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Racism as Prelude to War Crimes
By Ghali Hassan
January 2, 2005


Americans "have borne 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq". John Kerry, US
Democrat.



As a result of the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq, more
than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed — half of them women and
children. Eighty-four per cent of the deaths were caused by the actions of
the Americans and the British, and 95 per cent of these were killed by air
attacks and artillery fire; thousands more are imprisoned and tortured; the
lives of millions more have been wrecked.
In addition, the conditions of child health in US-occupied Iraq today are
even worse than during the genocidal years of sanctions. Acute malnutrition
among Iraqi children between the ages of six months and 5 years has
doubled, and over 400,000 Iraqi children are suffering from conditions of
chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiency.
The pretext for this wanton of destruction was few lies fabricated in
Washington and London. Iraqi civilians have been massacred by US-British
weapon of mass destructions (WMDs). In addition to the use of weapons made
from radioactive waste or 'Depleted Uranium' (DU), the US and Britain are
using internationally banned WMDs such as napalm and cluster bombs in
heavily populated urban areas like Baghdad, Fallujah and Mosul.
Since 1991, Iraq tried rationally to build its good relation with the rest
of the world, and Iraq has made very significant commitment to destroy it
weapons of defence. Countless reports by UN and US officials have now
confirmed that Iraq was defenceless nation and free from any WMDs since
1991. Genocide was in the making.
According to Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq between
1991 and 1998, "By 2002, on the eve of the US-led invasion, Baghdad was
full of booming businesses, restaurants were full, and families walked
freely along well-lit parks. Compare and contrast that image with the
reality of Baghdad [and the whole of Iraq] today". They "hate our freedom",
said George Bush.
These crimes committed for no reasons other than to spread fear and terror
upon defenceless people. These crimes are justified in American/Western
psyches on the basis that Iraqis are not white and therefore "unpeople",
and that Iraqis "do not value life as we value life in the US/West". It
follows, that the element of racism against non-white and Muslims in policy
formation should not be discounted. It is alive in every institution of
power.
In all US-British wars against other nations, "generally, with the
exception of Serbs, the victims of Pentagon firepower have been people of
colour who've looked different than the USA's white majority and power
structure. In the United States, racial biases have helped to grease the
war machinery", wrote Norman Solomon of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
"Meanwhile, inside the policy arena, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are
frequently in front of cameras to personify Uncle Sam in blackface". The
best warmongering PR ever produced.
The soldiers who are the tools of US-Britain wars are recruited from
working-class, low-income disfranchised whites, blacks and Latinos. They
are recruited from isolated and marginalized communities and towns affected
by the economic recession and the downturn sweeping the US and Britain with
employment opportunities steadily decreasing. It is assumed that life in
the army is the only way out of their misery into "better" life.
These soldiers are recruited to fight wars orchestrated by the elites and
rich white Anglo-Americans to spread their ideology of conquest and fear.
"You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish
to have", Donald Rumsfeld told one of his "death fearing" soldiers asking
about the lack of equipment and inadequate protection. The Secretary of
Defence forgot that it was the Bush administration that decided to go to
war against Iraq not the poor soldiers. Does Rumsfeld cares more about his
wars than the soldiers fighting it?
Soldiers who are exposed to chemical and radioactive weapons in
contaminated battlefields are considered "throw away soldiers", who are
dispensed with once exposed, and replaced by others who become throw away
in their turn with risks of cancer, deformed children from genetic damage
and serious health problems, wrote Professor Niloufer Bhagwat of Indian
Association of Lawyers. Soldiers who desert during wartime and get caught
are usually thrown in jail for years. The penalty under the US law is
execution. The children of the leaders of the war on Iraq are studying in
Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, nearly 300,000
US veterans are homeless on any given night, and almost half of those are
Vietnam veterans, who participated in previous US atrocity against
demonised innocent people.
Ordinary "soldiers are pilloried. White House officials are promoted. The
cost of hypocrisy in the billowing prison abuse scandal has not mattered
much up to now. Tomorrow we might care a lot more. The next victim of the
hypocrisy could be you or me", wrote Derrick Jackson of The Boston Globe.
The Bush administration is prosecuting the "few bad apples" stationed in
the Abu Ghraib, while defending the larger process of war and systemic
torture.
The systemic torture of Iraqi civilians and prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib
which was introduced by the US have now "survived its public exposure",
opined The Washington Post. Its chief torturer, Donald Rumsfeld and his
deputy, the Zionist Paul Wolfowitz remain in their jobs perpetuating this
systemic violation of human rights, and planning their next attack.
Furthermore, the Washington Post reported, that a report by retired Colonel
Stuart Harrington found that Special Operations and CIA task force members
abused Iraqi prisoners throughout that nation in secret facilities. The
report found that the US military sweeps of thousands of people off the
streets were so indiscriminate that they were "counterproductive to the
coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry".
The crimes of torture and murder of innocent Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison
are not the work of a few bad apples who are on TV trial for their actions,
this kind of crimes could not have taken place without orders from leaders
in the Bush administration. The leaders of those nations who are
perpetuating an illegal war and occupation are committing crimes against
the Iraqi people. Their actions and policy are copied from the US and
British textbooks of racism, and imperial conquest.

Around the world, and particularly in the Developing World, the photographs
"have strengthened the feeling that there is a deep racism underlying the
occupiers' attitudes to Arabs, Muslims and [other coloured people]
generally", wrote the Egyptian novelist, Ahdaf Soueif. She noted that "the
acts in the photos being flashed across the [TV] networks would not have
taken place but for the profound racism that infects the American and
British establishments".
A senior British officer in Iraq told a reporter about the attitude of the
U.S. military toward the Iraqi people, "My view and the view of the British
chain of command is that the Americans use of violence is not proportionate
and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the
Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as 'untermenschen'. They
are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life". 'Untermenschen', a
Hitler-derived term used by the Nazis to describe Jews, Romanies and Slavs
as inferior human beings. However, the way the British see Iraqis is much
more settled.
The British Prime Minister, Tony Blaire told the House of Common before the
invasion, "these [Iraqis] are different people, they are not like us, they
don't behave the way we behave". Few weeks later, his army participated in
the slaughter and torture of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. The
'pall of racism...hovering over' Middle East affairs under all British
governments from Churchill to Blair. In the 1920s British occupation of
Iraq, Churchill was quoted as saying, "the Iraqis, like all Arabs, were
"niggers", against whom poison gas could be used. Does Blair call Churchill
"an evil man"?
The West hasn't really changed very much; the Jews of yesterday are the
Muslims of today. Only time has changed. George Bush's ill-defined "War on
Terror" is now a euphemism for an ideological war against Muslims around
the world. Here in the land of the most insignificant of the "coalition of
the willing", and in many other countries, the War on Terror has been
internalised without question. The introduction of the so-called "terrorism
laws" that solely targeting Muslims is one case in point.
Governments-induced fear is turning citizens of one nation against each
other. A recent US survey conducted by Cornell University in New York found
that nearly half of all Americans believe the US government should restrict
the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans. Poor Muslims, even in their "Land
of the Free", are easy targets. Patriotism is 'bringing the war home'.
In order to deny the world the full scale of civilian deaths, and make the
atrocity in Iraq palatable to Americans and Western consumers, US
authorities have barred journalists and aid workers from entering the city
of Fallujah before the US assault and massacre begun there. All Iraqi men
aged between 14 to 60 years of age were prevented from leaving the city.
'The full force of America's arsenal of terror, including F-16s, C-130s,
Abrams tanks, and Apache Helicopters were unleashed on the city' writes
Mike Whitney. The City of 300,000 people has been bombed to rubble by all
kinds of terror bombs. The Red Cross estimated that more than 6000
civilians have been killed in the assault made no headlines in Western
media.
In addition, the media remain silent and downplayed the most credible
report by the British medical journal, The Lancet, which estimated more
than 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The report excludes the atrocity
of Fallujah. Unlike the death toll from the latest Tsunami in South-East
Asia, which has morphed into an urge to hear more updates and to see more
TV footages, the death of innocent Iraqi women and children is
systematically ignored. The "stingy" outcry over natural disaster, and
complete silence over the US-made disaster(s) is the West self-induced
moral hypocrisy. Uninterrupted and in full view, we can see all the "beasts
in Samaritan's clothing" helping those who once called the "Asian hordes".
This deliberate media ignorance is followed because George Bush believes
that the death of Iraqi women and children is "inflaming [public] opinion
throughout the country" and the world. These are the "moral values" that
the American people were concerned with when they voted for President Bush.
Any one observing US atrocities in Iraq and Palestine knows what are these
American moral values that Bush is defending.
The Canadian author and journalist, Naomi Klein rightly described the
attitudes of her big neighbours, Americans, she wrote, "are incapable of
caring about anyone's lives but their own, the Kerry campaign and its
supporters became complicit in the dehumanisation [and murder] of Iraqis,
reinforcing the idea that some lives are insufficiently important to risk
losing votes over. And it is this morally bankrupt logic, more than the
election of any single candidate, that allows these crimes to continue
unchecked". Americans are enjoying their "peaceful Christmas" holiday,
while their poor and destitute soldiers murdering innocent Iraqi men, women
and children resisting the occupation of their country.
Iraqis who resist the Occupation are merely 'insurgents holed up in the
city', dehumanised and will be 'flushed out'. With the exception of few
honourable voices in the West, no body care about the death of Iraqis. In
the West, "'We' are still seen as benign. We're not seen as illegal,
rapacious occupiers", said John Pilger recently. The US and Britain are
masters of racism and dehumanisation of "others". The Iraqi people are
seen, thanks to this media racism and dishonest liberal intellectuals, as
"insurgents" incapable of appreciating the "freedom we brought them".
The Iraqi people are fighting to liberate their country from foreign
occupation and terrorism. Their cause is noble and legitimate within
international law. They are not "insurgents". They are Iraqi men and women
resisting the occupation and destruction of their country and society by
foreign powers.
The destruction of Iraqi cities violated the principle of the Geneva
Conventions, and hence under the US War Crimes Act of 1996, the atrocities
carry the death penalty. The genocide in Fallujah is reminiscent to those
of Serbrenica and Grozny, both condemned by the US administration as
'genocides'. These unprovoked acts of aggression against the Iraqi people
and the destruction of their society constitute a clear violation of the
Laws of Land War found in the US army Field Manual 27-10.
George Bush and Tony Blair are guilty of the "supreme international crime"
in violation of the Geneva conventions should be held accountable for their
crimes against the Iraqi people. There is an overwhelming prima facie
evidence to indict George Bush and Tony Blair with war crimes. Equally
guilty is Western mass media. It has become one of the main instruments of
deception and lies and should be held accountable for the role it plays in
promoting war and racism not only against the Iraqi people, but also
against other peoples struggling against Western domination.
Furthermore, recent evidence provided by the American Civil Liberties Union
and the Centre for Constitutional Rights has strengthened the case of war
crimes. The Nuremberg Tribunal, established after World War II, defined war
of aggression as follow: "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is
not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime
differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole".
The war crimes tribunal in Japan established by the US after the War found
Japan's prime minister, Tojo Hideki, and Foreign minister, Hirota Koki
guilty of 'not preventing atrocities' against US prisoners of war and
sentenced them to death by hanging. Similar tribunal should be established
to investigate alleged war crimes committed against Iraqi prisoners and
civilians at Abu Ghraib and other prisons.
Both the US and Britain are democracies, and their laws and constitutions
forbid the unlawful crimes against innocent people. American and British
prosecutors have duties to prosecute George Bush and Tony Blair, and their
accomplices not only for their crimes against the Iraqi people, but also
for their crimes against the American and British peoples.
Instead, we are treated to the latest news that Saddam and his government
officials will be put on "trail". The trial that is already called by law
experts the Iraqi Kangaroo Court. It is a political ploy controlled by the
US. The so-called "prime minister", Allawi, has no authority to announce
the trial of Saddam. Allawi is the Occupation Spokesman's spokesman and
doesn't have the power to make decisions.
According to Professor Charif Bassiouni of DePaul University, an expert on
International Criminal Law, "All efforts are being made to have a tribunal
whose judiciary is not independent but controlled, and by controlled I mean
that the political manipulators of the tribunal have to make sure the US
and other western powers are not brought in cause. This makes it look like
victor's vengeance: it makes it seem targeted, selected, and unfair. It's a
subterfuge". There is no need to define a Kangaroo Court.
If Saddam and his official to be put on trial, then US leaders, British
leaders and other Western leaders who supported and encouraged Saddam
should be with him in the dock. Saddam trial is illegal. There is no law in
Iraq to allow for the trial of Saddam or his officials. Iraq is an
illegally occupied nation by foreign army. Saddam and his government
officials are prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. It is those
leaders who violated the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of War on Land to
commit the crimes against the Iraqi people should be put on trial in an
international court.
According to professor Richard Overy of King's College London, a leading
authority on Nuremberg Trial and international law, "International law
works only against weaker states. Big powers have an unmerited, but
unassailable, [self-induced] immunity". "What had happened in Iraq was a
major crime against humanity, and Bush and Blair could be in the dock", he
wrote.
Nonetheless, it is encouraging to see the action of some German lawyers
filing criminal complaints against the US Secretary of Defence, Donald
Rumsfeld and his cohorts. Similar actions should be pursued by other
nations. Those leaders who participated in this illegal war of aggression
against the Iraqi people should be brought to justice. Civilised nations,
who believe in justice, have an obligation to arrest and indict those
leaders with war crimes if they entered their nations.


Ghali Hassan lives in Perth Western Australia: He can be reached at e-mail:
<mailto:G.Hassan at exchange.curtin.edu.au</i>>G.Hassan at exchange.curtin.edu.au

Courtesy of Ghali Hassan



<http://uruknet.info?s1=1&p=8575&s2=02>Read the full article / Leggi
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