We Should Not Have Allowed 19 Murderers to Change our World

Published on Saturday, September 11, 2004 by the lndependent/UK

We Should Not Have Allowed 19 Murderers to Change our World
by Robert Fisk

 
So, three years after the international crimes against humanity in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania we were bombing Fallujah. Come again? Hands up those who knew the name of Fallujah on 11 September 2001. Or Samarra. Or Ramadi. Or Anbar province. Or Amarah. Or Tel Afar, the latest target in our "war on terror'' although most of us would find it hard to locate on a map (look at northern Iraq, find Mosul and go one inch to the left). Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

Three years ago, it was all about Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida; then, at about the time of the Enron scandal ­ and I have a New York professor to thank for spotting the switching point ­ it was Saddam and weapons of mass destruction and 45 minutes and human rights abuses in Iraq and, well, the rest is history. And now, at last, the Americans admit that vast areas of Iraq are outside government control. We are going to have to "liberate" them, all over again. Like we reliberated Najaf and Kufa, "to kill or capture Muqtada Sadr'', according to Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, and like we lay siege to Fallujah back in April when we claimed, or at least the US Marines did, that we were going to eliminate "terrorism'' in the city. In fact, its local military commander has since had his head chopped off by the insurgents and Fallujah, save for an occasional bloody air raid, remains outside all government control.

These past two weeks, I've been learning a lot about the hatred Iraqis feel towards us. Troweling back through my reporter's notebooks of the 1990s, I've found page after page of my hand-written evidence of Iraqi anger; fury at the sanctions which killed half a million children, indignation by doctors at our use of depleted uranium shells in the 1991 Gulf War (we used them again last year, but let's take these things one rage at a time) and deep, abiding resentment towards us, the West. One article I wrote for The Independent in 1998 asked why Iraqis do not tear us limb from limb, which is what some Iraqis did to the American mercenaries they killed in Fallujah last April.

But we expected to be loved, welcomed, greeted, fêted, embraced by these people. First, we bombarded Stone Age Afghanistan and proclaimed it "liberated", then we invaded Iraq to "liberate" Iraqis too. Wouldn't the Shia love us? Didn't we get rid of Saddam Hussein? Well, history tells a different story. We dumped the Sunni Muslim King Feisal on the Shia Muslims in the 1920s. Then we encouraged them to rise against Saddam in 1991, and left them to die in Saddam's torture chambers. And now, we reassemble Saddam's old rascals, their torturers, and put them back in power to "fight terror'', and we lay siege to Muqtada Sadr in Najaf. --- http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0911-09.htm

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The sad thing is that the Democrats are just as much to blame as the Bush* cabal...for turning their backs on a nation in need of strong leadership in the face of tyranny.

,...not perfect or all-knowing or "righteous".

Start from reality that,...we are taking our best stabs at the unknown,...need to accept that reality,...know that the best way to conquer the unknown is by holding onto eachother,...

,...and the future is secured by our finally deciding to embrace one another,...today,..............

And Cheney has made a threat to let it happen again if we do not sucumb to their fascism. I say we are as wimpy as Bu$h if we let it happen. (These fascist ruin our country that is.)
Peace
Wildman
Al Gore is My President

When I read your title, I thought this was about the Bush cabal.