Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa urged U.S. President Barack Obama to apologize on behalf of the American people for his country’s invasion of Iraq and to adopt a tough position toward dictatorships in Africa.
The Tutu cleric was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. He was always distinguished for telling the truth and for this reason, when he demands that the new U.S. president apologize, he means what he says and his words rest on absolute moral and humanitarian principles.
The previous U.S. administration went to war on Iraq based on lies and campaigns to deceive the American people, trying, as it did, to garner support from global opinion over the invasion. Today, now that the truth has become clear and the lies have been uncovered, and now that the world knows the extent of suffering in Iraq, there must be a brave and bold apology over the disastrous error that was the invasion.
This war led to the martyrdom of more than 1.5 million Iraqis, the displacement of at least five million others, and the rupture of a stable country, which denied its people security and the most basic necessities. These crimes must not go either unrecognized or unpunished.
Desmond Tutu was one of the few voices that warned against the danger of American military advances toward Iraq and the Islamic world. During his visit to the United States, Tutu spoke of how the Israeli Lobby had hijacked the White House and its decision-making circle, making a mockery out of a great power in order to serve Israeli interests, even if this led to the sacrifice of innocents and global stability.
President Obama was one of the fiercest opponents of the war in Iraq and did not abandon this position despite enormous pressure to do so. He has promised the withdrawal of his country’s forces within 16 months, but remains obliged to apologize to both the Iraqi and American people over the war and its material and human losses. Indeed, the American people have lost more than 4,000 of its good children in a war based on lies, and it has also foot the cost of this war, which has now risen above $700 billion.
An apology, despite its importance, is not enough. It needs to be accompanied by financial compensation to Iraqi families who lost their breadwinners and children, just like the United States compelled Germany to pay compensation to Jewish families of Holocaust victims. Why should the latter have obtained more than $100 billion and yet Iraqis are not dealt justice along similar standards, if not with the same amount? Iraqis are still paying Kuwaitis compensation due to the previous regime’s invasion of their country. The cumulative total of compensation paid in this case has now reached roughly $20 billion. If the current Iraqi government does not demand such compensation then it is reliant on Iraqi human rights organizations to act on this issue and turn to the respective international courts concerned with these claims.
you have got to be kidding.
americans think they gave the iraqis their freedom. the invasion and occupation is about oil reserves that we desperatly need in america.
we are building 67 military bases in iraq to maintain control of that oil.
america is broke. its style of reagan capitalism is self destructing.
america’s politicans are telling them it is only a real bad recession. to say anything else would mean you would not get reelected.
I am amazed at how little foreign journalists know about the american culture. we killed over one million vietnamese and did not bat an eye.
oh those protests over the vietnam war that was due to the draft of college students. this time it is a privitized military and private contractors.
americans have drank the industrial military complex kool aid they see themselves as the good guys in this war.
iraq and afgan will be obama’s vietnam. they are a no win situation.