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Iraq’s Occupation:
A Form Of Terrorism

By Ghali Hassan

29 May, 2008
Countercurrents.org

The overwhelming majority of Iraqis in Iraq and outside Iraq wants U.S. troops and mercenaries to leave their country. However, the U.S. refused to abide by international law and respects the Iraqi people rights to self-determination. The stated justification for the ongoing Occupation is that a withdrawal of U.S. troops and mercenaries would result in increased violence. Evidence shows that the Occupation is the source of violence and terror against the Iraqi people.

For the purpose of this article, the definition of terrorism is necessary. The English language dictionaries defined terrorism as: “Violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, carried out by states or individuals for political purposes”.

According to the ‘academic’ definition: “Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby – in contrast to assassination – the direct targets of violence are not the main targets”.

Finally, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff publication, defines terrorism as: “The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against people or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives”. Is it terrorism what the U.S. doing in Iraq?

Since the 2003 U.S.-Britain illegal aggression against the Iraqi people, reliable sources estimate that nearly 1.5 million innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed, the majority of the victims are women and children. Meanwhile, as a result of the Occupation-generated violence at least 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced, according to UNHCR estimates. Of these, more than 2.6 million Iraqis are displaced internally displaced persons (IDPs), while more than 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries, particularly Syria and Jordan. Iraq’s entire civilian infrastructure and services, including health care services and the education system have been destroyed. The Occupation has transformed Iraqi society from a peaceful pluralistic society into a sectarian society characterised by fratricidal killing and political violence.

Immediately after the invasion, U.S. forces and U.S.-trained death squads launched a deliberate and systematic reign of terror (dubbed ‘de-Ba’athification’) designed to terrorise the Iraqi population and destroy the Iraqi nation. Thousands of Iraqi professionals, including scientists, academics, teachers and doctors were murdered in cold blood. Mass graves of innocent Iraqis are unearthed regularly around the country with hundreds of unidentified bodies. Recently, Hearth al-Unaided, a member of the so-called Human Rights Commission in the Iraqi Parliament, told the Iraqi daily, Azzman: “On our lists there are 4,000 people who have gone missing. And these people, according to their relatives, were taken away by armed groups wearing Iraqi military or police uniform”. In addition, every day since the invasion, hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Iraqi civilians are killed in a series of intensified and indiscriminate U.S. bombing on densely-populated population centres. The Washington Post (May 22, 2008) revealed that a surge in “cowardly American bombings” of civilians designed to terrorise the Iraqi population and keeps ground troops inside their fortified military bases protected from legitimate Resistance attacks.

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis are languishing in a web of Gulag-like prisons and torture centres run by U.S. occupying forces and their Iraqi militias throughout Iraq. Iraqi prisoners, including women and children are held without charge and without due process in flagrant violation of international human rights law. They are subjected to mental and physical torture and sexual abuses at the hand of U.S. forces and their collaborators. In addition, countless neighbourhoods of Iraqi cities have became open-air prisons and Ghettos surrounded by concrete walls and checkpoints. Using international law and UN Conventions, scholars such as Ian Douglas and David Model have established that the U.S. is deliberately committing genocide in Iraq while at the same time manipulating and diverting the world away from its crimes. “In pursuing a policy of genocide in Iraq the United States has committed moral suicide”, wrote Douglas. (See Link for full report). For years, the U.S. Administration has cover-up the genocide in Iraq through ongoing dehumanisation of the Iraqi people and by successfully diverting public attention away from the atrocity in Iraq towards other less important issues such as Iran’s nonexistent nuclear program using a sophisticated political propaganda campaign.

The Slovenian “Renowned Philosopher”, Slavoj Zizek, argued that the U.S. invaded Iraq to “defundamentalize" the country, introduce “a secular democracy” in the region and “contains” Iran. Unfortunately, the ultimate result in Iraq is the “exact opposite”, added Zizek. Of course, it is a political propaganda. The U.S. encourages and supports fundamentalism because fundamentalism serves U.S. goal of spreading and nurturing instability. Saddam was far from a fundamentalist. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a functioning independent nation. Saddam presided over a stable welfare state when its many ethnic groups were living in harmony, unconcerned about political rivalry. Women rights were respected and encouraged. Iraqis have seen a lot of political activism, but they have never seen the kind of extremism introduced by the U.S. The U.S. fomented civil strife and turned Iraqis against each other, an imperialist agenda favoured by Israeli Zionists. Secondly, to describe the U.S. illegal aggression as a “mistake”, “incompetence” or a “blunder” is to mislead and convince the world that the destruction of Iraq and the mass murder of Iraqi civilians were not intentional. It is like saying: Hitler was a nice guy; he just made few unintentional mistakes. Evidence shows that the main aim of the U.S. unprovoked aggression and Occupation of Iraq is the destruction of the Iraqi nation, control over Iraq’s oil resources and support for Israel’s Zionist policies. The war has eliminated (for the time being) Iraq, once an independent powerful force in the Middle East. One can’t claim to be a serious scholar and at the same time characterises a war of aggression and a murderous Occupation as a “mistake”, “incompetence” or a “blunder”. If the U.S. failed in all its objectives in Iraq, it is because of the Iraqi people Resistance and refusal to submit to U.S.-Zionist agenda.

It is important to remember that while there have been no significant differences between successive U.S. administrations since World War II, the regime of George W. Bush is the most fascist regime since the fall of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Just because the Bush regime hasn’t committed war crimes against Jews, it doesn’t mean it is not guilty of horrendous war crimes against Muslims. During his Presidency, George Bush waged wars of aggression against defenceless nations, and threatened to attack others. In Iraq alone, the Bush regime killed and maimed millions of innocent civilians and carried out unlawfully and wantonly destruction to vital Iraqi civilian properties. The Bush regime’s practice of torture is the most abhorrent of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses. Like Hitler’s Third Reich, the U.S. is the most militarised country in the world and the most aggressive and extremist. The Bush regime intends to conquer the world, threatening with violence and forcing other nations to submit to U.S. hegemony.

At home, the Bush regime surrendered to big corporations, persecuting Muslims and enacted repressive policies and destroyed social services. To promote its wars of aggression, the Bush regime relays on a subservient global propaganda machine that dwarfs the Nazis’ propaganda machine. In today’s sophisticated propaganda, the daily news and information are controlled by a handful of giant media corporations that are in collusion with the Bush regime to manipulate the public in order to support U.S. hegemony. With journalists, academics and pundits are variously in collusion with or are coerced by the government even the most ‘educated’ segment of Western society, including American is indoctrinated and manipulated. Everything is simplified as ‘us’ against ‘them’. Americans may think George Bush is a “patriot”, but for the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Somalia, George Bush is a murderous tyrant, a war criminal worse than Adolf Hitler.

The ongoing Occupation of Iraq is an illegitimate murderous Occupation because it is in flagrant violation of the Iraqi people rights and is based on an illegal act of aggression condemned by the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations and people. The U.S.-installed “Iraqi government” is not a government per se. It is a Vichy regime or a puppet government and has no credibility among the Iraqi people. It rightly lacks any recognition by most Muslim nations. In brief, the puppet government is a collection of revenge-seeking expatriate criminals, conmen, corrupt businessmen and religious extremists. Their loyal militias were trained and armed by the U.S., Britain and Iran before they joined the invaders and brought into Iraq on the back of U.S.-British tanks during the illegal invasion of a once sovereign nation. Without any political standing that is acceptable to the Iraqi people, they are housed in the U.S.-fortified “Green Zone” and protected by the occupying forces. Their survival is parasitic and depends on the Occupation. Hence, the Bush regime is able to continue its colonial Occupation of Iraq. The puppeteers are easily manipulated and bribed to implement U.S.-Zionist agenda in Iraq. They are signing secret deals and “agreements” – far from the eyes of the media and the Iraqi people – with the Bush regime and cronies to sell Iraq’s resources and prolong the Occupation. (See the Link). As a reward for their services to the Occupation, members of the puppet government are often paraded on TV cameras and depicted as Iraq’s new “democratic government” in order to provide legitimacy for the murderous Occupation and U.S.-imposed hegemony on the region. It is an Iraqi façade used to legitimise the Occupation and manipulate public opinion outside Iraq.

Meanwhile, U.S. forces and the so-called “Iraqi Army” - a collection of poor young men lured by lack of employment to serve the Occupation – and the puppet government militias (the ‘Occupation Dogs’) are attacking Baghdad’s neighbourhood of Sadr City and the northern city of Mosul resulting in horrendous destruction and death to Iraqi civilians. The violent campaign is designed to ‘pacify’ (a.k.a. to terrorise) the Iraqi civilian population. Using all means, including the most criminal, U.S. troops and their collaborators are destroying Iraqi towns and cities across Iraq. The two-month attacks against the people of Sadr City forced around 6,000 people to flee their homes. Up to 150,000, half of them children are said to be cut off from aid in areas isolated by the U.S. military. Medical care has been destroyed by U.S. missile strike that also destroyed several ambulances at Sadr City’s main hospital.

The 1.7 million citizens of Mosul have been without drinking water and electricity as part of a collective punishment policy against the population in a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing by the U.S.-controlled Kurdish militia. More than 3000 men have been detained - without charge and for no good reason - in Baghdad and Mosul by the U.S. occupying forces and taken to prisons and torture centres. The stated justification for the ongoing violence and destruction is that the U.S. is protecting Iraqi civilians from the phantom of “al-Qaeda”, a convenient scapegoat to target the Iraqi Resistance and Iraqi anti-Occupation forces. However, evidence show that the U.S. is deliberately generating violence by financing, arming and inciting different groups against each other.

According to Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post (December 19, 2007); “Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of ‘occupying forces’ as the key to national reconciliation”. According to DeYoung (citing a study by focus groups conducted for the U.S. military); ‘the current strife [U.S.-generated violence] in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades -- as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years.’ The report provides very strong evidence that; “A sense of ‘optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups … and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis’”. So, the pretext that the U.S. is in Iraq “to prevent” civil war is an outright lie. It is the presence of U.S. troops which prevents peaceful reconciliation between the different Iraqi communities. There has never been a civil war in Iraq. With longstanding national and cultural traditions, Iraqis share common beliefs and values, and have shown the capacity to live together peacefully free of U.S. oppression. There is simply no argument left to justify the ongoing murderous Occupation of Iraq.

The ongoing murderous Occupation of Iraq is a form of terrorism aimed at terrorising and intimidating the entire Iraqi society in order to impose a client regime subservient to U.S.-Israeli interests. While Iraqis have suffered most of U.S. terrorism violence, the U.S. aggression is an aggression against the whole of humanity. The only way to save Iraqis from terrorism violence is to end the U.S. Occupation of Iraq by an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops and mercenaries from the country.

The responsibility remains for the U.S. and its allies to pay reparations for the damage and the unimaginable suffering they have caused to the Iraqi people. Moreover, it is not too late for George Bush, his gang and his accomplices to be held accountable for a war of aggression, terrorism and crimes against humanity.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.


 


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