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And they practice tae kwon do on the prisoners
Journal of a Futurist - 5 September 2003
Poor fellah my planet
I would feel much better today if I’d been wrong about the “war on terror”, because well over 60 thousand people would still be alive. Ten times that number would not be seriously injured. The Middle East would be less of a powder keg. US soldiers would not be wiping out Iraqi families at impromptu checkpoints almost every day of the week. Israel, an assassin’s lair, would not have turned Gaza into a concentration camp. The fever of cheap patriotism would not have gripped the west. Australia would not have stirred up a hornet nest in its region. Tony Blair would not have humiliated himself and his party. Embittered Muslims would not be flocking to join anti west networks of terror. The mass media would not have shamed itself. Travelling the world would be a buzz. The security industry would not have been given a license to do as it pleases. We would not have to keep reminding ourselves that the White House does not speak for all Americans, or even most Americans. The global effort to repair the eco-system would not have fizzled out. The world would be a safer place.
As God said to me
The born again hawks who urged shame on the peaceniks have suddenly gone very quiet. George Bush is no longer crowing, Bring it On! How did the tough guys get it so wrong?
Blinded by might, motivated by power, trapped in a mindset from the age of Columbus. Cheered on by an elite who profit from war, Rupert Murdoch, the brokers, the oil addicts. Did they have any doubts? In this lack they resemble fanatics: "God told me to strike at al Qaida”, said George Bush to the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas “and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East”. Well George, you could start be sending Arial Sharon to camp X-Ray, apologising to the world and impeaching yourself.
Most dangerous of all are the megalomaniacs with a hotline to God, whether Christian, Muslims or the orthodox Jews building their houses on stolen land. Religious belief is just a superstition. It’s fine as therapy or a makeshift moral compass, but now that it’s at the heart of foreign policy, it may well invoke the very apocalypse that many fundamentalists both secretly desire.
The Black Desert Furnace
Yes, if only I had been wrong about the war on terror. “What a fool I was”, I would shout from the talkshows, tears flowing, likening Condoleeza Rice to Joan of Ark, and George Bush to Bertrand Russell ….. Oh Yes, Oprah, Jesus truly is the son of a virgin, God’s on our side and the International Criminal Court is a communist plot. Until that day comes, and I hope it will, we are left with the brutal facts. And what facts!
As the invaders of Iraq are pulled ever further into the black desert furnace, their random acts of brutality have become too numerous to monitor. I do not have the psychological fortitude to offer more than a taste of what it’s like for Iraqi’s to be liberated b y Uncle Sam:
- Task Force 20, an "elite" American unit murdered at least five people as they drove down a street, reported John Pilger. “The next day they murdered a woman and her three children as they drove down a street. They are no different from the death squads the Americans trained in Latin America”.
- American soldiers in Iraq made “astonishing admissions” to the London Evening Standard that they “regularly kill civilians”. In a series of “disturbing interviews which throws light on the chaos gripping the country, GIs also confess to leaving wounded Iraqi fighters to die, and even to shooting injured enemy soldiers”.
- Pte Simon Behrndt briefed the UK Daily Telegraph how Freedom was being delivered: “We go in, kick in the doors, pull the guys out of bed, drag them outside, put zip ties around their wrists, trhrow them in the truck and take them in for questioning”. Behrndt is a martial arts enthusiast: “The raids are a real adrenilin rush, plus I get to practice my tae-kwon-do moves on out of line prisoners”.
- Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, describes the methods used to gather intelligence - after picking up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general, they left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in."
- The Iraqi newspaper Al-Mustaqilla (The Independent) was shut down for being too independent. As Brian Cloughley reports: On 21 July tanks blocked off the approaches to its building, then soldiers and Iraqi policemen broke into the premises where "They turned everything upside down, confiscated the newspaper's safe, the computers and personal documents of the chairman, Mr. Abdul-Sattar Alshalan. They arrested Mr. Alshalan, who is currently imprisoned at an unknown location., " It is flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions to refuse to provide details of the whereabouts of prisoners to next of kin. Mr Alshalan and thousands of others are being kept in confinement by the US Army without any notification of their location or physical condition being made available to relatives or the International Red Cross.
- The United States suspended military assistance to nearly 50 countries, including Colombia and six nations seeking NATO membership, because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution.
- The Pentagon is planning a new generation of weapons, including huge hypersonic drones and bombs dropped from space, that would allow the US to strike its enemies at lightning speed from its own territory, Julian Borger in Washington . Over the next 25 years, the technology would free the US from dependence on forward bases and the co-operation of regional allies, part of the drive towards self-sufficiency spurred by the difficulties of gaining international co-operation to invade Iraq.
You Get the Picture
Almost unnoticed outside Iraq, notes the UK Guardian, the senior US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has issued a proclamation outlawing any `gatherings, pronouncements or publications' that call for the return of the Baath party — or for opposition to the US occupation.
For the majority Iraqis, the toppling of Saddam Hussein is still seen as blessing, whatever the west’s motivation. Perhaps the same result have been achieved without the deaths 37,000 Iraqi civilians, nationwide, and untold numbers of injuries.
Instead of a war, surely the offer of a $50 million reward for the elimination of Saddam, a bonus for each son, plus an amnesty and a $10M “retirement benefit” for each non psychopathic General would have led to a quick & clean regime change. Cheap too, as the US is spending $3.9 billion a month on military operations, (though allocating only $2.5 billion over two years for reconstruction). www.counterpunch.org No matter how many brilliant alternatives to war had been offered to Bush, none of them stood a chance. The leader of the free world had already marched his soldiers up the hill. He isn’t man enough to have marched them down again.
ends
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