End the War on Freedom

"All it takes to masquerade as a patriot while keeping a straight face is Guile. One need only steer His Nation, like his sailboat, a little at a time, tack across the wind, but never against it." -- Lysander X

Wolfesblog is Claire Wolfe's new weblog at clairewolfe.com. Yay! Added to my links page. [jpfo]

Iraq Body Count is "a human security project to establish an independent and comprehensive public database of civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003." I added a counter in the right-hand column of this page below the calendar and the "Find" button. There are a number of different counters here that you can put on your web site. [whatreallyhappened]

"We don't do body counts" -- General Tommy Franks, US Central Command

Wolfgang P. May at Strike the Root - Collateral Damage - Mr. May learned the face of "collateral damage" in Vietnam. He tells that story and offers this poem: [rrnd]

The War Around Us

About war much has been written,
more must yet be said by those
who saw them die,
so that the dead may rest,
and sight be gained
to see war for what it was and is:

War is not fighting,
though fighting's what we see,
nor is it death, for death is but it's end.
It is the rancor of disunited hearts,
the death of love,
the end of hope.

The war around us echoes in our hearts
and grants it life.
Once, mortals dared to tame this ancient beast,
and yet it thrives.
Each age must fight this force again,
or pay its price.

Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com - A No-Winner - it ain't no cake-walk. The U.S. may win the war, but it won't turn out how our "leaders" want. [rrnd]

"As the convoy of British tanks and trucks rolled by, the Iraqi boys on the side of the road were all smiles and waves. But once it had passed, leaving a trail of dust and grit in its wake, their smiles turned to scowls. 'We don't want them here,' said 17-years-old Fouad, looking angrily up at the plumes of gray smoke rising from the embattled southern city of Basra, under attack from U.S. and British forces for more than two days. He pulled a piece of paper from the waistband of his trousers. Unfolding it, he held up a picture of Saddam Hussein. 'Saddam is our leader. Saddam is good,' he said defiantly, looking again at his well-worn picture showing the Iraqi leader with a benign smile, sitting on a majestic throne."

This was in southern Iraq, near Basra, the scene of a Shi'ite rebellion that was brutally crushed back in 1991,where the Americans expected to be greeted as heroes: one can only imagine how many Fouads there are in the north, closer to the seat of Saddam's power.

...

One hundred miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi civilian militia engaged the invaders for more than seven hours, armed only with machineguns mounted on pick-up trucks. "It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know why they don't just surrender," said U.S. Army Colonel Mark Hildenbrand.

His bafflement is the reason why the Americans cannot, in the end, win this war. Why do people fight against overwhelming odds, even when they know it's hopeless? The Colonel can't figure it out, and neither can his superiors. But any street-smart homie could tell them to expect a fight to the death when attacking some else's turf.

This war was never a fair fight. Iraq is a fifth-rate power, shrunken in military prowess by at least 30 percent since Gulf War I. But there are millions of Fouads in Iraq, and they are fighting back. Not for Saddam, or for the Baath Party, but due to the most basic of human instincts: hatred of foreign invaders. No amount of "shock and awe" will erase it from their hearts. Even after an American "victory," it will smolder, and its smoke will rise up and make the very air unbreathable for the occupiers.

...

It is a war that cannot be won, even if "victory" is declared: in the long run we will be driven out of the Middle East, just as the Marines were driven out of Beirut, just as the British were driven out, and the Crusaders before them. The quicksands of that volatile region will be the graveyard of America's imperial ambition. The first week of this war is a bitter preview of what lies in store for us into the indefinite future.

But it isn't too late to change the course of history. The anti-war movement must organize peaceful, legal, and massive rallies against this war, calling for a negotiated settlement. Catholics and others must appeal to the Holy Father to personally intervene. A campaign to petition the UN is not out of order. Every candidate for office must be pressured, relentlessly, and forced to take a stand one way or the other.

Vin Suprynowicz at the Las Vegas Review-Journal - When do we start negotiating the peace? - reflections on two recent killings by cops. [rrnd]

Cops are necessary. Most cops are decent folk. But they should make a list of the laws that are turning our streets into a war zone of "Us Against Them," troop up to the state Legislature, and say, "Let's repeal about 90 percent of this stuff. My granddad walked a beat in an even bigger city 60 years ago; he used to whistle and say 'Hi' to all the folks and rescue kittens from trees, and he never had to pull his gun once, in 30 years on the beat. Something has gone seriously wrong in America. If this is a war, when do we start to negotiate the peace?"

William Rivers Pitt at truthout - Now, I Am the Terrorist - the bombing of Baghdad is a terrorist atrocity. If you support this war, you are a terrorist. [rrnd]

Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, when asked by a reporter whether the Iraqi people would cheer Americans after this attack, stated that Baghdad's civilians would welcome us. This defies known history in Japan and Germany and Vietnam; those populations, after absorbing saturation bombing, hardened their resistance. American television purported to show Iraqi civilians cheering a soldier who tore down a picture of Hussein, but a Sky News reporter walking Baghdad's streets reported that, to a man, everyone he spoke with spat hatred and derision for this American attack.

On September 11th, I sat in numb horror as the images of carnage unfolded before me on the television. On that day, I was the victim of terrorism, along with every other American. Today, I sit in numbed horror as more carnage unfolds. Hundreds of massive missiles have rained down on a city far away, killing indiscriminately among the young, the infirm, the old and the innocent. My government did this. My nation did this. My leaders did this. Today, I am the terrorist.

So are you.

Sherman H. Skolnick - Most Forbidden Subject - The U.S. Military - concerning black chattel slavery in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the Highway of Death. As usual with Mr. Skolnick, remember your grain of salt. [birdman]

At the close of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, upwards of 150 thousand Iraqi conscript troops were going back to Iraq while, in effect, under a white flag of surrender. On the "Highway of Death" occurred the most ghastly war crime in the history of the world. President Daddy Bush ordered U.S. military aircraft and ground units to kill these surrendering troops by shooting them in the back, from the air and on the ground. (Was this done by all-white units? There is reason to believe so.) U.S. Military bulldozers were ordered by Bush to bury these slaughtered surrendering Iraqi troops, some of them still alive, in mass, unmarked graves in the desert. Years later one of those so ordered to commit what amounted to war crimes, told me,off the record, with tears in his eyes, his great regrets in retrospect having carried out such an order. Somewhere between 50 to 150 thousand Iraqis thus surrendering were butchered. The American monopoly press, under "war-time" censorship, was ordered to remove from all pictures any showing of dead Iraqi bodies and to show only blown up tanks, military trucks, and such on the "Highway of Death".

Add comment Edit post Add post