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CounterPunch
March 7,
2003
Blaming the Conquered
Obey the US...or
Pay the Price
By PAUL D'AMATO
The practice of the conqueror blaming the conquered
for the casualties inflicted on them is as old as conquest itself.
The (in)famous Spanish Requirement of 1513 is perhaps the most
straightforward example.
It was called the "requirement"
because royal law required it to be read before hostilities could
be undertaken against a native people. In Latin and/or Spanish,
witnessed by a notary, the Conquistadors would stand before a
people they were about to attack, and read the following:
"We ask...that you acknowledge the
Church as the ruler and superior of the whole world...But if
you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it...we shall
powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against
you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you
to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses.
"We shall take you, and your wives,
and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such
shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command;
and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief
and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse
to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him.
"And we protest that the deaths
and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not
that of their highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who
come with us."
How different is this from the present,
where we find the Bush administration warning Iraq not to put
its citizens in harm's way when the U.S. military juggernaut
rolls in for the kill? "The generals in Iraq must understand
clearly there will be consequences for their behavior,"
Bush smugly warned. "Should they choose, if force is necessary,
to behave in a way that endangers the lives of their own citizens,
as well as citizens in the neighborhood, there will be a consequence.
They will be held to account."
This turns logic on its head. The country
that is about to be overwhelmed with cruise missiles and carpet-bombing
is made to appear as if its own plans for defense are what may
"endanger" Iraqi people, rather than U.S. bombs.
This is the twisted logic that blames
the victims of relentless war for their own suffering. So, for
example, in 1997, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State James
Rubin said of the United Nations sanctions on Iraq, "If
the Special Commission [conducting weapons inspections] can't
do its work, I don't see how it can be any one country's fault
that sanctions are still on. It can only be Saddam Hussein's
fault."
The logic was simple. Saddam Hussein,
a U.S. ally in the region, slipped his American leash and refused
to acknowledge the U.S. as "the ruler and superior of the
whole world." Vanquished in a one-sided slaughter in 1991,
Iraq was forced by the U.S. to accept weapons inspectors and
was subject to debilitating economic and military sanctions that
denied the country the goods and equipment necessary to rebuild
the country's destroyed infrastructure, creating skyrocketing
childhood mortality rates.
Any attempt by Saddam Hussein to resist
these humiliating conditions is seen as the outrageous act of
a wily madman, which reinforces the necessity of sanctions, of
bombing, and now, of his replacement by a U.S.-controlled puppet.
The logic is as follows: You, as the conquered country, must
obey the conquerors, and if you don't, and we destroy you, it
will be your fault.
We should be clear in this coming war
who is being invaded and who is the real aggressor. The question
should not be, as it is even for some antiwar activists, can
we disarm Iraq without war, but who will hold George W. Bush
and the U.S. government to account for the hundreds of thousands
of lives they have taken and will take in Iraq for the sake of
the "credibility" of U.S. power?
Paul D'Amato
writes for the Socialist
Worker.
Yesterday's
Features
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No
Lock Up for Medical Marijuana Advocate Jeff Jones!
Gary Leupp
A Very
Fine Thing: Turkey Stands Up to Bush
Winslow T. Wheeler
Inside
the Pentagon's Pork Factory
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Swing
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Uri Avnery
Sharon's Sleight of Hand
Ron Lare
UAW Local
600's Opposition to War
David Krieger
Meanwhile, Back at the Security Council
Ralph Nader
How MSNBC Sabotaged Donahue
Anthony Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Donahue: a Response to Ralph Nader
Harry Browne
The
Curse of Bono
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February 28,
2003
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Meet
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Saul Landau
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A Plea for Hysteria
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Paying Through the Nose to Kill Iraqi Kids
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George W. Bonaparte
Mark Zepezauer
Why the Right Hates America
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The Anti----War Talk I Never Gave
Jerry Kroth
Jung and the Space Shuttle Revisited
Shyam Oberoi
Chronicle of a War Foretold
Ron Jacobs
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by Alexander
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