The Tragedy of Iraq
Published in Diário Popular
(Brazil) on 30 October 2010
by João Neutzling Júnior (link to original)
Last week the Swedish non-profit Wikileaks released a report on the many atrocities committed by the U.S. military during the criminal invasion of Iraq. And the Iraqi authorities themselves have publicly stated that the report contained no surprises, as it was known that the American invasion (2003-2009) was a deliberate violation of international law and human rights.
In September 2001, two U.S. commercial airplanes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. This suicide attack was filmed and widely disseminated throughout the media. It is important to remember that there was no visual record of the alleged attack on the Pentagon and a fourth plane that crashed in the vicinity of Pennsylvania.
President George Bush's administration quickly declared that this aggression had been orchestrated by al-Qaeda and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It was enough to trigger a U.S. invasion of the Arab country without UN authorization. The reasons were clear: Iraq was a dictatorship, its government was in violation of the rules of the UN Security Council and Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready for use. The fact is that the strongest dictatorship in the Middle East was and continues to be Saudi Arabia, where there are no opposing parties, no unions, and where even the Red Crescent (the Red Cross of the Arab world) lacks the freedom to act. In Saudi Arabia, there is no independent legislative power and all power is in the hands of King Abd Al Aziz Al Saud.
The only Middle Eastern country which has weapons of mass destruction is Israel, where Mordechai Vanunu (a Jewish nuclear technician) was imprisoned by his own government for revealing to the world the extent of Israel's nuclear program. And finally, the country that most frequently violates UN standards is also Israel, which still occupies the territories of Gaza and the West Bank without giving way to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Both Saudi Arabia and Israel are longtime allies of the U.S. government. The former because of oil and the latter for its political strength. All arguments by the U.S. government are therefore false. America's real interest was in Iraq's oil reserves, which contain over 115 million barrels of the best quality oil.
What followed after the American invasion was a real bloodbath in which more than 600,000 Iraqis were killed directly, by violence or indirectly, due to the destruction of civilian infrastructure. But worst of all was the revelation of the murders and tortures committed by marines in the Abu Ghraib prison, where more than 1,000 Iraqis have been imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Those who survived this hell were sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where prisoners are still held without access to lawyers, in complete disregard of the rules of the Vienna Convention — all of this by order of Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
That Saddam Hussein was a despotic leader was well known, but his brutality was hardly unique. Mohamed Suharto of Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and orchestrated the genocide of over a million and half defenseless people, and neither the UN nor the U.S. government did anything to stop it. Suharto died unpunished in 2008. The invasion of Iraq will go down in history as another chapter of U.S. imperialism and the failure of the UN.
In September 2001, two U.S. commercial airplanes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. This suicide attack was filmed and widely disseminated throughout the media. It is important to remember that there was no visual record of the alleged attack on the Pentagon and a fourth plane that crashed in the vicinity of Pennsylvania.
President George Bush's administration quickly declared that this aggression had been orchestrated by al-Qaeda and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. It was enough to trigger a U.S. invasion of the Arab country without UN authorization. The reasons were clear: Iraq was a dictatorship, its government was in violation of the rules of the UN Security Council and Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready for use. The fact is that the strongest dictatorship in the Middle East was and continues to be Saudi Arabia, where there are no opposing parties, no unions, and where even the Red Crescent (the Red Cross of the Arab world) lacks the freedom to act. In Saudi Arabia, there is no independent legislative power and all power is in the hands of King Abd Al Aziz Al Saud.
The only Middle Eastern country which has weapons of mass destruction is Israel, where Mordechai Vanunu (a Jewish nuclear technician) was imprisoned by his own government for revealing to the world the extent of Israel's nuclear program. And finally, the country that most frequently violates UN standards is also Israel, which still occupies the territories of Gaza and the West Bank without giving way to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Both Saudi Arabia and Israel are longtime allies of the U.S. government. The former because of oil and the latter for its political strength. All arguments by the U.S. government are therefore false. America's real interest was in Iraq's oil reserves, which contain over 115 million barrels of the best quality oil.
What followed after the American invasion was a real bloodbath in which more than 600,000 Iraqis were killed directly, by violence or indirectly, due to the destruction of civilian infrastructure. But worst of all was the revelation of the murders and tortures committed by marines in the Abu Ghraib prison, where more than 1,000 Iraqis have been imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Those who survived this hell were sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where prisoners are still held without access to lawyers, in complete disregard of the rules of the Vienna Convention — all of this by order of Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
That Saddam Hussein was a despotic leader was well known, but his brutality was hardly unique. Mohamed Suharto of Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 and orchestrated the genocide of over a million and half defenseless people, and neither the UN nor the U.S. government did anything to stop it. Suharto died unpunished in 2008. The invasion of Iraq will go down in history as another chapter of U.S. imperialism and the failure of the UN.
This is a pragmatic reporting. Bush is a bigger scoundrel than Saddam was. The fault lines of the whole Middle East lie in the appearance of Israel in the region. Israel came terrorizing in the first place the British Administration in its mandate in Palestine. The story needs no repetition. It is well known that even the British military got so terrorized by the Zionist radicals that Britain ended its mandate prematurely. Israel’s intrusion spread almost anarchy in and around Palestine. This was not how the orthodox Jews had envisaged Jewish return to the holy land. Arabs were caught unawares. The gap of mutual understanding and tolerance between West, led by America, and Middle Eastern Arabs was stretched to the breaking point. American interest in the supply of oil provided a measure of further exploitation of British and French exploitation of occupied Arab countries. Israel’s strong lobby so much influenced American foreign policy framework on Middle East that it became almost blind to the expansion of Israel by continuous grabbing of the West Bank of Palestine. Palestinians’ tragedy led to the strong reaction in the Arab states to confront Israel’s belligerency. American policy completely tilted in Israel’s favor. Iraq tried to seize leadership from Egypt to deal with Israel. Neither the West led by America had a clear vision of Middle East’s future, nor did Israel present its vision of a peaceful Jewish home land. Now President Obama has seen the folly of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the one hand and of the illegal occupation of the West Bank by Israel. Israel has so much grabbed Palestinians country that a plausible solution of two state visions is almost impossible. There are 120 illegal Jewish settlements with half a million settlers in the West Bank. Israel’s weaknesses and its contradictions are likely to result in a tragedy of Israel much similar to Iraq. This needs to shine the light on Israel’s concept of the Promised Land of Jews. But Jews are living in exile through a divine edict. Israel has, therefore, excluded the Hebrew God from its concept to circumvent the exile obstacle. It replaced faith in God at the swearing in ceremony of Israel at its foundation with a symbolic “Rock of Israel.” Little do Israel’s Zionist rulers realize the consequences of this blasphemy? This iniquity of the Zionists might be the end of it in an impending threat of a scourge from the heavens in keeping with the similar punishments with which Jewish history abounds. There is also a real possibility of America being sucked in the maelstrom.