As
a result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation
of Iraq, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have
been killed - half of them women and children. Eighty-four
per cent of the deaths were caused by the actions
of the Americans and the British, and 95 per cent
of these were killed by air attacks and artillery
fire; thousands more are imprisoned and tortured;
the lives of millions more have been wrecked.
In
addition, the conditions of child health in US-occupied
Iraq today are even worse than during the genocidal
years of sanctions. Acute malnutrition among Iraqi
children between the ages of six months and 5 years
has doubled, and over 400,000 Iraqi children are
suffering from conditions of chronic diarrhoea and
protein deficiency.
The
pretext for this wanton of destruction was few lies
fabricated in Washington and London. Iraqi civilians
have been massacred by US-British weapon of mass
destructions (WMDs). In addition to the use of weapons
made from radioactive waste or 'Depleted Uranium'
(DU), the US and Britain are using internationally
banned WMDs such as napalm and cluster bombs in
heavily populated urban areas like Baghdad, Fallujah
and Mosul.
Since
1991, Iraq tried rationally to build its good relation
with the rest of the world, and Iraq has made very
significant commitment to destroy it weapons of
defence. Countless reports by UN and US officials
have now confirmed that Iraq was defenceless nation
and free from any WMDs since 1991. Genocide was
in the making.
According
to Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector
in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, "By 2002, on
the eve of the US-led invasion, Baghdad was full
of booming businesses, restaurants were full, and
families walked freely along well-lit parks. Compare
and contrast that image with the reality of Baghdad
[and the whole of Iraq] today". They "hate
our freedom", said George Bush.
These
crimes committed for no reasons other than to spread
fear and terror upon defenceless people. These crimes
are justified in American/Western psyches on the
basis that Iraqis are not white and therefore "unpeople",
and that Iraqis "do not value life as we value
life in the US/West". It follows, that the
element of racism against non-white and Muslims
in policy formation should not be discounted. It
is alive in every institution of power.
In
all US-British wars against other nations, "generally,
with the exception of Serbs, the victims of Pentagon
firepower have been people of colour who've looked
different than the USA's white majority and power
structure. In the United States, racial biases have
helped to grease the war machinery", wrote
Norman Solomon of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
"Meanwhile, inside the policy arena, Colin
Powell and Condoleezza Rice are frequently in front
of cameras to personify Uncle Sam in blackface".
The best warmongering PR ever produced.
The
soldiers who are the tools of US-Britain wars are
recruited from working-class, low-income disfranchised
whites, blacks and Latinos. They are recruited from
isolated and marginalized communities and towns
affected by the economic recession and the downturn
sweeping the US and Britain with employment opportunities
steadily decreasing. It is assumed that life in
the army is the only way out of their misery into
"better" life.
These
soldiers are recruited to fight wars orchestrated
by the elites and rich white Anglo-Americans to
spread their ideology of conquest and fear. "You
go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you
might want or wish to have", Donald Rumsfeld
told one of his "death fearing" soldiers
asking about the lack of equipment and inadequate
protection. The Secretary of Defence forgot that
it was the Bush administration that decided to go
to war against Iraq not the poor soldiers. Does
Rumsfeld cares more about his wars than the soldiers
fighting it?
Soldiers
who are exposed to chemical and radioactive weapons
in contaminated battlefields are considered "throw
away soldiers", who are dispensed with once
exposed, and replaced by others who become throw
away in their turn with risks of cancer, deformed
children from genetic damage and serious health
problems, wrote Professor Niloufer Bhagwat of Indian
Association of Lawyers. Soldiers who desert during
wartime and get caught are usually thrown in jail
for years. The penalty under the US law is execution.
The children of the leaders of the war on Iraq are
studying in Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
According
to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans,
nearly 300,000 US veterans are homeless on any given
night, and almost half of those are Vietnam veterans,
who participated in previous US atrocity against
demonised innocent people.
Ordinary
"soldiers are pilloried. White House officials
are promoted. The cost of hypocrisy in the billowing
prison abuse scandal has not mattered much up to
now. Tomorrow we might care a lot more. The next
victim of the hypocrisy could be you or me",
wrote Derrick Jackson of The Boston Globe. The Bush
administration is prosecuting the "few bad
apples" stationed in the Abu Ghraib, while
defending the larger process of war and systemic
torture.
The
systemic torture of Iraqi civilians and prisoners
of war at Abu Ghraib which was introduced by the
US have now "survived its public exposure",
opined The Washington Post. Its chief torturer,
Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, the Zionist Paul
Wolfowitz remain in their jobs perpetuating this
systemic violation of human rights, and planning
their next attack.
Furthermore,
the Washington Post reported, that a report by retired
Colonel Stuart Harrington found that Special Operations
and CIA task force members abused Iraqi prisoners
throughout that nation in secret facilities. The
report found that the US military sweeps of thousands
of people off the streets were so indiscriminate
that they were "counterproductive to the coalition's
efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry".
The
crimes of torture and murder of innocent Iraqis
at Abu Ghraib prison are not the work of a few bad
apples who are on TV trial for their actions, this
kind of crimes could not have taken place without
orders from leaders in the Bush administration.
The leaders of those nations who are perpetuating
an illegal war and occupation are committing crimes
against the Iraqi people. Their actions and policy
are copied from the US and British textbooks of
racism, and imperial conquest.
Around
the world, and particularly in the Developing World,
the photographs "have strengthened the feeling
that there is a deep racism underlying the occupiers'
attitudes to Arabs, Muslims and [other coloured
people] generally", wrote the Egyptian novelist,
Ahdaf Soueif. She noted that "the acts in the
photos being flashed across the [TV] networks would
not have taken place but for the profound racism
that infects the American and British establishments".
A
senior British officer in Iraq told a reporter about
the attitude of the U.S. military toward the Iraqi
people, "My view and the view of the British
chain of command is that the Americans use of violence
is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the
threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi
people the way we see them. They view them as 'untermenschen'.
They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life".
'Untermenschen', a Hitler-derived term used by the
Nazis to describe Jews, Romanies and Slavs as inferior
human beings. However, the way the British see Iraqis
is much more settled.
The
British Prime Minister, Tony Blaire told the House
of Common before the invasion, "these [Iraqis]
are different people, they are not like us, they
don't behave the way we behave". Few weeks
later, his army participated in the slaughter and
torture of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.
The 'pall of racism...hovering over' Middle East
affairs under all British governments from Churchill
to Blair. In the 1920s British occupation of Iraq,
Churchill was quoted as saying, "the Iraqis,
like all Arabs, were "niggers", against
whom poison gas could be used. Does Blair call Churchill
"an evil man"?
The
West hasn't really changed very much; the Jews of
yesterday are the Muslims of today. Only time has
changed. George Bush's ill-defined "War on
Terror" is now a euphemism for an ideological
war against Muslims around the world. Here in the
land of the most insignificant of the "coalition
of the willing", and in many other countries,
the War on Terror has been internalised without
question. The introduction of the so-called "terrorism
laws" that solely targeting Muslims is one
case in point.
Governments-induced
fear is turning citizens of one nation against each
other. A recent US survey conducted by Cornell University
in New York found that nearly half of all Americans
believe the US government should restrict the civil
liberties of Muslim-Americans. Poor Muslims, even
in their "Land of the Free", are easy
targets. Patriotism is 'bringing the war home'.
In
order to deny the world the full scale of civilian
deaths, and make the atrocity in Iraq palatable
to Americans and Western consumers, US authorities
have barred journalists and aid workers from entering
the city of Fallujah before the US assault and massacre
begun there. All Iraqi men aged between 14 to 60
years of age were prevented from leaving the city.
'The full force of America's arsenal of terror,
including F-16s, C-130s, Abrams tanks, and Apache
Helicopters were unleashed on the city' writes Mike
Whitney. The City of 300,000 people has been bombed
to rubble by all kinds of terror bombs. The Red
Cross estimated that more than 6000 civilians have
been killed in the assault made no headlines in
Western media.
In
addition, the media remain silent and downplayed
the most credible report by the British medical
journal, The Lancet, which estimated more than 100,000
Iraqi civilians were killed. The report excludes
the atrocity of Fallujah. Unlike the death toll
from the latest Tsunami in South-East Asia, which
has morphed into an urge to hear more updates and
to see more TV footages, the death of innocent Iraqi
women and children is systematically ignored. The
"stingy" outcry over natural disaster,
and complete silence over the US-made disaster(s)
is the West self-induced moral hypocrisy. Uninterrupted
and in full view, we can see all the "beasts
in Samaritan's clothing" helping those who
once called the "Asian hordes".
This
deliberate media ignorance is followed because George
Bush believes that the death of Iraqi women and
children is "inflaming [public] opinion throughout
the country" and the world. These are the "moral
values" that the American people were concerned
with when they voted for President Bush. Any one
observing US atrocities in Iraq and Palestine knows
what are these American moral values that Bush is
defending.
The
Canadian author and journalist, Naomi Klein rightly
described the attitudes of her big neighbours, Americans,
she wrote, "are incapable of caring about anyone's
lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its
supporters became complicit in the dehumanisation
[and murder] of Iraqis, reinforcing the idea that
some lives are insufficiently important to risk
losing votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt
logic, more than the election of any single candidate,
that allows these crimes to continue unchecked".
Americans are enjoying their "peaceful Christmas"
holiday, while their poor and destitute soldiers
murdering innocent Iraqi men, women and children
resisting the occupation of their country.
Iraqis
who resist the Occupation are merely 'insurgents
holed up in the city', dehumanised and will be 'flushed
out'. With the exception of few honourable voices
in the West, no body care about the death of Iraqis.
In the West, "'We' are still seen as benign.
We're not seen as illegal, rapacious occupiers",
said John Pilger recently. The US and Britain are
masters of racism and dehumanisation of "others".
The Iraqi people are seen, thanks to this media
racism and dishonest liberal intellectuals, as "insurgents"
incapable of appreciating the "freedom we brought
them".
The
Iraqi people are fighting to liberate their country
from foreign occupation and terrorism. Their cause
is noble and legitimate within international law.
They are not "insurgents". They are Iraqi
men and women resisting the occupation and destruction
of their country and society by foreign powers.
The
destruction of Iraqi cities violated the principle
of the Geneva Conventions, and hence under the US
War Crimes Act of 1996, the atrocities carry the
death penalty. The genocide in Fallujah is reminiscent
to those of Serbrenica and Grozny, both condemned
by the US administration as 'genocides'. These unprovoked
acts of aggression against the Iraqi people and
the destruction of their society constitute a clear
violation of the Laws of Land War found in the US
army Field Manual 27-10.
George
Bush and Tony Blair are guilty of the "supreme
international crime" in violation of the Geneva
conventions should be held accountable for their
crimes against the Iraqi people. There is an overwhelming
prima facie evidence to indict George Bush and Tony
Blair with war crimes. Equally guilty is Western
mass media. It has become one of the main instruments
of deception and lies and should be held accountable
for the role it plays in promoting war and racism
not only against the Iraqi people, but also against
other peoples struggling against Western domination.
Furthermore,
recent evidence provided by the American Civil Liberties
Union and the Centre for Constitutional Rights has
strengthened the case of war crimes. The Nuremberg
Tribunal, established after World War II, defined
war of aggression as follow: "To initiate a
war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international
crime; it is the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within
itself the accumulated evil of the whole".
The
war crimes tribunal in Japan established by the
US after the War found Japan's prime minister, Tojo
Hideki, and Foreign minister, Hirota Koki guilty
of 'not preventing atrocities' against US prisoners
of war and sentenced them to death by hanging. Similar
tribunal should be established to investigate alleged
war crimes committed against Iraqi prisoners and
civilians at Abu Ghraib and other prisons.
Both
the US and Britain are democracies, and their laws
and constitutions forbid the unlawful crimes against
innocent people. American and British prosecutors
have duties to prosecute George Bush and Tony Blair,
and their accomplices not only for their crimes
against the Iraqi people, but also for their crimes
against the American and British peoples.
Instead,
we are treated to the latest news that Saddam and
his government officials will be put on "trail".
The trial that is already called by law experts
the Iraqi Kangaroo Court. It is a political ploy
controlled by the US. The so-called "prime
minister", Allawi, has no authority to announce
the trial of Saddam. Allawi is the Occupation Spokesman's
spokesman and doesn't have the power to make decisions.
According
to Professor Charif Bassiouni of DePaul University,
an expert on International Criminal Law, "All
efforts are being made to have a tribunal whose
judiciary is not independent but controlled, and
by controlled I mean that the political manipulators
of the tribunal have to make sure the US and other
western powers are not brought in cause. This makes
it look like victor's vengeance: it makes it seem
targeted, selected, and unfair. It's a subterfuge".
There is no need to define a Kangaroo Court.
If
Saddam and his official to be put on trial, then
US leaders, British leaders and other Western leaders
who supported and encouraged Saddam should be with
him in the dock. Saddam trial is illegal. There
is no law in Iraq to allow for the trial of Saddam
or his officials. Iraq is an illegally occupied
nation by foreign army. Saddam and his government
officials are prisoners of war under the Geneva
Conventions. It is those leaders who violated the
Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War on Land to
commit the crimes against the Iraqi people should
be put on trial in an international court.
According
to professor Richard Overy of King's College London,
a leading authority on Nuremberg Trial and international
law, "International law works only against
weaker states. Big powers have an unmerited, but
unassailable, [self-induced] immunity". "What
had happened in Iraq was a major crime against humanity,
and Bush and Blair could be in the dock", he
wrote.
Nonetheless,
it is encouraging to see the action of some German
lawyers filing criminal complaints against the US
Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld and his cohorts.
Similar actions should be pursued by other nations.
Those leaders who participated in this illegal war
of aggression against the Iraqi people should be
brought to justice. Civilised nations, who believe
in justice, have an obligation to arrest and indict
those leaders with war crimes if they entered their
nations.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth Western Australia:
He can be reached at e-mail: G.Hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au
