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Special Investigation:
Have Journalists Been Deliberately Murdered in Iraq by the US
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Our new
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the growing body count of journalists in Iraq and documents numerous
incidents where US troops have deliberately targeted reporters.
Charles Glass offers a
stark comparison of the uprooting of Palestians in the Galilee
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Now
As the US closes in on the opening day
of its new Congress, the possibility of voters getting a withdrawal
of US forces from Iraq grows dimmer and dimmer. George Bush
continues to insist that US forces will remain in country until
their job is done. What that job is exactly seems to most to
be a secret known only to certain members of the White House,
but the key to it all is the desire for the US to reshape the
world in order to , as this an excerpt from the Project for the
New American Century (PNAC) statement of principles reminds us,
"preserve and extend an international order friendly to
US security, (and) prosperity." Lest we forget, this is
the primary force behind the policies of George Bush. Of course,
when these men and women talk about security and prosperity,
they aren't necessarily thinking of yours and mine. They are,
however, certainly thinking about theirs, especially when it
comes to the prosperity part of the equation. One need only
look at the profits certain friends of Washington's power elites
have made from the ongoing war in Iraq to get a mere hint of
the prosperity these folks are talking about. (Ans that doesn't
even begin to count the billions they want to make from controlling
Iraq's oil.) Then, just to see what they have in mind for those
of us that don't matter to them, take a look at the situation
of the poor in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.
In the past couple of weeks,
the news has reported the deaths of several Iraqi women and children
from US airborne bombs and missiles. This is no accident. As
the use of US air support to support Iraqi government forces
on the ground increases (and US ground forces pull back), there
are bound to be more and more such casualties. Like Israel and
previous Pentagon leaders, the current US command refuses to
accept blame for these deaths, choosing instead to blame them
on the actions of the resistance forces. Although these are
usually called mistakes by the command, the harsh act is that
they are not. As Howard Zinn wrote in his classic argument Vietnam:
The Logic of Withdrawal, "since the killing of civilians
is inevitable...it cannot be called an accident." When
a pilot drops his load of bombs or fires his deadly missiles
on a street of houses, or when a gunner unleashes a barrage of
bullets from his Vulcan Gatling gun at the rate of 6000 bullets
per minute on a group of people running away from the helicopter
he is in, this is not an accident. It is part of the strategy
of pacification--a policy that George Orwell pointed out goes
something like this:
Defenceless villages are bombarded
from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside,
the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary
bullets: this is called pacification.
While the specifics of the
battleground may change from Mr. Orwell's description, the essential
facts do not. In Afghanistan, US-led forces bombard villages
and schools, calling the latter terrorist training grounds.
In Iraq, US forces provide air support for US and Iraqi ground
forces that raid villages in house-to-house searches. If the
ground forces call in a strike, the pilots release their missiles,
which may or may not even hit the house they are supposed to
hit. As the number of these air support missions climbs, the
chance of killing innocents likewise increases.
Let's go back to the phased
withdrawal (or redeployment) scenario. This scenario is based
on the hope that the forces paid for by the US will be able to
keep political and military power after the US military draws
down its forces and pens them in the permanent bases Washington
is building in Iraq. It is not, as the "Stay the Course"
adherents like to charge, an excuse to lose the war. What it
is is a way for the US to keep its paws deeply immersed in Iraqi
politics for the long term (without US soldiers doing the dying)
until Washington can have exactly who they want running the country.
Of course, the way things are going, it could be a while before
the CIA and Pentagon can even find such folks. As recent history
has proven, even if they do find such individuals, the real struggle
is convincing the Iraqis that these officials really have any
power that isn't given them by Washington. Given that the main
thing the Iraqis want is the exit of all foreign militaries from
their country and that this is the one thing the Green Zone Iraqis
cannot provide, it is no mystery that these leaders appear impotent.
If they demand that the US forces leave, Washington will disperse
with them. If they "ask" for them to stay, they reinforce
the view of their fellow citizens that they are US stooges.
That's why it's nice to have US forces close by. They provide
good backup. Also, if things get real hot, they can always airlift
you out.
Now, I can hear people asking
what's wrong with US forces staying nearby to help put in a government
friendly to Washington in Iraq and Afghanistan? After all, don't
we believe in democracy? Well, let me give you a couple reasons
why this isn't okay. For one, the majority of Iraqis don't want
us to. That in itself is more than enough reason. For another,
any government that must be backed up by a foreign military force
is not going to last for the simple reason that it is not a truly
national government. The US tried to do exactly this in southern
Vietnam and failed miserably. Sure, George Bush and others like
him think the reason the US didn't succeed in Vietnam was because
the US quit. That is wrong. They didn't quit. They lost.
Their project to reshape southeast Asia was never popular with
the people that lived there and it failed. Even after millions
of deaths and inestimable destruction. There have already been
several hundred thousand deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, with
unknown numbers yet to come if US and NATO forces continue their
murderous attempt to install governments subservient to Washington's
interests--which is what politicians, generals and media mouths
really mean when they speak so eloquently about freedom and democracy.
Another reason--and perhaps
the most important reason of all--is that these wars are wrong.
Plain and simple. Wrong. The pretense of liberation is over.
The pretense that US Galahads were going to come in and save
Iraqi and Afghani women from the more medieval practices of certain
Islamic fundamentalists is over. Now, those women and their
children are being killed indiscriminately by US bombs and missiles.
Some are even being raped by US soldiers. There is no moral
right in arresting people without cause and then torturing them.
Nor is there any moral right in denying a population electrical
power and security while the occupiers live in air conditioned
comfort with colonialist trappings. In short, there is nothing
moral about the US wars on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
And there never will be.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
