. The attack on Iraq had been long planned. There just isn’t an excuse for it. Since George H.W. Bush didn’t unseat Saddam in 1991, there’s been a longing among the extreme right in the United States to finish the job. The war on terrorism (fuelled by September 11) gave them that opportunity. The logic of this of course, is convoluted and fraudulent.

The United States (with help from Britain and Australia) invaded Iraq so that it could further secure for the developed world the flow of oil from that country, and they wish to occupy it for quite some time so they can establish a system of government that they can be confident will protect their corporate interests. They are most definitely not out to introduce any real democracy to the people of Iraq. If they were, then they wouldn’t be trying to replace Saddam Hussein with somebody similar. The current regime in Washington also wants to make certain that all of the lucrative reconstruction deals that they have awarded mostly to US companies, are actually able to reach fruition. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is all about plunder. Nothing else. I see nothing “noble” in this Richard.

And Richard, even if the United States really did invade Iraq with such “noble” intentions as to introduce to them glorious “democracy”, then so what? They nevertheless have no right to do so – legally, or morally. This idea that you can justify an invasion of another country as part of a civilizing mission to introduce to them “democracy” is an outrageous one, and one which most of the world is quite rightly horrified by and concerned about. I have already mentioned elsewhere on this website just how stupid and unrealistic is the idea of being able to implant a Western-style parliamentary democracy by force to a developing country which has no history of such democratic traditions, and which for centuries, has been governed by a series of tribal clans based around religious and ethnic identities. The sheer arrogance of the Bush administration is both frightening and dangerous, as is their level of ignorance.

Finally, I need to comment in support of something else that FYI has quite rightly noted: that “self-righteousness and American exceptionism are the key factors that contributed to Bush’s re-election and to the mess that is seen in today’s Iraq.”

We all know that corporate journalism in the United States preaches “objectivity” and scorns those who take the side of the dispossessed and disenfranchised. But the mainstream media in Britain, which is noticeably less censored than the media is in the United States, makes a few allowances. As I said early on in this piece, the argument that I have expressed here is common to the pages of The Guardian and The Independent in Britain, and to the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, and in the mainstream newspapers of Canada and New Zealand and no doubt many other countries too. But I doubt whether any of America’s mainstream newspapers would print, on their front pages, articles that would dare to suggest that the Iraqi “insurgents” ought to be viewed instead as “freedom fighters.”

Like something out of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, journalistic “adjudicators” working for such organizations as the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the US tend to censor such viewpoints. No wonder then, that so many Americans have had their emotions and viewpoints so heavily manipulated on such issues as the Iraqi War and occupation. No wonder then, that so many Americans are duped into believing that they are in Iraq with “noble” intentions. The images that America’s corporate media displayed to the world of smiling Iraqis cheering them on with flowers was a totally unconvincing piece of propaganda – a small minority only, who turned out to welcome on the arrival of US tanks, blown up and sensationalised to help legitimate the illegitimate.

When US soldiers are killed by suicide bombers, the folks back home are encouraged to empathise and to sympathise, but when Iraqi civilians are killed in their homes while eating their dinners by falling US bombs, well, such tragedies and atrocities are barely even mentioned. People certainly are not encouraged to empathise with such victims. In fact, when Iraqi civilians die at the hands of the US military, they are often dismissed as “collateral damage.” The pilots who drop these weapons that kill and maim innocent civilians while they’re sitting in their homes are never labelled as “terrorists”. Nor are the politicians in Washington who are responsible for orchestrating such war crimes.

Enough of the dangerous ignorance. Enough of the inexcusable evangelical arrogance. And enough of the double standards.

I have a number of good American friends, and I am very pleased to be able to say that not all of them are duped into thinking that their government has sent them into a war and foreign occupation with “honorable” intentions.

Best Regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

December 26, 2004 @ 12:32 am | Comment

Now that the die has been cast, Saddam’s regime deposed and the coalition forces are occupying the country of Iraq, how should we regard those who are still attacking the occupiers who are targeting anyone they consider to be assisting the United States? This seems to me to be what is at the heart of the matter – to be what is at the heart of this debate.

What I am about to argue I suspect will upset and anger many people, but it is a view which many people who regard themselves as humanitarians currently hold, particularly outside of the United States. What I am about to argue is the position held not only by the Noam Chomskys and John Pilgers of this world, but also of so many other observers – “ordinary” people who come from a wide diversity of professions and backgrounds, and whose views can be found printed in large numbers in the letters to the editor section of many of the world’s mainstream newspapers, like The Guardian of London, or The Sydney Morning Herald, and so on. It is the view of Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) just as it is the view of the majority of people who reside in the Middle East.

What all of these people just mentioned above maintain, and it is what I also maintain, is that the present Iraqi “resistance” is incredibly important and that the world now depends on it to win. If the US military machine and the Bush administration can suffer something like a defeat in Iraq, then they can be stopped – they can be stopped from invading other countries, other possible targets, like Iran or Syria for example.

What we have in Iraq right now is, I suppose, the equivalent of a kind of Vichy Government being set up. And historically, resistance to this type of situation has always been atrocious, has always been bloody. It has always involved terrorism.

You can imagine if Australia or American had been occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War, the kind of resistance there would have been, the kind of terror tactics that would have been employed. We’ve seen that all over the world. Now, I think the situation in Iraq is so dire that unless the United States is defeated there that we’re likely to see an attack on Iran, and possibly even on North Korea, and so I think what happens in Iraq now is incredibly important. It is important for the United States to be defeated in Iraq militarily – and this, I know, is the outcome that most of the world is hoping for.

Let us consider who these “insurgents” really are. Are we talking about the remnants of the Baathist regime, or are we talking about foreign mujahadeen? Are we talking about anyone that’s prepared to pick up a gun or to set off a bomb?

We should not, if we wish to remain logical and fair, employ a different standard of looking at what a resistance is in Iraq to anywhere else, as both ACB and FYI have quite rightly already pointed out.

The resistance to the US occupation, which is an illegal occupation, comprises of at least twelve groups. The US corporate media originally tried to tell the world that these “insurgents” were all Saddam remnants for a long time, and yet now that Saddam has been captured, the resistance has actually become intensified.

The truth is this: there are twelve groups, they are all very different, there are groups within the Shia, but what they’re all united about, quite clearly, is getting rid of a foreign invader and occupier from their country.

And as I say, historically, be it in Algeria or in Vietnam, or France during the Second World War, it is going to be atrocious and bloody.

Now, are these resistance fighters all Baathists, as j.j., another contributor to this website, has already tried to convince us of?

Well, there’s a great irony here because what the United States is doing right now is retraining, or rather rehiring, 10,000 of Saddam Hussein’s most vicious security people. The CIA are training these people to actually put the finger on who the resistance are, so what you have going on in Iraq now is a kind of re-Nazification, the same sort of thing that went on in Germany after the Second World War. Noam Chomsky for one, has commented quite of a lot on this of late, and many others too, all of whom support this assertion with the weight of strong empirical evidence.

Many people might question the legitimacy of these resistance fighters to target young Iraqi men queuing up to join the Iraqi police. But once again, historically, all resistance movements have said if you’re going to collaborate, then you are a target.

Now of course, the killing of innocent people can’t be condoned under any circumstances, but in all resistances, it happens. And these young Iraqi men, who are out to join this Gestapo-like police force, are not really all that innocent are they? – in fact, they are among some of the most vicious people one could hope never to encounter.

The United States has singled out all of Saddam Hussein’s top security and intelligence people. He ran one of the most effective security, yes, Gestapo’s in the Middle East. They’ve taken them and these people are now training 10,000, paid for by the CIA, to effectively do for the Americans what they did for Saddam Hussein.

Now, am I saying that those Iraqi men, who line up outside of police stations looking to be recruited to get a job in what is clearly a dire economic climate, are legitimate targets? The answer is no, I’m not saying they are legitimate targets. But, to a resistance, they are legitimate targets, yes.

But the resistance is nevertheless a resistance which I think we all depend upon. If the rest of us watching this war, those of us who worry about what a rampant United States is going to do next – and we should all be worried about that (Americans especially) – then we need to ask ourselves, and millions of people all over the world have asked themselves – how can that be stopped?

Well, one place where it is going to be stopped, or at least entrapped, or something will deter it, is, unfortunately, and I repeat unfortunately, in Iraq, because although Americans will be killed, most of the people killed are going to be Iraqis, and that is also what happened in Algeria and in Vietnam – especially in Vietnam.

O.K. I can already hear the protests of many! How can I possibly say, effectively, that the rest of the world now must depend upon a resistance which is prepared to send a truck bomb into the United Nations, which is prepared to bomb civilians who are celebrating on their holiest day in holy cities like Karbala, who is prepared to send suicide bombers to kill US soldiers while they’re sitting in a tent eating their lunch? How can I possibly take this line?

Well, look, let make one thing very clear here. I most certainly do not want to see American or British solders killed in Iraq. What happened to those soldiers in Mosul for example, while they were sitting in their tent eating their lunch, represents not only a terrible tragedy for those individuals, in that their lives have been sadly cut short, but of course it is also a terrible tragedy for their families and friends, and it is a terrible loss and tragedy for America; for the world even. But it is equally tragic when Iraqi civilians are blown to pieces by falling bombs while they are sitting in their homes, eating their meals. A few months ago, researchers writing for The Lancet (the world’s most prestigious medical journal) estimated that at least “100,000 Iraqi civilians” have died as a result of either US bombing or of having been caught up in the crossfire.

The litany above is truly awful and horrifying, yes. But you cannot fail to miss the source of all this violence. And the source of all this is the invasion and occupation itself, an unprovoked and illegal invasion and occupation, and a bloody one, by the US and Britain which has caused the deaths of, in the latest conservative estimate, of 100,000 Iraqi civilians – which is right now causing the deaths every month of an estimated 1,000 children from cluster bombs, which is causing the most pervasive contamination from a variety of toxic weapons such as depleted uranium – which will go on destroying people’s lives for generations to come.

This is the source – this is the main violence in Iraq. Surely nobody can seriously try to argue against that.

I mean, sure, there is all of this horrific violence that is occurring against anyone who is perceived to be in any way supporting the US occupation, but all of this violence is a reaction to the occupation. We need to look more at the source of all of this violence, and that, quite clearly, as I just said above, is the US invasion and occupation itself.

I’m not saying that two wrongs make a right. I’m not suggesting that anybody ought to rise to the call of a revengeful God. And I know what you might be thinking – that there are other forms of resistance. There is peaceful resistance, to start with. Mahatma Ghandi did not resort to bombing, right?

But tell me – how do you mount a peaceful resistance to an invading force, which Human Rights Watch a few months ago described as out of control, as rapacious, which has bought a kind of murderous street fighting, which killed, in their ‘Shock and Awe’, up to 55,000 people? – and that occurred before the real occupation even began!

Robert Fisk, the independent correspondent, claims that something like between 500 to 1,000 Iraqis are killed indirectly as a result of the American presence every week in that country.

Now, how can anybody say that they should all just sit down in the middle of the street and say to the Americans: “Sorry! But you must go.”

At any rate, there are also a lot of people actually opposing the US occupation peacefully, but this is never reported. It is deliberately censored. If you follow the reports of many of the human rights observers in Baghdad, you will read that there is an enormous amount of peaceful resistance going on, but on the other side of the resistance – and it’s one resistance – there is also fire being fought with fire.

I’m not saying that I approve of this method of fighting fire with fire. In fact, I can’t approve of, under any circumstances, the killing of innocent people.

But you have to understand why it happens.

American and British troops who are in the occupying forces, are for the resistance, legitimate targets (regardless of whether they are eating their lunch or not) because the American and British troops are illegally occupying their country. Any foreign occupier of a country, military occupier, be they Germans in France, Americans in Vietnam, the French in Algeria, wherever, the Americans in Latin America, I would have thought, from the point of view of the local people – be they Americans in America – if America had been invaded and occupied by the Japanese, then the occupying forces, from the point of view of the people of that country, are legitimate targets.

Richard – I’m sorry, but I just cannot accept your view that the United States has invaded and is occupying Iraq “for noble purposes”. Very few Iraqis will see it this way, and I can assure you, that most people throughout the rest of the world do not see it this way either. The attack on Iraq had been long planned. There just isn’t an excuse for it. Since George H.W. Bush failed to unseat Saddam in 1991, there’s been a longing among the extreme right in the United States to finish the job. The war on terrorism (fuelled by September 11) gave them that opportunity. The logic provided by Bush and Blair for this war of course, is convoluted and fraudulent.

The United States (with help from Britain and Australia) invaded Iraq so that it could further secure for the developed world the flow of oil from that country, and they wish to occupy it for quite some time so they can establish a system of government that they can be confident will protect their corporate interests. They are most definitely not out to introduce any real democracy to the people of Iraq. If they were, then they wouldn’t be trying to replace Saddam Hussein with somebody similar. The current regime in Washington also wants to make certain that all of the lucrative reconstruction deals that they have awarded mostly to US companies, are actually going to be able to reach fruition. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is all about plunder. Nothing else. I see nothing “noble” in this Richard.

And Richard, even if the United States really did invade Iraq with such “noble” intentions as to introduce to them glorious “democracy”, then so what? They nevertheless have no right to do so – legally, or morally. This idea that you can justify an invasion of another country as part of a civilizing mission to introduce to them “democracy” is an outrageous one, and one which most of the world is quite rightly horrified by and concerned about. I have already mentioned elsewhere on this website just how stupid and unrealistic is the idea of being able to implant a Western-style parliamentary democracy by force into a developing country which has no history of such democratic traditions, and which for centuries, has been governed by a series of tribal clans based around religious and ethnic identities. The sheer arrogance of the Bush administration is both frightening and dangerous, as is their level of stupidity and ignorance.

Finally, I need to comment in support of something else that FYI has quite rightly noted: that “self-righteousness and American exceptionism are the key factors that contributed to Bush’s re-election and to the mess that is seen in today’s Iraq.”

We all know that corporate journalism in the United States preaches “objectivity” and scorns those who take the side of the dispossessed and disenfranchised. But the mainstream media in Britain, which is noticeably less censored than in the United States, makes for a few allowances. As I said early on in this piece, the argument that I have expressed here is common to the pages of The Guardian and The Independent in Britain, and to the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, and in the mainstream newspapers of Canada and New Zealand and no doubt many other countries too. But I doubt whether any of America’s mainstream newspapers would print, on their front pages, articles that would dare to suggest that the Iraqi “insurgents” ought to be viewed instead as “freedom fighters.”

Like something out of George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, journalistic “adjudicators” working for such organizations as the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the US tend to censor such viewpoints. No wonder then, that so many Americans have had their emotions and viewpoints so heavily manipulated on such issues as the Iraqi War and occupation. No wonder then, that so many Americans are duped into believing that they are in Iraq with “noble” intentions. The images that America’s corporate media displayed to the world of smiling Iraqis cheering them on with flowers throughout the early days of the occupation was a totally unconvincing piece of propaganda – a small minority only, who turned out to welcome on the arrival of US tanks, blown up and sensationalised to help legitimise the illegitimate.

When US soldiers are killed by suicide bombers, the good folks back home are encouraged to empathise and to sympathise, but when Iraqi civilians are killed in their homes while eating their dinners by falling US bombs, well, such tragedies and atrocities are barely even mentioned. People certainly are not encouraged to empathise with such victims. In fact, when Iraqi civilians die at the hands of the US military, they are often dismissed as “collateral damage.” The pilots who drop these weapons that kill and maim innocent civilians while they’re sitting in their homes are never labelled as “terrorists”. Nor are the politicians in Washington who are responsible for orchestrating such war crimes.

Enough of the dangerous ignorance. Enough of the inexcusable evangelical arrogance. And enough of the double standards.

I have a number of good American friends, and I am very pleased to be able to say that not all of them are duped into thinking that their government has sent them into a war and foreign occupation with “noble” intentions.

Best regards,
Mark Anthony Jones

December 26, 2004 @ 10:37 pm | Comment