Bush’s Dog

How curious! U.S. sergeant Gwen Beberg, as she was crushing Iraqis in Baghdad, found in a skip, all alone and abandoned, a dog which she called Ratchet.

Amidst pressures, procedures, and tenderness, the animal arrived in the United States as a hero and a media star. For a few days, this case rescued from oblivion the North American invasion of Iraq which, according to British investigators, has caused one million two hundred thousand fatalities since 2003.

The American occupation of Iraq is a modern day disgrace. Based on lies, the invasion hides sinister stories which turn the North American administration into a genocidal government, and the people of the violated country into martyrs and victims of a superpower. In the mist of disinformation is concealed the saga of the residents of Fallujah, the city of a thousand mosques, bombarded and besieged by the troops; city in which there were massive executions of civilians, among them dozens of children.

Perhaps nobody remembers any longer that in Fallujah (as happened in historical Numantia) the populace had to resort to cannibalism and eat the dead, in the face of the criminal siege of the U.S. soldiers. Perhaps the tortures inflicted by the invaders on the Abu Ghraib detainees disappeared in the general amnesia. Or the bombing with white phosphorus, or the cluster bombs which killed thousands of civilians.

The Iraq invasion, which encountered a heroic resistance of its people, is one of the most horrifying acts of imperialist aggression of recent times, even thought it is disguised as a crusade for liberty and democracy. The already known abuses of Bush and his neoconservative entourage constitute crimes against humanity. Of course for Washington, the fathers of the stories about the weapons of mass destruction and other lies, it was all about bringing “democracy” to Iraq. The generous empire didn’t go there in pursuit of oil and other business, but as the savior of the Iraqi people. In March 2008, five years into the occupation, Bush said without blushing that the invasion “was worth it.”

This is to say that the murder of over one million people, demolition of libraries, destruction of a culture, displacement of over five million human beings, ruined infrastructure, burned millennial testimonies of art and science, and countless other violations were “worth it.” Mentioning the operation “Shock and Awe”, a reporter said that Baghdad was destroyed by true forces of evil: those of Bush who, according to Hugo Chavez, “smells of sulfur.”

Iraq lives in a state of horror and interior commotion. Nevertheless, its people know that no invader of its territory has ever triumphed. Neither the Romans, nor the English. And here I return to the story of Ratchet, saved by a war criminal who was moved by the sad sight of an abandoned dog. Its owners may have been slain by the invading troops.

Last Sunday, at president Bush’s press conference in Baghdad, an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the man who committed what may be the greatest genocide of our times, who sponsored an invasion of a sovereign country and caused the deaths of a million two hundred thousand people. The journalist’s shoes flew, accompanied by a cry: “Dog!” He missed. Maybe Bush deserves more than some shoes: an international condemnation for being a war criminal.

Ah, and we’ll need to apologize to the dogs. I don’t think they’re as heartless as Bush. How curious: an Iraqi dog found its guardian angel in a war criminal who, as it often happens, one day will be decorated, while Iraq will have to submit to the invaders until January 2012, if the resistance doesn’t defeat them earlier, as it did in Vietnam.