PRAXIS AND THEORY AND EMANCIPATION!
No. 592
EMANCIPATORY FIRE AGAINST BUSH´S BRIMSTONE
By Franz J. T. Lee
How is it possible that those who pray most, who go to war by God's Grace, who write God on their dollars, are the most atheistic, cruel and brutal monsters on the globe? Either they are pharisees, a "generation of vipers", are sadistic hypocrites, heartless megalomaniacs at the helm of global, economic and political power, or their "God" de facto is a nasty, mind-controlling myth, a Draconian Moloch, devouring millions of innocent (wo)men and children in Iraq and elsewhere.
It is the very same "God" that Europe, and daily America, gratis had exported (and are still exporting) to the so-called "Third World", and who brutally has destroyed all indigenous, independent spirits, who has converted them, millions and millions, into docile, pacifist wage-slaves. Elsewhere, other dominating world religions have given the rest of mankind, 85% of the world population, the final blow of divine grace.
However, these dormant spirits are now arising out of their millennia-old slumber, delirium and psychosis, because at present the world is being ravaged by a wild bush fire, and the very human species is threatened by an imminent, inexorable, total, totalitarian "black-out". The rural physical labour forces reduction plan of 5 billion, the Damocles Sword of Genocide and Holocaust, in any case is swinging above their heads.
Bush & Co. have launched the New York September 11th menetekel; Caracas replied with the April 11 - 13th, 2002 "massive exodus miracle", and now it`s Baghdad´s turn. Now, not the gods, not the god-men or men-gods, perform miracles anymore, but the downtrodden on a global scale; their emancipatory march, their revolutionary spirits can be seen across the planet.
However, having said this, note, it is always the darkest before dawn, before the aurora, and where there is emancipatory fire, there also lurks imminent defeatist danger, genocidal smoke over our heads, like over Baghdad; currently, all of us are encircled by battalions of war oil mongers, by roaring, bellicose oceans of fatal, mortal, lethal ABCDEF troubles.
Now Tar-Black can clearly see Snow-White, everything is clarified historically, is recognizable. It is not a matter of kissing anybody awake anymore, to whine and wind in front of Walls of Woe, it is the time of Humpty-Dumpty to fall from all the walls he ever built, and which Israel belatedly still tries to erect again. The real, true war is waged in the economic field, and there, very clearly, European, Russian and Chinese interests concretely and perilously confront the belligerent, moribund dollar. The feather used to be mightier than the sword, now the natural, feminine, transhistoric world spirits are progressively blowing the patrian "mother of all bombs" into productive oblivion. For Baghdad, this slow-burn, this rebellious process may be too late to save the Iraqis from US fascist domination, but the writing is already on the wall of the White House.
Argentina, Caracas, the Mideast, Baghdad and elsewhere, the billions of pauperized masses, who have nothing to lose anymore, not even their lives, do not fear anything anymore, not elf, not scalar weapons, not even death, they have become galactic fire flames, strewing revolutionary and emancipatory, glowing star-dust to the end of all places, to the end of all times, beyond the Clouds of Magellan, beyond the Universe, beyond Heaven and Hell.
Hence, it is not the best of all times anymore, also not the worst of all places anymore, it is Exodus, crossing the Production Rubicon, entering transhistoric Emancipation. We are all still too near to this transcendental watch-tower, we sit at its foot, hence we can barely see the light, but we are already transcending faster than light, confronting the deadly universal, pentagonic, concentric, racist weapons of Photon, of Pluto, of Plutonium, with the transversal, pentatonic, inter-galactic, rainbow-coloured Emancipatory Fire of Prometheus, Heracleitus and Lucifer -- not of a Son of a Gun, of Big Brother, but of the real, true, other Son of God, whose Love Fire, his Brother, Jesus Christ, had brought to Earth, and who had wished that it had set the Pentagon Prairie already on Fire! The Emancipatory Electro-Magnetic Spectrum faces Full Spectrum Dominance, and this historic spectre will not leave Universal Labour, Alienating Capital untouched anymore!
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SPANISH & ENGLISH:
*** EMANCIPATORY FIRE AGAINST BUSH´S BRIMSTONE
By Franz J. T. Lee.
Noam Chomsky
El País.
** 100,000 in Germany demonstrate for an immediate end to the war.
** After the Shooting Stops, Dreams of Politicians Often Fall Apart
** Read the small print: the US wants to privatise Iraq's oil
No one here believes this is a humanitarian war
Jonathan Steele in Damascus.
*** Under fire: the architects of war
By Andrew Grice Political Editor and Rupert Cornwell in Washington.
*** British forces destroy 17 more tanks
Day 12: Unprecedented onslaught on Baghdad as battles continue for Basra, Najaf and Nasiriyah
Agencies
** Another market massacre in Baghdad
By Henry Michaels.
31/03/03.
31 de marzo de 2003
Noam Chomsky
El País
Si hay algo que
enseña con claridad la historia de las guerras, es que se pueden
predecir muy pocas cosas. En Irak, la fuerza militar más temible
de la historia de la humanidad ha atacado un país mucho más
débil, en una tremenda disparidad de poder.
Hará falta
cierto tiempo para poder valorar, incluso de forma preliminar, las consecuencias.
Es preciso dedicar todos los esfuerzos a disminuir al mínimo los daños
y proporcionar al pueblo iraquí los enormes recursos necesarios para
que puedan reconstruir su sociedad después de Sadam, a su manera y
no como dicten unos gobernantes extranjeros.
No hay motivos para
dudar la opinión casi universal de que la guerra de Irak sólo
servirá para aumentar la amenaza del terror y el desarrollo y uso de
las armas de destrucción masiva, con fines vengativos o disuasorios.
En Irak, el Gobierno de Bush persigue una "ambición imperial" que está
atemorizando al mundo, con razón, y convirtiendo a EE UU en un paria
internacional.
La intención
explícita de la política estadounidense actual es reafirmar
un poder militar que ya es el mayor del mundo, e imposible de desafiar. Estados
Unidos puede librar guerras preventivas a voluntad; guerras preventivas, que
no acciones para impedir un peligro inmediato. Sean cuales sean los motivos
que, en ocasiones, justifican una acción preventiva a corto plazo,
no sirven para justificar una categoría muy diferente de guerra preventiva:
el uso de la fuerza para eliminar una amenaza artificial.
Esta política
sienta las bases para una lucha prolongada entre Estados Unidos y sus enemigos,
algunos de ellos creados por la violencia y la agresión, y no sólo
en Oriente Próximo. En este sentido, el ataque de Estados Unidos a
Irak es una respuesta a las plegarias de Bin Laden.
Lo que el mundo
se juega en la guerra y la posguerra es muchísimo. Por no elegir más
que una de las numerosas posibilidades, la desestabilización en Pakistán
podría provocar la venta de armas nucleares descontroladas a la red
mundial de grupos terroristas, que muy bien pueden verse fortalecidos por
la invasión y ocupación militar de Irak. Es fácil imaginar
otras circunstancias no menos siniestras.
Sin embargo, no
hay que perder la esperanza de que se produzcan consecuencias más beneficiosas,
empezando por el apoyo mundial a las víctimas de la guerra, de la
tiranía brutal y de las sanciones asesinas en Irak.Un indicio prometedor
es que la oposición a la invasión, antes y después de
producirse, ha alcanzado un nivel sin precedentes. En cambio, cuando el Gobierno
de Kennedy anunció -este mes hace 41 años- que pilotos estadounidenses
estaban bombardeando y arrasando territorio de Vietnam, las protestas fueron
casi inexistentes. No alcanzaron ningún volumen significativo hasta
varios años después.
Hoy existe un movimiento
popular contra la guerra a gran escala, comprometido y basado en los principios,
presente en Estados Unidos y todo el mundo. El movimiento pacifista actuó
con energía ya antes de que empezara la nueva guerra de Irak. Este
dato refleja el hecho de que, a lo largo de los años, cada vez hay
menos voluntad de tolerar las agresiones y las atrocidades, uno de los numerosos
cambios producidos en el mundo. Los movimientos activistas de los últimos
40 años han tenido un efecto civilizador.
Ahora, la única
forma que tiene Estados Unidos de atacar a un enemigo mucho más débil
es elaborar una enorme ofensiva propagandística que represente a éste
como el mal supremo o incluso una amenaza para nuestra supervivencia. Eso
es lo que ha hecho Washington con Irak. No obstante, los pacifistas están
ahora en una posición mucho mejor para detener el próximo recurso
a la violencia, y éste es un aspecto de extraordinaria importancia.
Gran parte de la
oposición a la guerra de Bush se basa en la convicción de que
Irak no es más que un caso especial de la "ambición imperial"
enérgicamente proclamada en la Estrategia de Seguridad Nacional, el
pasado mes de septiembre. Para tener cierta perspectiva respecto a nuestra
situación actual, puede resultar útil observar la historia
reciente. En octubre, la naturaleza de las amenazas contra la paz quedó
destacada con gran dramatismo en la reunión celebrada en La Habana
para conmemorar el 40º aniversario de la crisis de los misiles cubanos,
una reunión a la que asistieron importantes participantes de Cuba,
Rusia y Estados Unidos. El hecho de que sobreviviéramos a aquella
crisis fue un milagro. Nos enteramos de que quien salvó el mundo de
la destrucción nuclear fue un capitán de submarino ruso, Vasily
Arjipov, que dio la contraorden ante las instrucciones de disparar misiles
nucleares cuando varios destructores estadounidenses atacaron submarinos
rusos cerca de la línea de "cuarentena" de Kennedy. Si Arjipov hubiera
aceptado las instrucciones, el lanzamiento nuclear habría desencadenado,
casi con seguridad, un intercambio que habría podido "destruir el
hemisferio norte", como había advertido Eisenhower.
La temible revelación
resulta especialmente oportuna debido a las circunstancias: la crisis de los
misiles tuvo sus raíces en un terrorismo internacional cuyo fin era
"el cambio de régimen", dos conceptos hoy muy de actualidad. Las agresiones
terroristas de Estados Unidos contra Cuba comenzaron poco después de
que Castro se hiciera con el poder y sufrieron una rápida escalada
con Kennedy, hasta llegar a la crisis de los misiles y los años posteriores.
Los nuevos hallazgos
demuestran con gran claridad los riesgos terribles e imprevistos de atacar
a "un enemigo mucho más débil" para obtener "un cambio de régimen",
unos riesgos que no resulta exagerado decir que podrían condenarnos
a todos. Estados Unidos está abriendo unas rutas nuevas y peligrosas
frente a una oposición mundial casi unánime.
Washington puede reaccionar de dos formas ante unas amenazas que, en parte, derivan de sus propias acciones y proclamaciones. Una forma es intentar aplacar dichas amenazas prestando atención a los agravios legítimos y aceptando convertirse en miembro civilizado de una comunidad mundial, capaz de respetar el orden mundial y sus instituciones. Otra es construir máquinas de destrucción y dominio todavía más temibles, con el fin de poder aplastar cualquier cosa que consideren un desafío, por lejano que sea; lo cual provocará nuevos y mayores retos.
http://www.rebelion.org/chomsky/chom310303.htm*****************************************************************************************************
31 de marzo del 2003
Michel Collon
En 1991 tanto los media de Europa como los
de EEUU se hicieron eco de un cúmulo de mentiras mediáticas
destinadas a convencer a la opinión pœblica de que apoyara la guerra
contra Iraq.
Hoy, varios gobiernos europeos se han distanciado de la táctica
de Bush. Sin embargo, ¿nos están diciendo actualmente toda
la verdad los media europeos? ¿Han sometido a evaluación crítica
toda la información repetida desde hace doce años? Test-media.
1 «Se castigó a Sadam desde el momento en que invadió
Kuwait en 1990.»
O VERDADERO O FALSO
2 «Sadam es el único responsable de la cruenta guerra
irano-iraquí (1980-1988).»
O VERDADERO O FALSO
3 «Sadam gaseó voluntariamente a 5.000 civiles kurdos
en Halabja. »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
4 «Sadam posee las armas más peligrosas del mundo (Bush,
enero de 2003). »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
5 «Occidente debe eliminar a Sadam porque es un tirano.»
O VERDADERO O FALSO
6 « Sadam no podría ser un modelo de sociedad. »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
7 «Sadam ha sido un instrumento de EEUU. En absoluto hay que
considerarlo anti- imperialista. »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
8 «Pero, con todo, estaría bien deshacerse de Sadam. »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
9 «Con todo, ¡es imposible apoyar a Sadam ! »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
10 « Finalmente, ¿no debemos decir "Ni Bush, ni
Saddam" ? »
O VERDADERO O FALSO
1 «Se castigó a Sadam desde el momento en que invadió Kuwait en 1990.»
FALSO: El Congreso de EEUU había decidido el embargo contra Iraq en 1989, después de que Sadam hiciera un llamamiento a todos los países de Oriente Medio a unirse para aumentar su independencia frente a EEUU.
¿Por qué los media occidentales ocultaron cuidadosamente la historia de Kuwait? Este país siempre había formado parte de Iraq. Pero los colonialistas británicos lo separaron en 1920 « para debilitar a Iraq y privarle de su salida al mar » (carta del gobernador británico de la época): Ningún país de la región reconoció esta separación. Y todos los regímenes iraquíes sucesivos han tratado de recuperar esta provincia perdida.
2 «Sadam es el único responsable de la cruenta guerra irano-iraquí (1980-1988).»
FALSO: en efecto, desgraciadamente Sadam desencadenó esta guerra tras una serie de provocaciones iraníes, entre otras, el intento de asesinato de Tareq Aziz. Pero fue Jomeini quine rechazó un acuerdo de paz y quien hizo que la guerra durara ocho años.
Pero lo más importante de esto es la estrategia diabólica de EEUU: divide y vencerás . El ministro norteamericano Kissinger decía que esperaba que esa guerra « dure el mayor tiempo posible y que haya el mayor número posible de muertes en ambos bandos».
De hecho EEUU nunca ha tolerado que un Estado de Oriente Medio disponga de medios de resistirse a Israel, y han atacado Irán, Líbano, Siria, Libia, a los palestinos… E Iraq, fiel apoyo de los palestinos.
3 «Sadam gaseó voluntariamente a 5.000 civiles kurdos en Halabja»
DUDOSO : Recordemos las numerosas mentiras mediáticas lanzadas en 1991 cuando EEUU y Europa atacaron Iraq: las incubadoras que supuestamente había robado el ejército iraquí en la ciudad de Kuwait, la marea negra atribuida a Sadam, pero que en realidad fue obra del ejército norteamericano, supuestas torturas a los pilotos occidentales prisioneros, la palabrería sobre el "cuarto ejército del mundo" presentado como una amenaza para todos nosotros… Todo esto se ha desmoronado (véase el libro ¡Ojo con los media! Las mentiras medíaticas del Golfo, Editorial HIRU)
En relación a Halabja, en el New York Times del 31 de enero de 2003, Stephen C. Pelletiere, responsable de la CIA encargado de seguir esta guerra y profesor en el US Army War College, desmintió a Bush indicando que este uso de gas 1° ocurrió por error durante una batalla entre el ejército iraquí y el iraní. 2° Sobre todo, indicó que casi seguro era obra del ejército iraní, el único que poseía el tipo de gas (a base de cianuro) utilizado en este lugar. Su conclusión : « Quizá hay justificaciones para invadir Iraq, pero Halabja no es una de ellas »
Se piense lo que se piense, ¿qué se diría si Cuba bombardeara Washington porque EEUU ha cometido múltiples crímenes de guerra, ha tratado de asesinar a Castro, de invadir la isla y acumula en ella armas de destrucción masiva en Guantánamo?
4 «Sadam posee las armas más peligrosas del mundo (Bush, discurso del Estado de la Unión, 2003)
FALSO: Israel posee 200 cabezas nucleares, ilegal y clandestinamente, y rechaza cualquier inspección. Ha encarcelado a Mordechai Vanunu, ingeniero israelí que tuvo el valor de revelar la existencia de esos arsenales. He aquí el gran tabú de los media occidentales. ¿Por qué se ha de desarmar Iraq, un Estado soberano, cuando Israel amenaza a toda la región ?
Pero el peligro mayor es el propio EEUU que ha utilizado armas nucleares (Hiroshima), químicas (Vietnam – Agent Orange) y bacteriológicas (Cuba). Hoy, bajo el pretexto de « amenaza », se niega a comprometerse a no utilizar sus armas nucleares, ni siquiera contra un país pequeño no nuclear. Hitler también se decía "amenazado » por Polonia.
Añadamos que ni siquiera en 1991, cuando fue atacado por occidente, Sadam utilizó sus armas químicas.
5 «Occidente debe eliminar a Sadam porque es un tirano.»
HIPóCRITA : EEUU ha apoyado y apoya a los peores dictadores del planeta:
Mobutu, Pinochet y todos los dictadores de América del sur, los generales turcos, etc… Para servir a sus intereses económicos.
En julio de 2002 una persona cercana a Bush, el senador Lugar, definió el verdadero objetivo de EEUU: «Vamos a administrar el negocio de petróleo, vamos a ganar dinero y eso servirá para reconstruir Iraq porque ahí hay dinero.» (Comité de Asuntos Exteriores del Senado norteamericano, 31 de julio de 2002).
Esso, Shell y BP figuran a la cabeza de la lista de las multinacionales. Antes de1958, ellas colonizaron y saquearon Iraq. Expulsadas del país por una revolución de liberación nacional, nunca han dejado de querer recuperar las segundas reservas de oro negro del mundo. Y de expulsar a la competencia francesa (Total) y rusa (Lukoil).
Washington quiere a toda costa ejerce un completo chantaje sobre el aprovisionamiento energético de sus rivales: Europea y Japón.
EEUU es una economía en quiebra : sus exportaciones son inferiores a sus importaciones en 450.000 dólares al año. Se mantiene solamente gracias a los préstamos alemanes y japoneses. Y confiscando lo petrodólares de Oriente Medio gracias a los emires y jeques corruptos que impone en los Estados títeres del Golfo
6 « Pero Sadam no podría ser un modelo de sociedad »
RESPUESTA: Sadam representa a la burguesía iraquí nacionalista que expulsó al colonialismo británico en 1958. A ese titulo presenta dos aspectos:
Por un lado, no constituye un « modelo de sociedad » para quienes preconizan una sociedad socialista y democrática como el único medio de asegurar el bienestar de toda la población.
Pero el balance es mucho más positivo comparado con otros regímenes de Oriente Medio: en lugar de entregar los petrodólares a las multinacionales norteamericanas, las ha utilizado – y lo reconocen todos los observadores occidentales - para desarrollar la enseñanza, la sanidad y, en general, la economía de su país.
Iraq es también el único país laico de Oriente Medio. No es raro ver en sus administraciones a mujeres dirigiendo a hombres. Comparado con los países vecinos…
7 «Sadam ha sido un instrumento de EEUU. En absoluto hay que considerarlo un anti-imperialista »
RESPUESTA: Hay que partir de los hechos, de la realidad económica. EL empeoramiento de la crisis y de la guerra económica empuja a las multinacionales de los países ricos a no dejar ni siquiera las migajas del pastel a las burguesías del tercer mundo. Tratan de controlar completamente a los países estratégicos, sus empresas y sus materias primas.
Para sobrevivir, estas burguesías locales con frecuencia no tienen otra salida que oponerse al imperialismo. Su resistencia tiene el efecto de arrastrar a la lucha a poblaciones más amplias. Ahora bien, para resistir a la amenaza planetaria que representan hoy EEUU y sus aliados, a los pueblos le interesa que el frente anti- imperialista sea lo más amplio posible.
¿Cuál es hoy la contradicción principal de Iraq? La que opone a este país a la amenaza de ocupación imperialista. Quien pone en primer plano otra contradicción, la contradicción entre la burguesía iraquí y su población, hace el juego a Bush.
Imaginen un hombre y su mujer en plena disputa. Llega un bandido que quiere apoderarse de sus propiedades y empieza a prender fuego a la casa ¿Cuál es la tarea prioritaria, continuar al disputa o apagar el incendio?
8 «Pero, con todo, estaría bien deshacerse de Sadam. »
RESPUESTA: ¿Bien para quién ? Actualmente, Sadam representa la independencia de su país, el decir, la negativa a dar su petróleo gratis a las multinacionales. Cualquier dirigente "importado» - ya sea por las bombas o por el chantaje- será un títere. Decir « tenemos que sustituir a Sadam » equivale, en la actual relación de fuerzas, a dejar hacer a las clases dominantes de EEUU y de Europa.
Sustituir a los rebeldes por títeres es una estrategia global de la recolonización.
Condoleezza Rice, ministra de Bush, declaró : « Tanto el Iraq de Sadam como los palestinos de Arafat necesitan nuevos dirigentes (…) capaces de dirigir una reformas como las de Serbia y de Afganistán». Veamos los resultados... En Afganistán, diez ministros de quince tienen pasaporte de EEUU y el presidente Karzaï es un vulgar empleado de la multinacional petrolífera norteamericana Unocal. En Serbia, el precio del pan ha pasado de cuatro a treinta dinares ; el de la electricidad se ha multiplicado por cuatro, privando así de electricidad y, por tanto, de calefacción, a 170.000 familias sólo en Belgrado. El FMI exigió 800.000 despidos antes de privatizar todo al servicio de las multinacionales.
Los « dirigentes democráticos made in USA » son la recolonización del mundo, despiadada para con los trabajadores y sus paisanos.
9 «Con todo, ¡es imposible apoyar a Sadam ! »
RESPUESTA: Para cualquier anti-imperialista, la primera cuestión es : ¿hay que hacer lo que sea, sí o no, para impedir que EEUU domine completamente el mundo? Respuesta: sí. Porque si se deja que la relación de fuerzas se deteriore a su favor, un nuevo fascismo amenaza a todos los pueblos del mundo.
Cuando Hitler y Mussolini amenazaban al mundo, hubo que apoyar a cuantos se les resistían. Incluido, por ejemplo, el dictador etíope Haïlé Sélassié que se oponía a la invasión italiana.
Así pues, ¿hay que apoyar la resistencia del pueblo iraquí y de sus dirigentes contra la invasión ? La reapuesta es igualmente sí.
Después de Iraq, Bush atacará Irán, Siria, incluso Arabia Saudí. Si Washington controla totalmente Oriente Medio(y los demás grandes regiones estratégicas: Asia central, Cáucaso, África central, el Maghreb, norte de América del sur…), la relación de fuerzas será menos ventajosa para las próximas guerras planificadas por Bush.
Y cuando EEUU ocupa una región, las condiciones de la lucha se hacen mucho peores para todos los pueblos, ya se trate de la lucha por el derecho a comer, de la lucha por la democracia, por el medioambiente o la solidaridad de los pueblos. Una ocupación militar norteamericana es la peor catástrofe, tanto para esos pueblos como para la relación de fuerzas internacional. Si los dirigentes iraquíes resisten al imperialismo norteamericano, ¿es algo bueno para su pueblo? Sí.
Un comunista iraquí huyó de Sadam y adoptó la nacionalidad argelina. Volvió en abril de 2002 con nuestra misión de "Inspectores de paz », y fue muy claro : « Hoy, mi deber en tanto que comunista es defender a mi país y sus materias primas frente a EEUU.
Con el actual régimen si es necesario. Una vez descartada la amenaza, será el pueblo iraquí quien decida si hay que transformar este régimen o sustituirlo. Cuando los países ricos deciden por nosotros, eso es paternalismo colonial.»
Los países imperialistas preconizan al supresión de la soberanía de los Estados del tercer mundo para justificar sus injerencias interesadas y poder amenazar a cualquier pueblo que se resista a su globalización. Pero el derecho a la soberanía es un logro de la lucha anticolonial y hay que preservarlo.
Por esa razón el interés global de los pueblos es apoyar a los países y a los dirigentes que resisten al dominio de EEUU. Lo que no implica aprobar todas sus acciones pasadas o presentes, ni el resto de sus programas políticos . Pero traer a colación estas críticas en el momento en que Bush trata de poner a la opinión publica en si favor es contraproductivo.
10 «Finalmente, ¡la única posición posible es "Ni Bush, ni Sadam"!»
RESPUESTA : Eso es lo que desde hace doce años dice la tendencia dominante en la izquierda, con unas consecuencias muy negativas.
En 1991, ya bajo la consigna 'Ni Bush, ni Sadam', recomendaron, no la guerra, sino el embargo contra Iraq. En realidad, otra forma de guerra: dentro de poco habrá dos millones victimas.
En 1995 y 1999, con 'Ni 'OTAN, ni Milosevic' aprobaron (e incluso a veces reclamaron) los bombardeos de la OTAN, preludio de la imposición de un gobierno del FMI y de la ocupación de Kosovo por parte de la OTAN. Este vive hoy bajo el terror de la mafia albanesa y la limpieza étnica de todas las minorías nacionales:
serbios, gitanos, judíos, musulmanes, turcos, etc.
En 2001, con 'Ni Bush, ni les talibanes', cerraron los ojos ante la ocupación neocolonial de Afganistán, cuyo objetivo era construir un oleoducto norteamericano e instalar bases militares en el corazón de Asia central. También se ha oído con frecuencia 'Ni Sharon, ni Arafat'…
Mañana, todavía se oirán los 'Ni, ni' cuando Washington ataque Irán, Corea, Colombia (ya ha empezado), Filipinas u otros países. Siempre con pretextos humanitario, siempre con mentiras mediáticas para demonizar a quienes se resistan.
Es el momento de volver a la verdadera posición fundamental de la izquierda, que en primer lugar ha de ser anticolonialista : no equiparar a agresor y agredido, desenmascarar la propaganda de guerra y las mentiras mediáticas de las clases dominantes y, sobre todo, denunciar los intereses económicos ocultos detrás cada guerra.
La única posición anti-imperialista consecuente es rechazar la guerra global y apoyar la resistencia de los pueblos. El 'Ni, ni' condena a la parálisis. El 'Ni, ni' impide ampliar y unir la resistencia al imperialismo de EEUU .
(Traducción del francés: Beatriz Morales Bastos)
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The Miscalculations of Yes-Men
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 31 March 2003
It is becoming difficult to tally all of the decisions made by the Bush administration that have turned out to be dead wrong. Walking away from North Korea at the outset of the administration has blossomed into an embarrassing tactical and diplomatic imbroglio with nukes prominently on the table. The massive trillion-dollar tax cut, feted by the administration as an economic cure-all, has become a crushing millstone on the back of an already murderously overburdened federal budget. The decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Treaty, and to be generally disdainful of the international community as a matter of course, led to the utterly humiliating series of diplomatic defeats America has suffered on the matter of Iraq.
Little in the last two years of folly can compare, however, to the disastrous miscalculations made by the Bush administration regarding their military attack upon Iraq.
This is what the highest members of the administration, as well as opinion-makers favorable to the war, were saying about the ease with which we would take Iraq:
• Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" on March 16th, said, "The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."
• In an opinion piece for the Washington Post published February 13, 2002, former U.N. ambassador Ken Adelman said, "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps."
• Christopher Hitchens, writer for Vanity Fair said on January 28, 2003, "This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention. The president will give an order. It will be rapid, accurate and dazzling ... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
• Richard Perle, chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board until his recent resignation amid accusations of financial conflicts of interest, said in a July 11, 2002 PBS interview, "Saddam is much weaker than we think he is. He's weaker militarily. We know he's got about a third of what he had in 1991. But it's a house of cards. He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder." This is the same Richard Perle who told David Corn in May of 2002 that Iraq could be taken with a light force of 40,000 American troops. "We don't need anyone else," he said.
There have been at least 400 civilians killed by American bombs and cruise missiles, as well as by American troops firing on suspected hostiles. There have been over 50 American and British troops killed, with several more missing and unaccounted for. These numbers are, in all likelihood, not an accurate representation of the situation; battles are taking place all over Iraq and it is difficult to account for all civilian losses, and the Defense Department has pointedly begun refusing to release American casualty data to the press. The Iraqi cities of Basra, An Nasiriya, Umm Qasr, Najaf and Baghdad remain resolutely untaken after "Shock and Awe" failed to shock and awe. US forces arrayed in the field are running low on food, fuel and ammunition because supply lines, strung out over 350 miles of desert, are constantly harassed by Iraqi militia. Instead of being welcomed as liberators, American and British forces are seen as conquerors by rank and file Iraqi civilians.
The heady words of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and the rest regarding the inevitable welcome that was to come from Shi'ite and Kurd civilians apparently failed completely to recall the last time we told these people they were about to be liberated. In the first Gulf War, the first Bush told these groups to rise up in revolt against Hussein. They did, and were slaughtered when Bush Sr. allowed Hussein's helicopter gunships to fly across our battle lines after the cease fire and destroy them. It was a dubious assumption, at best, to believe they would trust us this time. As Marine Brigadier General John Kelly said just days ago in Iraq after reflecting upon the manner in which these groups were abandoned to death, "I'd be very, very hesitant to throw my saddle on this horse until I see this horse is going to win."
A story by John Kifner in Saturday's New York Times describes the First Marine Division in Iraq being stunned by the level of resistance they were facing. They had been told the Iraqis would smile and wave as they rolled to Baghdad. Instead, they have been engaged in non-stop fighting since hostilities commenced. They have been attacked repeatedly by armed men in civilian clothes, which is leading inexorably to the nightmare scenario that plagued the Vietnam war. When a troop cannot tell friend from foe in wartime, a lot of innocent civilians get cut down. Kitner's story describes a bus coming under fire from a Marine gunner because they feared it was filled with Iraqi gunmen. A survey of the bus after the shooting stopped revealed a number of dead civilians.
Because of the gross miscalculations on the part of the Bush administration, officers in the Army are now saying that they must effectively "restart the war" by bringing in reinforcements and establishing greater protection for the supply and communication lines. This protection will require at least three brigades.
How did this happen?
Senior war planners are accusing Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld of "micromanaging" the conflict and ignoring the advice of the generals. "He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn," one of these planners is quoted as saying. Rumsfeld rejected plans to send many more men to the fight, and demanded that the forces depend on equipment already in place in Kuwait instead of sending greater shipments overseas. When Turkey failed to come on board for the fight, war planners thought it wise to wait until another route into Iraq could be established. Rumsfeld said no, and the casualties rise.
To say that the current debacle in Iraq is the fault of Don Rumsfeld is to miss entirely the structure, mindset and functionality of the Bush administration. CIA officials, as well as analysts from the State and Defense Department, warned the administration that American forces would face stiff and deadly resistance from Iraqi forces. These warnings were utterly ignored. The spin now is that these views were not presented "forcefully" enough, intimating that Bush was not given all of the facts in the manner required.
This is nonsense.
What has happened is clear. Bush wanted war on Iraq, period. He is surrounded by a mob of yes-men who also wanted war, and so they made sure that only the rosiest of predictions were listened to in the planning stages. Read again the quotes above if you doubt this. Bush only wanted to hear good news about the progress towards combat, and so he got it, and so here we are. These same rosy wrong predictions were disseminated to a media machine that was all too eager to accept them at face value. The words of Karl Kraus, Austrian satirist, are appropriate here: "How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."
This is all, of course, academic and militaristic. The fact remains that America should not be involved in a war with Iraq in the first place. The only reason an accounting of the disastrous planning that went into all this is important is because of what will come because of it. Larger forces will soon arrive in Iraq, and the civilians of that nation will suffer for it. More civilians will be shot dead because our troops fear ambush, more neighborhoods and marketplaces will explode in fire and death, more people will starve as cities are choked off and surrounded and bombed and strafed, and more American troops will die. The "light force" concept has been proven a failure, and a bloody one at that, and so a heavier force will land with a meaty thud. Nothing good will come of this. We will lose this war by winning it.
If you listened to the Bush administration, we went to war in order to destroy the undeniably massive stockpiles of mass destruction weapons being hoarded by Saddam Hussein. We went to liberate a people thirsty for freedom. American Special Forces have captured several sites considered key chemical weapons installations by intelligence reports, and American troops have investigated dozens more. Not so much as a thimbleful of proscribed weaponry has been discovered. Meanwhile, those people wishing for American liberation have given us one hell of a bloody nose, and will continue to do so. They will be met, shortly, by a much larger and harder force thanks to the abysmal failures of the yes-men at the top of the governmental food chain.
We are witnessing a mistake compounded by a mistake compounded by a mistake, and the bill for this idiocy is being written in the blood of women and children and American soldiers. There should never have been a "light force" invasion because there should have never been an invasion in the first place. The coming "heavy force" will grind bone meal into the sands of the Iraqi desert and into the streets of Iraqi cities. This darkness is only just beginning to settle.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times best-selling author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in June 2003 from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, MA.
Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.
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100,000 in Germany demonstrate for an immediate end to the war
By our correspondents
31 March 2003
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An estimated 100,000 joined protests, sit-ins and blockades throughout Germany on Saturday to demand an immediate end to the US/British war against Iraq. According to police, 50,000 marched through Berlin in the latest of a series of protests and activities in the capital city against the war.
An additional 30,000 demonstrators formed a 50 kilometre-long human cordon between the west German cities of Osnabruck and Munster. Both towns in the fifteenth century were involved in the ending of the devastating German Thirty Years War. Demonstrations and protests also took place in the cities of Dresden, Hamburg, Kiel, Lübeck, Cottbus, Rostock, Bonn and Munich. Blockades and sit-ins of US bases in Germany took place in Stuttgart and Frankfurt (see below).
Berlin
According to police figures, 50,000 gathered in Berlin and marched in two separate columns to the city’s Victory Column close to the Brandenburg Gate. In bright sunshine, protesters—including very many young people, school students and entire families—carried homemade banners reading, “Shame on you, Mr. Bush” and “Send inspectors to check for weapons of mass destruction in America.” The chairperson at the Berlin rally announced that in the 10 days since the beginning of the war a total of 67 demonstrations, protests and pickets had taken place in Berlin alone. A recent survey in Germany also states that at least a third of all German school students have taken part in some sort of protest activity against the Iraq war.
At the final rally, which was organised by a coalition of peace initiatives and the Attac anti-globalisation movement, various speakers professed their anger at the war against Iraq, but failed to make any criticism of the collaboration with the US war being undertaken by the German government.
The main speaker at the rally was the head of the German trade union movement (DGB), Michael Sommer, who denounced the war but then declared that while it was necessary to spend money on the fight against terrorism, funds should also go towards combating poverty.
While professing opposition to the war, the sum total of German trade union activity has been to organise a paltry 10-minute general strike. Sommer attacked the openly pro-war stance of the leader of the Christian Democratic opposition (CDU), Angela Merkel, but had nothing to say about the German government’s practical measures supporting the US war effort. Sommer’s speech was largely greeted with silence, with some members of the public loudly declaiming him to be a hypocrite.
After Sommer, the chair of the rally announced that speakers from the SPD had declared at short notice that they had other pressing engagements. The planned speaker from the Green Party did not materialise. It was left to the veteran Algerian nationalist, Achmed Ben Bella, to denounce George W. Bush and Tony Blair as fascists while then going on to congratulate the German and French governments for their stance against the war. Over the past few years Ben Bella has given his support to a number of activities organised by the Attac anti-globalisation movement.
The reluctance of SPD and Green Party representatives to address the Berlin rally can only be explained as the dismissive reaction by these parties to the antiwar movement, which has raised the central demand of an end to all forms of German government collaboration with the Iraq war.
Blockades of US airbases in Frankfurt and Stuttgart
Saturday also witnessed protests and blockades of US military bases in Stuttgart and Frankfurt. About 6,000 formed a cordon around the major US base in Stuttgart before the protest was broken up by police. An estimated 2,000 took part in the blockade of the Rhine-Main US airbase near the city of Frankfurt-Main. The base is one of the principal airports for the transport of US weapons, equipment and personnel to the battle zones in Iraq. Traffic in and out of the airport has doubled since the war began.
There have been a series of demonstration since the war began and a mass blockade of the Frankfurt base took place just two weeks ago, when police transported away a number of demonstrators but generally reacted in a restrained manner to the protest. This Saturday the police presence was much larger and they intervened at an early stage to confiscate sleeping bags, mattresses and provisions brought by the protesters. As the group, including large numbers of youth, sat down in front of the entrance to the base police moved in to transport them away.
As the war continues, protests in Germany are concentrating increasingly on the bases being used by the US military—an operation which has been fully sanctioned by the SPD-Green Party coalition government. Banners at the Frankfurt protest also demanded an end to the use of German airspace for US bombers: “Stop assistance to the war by SPD and Greens. Ban the use of German air space.” American B-52 bombers starting off from Great Britain fly over Germany before unloading their enormous payloads of munitions on Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.
Speakers at the protest noted that, despite opposition to the war, German government representatives have avoided declaring the US aggression to be a breach of international and German law because such a statement would jeopardise German assistance to the war effort and make the German government liable to legal action.
One of the speakers at the rally, Tobias Pflüger, from the Tubing Information centre for military affairs, confirmed that the German Defence Ministry had assigned a total of 3,700 German soldiers to patrol US and British military facilities in Germany. He went on to point out that while the German government was keen to ensure that relations with the US did not worsen, it was also intent on developing Europe and Germany as an economic and military alternative to the US.
Pflüger also criticised the plan for the reform of the German army, to be officially presented in May this year by German Defence Minister Struck, which envisages a significant alteration to the types of intervention made by the army. In particular, the reform plan proposes that the German army be capable of intervening in so-called “preventive wars” such as the present US aggression in Iraq.
Pflüger concluded that the reaction by European countries to US unilateralism was to develop their own potential to wage war: “Whoever undertakes entirely justified criticism of the US should not forget to also criticise support for the war on the part of the German government and the German military policy itself.”
Another speaker at the Frankfurt protest, Philip Wehreschild, who had helped organise mass protests by Frankfurt school children against the war, reported that a total of 200,000 pupils had gone on strike the day after the first American bombs fell on Baghdad.
Wehreschild stated that the same government which had sent troops to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan could not be regarded as fundamentally opposed to war and that growing militarism in Germany could only be financed by further drastic attacks on social conditions. Finally he noted that if the parents of the 200,000 striking school children had themselves gone on strike and participated in actions to prevent US military supplies from reaching the battlefields, the repercussions for the war would have been dramatic. He called upon the German trade union movement to translate its verbal opposition to the war into practice and organise strike action.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/germ-m31.shtmlAfter the Shooting Stops, Dreams of Politicians Often Fall Apart
March 20, 2003
The Bush administration has it all planned out. War will lead to the toppling of Saddam Hussein. The fall of the dictator will usher democracy into Iraq. Then the contagion of freedom will spread throughout the region, bringing its people prosperity, taking the wind out of the sails of terrorism and securing American interests.
Well, it may be right. But it may as easily be seriously wrong. Wars can lead to sweeping changes on a world scale, as some in the administration believe will happen. But there is a sting, too, in the historical tail: War's changes are unpredictable. That's the lesson of World War I, which set the stage for the creation of the modern Middle East.
A century ago there was no Iraq, no Israel, Jordan or Kuwait, no republics of Lebanon, Syria or Turkey. It was war that swept away the old Ottoman Empire and allowed European and American statesmen to conjure up states where none had existed before. Yet ultimately, they were unable to bring their plans to fruition or create the stability and order they dreamed of. None of those who entered the war came close to predicting the world order that emerged at the other end.
President Woodrow Wilson had brought the U.S. into the conflict to make the world "safe for democracy." In his mind, this meant splitting the Ottoman Empire into independent, self-governing democracies. But as Wilson found, it is easier to break things up than to put them back together again. During the war, the U.S. was one of the strongest supporters of independence for small ethnic groups like the Armenians and the Kurds. But words are one thing, deeds another. There were no American troops in the region; the other great powers wanted only to bring theirs home.
Without allies, the Armenians were no match for the Turks, and later the Kurds were crushed as well.
Iraq was a new country cobbled together from several Ottoman provinces, its lines drawn by the Europeans. For a time, the British were prepared to use force: They had economic interests in the region and a world empire to run. But faced with widespread revolt, the British appetite for direct military rule quickly dwindled, and they soon handed over power to the loyal Saudi Prince Faisal, who was installed in Baghdad.
Faisal had no illusions about the difficulties he faced: "There is not yet in Iraq an Iraqi people," he wrote. In fact, the new state was an amalgam of peoples -- Kurds, Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and others -- and was not nearly as stable as its creators had hoped it would be. The Kurds opposed first the British, then Faisal. Kurdish leaders were exiled, and they, like the other minorities, ultimately bowed to superior force.
But though he defeated them in the short term, Faisal's top-heavy state, imposed by foreigners and led by outsiders, never won legitimacy in the eyes of its disparate constituents and was toppled by the military coup some decades later that eventually brought the Baath Party and ultimately Saddam Hussein to power.
So much for the dream of a "peace to end all peace."
Now, President Bush has picked up the mantle of Wilson and is pledging to fight for a newly democratic Middle East. But if the fight really is for democracy, it will not be over soon. To avoid the outcome of World War I, American troops would have to remain in the region for a very long time, and the dilemmas they would face are numerous: how to remain there while avoiding accusations of imperialism; how to bring in democracy without leading to political disintegration; above all, how to make sure that a democratic Iraq will be obedient, or at least friendly, to American interests. Democracies give voice to a people's sense of its own interests, not to someone else's.
Nearly a century ago, Wilson learned the hard way that in international affairs, there is a great gulf between wishing something were so and making it so. But at least Wilson, the architect of the League of Nations, worked for peace and would never have deliberately started the war that he eventually helped to end.
The Bush administration may share his universal ambitions, but its extraordinary confidence that it can use war as an instrument of change is something new.
Will the architects of this war be more successful in shaping the course of events than their predecessors in the early 20th century? Or are they committing an act of monumental folly? One thing is certain: They have changed the way the U.S. is perceived around the world forever.
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Mark Mazower is a history professor at Birkbeck College in London
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Read the small print: the US wants to privatise Iraq's oil
No one here believes this is a humanitarian war
Jonathan Steele in Damascus
Monday March 31, 2003
The Guardian
In this highly politicised city where anger over the invasion of Iraq alternates with pride in the resistance, there is one sure way to lighten the mood. Suggest that George Bush and Tony Blair launched their war because of Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction. Hoots of derision all round. Whether they are Syrians or members of the huge Iraqi exile community, everyone here believes this is a war for oil. In nearby Jordan and across the Arab world the view is the same.
Some suggest a second motive - Washington's desire to strengthen Israel. Under one theory US hawks want to break Iraq into several statelets and then do the same with Saudi Arabia, to confirm the Zionist state as the region's superpower. Others cite Donald Rumsfeld's recent comments about Iran and Syria as proof that war on Iraq is designed to frighten its neighbours, who happen to be the leading radicals in the anti-Zionist camp.
Oil is the war aim on which all Arabs agree. While the Palestinian intifada is resistance to old-fashioned colonialism with its seizure and settlement of other people's land, they see the Iraqi intifada as popular defence against a more modern phenomenon. Washington does not need to settle Iraqi land, but it does want military bases and control of oil.
Many Arabs already define this neo-colonial war as a historic turning point which might have as profound an effect on the Arab psyche as September 11 did on Americans. Arabs have long been accustomed to seeing Israeli tanks running rampant. Now the puppet-master, arrogant and unashamed, has sent his helicopter gunships and armoured vehicles to Arab soil.
The US has mounted numerous coups in the Middle East to topple regimes in Egypt, Iran and Iraq itself. It has used crises, like the last Gulf war, to gain temporary bases and make them permanent. In Lebanon it once shelled an Arab capital and landed several hundred marines. But never before has it sent a vast army to change an Arab government. Even in Latin America, in two centuries of US hegemony, Washington has never dared to mount a full-scale invasion to overthrow a ruler in a major country. Its interventions in the Caribbean and Central America from 1898 to 1990 were against weak opponents in small states. Three years into the new millennium, the enormity of the shift and the impact of the spectacle on Arab television viewers cannot be over-estimated. Is it an image of the past or future, they ask, a one-off throw-back to Vietnam or a taste of things to come?
Blair sensed Arab suspicions about the fate of Iraq's oil when he persuaded Bush at their Azores summit to produce a "vision for Iraq" which pledged to protect its natural resources (they shrank from using the O word) as a "national asset of and for the Iraqi people". No neo-colonialism here.
Unfortunately, the small print is different, as could be expected from an administration run by oilmen. Leaks from the state department's "future of Iraq" office show Washington plans to privatise the Iraqi economy and particularly the state-owned national oil company. Experts on its energy panel want to start with "downstream" assets like retail petrol stations. This would be a quick way to gouge money from Iraqi consumers. Later they would privatise exploration and development.
Even if majority ownership were restricted to Iraqis, Russia's grim experience of energy privatisation shows how a new class of oil magnates quickly send their profits to offshore banks. If the interests of all Iraqis are to be protected, it would be better to keep state control and modify the UN oil-for-food programme, which has been a relatively efficient and internationally supervised way of channelling revenues to the country's poor.
Drop the controls on Iraq's imports of industrial goods. End the rule that all food under the programme has to be imported, thereby penalis ing Iraqi farmers and benefiting rich exporters in Canada, Australia and the US. But maintain the programme for several years to keep helping the 60% of Iraqis who depend on subsidised food (it will be more after this war) rather than channel revenues to a new Iraqi government or a World Bank-administered trust fund which will be under pressure to pay it to US construction companies to repair the infrastructure which Bush's war machine has destroyed. US and UK taxpayers should finance the peace as they have financed the war. Iraqi oil earnings must stay out of US and British hands.
If Downing Street has a better grasp than Washington of the need not to appear to be occupying Iraq, it was equally misinformed about Iraqis' views of invasion. Both governments confused hatred of Saddam with support for war. War has its own dynamic, trapping millions in the desperate business of daily survival. Naturally they blame US and British troops for the chaos. Yet, even before the first bomb fell, most Iraqis were against "liberation" by force.
People living under Saddam Hussein's rule do not give opinions easily but British and US officials should have done a better job of talking to Iraqis in Jordan and Syria who are in close touch with their families in Iraq.
On the eve of the war, I interviewed 20 Iraqis in Amman individually or in groups of two or three friends for an hour each on average. They included Sunni and Shia, property owners, artists, factory workers and several unemployed. Most were fierce critics of the Iraqi president. But on the over-riding issue of whether Bush should launch a war, a majority was opposed. Nine were against, four were torn and only seven were in favour. Now that war is no longer a theoretical option but a reality affecting every Iraqi at home and abroad, patriotic feelings are stronger.
Western governments apparently confined their research to people with a narrow vested interest. They financed exiled politicians who want a share in US-supplied power and then talked to them as though they were independent. They listened to businessmen eager to cash in when the US privatises the economy. They were fascinated by nostalgic Hashemite monarchists.
The voices of the poor and the professional classes were not deemed of interest, although these are the people who benefited from the surge in social investment from 1975-85 and later fell back under sanctions. London and Washington convinced themselves that Saddam Hussein had ruined the economy without asking whether Iraqis shared this view. If they now divert Iraq's oil revenues, they will be following a long tradition of blunder and exploitation.
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Under fire: the architects of warBy Andrew Grice Political Editor and Rupert Cornwell in Washington31 March 2003
Tony Blair suffered a backlash from senior Labour MPs over the war in Iraq yesterday when a former minister warned that the conflict could turn into another Vietnam. The growing political tensions affected the architects of war on both sides of the Atlantic and the Bush administration was forced to deny that its strategy is in disarray. Reports surfaced of a rift between senior US military commanders and Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, over the size and nature of the force sent to oust Saddam Hussein. In Washington, Mr Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flatly denied suggestions of disagreement. "That's not true," the US Defence Secretary declared. And he dismissed suggestions that the 12-day campaign was taking a breather – of anything up to a month, some reports have suggested – to allow reinforcements to arrive at the front line, 50 miles south of Baghdad. "We have no plans for pauses or ceasefires or anything else," Mr Rumsfeld said. But while air attacks continued on Republican Guard units and on "regime targets" in the capital, the impression is that the US forces are digging in, building up reserves and securing supply lines. Although the Allies attacked Baghdad, where a huge fire was burning after the Iraqis lit an oil trench close to the city centre, the main action seemed to be around the southern port of Basra. British forces claimed to have captured five senior Iraqi officers and hit the city's television tower. A British soldier was killed when his launch on the Zubayr river came under grenade attack. In London the unofficial political truce since the war began was shattered when Robin Cook, who resigned as Leader of the Commons two weeks ago, called for British forces to be brought home. After being accused of disloyalty to the troops by his former cabinet colleagues, Mr Cook said he was not advocating immediate withdrawal and that he wanted President Saddam defeated. But he stood by his criticisms, saying the Government's hopes for a "quick, easy war" had failed to materialise and that the campaign had been "badly planned". He said there was no sign of President Saddam being overthrown by his associates or the Iraqi people welcoming coalition troops as liberators. His comments reflected concern among Labour MPs that the war strategy has been blown off course. Doug Henderson, a former armed forces minister, called for a ceasefire. He said: "Unless there is a withdrawal very soon, then we will probably get bogged down in the way that the Americans got bogged down in Vietnam. Half a million soldiers [were] committed in Vietnam; 55,000 American deaths, probably about two million deaths of Vietnamese. Now, do we want to get into the kind of situation that could lead to that?" The Government, which has been repeatedly assured by the Bush administration that the war is going according to plan, was thrown on to the defensive by Mr Cook's attack. But the fractures in London are being mirrored in the US, where The New Yorker says in today's edition of the magazine that Mr Rumsfeld turned down requests from top uniformed commanders for more troops, and resisted pleas that the campaign be delayed until more troops were ready. The US commander, General Tommy Franks, said there had been no new deployment orders since the start of the war, and he maintained that troop numbers were sufficient. Geoff Hoon, the Secretary of State for Defence, conceded that more British troops might be needed. But he insisted it was "not possible" that the coalition would lose the war. "I am absolutely confident in the military strategy," he said. |
31 March 2003 11:04
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=392455
British forces destroy 17 more tanksDay 12: Unprecedented onslaught on Baghdad as battles continue for Basra, Najaf and NasiriyahAgencies31 March 2003
British troops destroyed 17 more tanks in a running battle with Iraqi forces, military sources said today. The 16th Air Assault Brigade, including tanks and artillery,destroyed the Russian-built T55 tanks after encountering an Iraqi force of two infantry companies. Meanwhile, America unleashed all of its hi-tech bombers today in an unprecedented onslaught in and around Baghdad. The US Central Command said the attacks were carried out simultaneously by multiple B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers, adding that it was the first time all three long-range strike aircraft had targeted the same area at the same time.
Tank battle: The Iraqi tanks were destroyed in the Rumaila oilfields. The engagement, involving troops from the 16th Air Assault Brigade, began late yesterday afternoon and carried on into the early hours of the morning. The British force, including tanks and artillery, encountered an Iraqi force of two infantry companies – around 300 to 400 men – also supported by tanks and artillery. In the fighting that followed, 17 Russian–built T55 tanks and five artillery pieces were destroyed. A number of Iraqis were reported to have been taken prisoner. A British military source said: "They fought as a unit, they fell back as a unit, they counter attacked as a unit. It was not a ramshackle operation."
Around Basra: Hundreds of Royal Marine commandos pressed on into the city as they sought to build on their biggest offensive so far in the Iraq war. By nightfall yesterday, around 600 Royal Marines from 40 Commando had taken up a "consolidation position" in the suburb of Abu al Khasib after a fierce 15-hour assault designed to encourage Saddam Hussein's opponents in Iraq's second city to rise up against his regime. A number of Marines also moved into an area to the east of Abu al Khasib, leaving what is believed to be a brigade-sized Iraqi force trapped in the middle. An additional company of men from 42 Commando were flown in by helicopter to help block an escape route for Iraqi troops. By mid-morning, around 30 Iraqis were dead and hundreds were reported captured, military sources said. Several enemy tanks had also been destroyed. A total of 14 British troops were reported injured.
Baghdad: Streaks of anti-aircraft tracer fire lit up the sky as heavy bombing shook the capital just after 5.15am local time (3.15am BST). Firefighters were seen tackling the blazing ministry of information which threatened to set fire to a neighbouring shopping centre. In Rustamiyah, eastern Baghdad, the main training centre for the Iraqi paramilitary forces was bombed by the coalition yesterday, US Central Command said. Targets in the capital also included the Abu Gharayb Presidential Palace, near Saddam International Airport, and two facilities at the Karada Intelligence Complex.
South and west of Baghdad: Coalition forces targeted the Iraqi Republican Guard - Saddam's best trained fighters - in the hope of weakening Iraqi defences ahead of a US-led ground assault. On the ground, the closest known point in the US-led advance on Baghdad was the town of Hindiyah 50 miles south of Baghdad, between the sacred city of Karbala and the ruins of ancient Babylon. The 4th Batallion of the 64th armored regiment rolled into the town of 80,000 at dawn - met by small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades. At least 15 Iraqi troops were killed. American troops said they had captured several fighters who said they belonged to the Republican Guard's Nebuchadnezzar Brigade, based in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
Najaf: 100 miles south of Baghdad, US forces encircled the Shiite holy city of Najaf (population 300,000) and said they had killed about 100 paramilitary fighters and captured about 50 Iraqis. The US Central Command said that 100 "terror squad members" were killed yesterday at Najaf and another town in fighting with the 82nd Airborne Division. Najaf is strategically important as a major supply base for Baghdad, and Allied commanders are said to be unsure whether to continue fighting for the city or simply to cut it off. It is in Najaf that Ali, son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad, is buried at an extraordinary shrine, its gold dome and twin minarets gleaming for miles.
North of the capital: Kurdish fighters have made further advances as Iraqi forces withdrew towards the major oil centre of Kirkuk, still under Baghdad control. The US-backed Kurdish troops gained almost 10 miles but were hampered by a series of dense minefields left by Iraqi troops, said Ares Abdullah, a Kurdish commander. Kirkuk is the country's second largest oil-producing region and considered by Kurds as an essential part of their ethnic lands. |
31 March 2003 11:05
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392458
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Another market massacre in Baghdad
By Henry Michaels
31 March 2003
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Last Friday, for the second time in two days, US missiles hit a busy market street in a working class district of Baghdad, killing and wounding scores of innocent civilians—the same slum dwellers that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had claimed would rise up to overthrow the Iraqi regime as soon as the war began.
Dr. Osama Sakhari, speaking at Baghdad’s Al Noor Hospital after a day of heavy raids across the capital, said he had counted 55 people killed and more than 47 wounded from the market in the Shu’ale neighborhood. The dead included at least 15 children.
Another Iraqi doctor, Hakki Is-mail Marzooki, said the deaths were in a residential area just 300 meters from his hospital. Dr. Marzooki described the scene as like a “massacre” and said there were no potential military targets in the area.
Arabic language television stations Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya broadcast pictures of bodies, including those of two children, and footage of people carrying coffins out of the hospital. They showed scenes of severed body parts and wounded toddlers bandaged and crying in hospital beds. Al Jazeera broadcast the grief-stricken funerals of those killed.
According to British journalist Robert Fisk, who visited the hospitals, at least 62 civilians had died by Saturday afternoon. He described “appalling scenes of pain and suffering”: “A two-year-old girl, Saida Jaffar, swaddled in bandages, a tube into her nose, another into her stomach. All I could see of her was her forehead, two small eyes and a chin. Beside her, blood and flies covered a heap of old bandages and swabs. Not far away, lying on a dirty bed, was three-year-old Mohamed Amaid, his face, stomach, hands and feet all tied tightly in bandages. A great black mass of congealed blood lay at the bottom of his bed.”
Fisk refuted American and British claims that an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile was responsible for the carnage. He cited the serial number and coding from a piece of the missile retrieved by an old man whose home is 100 meters from the bomb’s two-meter crater. The serial number was 30003-704ASB 7492 and it was followed by a “lot” number: MFR 96214 09. There was no doubt about the authenticity of the metal fragment—Fisk saw it before the Iraqi authorities knew it existed.
Local residents said they had heard or seen the American jet that dropped the missile, in broad daylight and with perfect visibility in a clear sky.
Both Fisk and another Western journalist who visited the scene—Canadian Patrick Graham—observed that the bomb had been designed to kill and maim, not destroy buildings. They witnessed horrible shrapnel wounds and far-flung damage that contrasted with the relatively small size of the meter-wide bomb crater.
In Fisk’s words: “The missile sprayed hunks of metal through the crowds—mainly women and children—and through the cheap brick walls of local homes, amputating limbs and heads. Three brothers, the eldest 21 and the youngest 12, for example, were cut down inside the living room of their brick hut on the main road opposite the market. Two doors away, two sisters were killed in an identical manner.”
Dr. Ahmed, an anesthetist at the Al-Noor hospital, told Fisk: “We have never seen anything like these wounds before. These people have been punctured by dozens of bits of metal.” One old man had 24 holes in the back of his legs and buttocks, some as big as quarter coins. An X-ray photograph showed at least 35 slivers of metal still embedded in his body
Like the Al Shaab market massacre last Wednesday, when at least 21 Iraqi civilians were killed or burned to death by two missiles fired by an American jet, Shu’ale is a poor, Shia Muslim neighborhood of single-story corrugated iron and cement food stores and two-room brick homes.
Speaking freely without the presence of government officials, residents bitterly condemned the American and British forces. “This is a crime,” a woman said angrily. “Yes, I know they say they are targeting the military. But can you see soldiers here? Can you see missiles?”
A few journalists did report seeing a Scud missile on a transporter near the Al Shaab area on Thursday and there were anti-aircraft guns around Shu’ale. But these weapons are known to present no threat to high-flying American war planes.
Despite the evidence cited by Fisk and Graham, the American and British governments are continuing to blame Iraq for the deaths in both market attacks, alleging that Iraqi workers are under orders to remove evidence that would support that claim. “A large number of Iraqi surface-to-air missiles have been malfunctioning. Many have failed to hit their targets and have fallen back onto Baghdad before exploding,” a British government spokesman said.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf ridiculed these claims. “My explanation for their increasing crimes against civilians is that they are feeling the weight of the series of defeats which we inflicted on them on the outskirts of the cities and in the desert,” he said.
The massacre came amid signs of a shift in the US-British war policy to target civilian facilities throughout Iraqi cities, including Baghdad. US and British bombs and missiles pounded the capital repeatedly on Friday in the heaviest day of raids since the war began. The raids knocked out many telephone lines—a deliberate strike against civilian infrastructure.
Massive 2,000 kilogram “bunker buster” bombs were dropped for the first time later the same day, destroying television and other media facilities in the capital’s center. Among the targets hit were studios used by international reporters. The explosions shook large parts of the city, including hotels housing foreign journalists.
Despite Pentagon claims that these are legitimate “command and control” targets, they are civilian facilities. Their destruction is a bid to stifle coverage of both the devastation of Iraqi cities and the outraged response of Iraqi people. More broadly, the devastation of civilian infrastructure is an attempt to turn the population against the Iraqi regime.
An AFP reporter saw a 50-year-old man wounded when a missile hit a communications center in a residential neighborhood on Sunday as workers were clearing rubble from previous strikes. Overall, Iraq claims that 4,000 civilians have been killed since Bush launched the war on March 19.
Shaken by the depth of popular resistance to their invasion, Washington and London are changing their troops’ rules of engagement, instructing them to be more willing to kill civilians in urban areas. According to media reports, the new rules will place less emphasis on minimizing civilian casualties and more on destroying the enemy, even if Iraqi military personnel are intermingled with civilians.
The BBC reported that military policy had changed from “winning hearts and minds” to treating all Iraqi residents as possible combatants, a shift reinforced by Saturday’s suicide bomb incident in which an Iraqi soldier killed four Americans at a military checkpoint.
One New York Times dispatch from Diwaniya, Iraq, gave a glimpse of the reality that many civilians have been shot down already. Marine Sergeant Eric Schrumpf, 28, confirmed that bystanders had been killed in nearby villages. “We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?” he said. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other members of his unit opened fire on an Iraqi soldier. He watched a woman standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.
The second market massacre has fueled hostility to the US-led invasion throughout the region. “Monstrous martyrdom in Baghdad,” was the headline in Al-Dustour, a newspaper in Amman, Jordan. “Dreadful massacre in Baghdad,” said Egypt’s mass circulation Akhbar al-Youm newspaper. Photos of two young victims of the blast covered half of its front page. “Yet another massacre by the coalition of invaders,” read the main headline in Saudi Arabia’s Al-Riyadh daily.
“Those pictures have showed that America’s war is not only against the Iraqi regime and the Iraqi army, but also against the Iraqi children and elderly. How can we trust them now?” said Mahmoud Sahiouny, 19, a Syrian computer science student who lives in Beirut.
While the American and Western media have barely reported the incident, news of it quickly spread via email and the Internet. The Washington Post found a group of women at an Internet cafe in Cairo, for example, displaying some of the email they received on Saturday, containing pictures of funerals, wailing women, mourning men and the bodies of children in cradle-sized coffins.
“This is a media war, and America will realize sooner or later that we Arabs have a million alternatives now,” said Rana Khoury, 20, a political science student at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. “What really hurts is when I turned to American stations, they were talking about the humanitarian aid that the allies are providing for the Iraqi people. They didn’t even mention those who were massacred.”
Some of the people interviewed by Western journalists said they hated leaders like Saddam Hussein but were now ready to fight the US and British forces. “Bush is an occupier and terrorist. He thought he was playing a video game,” said George Elnaber, 36, an Arab Christian and the owner of a supermarket in Amman. “We hate Americans more than we hate Saddam now,” he said.
In Cairo, even figures with ties to the United States political establishment expressed anger. “Mr. Bush has lost us. We are gone. Enough. That’s the end,” said Diaa Rashwan, head of the comparative politics unit at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “If America starts winning tomorrow, there will be suicide bombings that will start in America the next day. It is a whole new level now.”
“It is as if you are watching a horror movie,” said Summer Said, a journalist for the Cairo Times, an English-language newsmagazine. “I thought, at first, okay, maybe it isn’t a war for oil. Maybe America does want to help. Now, it’s genocide to me. Is the American government trying to exterminate Arabs?”
“This war is affecting civilians primarily. I did not expect to see civilians bombed and I feel exceedingly angry,” wrote Ezzat El Kamhawy, a respected Egyptian novelist. “This war can only harm the future of democracy in the area.... What is happening now does not implicate the future of the Arabs alone but the future of America herself.”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/mar2003/mark-m31.shtml*************************************************************************************************************************
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