Category: Antiwar writings

The media will be full of stories of the beheading of Nick Berg. The implication is clear: we do horrific things to them, and they do horrific things to us, so it’s all fine and even-handed and okay.

Joe Lieberman apparently said in the media, responding to the lack of an apology: “I have to point out that no one apologized to us for 9/11. No one apologized to us for the killing of US servicemen and women in Iraq.” I was sent this by email along with a translation: “I would just like to point out that some unrelated brown people did some bad things.”

And that is about all the logic you need. The Red Cross report on the torture at Abu Ghraib apparently says that 90% of the prisoners were innocent. But does ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’ have any meaning in a culture so deeply racist? If North Americans are incapable of understanding that the invasion of Iraq was international aggression, and the ultimate crime, the one that has made all the torture, massacres, abuses, and war crimes possible, then why would they be capable of understanding that some set of Iraqis was ‘innocent’? Innocent of what, in any case — would resistance activities, legitimate under international law, make them ‘guilty’?

In Stan Goff’s books, he refers to Vietnam as a ‘race war’. Whatever the US went there to do, whether it was establish ‘credibility’, or defeat ‘the threat of a good example’, on the ground it played out as a bloody race war. But that’s what all these wars are. Just bloody race wars, of escalating atrocities, justifications in terms of other atrocities, and dehumanization.

The murder of Berg is going to be used to try to take attention away from the tortures at Abu Ghraib (and all the other torture that’s still going on and hasn’t been discussed, like at Guantanamo and elsewhere). It’s also going to be used to justify future atrocities and a longer presence in Iraq. If this weren’t a race war, if there were some sanity in this situation, Berg’s murder would be further reason why the US should not be in Iraq. But that would be too much to ask.

Private Mercenary Company Seeks to fill Baghdad Interrogator Position

To be honest, I can’t verify the authenticity of this, but I thought I’d blog it anyway. It looks real. Someone emailed it to me, and it definitely deserves linking. It might predate the recent scandals, but it does have the gruesome and macabre quality you’ve come to expect from this blog. Here’s the ad. You can even submit your resume online. Some people are likely to be vacating these positions, so they might have some openings… I’ll put some higlights in.

CACI’s Job Database

Interrogator/Intel Analyst Team Lead Asst.
BAGHDAD, Iraq

(Requisition #BZSG308)
Clearance: TS

Description:
Assists the interrogation support program team lead to increase the effectiveness of dealing with Detainees, Persons of Interest, and Prisoners of War (POWs) that are in the custody of US/Coalition Forces in the CJTF 7 AOR, in terms of screening, interrogation, and debriefing of persons of intelligence value. Under minimal supervision, will assist the team lead in managing a multifaceted interrogation support cell consisting of database entry/intelligence research clerks, screeners, tactical/strategic interrogators, and intelligence analyst.

Required:
Position requires a bachelor’s degree or equivalent and five to seven years of related experience, preferably in intelligence field. Requires a Top Secret Clearance. Strong writing and briefing skills, with competency in automation, research and basic software applications. Familiar with intelligence collection capabilities/planning, as well as analytical procedures.

Desired:
Minimum of 5 years in intelligence field. Requires a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent. Requires a Top Secret Clearance. Strong writing and briefing skills, with competency in automation, research and basic software applications. Familiar with intelligence collection capabilities/planning, as well as analytical procedures.

I went through the masochistic exercise of watching CNN, briefly, this morning. They were talking about how bad it would be for Americans when Iraqis learned of the abuse of prisoners by the Americans, the story that came out on 60 Minutes. Rahul Mahajan of Empire Notes has republished the photos of abuse. I think the photos say quite a lot. It’s a good thing that our culture is so deeply racist that it forbids people from seeing the utterly obvious. If it didn’t, all that sanctimony about the ‘barbarians’ in Fallujah celebrating the brutal treatment of the US mercenaries might ring hollow. But in fact, that kind of sanctimony and this kind of callous brutality are perfectly consistent with one another.

This will probably be a big story and hence unnecessary for me to blog, but I couldn’t help but notice that part of the ‘political solution’ the US was seeking was to put a Saddam-era general in charge of Fallujah. Irony: yesterday in our Counterspin debate the one thing that the American Enterprise Institute columnist could say in defense of the murderous invasion and re-destruction of Iraq was that it removed Saddam.

But no need to worry too much. The US has pretty much called off the ‘political solution’ and has re-started the slaughter in Fallujah after all, thus insisting on differentiating themselves from Saddam’s regime yet again.

I see a lot of writing calling Iraq a ‘quagmire’ and comparing it to Vietnam. I could be mistaken, but I detect almost a kind of smugness in the comparison, ie., people who think the US is going to get a come-uppance in Iraq the way it got such in Vietnam. I have to admit I dislike this, very strongly, for several reasons.

1) Tariq Ali complained once that the West had a ‘lack of imagination’ because it made every third world leader singled out for attack into ‘Hitler’… paraphrasing, he said: “Nasser was Hitler on the Nile; we had Milosovic who was Hitler on the Danube; we have Saddam who is Hitler on the Euphrates…” I think the Vietnam comparison is similar. Colombia was the next Vietnam; Iraq is Bush’s Vietnam; and so on.

2) If you want to make the comparison, the least you could do is not be smug about it. You should be crying when you make the comparison, not laughing at Bush. Vietnam was a holocaust. There were between 2-5 million Vietnamese killed, probably 40 Vietnamese for every American invader. Carter said ‘the destruction was mutual’, but I can’t help but see it as the US going off and destroying a country and murdering a large chunk of its population. If Iraq is ‘Bush’s Vietnam’, it is so in that respect, but that’s a tragedy.

Talk about a ‘feeler’. So various outlets are saying that the US is vowing to capture or kill Moqtada as-Sadr. Someone even used the famous ‘dead or alive’ phrase, last used for Osama bin Laden. I’m a little surprised. I would have thought they would have wanted to build him up into another famous Arab villain and make the ‘fiery cleric’s’ face known all over the country, stoking the racism that has played such a useful role in US war plans all over the world for a little longer.

It’s another page out of the Israeli handbook. I’m sure you’ve all read Fisk’s latest:

It seems that as long as you say “war on terror”, you are safe from all criticism. For not a single American journalist has investigated the links between the Israeli army’s “rules of engagement” – so blithely handed over to US forces on Sharon’s orders – and the behaviour of the US military in Iraq. The destruction of houses of “suspects”, the wholesale detention of thousands of Iraqis without trial, the cordoning off of “hostile” villages with razor wire, the bombardment of civilian areas by Apache helicopter gunships and tanks on the hunt for “terrorists” are all part of the Israeli military lexicon.

In besieging cities – when they were taking casualties or the number of civilians killed was becoming too shameful to sustain – the Israeli army would call a “unilateral suspension of offensive operations”. They did this 11 times after they surrounded Beirut in 1982. And yesterday, the American army declared a “unilateral suspension of offensive operations” around Fallujah.

Not a word on this mysterious parallel by America’s reporters, no questions about the even more mysterious use of identical language. And in the coming days, we shall – perhaps – find out how many of the estimated 300 dead of Fallujah were Sunni gunmen and how many were women and children. Following Israel’s rules is going to lead the Americans into the same disaster those rules have led the Israelis.

The media will, of course, go along with anything the US does, and racism will help those who want to to swallow it. But in Iraq, I wonder what the message will be, given that they took Saddam (Murder, Inc.) alive (even gave him a free dental exam), and are planning to blow Moqtada as-Sadr up?

States rarely commit atrocities without putting out ‘feelers’ to see how they are going to go over. Israel, for example, has been putting out ‘feelers’ about assassinating Yasser Arafat for quite some time. The US has been putting out ‘feelers’ about attacking Syria and Iran since the invasion of Iraq. Likewise, plenty of ‘feelers’ are going out about getting Colombia to attack Venezuela. These things are tests: if the reaction suggests they can get away with it, they go for it.

So it is with Fallujah (See Andrea Schmidt’s latest report here). There is a note that came over the networks by various international organizations yesterday, with new estimates of the magnitude of the atrocity: “470 killed. 1200 injured, of which 243 are women and 200 are children. This is the first, underestimated body count from Falluja.” (The entire note is reproduced below).

This should actually be the sort of thing that our movement is good at: halting a dramatic massacre in progress against a civilian population, done directly by us, unfolding as we speak. And there have been emergency demonstrations and pickets all over North America. It is a major slaughter that will take place if the public response is inadequate. Here is the call for solidarity in its entirety:

End the Massacre in Falluja!

470 killed.
1200 injured, of which 243 are women and 200 are children.
This is the first, underestimated body count from Falluja.

April 9 2004
Occupied Baghdad

Since fighting escalated at the beginning of the week, Iraqi people, especially in the city of Falluja, are facing a humanitarian disaster. Occupation Forces have laid siege to the city. More than 470 people have been killed, 1200 injured. Dead bodies are lying in the streets.

Falluja is being mortared and bombed by F-16 fighter planes, helicopters dropping cluster bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

Ambulances are being shot at by snipers. Medical aid and supplies have been stopped by US Occupation Forces. Aid workers delivering supplies have had to take secondary roads into the city; once they arrived, they found themselves under fire from US snipers.

No humanitarian corridor has been put in place.

A cease-fire was announced and people began trying flee, but US troops resumed their attacks. Many people remain trapped inside the city, and refugees trying to escape from Falluja to Baghdad are being prevented from reaching their destination by US military. They form a column that extends over 10 kilometers of highway.

The thousands of families who remain trapped in Falluja are running out of basic necessities like food and potable water. Hospitals and medical staff are overwhelmed, and are asking desperately for blood, oxygen and antiseptics.

Fighting is spreading all over the country, Al-Sadr City has been attacked and paid a high price with almost 100 casualties. The situation in Southern cities – Kerbala, Najaf, Kut – is unknown to us, but they are also feared to be the sights of humanitarian emergencies.

The international community, the United Nations and the European Community cannot remain spectators to the massacre in Falluja and the terrorization of Iraqi people all over the country.

The international community must take a firm position and demand that Coalition Forces stop these massacres and respect international conventions and allow for a humanitarian corridor through which refugees can safely escape, and medical supplies can reach Falluja.

Stop the massacre.
Stop attacking civilians.
End the siege of Falluja.

Signed:
Bridge to Baghdad/Italy (001 914 360 9080 in Baghdad)
CCIPPP/France (079 01 427 627 in Baghdad)
Italian Consortium of Solidarity/Italy
Iraq Solidarity Project/Canada (079 01 429 115 in Baghdad)