The Resort To Indiscriminate Killings
By Ghali Hassan
01 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org“Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you”.
U.S. President George W. Bush [1].
To prove the sincerity of his message to the Iraqi people, Bush indiscriminately bombed the al-Nasser market in the al-Shu’la [al-Sholeh] residential area in Baghdad on the morning of March 28, 2003, killing more than 60 innocent civilians and injuring many more. This followed by the “Shock and Awe”, the most murderous form of barbaric terrorism. Thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed every day in one of the most premeditated and unprovoked acts of aggression in history. Why the U.S. is resorting to indiscriminate killings of Iraqi civilians?Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire in the U.S. documents in details the March 2003 wanton destruction of Iraq, mass murder of innocent civilians and acts of terrorism committed by the Anglo-American fascist forces against the Iraqi population [2]. Except for the building of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, the Iraqi State was destroyed and the complete looting and burning of the capital Baghdad was rightly described by many people as an “Iraqi Holocaust”.
The atrocity in Iraq exposed the reality of Western “progressives” and their “anti-war” movements. Once the atrocity began, Western moral conscience evaporated. The so-called “Second Superpower” to counter U.S. terror, fell silent and melted away like snow under the summer sun. The new fabricated pretext to justify the silence is Saddam Hussein (and his alleged crimes). Saddam provides a “compass” to normalise and justify greater and more horrendous crimes by the invading forces.
Just few months into the illegal invasion, the UN Security Council – the instrument of U.S. terror against the Iraqi people – rushed to legitimise the Occupation and conquest of Iraq. By legitimising an illegal occupation that was opposed by the majority of the world population, the UN acted against its Charter. It is a true tragedy for world peace that the UN has become a complicit in war crimes against the Iraqi people.
In order to mask the Occupation and manipulate public opinion at home, the U.S. Government installed a Vichy-like puppet government, through fraudulent elections, of course. Those who are close to the Occupation constitute a collection of imported conmen, extremists and thugs, while others are just opportunists. The puppet government has no power and is totally discredited by all Iraqis. Its main role is to play the role of an ‘Arab façade’ serving U.S. imperialist interests and legitimises and illegitimate Occupation. It is proved to be so useful that its incompetence is blamed (by the Bush Administration) for all the Occupation-generated crimes, from the violence and lack of security, to sectarian divisions and mass corruption.
After more than four years of Occupation and countless pretexts to justify the bloodbath, the Occupation, the Occupation is sold as a “war” against “al-Qaeda”, a U.S.-created proxy. The use of al-Qaeda as a bogeyman is designed to fuel a campaign of anti-Muslim hatred and keep the public in a state of fear. More importantly, the use of al-Qaeda obfuscates the presence of a legitimate Iraqi National Resistance and justified the ongoing Occupation of Iraq.
Indeed, George Bush seemed to be obsessed by al-Qaeda and is using it with increased frequency. George Bush claim that the U.S. is fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is simply ludicrous. “We all know now that the U.S. military is using the name of al-Qaeda to cover-[up] attacks against our National Resistance fighters and civilians who wish immediate or scheduled withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq”, Hilmi Saed, an Iraqi journalist from Baghdad told Ali al-Fadhily of Inter Press Service (IPS) in Ba’aqubah.
Of course, there is no hard evidence of al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq. The current extremism in Iraq is the result of U.S. Occupation. It is encouraged because it provides the U.S. and its collaborators with a pretext and as an alternative to the Iraqi Resistance. Even if al-Qaeda exists in Iraq, its deliberately exaggerated presence and role serve U.S. aim to cover-up the deliberate destruction of Iraq, the indiscriminate mass murder of over a million innocent Iraqi civilians and the looting of Iraq’s oil wealth.
As I write these words, U.S. occupying forces and their collaborators, supported by attack helicopters, are sweeping through the province of Diyalah, indiscriminately bombing towns and villages, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and destroying properties. “Most of the dead are women and children”, an Iraqi eyewitness told journalists of McClatchy Newspapers. In nearby town of Husseiniya north of Baghdad, U.S. helicopters attacked a residential area killing 18 civilians and injured 21 more in a deliberate and unprovoked act of aggression. As usual, the town is now “under total siege” by the U.S. military. Meanwhile, in Baghdad, Occupation-sponsored terrorists attacked crowds of Iraqis celebrating the Iraqi national soccer team’s defeat of South Korea at the Asian Cup, killing at least 50 innocent civilians and setting one community against the other. Of course it was a “suicide bomber”, so we are told. Never in its pre-Occupation history has Iraq experienced level of violence.
Furthermore, the indiscriminate attacks on civilians and the wanton destruction of Iraq are forcing more than two thousand Iraqis every day to flee their homes. According to UN Children’s Fund, an estimated 4.2 million Iraqis, half of them children, have fled their homes either as internally displaced refugees or to neighbouring countries: especially Syria and Jordan. Most of them are living in crowded camps under harsh conditions and deprived of their basic human rights.
In Iraq, “Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, health care, education, and employment,” revealed a new report by the British charity group, Oxfam and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI). Some eight million Iraqis are in need of immediate emergency aid, with at least half of the population are living in “absolute poverty”, said the Report. In addition, Iraq is now completely brain-drained and lacks adequate and sufficient human resources to service and care for its citizens. The policy is part of U.S. broader goal in Iraq which is the destruction of Iraq as an independent and civilised society, replaced by a dependent and divided Iraq ruled by fiefdoms separated from each other.
Let’s not forget that the situation in Iraq today is the result of an unprovoked act of aggression based on pretexts proved to be fabricated lies. American leaders (supreme criminals) and their lackeys (Blair, Howard et al.) used and continue using the events of 9/11 in the U.S. to provoke and justify wars of aggression against peoples and nations who had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of 9/11. They are committing war crimes and should be held accountable and put on trial for their crimes. The few soldiers who are on display in a show trial are merely a propaganda ploy to divert public attention away from the supreme criminals.
The majority of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq are poor underprivileged White and Black and Hispanic Americans who have been enlisted to escape poverty; others are illegal immigrants lured by the attraction of a green card or U.S. citizenship in exchange for service in Iraq; increasing numbers of U.S. military are convicted criminals (‘felons’) who have been offered to choose between going to prison and serving in the army. According to the New York Times; “The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the US Army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide”, (NYT, 14 February 2007).
Nick Turse of TomDispatch describes U.S. military in these words: “U.S. ground forces are increasingly made up of a motley mix of under-age teens, old-timers, foreign fighters, gang-bangers, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, ex-cons, inferior officers and a host of near-mercenary troops, lured in or kept in uniform through big payouts and promises”, (Asia Times, 16 September 2006). Overall, they are skilfully brain-washed and indoctrinated in a culture of violence and racism reinforced once the soldiers arrived in Kuwait. “We make our heroes out of clay. We laud their gallant deeds and give them uniforms with colored ribbons on their chest for the acts of violence they committed or endured. They are our false repositories of glory and honor, of power, of self-righteousness, of patriotism and self-worship, all that we want to believe about ourselves. …” writes Chris Hedges in Adbusters magazine in Vancouver, Canada. It is no longer a national army force defending the motherland; but a heavily-armed mercenary force trained to commit crimes against defenceless peoples.
In addition, the Pentagon use of “private army” of mercenaries has increased the atrocity in Iraq. There are more mercenaries in Iraq now than soldiers. Their number range from 160,000 to 180,000. They are immune from prosecution and operating outside the law. Since their arrival in Iraq to serve the Occupation, mercenaries have been involved in heinous crimes against Iraqi civilians. The indiscriminate murder of peaceful Iraqi protesters in Najef in April 2004 by Blackwater mercenaries was a case in point. No one has been brought to justice.According to Jeremy Scahill, (author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army); “For the [mercenaries] in Iraq, immunity and impunity are welded together”. Mercenaries “fill a gap attributable to insufficient troop levels available to an overstretched military”, wrote Scahill, quoting David Petraeus, the general in charge of the Occupation. The use of mercenaries pacifies the public and removes anti-war sentiment at home. There is no patriotism in mercenary wars; the victims are “only Iraqis”.
A recent investigation by The Nation magazine [3] sheds a dim light on the deliberate war crimes committed against Iraqi civilians and on the attitudes of the Anglo-American fascist forces towards the Iraqi people. As Specialist Josh Middleton described these attitudes to The Nation investigators; “[I]f they don’t speak English and they have darker skin, they’re not as human as us, so we can do what we want [to them]”. Any Nazi soldier or Schutzstaffel (SS) could have said the same about Jews. The massacres of Iraqi civilians at Haditha, Samarra, Fallujah were not aberrations, countless of massacres and war crimes continue on a daily basis.
There is no way the Bush Administration didn’t know about these crimes. The dehumanisation of Iraqis was an essential part of the aggression against Iraq. Like the torture and abuses of Iraqi civilians, these massacres of innocent Iraqi civilians are not the actions of “a few bad apples”; they are the responsibility of the Bush Administration. According to investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, quoting a Pentagon consultant; the Bush Administration “basic strategy was ‘prosecute the [few] kids in the photographs but protect the big picture’”.
In October 2006, the peer-reviewed British medical journal, The Lancet published an epidemiological study conducted by physicians Al-Mustansiriyah School of Medicine in Baghdad and Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins University. The study, which has been praised by the British government scientific officer, found that an “underestimation” rate of 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children were killed by U.S. forces since the March 2003 aggression. This means that at least 15,000 innocent Iraqis killed every month during the 39 months of the Occupation covered by The Lancet study. Figures released by the U.S. military and other sources show that between 300 and 500 Iraqi civilians killed each day by U.S. troops and their collaborators. However, despite all the evidence, the atrocity remains hidden from the general public.
Concerted efforts by Western leaders and mainstream media blackout are keeping the public unaware and misinformed about the atrocity in Iraq. The indiscriminate killings of innocent Iraqi civilians are justified by portraying and framing Iraqis as “insurgents”, “militants”, “terrorists” and “Islamists”. Indeed, journalists who travel to the Middle East and pretend to write about the situation there are unable to examine the root causes. They only see the Middle East through an inherently imperialist and racist lens.
Since the publication of The Lancet study, the atrocity has increased dramatically and the death rate of Iraqi civilians could be much higher. According to eyewitnesses, U.S. soldiers and mercenaries randomly and indiscriminately fired on cars and children. The soldiers are often supported by attack helicopters indiscriminately firing on any gathering of people resulting in many deaths. “The killing of unarmed Iraqis was so common many of the troops said it become an accepted part of [U.S.-created] daily landscape”, revealed The Nation investigation [3].
Furthermore, the indiscriminate killings of Iraqi civilians have increased during U.S. massive military assaults in 2006 and 2007, including the recent U.S. “surge”, a euphemism for increase in armours and troop numbers. Before each military assault, towns and villages were cut-off, bombed and besieged, and civilians were prevented from leaving their homes. Countless Iraqi towns and villages were deliberately and indiscriminately bombed by U.S. forces using legally banned weapons of mass destruction, including White Phosphorous, Napalm bombs, ‘Depleted’ Uranium (DU), killing large number of civilians and destroying homes and vital infrastructures. (See: Field Artillery, March - April, 2005; The Independent, 10 August, 2003).
In addition, air attacks on population centres have intensified in recent months. A fivefold in air attacks on residential areas show that U.S. aircraft dropped more bombs and missiles in the first four and a half months of 2007 than all of last year. At the same time, the number of Iraqi civilian casualties from U.S. air strikes appears to have increased sharply, a reminder of the U.S.-made bloodbath in Vietnam.
Finally, the war on Iraq is not “a vast and complicated enterprise” or “quagmire”, as the mainstream media and Western pundits like to describe the atrocity. War has become a euphemism for propaganda. There is no war in Iraq. Iraq is under a murderous foreign Occupation; the highest form of fascist dictatorship. Iraqis are the world’s most deprived people today. The U.S. can and has the resources and power to end the Occupation and stop the atrocity by implementing a full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq.
The U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq illegally by force of arms. Hence, the Iraqi armed Resistance is necessary in the face of U.S. armed aggression, as self-defence against foreign oppressors. The Iraqi people had no option, but to resist the Occupation. It is the only path to peace and freedom.
President Bush’s 2003 declaration of an open aggression on all Iraqis was a war crime. The U.S. resort to indiscriminate killings of Iraqi civilians in an attempt to pacify the Iraqi population and defeat the Iraqi Resistance has failed.
The only card left to play safely is the immediate and full withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq. While the Anglo-American leaders remain unindicted for the war crimes they committed against the Iraqi people, they are obliged to pay reparations to help Iraqis return to at least pre-invasion living conditions.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
Endnotes:[1] George W. Bush. “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation”, The White House, 17 March, 2003.
[2] Marc W. Herold. “The evil, the grotesque and U.S. lies”. Frontline, vol. 20 (9). April-May, 2003.
[3] Chris Hedges & Laila AL-Arian. “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness”. The Nation, 30 July, 2007.
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