Surrendering Everything

While in Moscow in October 2007, U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice still had the time to preach U.S. “democracy” and “human rights”. Meanwhile in Iraq, daily indiscriminate bombing raids by U.S. forces on Iraqi civilians are continuing in flagrant violation of international human rights law. The aim of this deliberate hypocrisy is to manufacture delusions and induce moral bankruptcy among the population, and to justify the use of violence to further U.S.-Western imperialist agenda.

As the U.S. Secretary met with Russian “activists”, U.S. occupying forces in Iraq killed at least 34 innocent Iraqi civilians, including six women and nine children, and injured many more near Lake Tharthar, north of Baghdad. While these crimes are daily occurrence, the war against the Iraqi people has increased significantly. In addition to the rise in troop’s number – 170, 000 U.S. troops supplemented by 180,000 private mercenaries –, the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007 over the same period in 2006 has increased by five-fold. More than 30 tons of those have been cluster weapons, which targeted civilians and always resulted in a massacre of innocent civilians each time they are dropped.

As the Occupation continues, the death rate of Iraqis has doubled every year since 2003. The latest survey put the number of death to more than an estimated 1.22 million Iraqis, mostly women and children have been murdered since the 2003 U.S. aggression. The mass murder of Iraqis is not even discussed in public and the UN continues to play the role of an accomplice.

In addition to the mass murder of civilians, at least 4.5 million Iraqis have fled their homes because of the violence, and the numbers are rising steadily. More than half of them is internally displaced, refugees in their own country. They are enduring daily harsh and miserable living conditions, far worse than they have ever endured before the unprovoked aggression against their nation. The remainder have sought refuge outside Iraq. Only a small number were able to settle in the West, and the U.S. is the least interested in their wellbeing. As a result of U.S. aggression, most Iraqis have suffered the loss of a family member; more than 43 per cent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty; 70 per cent lack adequate water supplies; and 80 per cent lack sanitation (UNHCR, 2007).

The U.S. record of flagrant violation of human rights and contempt for International Law is nowhere more violent than in Iraq. On 12 May 1996, Madeleine Albright, the then Secretary of State in the Clinton’s Administration described the mass murder of 500,000 innocent Iraqi children – a direct result of the U.S.-Britain enforced genocidal sanctions – as: “a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it”. While the U.S. is well-known as an example of tyranny and the greatest enemy of democracy and human rights, very few people thought the U.S. was preparing for the total destruction of Iraq and mass murder of Iraqi civilians when the U.S. began its war of aggression to destroy the Iraqi State.

The “New” Iraq, designed by George Bush and his gang of hardcore Zionists, is a brain-drained and empty of human resources. In Bush’s thinking, the cradle of human civilisation would have to be wiped off the map and replaced by a new (Americanised) Iraq. As we know, Iraq’s cultural heritage and history have been deliberately looted and destroyed. Iraq’s professionals, including academics, scientists, doctors and teachers have been systematically liquidated in cold blood by U.S.-Israeli trained and financed murders and death squads. For rejecting Bush agenda and his Zionist scheme for their nation, Iraqis are living in state of fear and terror, and stripped of their basic human rights and dignity.

The deliberate destruction of Iraq and the creation of a dependent U.S. proxy serving U.S.-Western interests is part of the U.S.-Israel imperialist agenda. It is now clear that the U.S. primary goal in Iraq has to do with the protection of the Israeli fascist regime and U.S. imperialist domination of the region and its oil resources. Every one knows that U.S. rhetoric (of democracy and justice) is nothing short of fascist propaganda masquerading as “democracy” and “human rights”. It is worth remembering that when Adolf Hitler invaded other nations (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, etc.), Hitler uses the same concocted “human rights” pretexts to justify his war crimes.

Today’s Iraq is a lawless land where foreign mercenaries, and expatriate criminals and extremists are terrorising the civilian population with impunity. By arming and financing one faction against the other, the U.S. exacerbates the violence and hence justifies the ongoing Occupation. This criminal colonial policy is not new, as many have suggested. In order to serve their imperialist interests, U.S. and Western governments have always had strong love affairs with criminals and terrorists. Indeed, U.S. support for terrorism is part of U.S. strategy to continue the Occupation of Iraq.

Speaking of terrorists, Kurdish warlords and their militia in northern Iraq have been used by Western governments and Israel and proved to be reliable pawns. The Kurds treacherous collaboration in the murderous Occupation of Iraq is just one epoch in their history of treason and serving imperialism’s interests at the expense of ordinary Kurds. The Kurdish armed groups, the so-called Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK) or Kurdistan Workers Party, are now described by the Western media as “Kurdish fighters” fighting for autonomy and are allowed to remain in a safe haven in U.S.-occupied northern Iraq. Of course, this sounds like a decent group of ‘freedom fighters’, like Roland Regan’s Contras murderers in Latin America. Forgotten is the decades-long history of the PKK campaign of terror against the Turkey.

In contrast, the image of the legitimate Iraqi Resistance against the murderous Occupation is distorted and the Resistance is portrayed as an “insurgency” and a collection of “al-Qaeda” terrorists. Likewise, Afghans who are resisting the occupation of their country are labelled “terrorists”. The democratically-elected Palestinian Resistant Movement (HAMAS) is also labelled ‘terrorists’ for legitimately resisting Israel’s terror. Hence, Palestinian children have to suffer the wrath of a U.S.-EU blockade enforced by Israel’s terror.

In 2006, the Bush Administration was behind Israel’s invasion of Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah fighters there. In addition to the destruction of Lebanon vital infrastructure, Israeli aggression killed some 1,500 innocent civilians and turned more than half a million into refugees, with tacit U.S.-EU approval. Condoleezza Rice called Israel’s premeditated terror, the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”. And to make the situation worse, the U.S. and its allies not only refused to condemn or stop Israel’s terror against the civilians population, but the U.S. shipped bombs to Israel knowing in advance that the Israeli army was deliberately targeting innocent Lebanese civilians. Now, compare this with U.S. opposition to Turkey’s plan to stop Kurdish terror.

It follows, the term ‘terrorist’ is reserved for those who are rejecting U.S. domination and fighting to free themselves from U.S.-Israel Occupation. As rightly described by the late Pakistani scholar, Eqbal Ahmad, ‘terrorism’ is a floating signifier attached at will to Western enemies to evoke moral revulsion. The vagueness and inconsistency of its definition is key to its political usefulness.

Furthermore, let’s take a look at the U.S.-West hypocrisy of holding Turkey responsible for allegedly committed an “Armenian genocide” some 90 years ago while deliberately ignoring the ongoing Iraqi Genocide. As Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University in New York accurately elaborated, that genocide is being instrumentalised in a way that mass slaughters which implicate the U.S adversaries are being named “genocide” and those that implicate the U.S. and its friends are not being named genocide. In the case of Turkey – a U.S.-NATO ally –, the aim is to blackmail Turkey and distort the image of Muslims and Islam, and associate Muslims with violence and deflect guilt away from U.S.-Western perpetrators of the Iraqi Genocide.

If you reflect on the ongoing violence and suffering inflicted on millions of people around the world you will realise that whether it is the mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians and the deliberate starvation of Palestinian children or the destruction of the environment and the spread of poverty, the U.S. and its Western allies are the main perpetrators. They are on the move looking for a fight, continually fabricating lies and engineering crises in order to justify violence, as if the current sad world’s state of affairs is not enough. And they get away with whatever war crimes they have committed.

Tony Blair, the still-free and unindicted war criminal, continues to see himself performing his role as propagandist for the “values” he “shared” with George Bush. Blair’s “new” role is preaching the same fascist ideology he preached while Britain prime minister. At the expense of the lives of innocent Palestinian children, his mission is the “security” of Israel. Important issues such as the Gaza blockade – where Palestinian children are dying from starvation and malnutrition – or the human rights of some 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, including a large number of innocent women and children, enduring Israel’s brutal treatments of sadistic torture, sexual abuses and murder, are deliberately ignored.

When it comes to Israel, U.S.-Western governments employ the most blatant form of hypocrisy. For example, despite Israel’s chronic violations of international human rights law, breach of countless UN Resolutions regarding the occupation of Palestinian land, and Israel appetite for unprovoked acts of aggression, U.S.-Western governments provide unconditional political, financial and military support to Israel. The ongoing U.S. threat to attack Iran is jus a case in point. The U.S. government, with its massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, accuses Iran of posing threat to U.S. and Israel security and “having ambitions” to develop nuclear weapons. Of course, there is no hard evidence to support these concocted pretexts. Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is allowing frequent inspections of its facilities by the UN Nuclear Watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Unlike Iran, Israel has refused to sign the NPT or allowed inspection of its facilities. It is clear that Israel possesses a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and has threatened to use these weapons against countries in the region. Israel continues to illegally occupy Palestinian land. Despite all of this, Israel has the full blessing of the U.S.-Western governments.

It is worth noting that three-quarters of Americans are against U.S.-Israel military threat to attack Iran. The same number of Americans favours a diplomatic solution to the (engineered) crisis. The drumbeat for war against Iran is pushed by U.S. Zionists (the so-called ‘Neocons’), the powerful pro-Israel Jewish Lobby, and by the Israeli regime. Just take a look inside one of these pro-war U.S.-based ‘think-tanks’ (institutes), and count those with “dual loyalty” to Israel and (maybe) to the U.S.

The push for war with Iran is part of a fascist anti-Muslims/anti-Arabs propaganda campaign in the U.S. and Europe. There are concerted efforts by inherently racist Zionists, the U.S.-Western media and the entertainment industry to dehumanised and vilified Arabs. Take a look at how the mass killing of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians is justified and applauded by U.S.-Western leaders and sold as part of U.S.-Western “shared values” to spread “democracy” and “human rights”. The campaign is a deliberate effort to spread fear and hatred, and build public support for war on Muslim nations, including Iran.

In the U.S., thousands of Muslim immigrants and American citizens have been illegally hounded in witch-hunt roundups, held in secret detention centres, “black holes”, where they disappear for months into extreme solitary confinement, and many illegally deported without due process. Their “crime” is their Muslim faith. (For more, see Chris Hedges, Truthdig, 29/10/2007).

The immoral and illegal policy of “extraordinary rendition” in which CIA agents kidnap innocent Muslims and so-called “terrorism suspects” anywhere in the world and illegally transfer them to prisons in countries where they are tortured on behalf of the U.S. or sent them to secret CIA prisons (“black sites”) hidden across Europe, where they are tortured by CIA agents is flagrant violation of international human rights law. Many Muslims, mostly innocent, include prisoners of the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq have ended-up in the Pentagon official Concentration Camp at Guantánamo Bay where some of them were tortured to death.

Furthermore, Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including women and children, are imprisoned in countless U.S.-run prisons throughout Iraq. They are denied basic human rights and enduring systematic torture, abuse and murder in violations of International Law, including the UN Convention and the Geneva Conventions against torture and mistreatment of detainees and prisoners. The infamous Abu Ghraib (where George Bush known to have perfected the practice of torture) is just the tip of the iceberg in America’s global network of torture centres.

The Russians must be wondering about the U.S. Secretary preaching “democracy” and “human rights” in their country while deliberately ignoring not only the inequality and violations of human rights in her own country – where at least 50 million of her fellow Americans (mostly African Americans) are denied health care and treated with contempt –, but also a catalogue of U.S. government violations of International Law and contempt for human lives around the world.

In sum, the primary aim of U.S.-Western deliberate hypocrisy is to control the public, induce moral bankruptcy and justify the use of violence to further U.S.-Western imperialist agenda, using “democracy” and “human rights” as political tools. Thus, as long as U.S.-Western leaders continue to ignore their own war crimes and their complicity in war crimes, they have no moral authority or credibility to judge other countries or interfere in the affairs of other countries.