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Recent Stories
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
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March
25, 2003
Thoughts and
Warnings on the War
Bitter Rice
By URI AVNERY
Some
thoughts about the war:
Beware of the Shiites.
The troubles of
the occupation will start after the fighting is over. Here is a personal
story and its lessons:
On the forth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I crossed the
border at a lone spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which had
already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private car,
accompanied only by a woman photographer. We passed a dozen Shiite villages
and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted ourselves
only with great difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each one insisting
that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days, they had showered
the soldiers with rice.
A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite direction,
from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing bulletproof vests
and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.
What had happened? The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as liberators.
When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, they started
to kill them.
When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon, the Shiites were a down-trodden,
powerless community, held in contempt by all the others. After a year
of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and military power.
The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the Arab world that
has beaten the mighty Israeli army.
Sharon is the real father of the Shiite force in Lebanon. Bush may well
become the father of Shiite power in Iraq. The Shiites, 60% of the Iraqi
population, have been until now down-trodden and powerless. When they
will realize that the Americans intend to stay, they will start a deadly
guerilla. Bush does not intend to leave Iraq, as Sharon did not intend
to leave Lebanon.
Then what? America
will argue that Iran, the great Shiite neighbor, is behind the Shiite
guerilla. In Iran there is a lot of oil. That’s thenext target.
Blood
for Oil
George Bush is a
primitive man, but the people behind him are far from being stupid.
They are the oil barons and the arms industry giants. They want to do
what great powers have always done: use their military might in order
to acquire economic hegemony. In simple words: to rob the poor peoples
in order to enrich themselves even more.
The military occupation
of Iraq will last many years and secure for America the control over
the vast oil reserves of Iraq, as well as the Caspian Sea reserves and
all the Arab oil. That will give it control over the world’s economy
and prevent the emergence of a competing, independent European economic
bloc. America is fighting against Europe as much as against Iraq. That
is part of the reason for Europe’s angry response.
Germany.
Germany is against
the war. Against any war. In no other country was the anti-war outburst
so authentic, emanating from the innermost feelings of the masses.
And who is furious
about this? Israel, the country of the Holocaust survivors. How do they
dare, these damn Germans, to object to the war?
A sad irony of history:
all German TV stations show citizens, intellectuals and ordinary folk,
who pray for peace, all Israeli TV screens show retired generals, obviously
enjoying themselves, discussing with great relish how to employ giant
bombs and other instruments of death.
Intoxication
of power.
This is the first
war of the 21st century, and it bodes ill.
This century has
inherited from its predecessor a world containing one sole super-power.
America has no competitors, no possible combination of other forces
can measure up to it. It can literally do what it wants, and now it
is doing just that openly and brutally.
When America won
its cheap and easy victory in Afghanistan, using smart bombs and suitcases
filled with cash, it was clear it could not stop itself anymore. A huge
machine like that wants to go on fighting and is searching for an enemy.
Now it’s Iraq. Who next? Iran? North Korea?
That is what happened
to the Roman Empire. That is what happened to Napoleon and Hitler. The
intoxication of power knows no boundaries. And no one of these was in
the situation of the United States now: alone in the world, without
enemies that can stand up to it.
A Jewish
War?
The anti-Semites
proclaim that this is not a war for American interests, but for Israel.
As proof, they point to the group of American Jews that took a leading
part in initiating this war, people like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle
and Douglas Feith at the Defence Department, Elliott Abrams at the National
Security Council (as well as Ari Fleisher at the White House and even
Dan Kerzer, the US ambassador in Tel-Aviv). These people support haron
and the extreme right in Israel, some of them speak Hebrew, a group
of them has acted as advisors to Benyamin Netanyahu, when he became
prime Minister. Together with the two non-Jews, Cheney and Rumsfield,
they pushed Washington into the war. Thus say the anti-Semites.
That is true by
itself, but this is first and foremost a war for American interests.
However, Bush and Sharon believe that American and Israeli interests
are practically identical. The Jewish war group in Washington acts in
close cooperation with the Christian fundamentalists, who now control
the Republican party and who have a hidden anti-Semitic agenda.
The anti-Semites will point to another obvious fact: Israel is the only
country in the world where not one single politician nor any part of
the media has raised their voices against the war. While millions march
all over the world, only one single anti-war demonstration, organized
by Gush Shalom and some other peace organizations, has taken place in
Israel. It attracted 2500 people.
In the struggle
between Bush and world opinion, the government of Israel has chosen
chose Bush. On the face of it, that seems sensible, since Bush has might
on his side and sides with Sharon. But in the long run, it may turn
out to be the wrong bet.
The
pope’s divisions.
“How many
divisions does the pope have?” Stalin asked sarcastically when
told that the Holy Father objects to his actions. Today, the question
is: how many divisions does world public opinion command?
All over the world,
the public opposes the war. There is an immense majority against it
even in countries whose leaders have joined Bush’s “coalition”.
For the first time, there is something that can be called “world
opinion”.
Only the future
will tell if this constitutes a real force. Thomas Jefferson, one of
the fathers of American democracy, once said that no country could conduct
its affairs without “a decent respect for world opinion.”
Perhaps the 21st
century will witness a struggle between the brute force of a mighty
military-economic super-power and world public opinion, assisted now
by modern technology.
Mercenaries.
This is a war fought
by mercenaries. The fighters are professional soldiers, the sons of
the poor, many of them black. Therefore it is easy for middle class
citizens, and especially the Republican voters, to approve of the war.
It is not their sons who will be killed.
In the past, the
European left demanded the abolition of the professional army and the
introduction of general conscription. At the time, that was a “progressive”
idea. When the left put on weight, it forgot all about it.
The Vietnam war
was still fought by drafted soldiers. Resistance to the war grew when
the body bags started to arrive. George W. Bush, who supported the war
with all his heart, took no part in the fighting. Father arranged a
job for him back home. He was just another shirker.
Jefferson again:
“Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
Uri Avnery
has closely followed the career of Sharon for four decades. Over the
years, he has written three extensive biographical essays about him,
two (1973, 1981) with his cooperation. Avnery is featured in the new
book, The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent .
Yesterday's Features
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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