Press Action ::: Crystal Clear Message from Iraq: ‘Occupiers Out’

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Crystal Clear Message from Iraq: ‘Occupiers Out’

By Abu Spinoza

The New York Times reported under the headline, “Grisly U.S. Deaths in Iraq,” the following: “Enraged mob attacked four American contractors here today, shooting them to death, burning their vehicles, dragging their bodies through the downtown streets and then hanging the charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.” Mainstream media commentators will no doubt pronounce on the cruelty of the deaths of American civilians in Iraq and blame mysterious “foreign forces” and “terrorists” for these actions.

Whilst an attack on civilians cannot be condoned by anyone, these events pale in comparison to the irrationally enraged, ignorant, imperial power’s own production of “Grisly Iraqi Deaths in Iraq.” The U.S. has attacked and invaded Iraq after years of support for Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran until his invasion of Kuwait. The U.S. followed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait with more than a decade of sanctions, bombing civilians and soldiers to death, burning homes and meticulously destroying infrastructure, and then installing a puppet regime of sycophants and thieves. The U.S. occupiers have imprisoned Iraqi men and women in a style worthy of Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Army inflicts collective punishment on Iraq barb wiring villagers who refuse to cooperate with occupation authorities.

Occupiers are not loved in a country, whether it is Nazi-occupied France, Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, or Israeli-occupied Palestine. So it should be fairly obvious to everyone that in occupied Iraq the Americans and other foreign soldiers and contractors, including civilians, and their local collaborators servicing the U.S. occupation are not welcome. The hatred of the occupiers is widespread among the subjugated population. Jeffrey Gettleman and John F. Burns of New York Times report: “Fallujah’s streets were thick with men and boys and chaos. … ‘Viva mujahadeen!’ shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. ‘Long live the resistance!’ Nearby, a boy no older than 10 put his foot on the head of a body and said: ‘Where is Bush? Let him come here and see this!’ Many people in the crowd said they felt as if they had won an important battle. Others said they thought that the contractors, who were driving in four-wheel-drive trucks, were working for the Central Intelligence Agency. ‘This is what these spies deserve,’ said Salam Aldulayme, a 28-year-old Falluja resident.” The reporters of the New York Times do occasionally report the truth, particularly when it can be buried in the middle of long articles as long as the lead paragraph of the filed story conveys an approving tenor of U.S. policies of imperial arrogance and conquest.

The message from the people of Iraq as shown by their actions and support for the resistance should be crystal clear to all U.S. citizens: “Occupiers Out.” And as the 10-year-old Iraq boy asked: “Where is Bush?” How long can Bush and the Great Power hide behind lies and concoctions?

Bush #2 and Co. and his predecessors, including Bush #1, Clinton, Reagan, Thatcher, Major and Blair, have to face up to the facts that they too are individually and collectively responsible for the deaths of Iraqis due to sanctions, bombings, and wars. If Saddam Hussein will be tried for his crimes, which he surely deserves, there is no reason not to bring to trial those responsible for other crimes and those who aided and abetted Saddam Hussein and other dictators. Those who lied about the weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s alleged capacity to wage war against its neighbors and the United States as pretexts to impose sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and wars deserve to be tried in an international court of law.

If North Americans are at all concerned about the well being of Iraqis and U.S. soldiers and their civilians cohorts, the honorable thing to do is to call for the complete, immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Anglo-American Occupation Forces from Iraq and the dismantling of any puppet regimes that give a veneer of self-rule. The deaths of Iraqis and North Americans are absolutely unnecessary and can be quickly stopped. The way to end futile bloodshed and grisly deaths is to exact an Anglo-American exit from Iraq and hand over power to the legitimate representatives of Iraqi people. Going beyond demonstrations, progressives in North America can take concrete steps to de-legitimize the U.S. occupation of Iraq through sustained political and social mobilization, including electoral strategies to challenge the Republican-Democratic duopoly.

Abu Spinoza is a columnist for Press Action.

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