The testimonies at the previous sessions of the World Tribunal on Iraq in Brussels and New York have demonstrated that even those of us who have tried to follow the war in Iraq closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq.You haven't addressed the assertion that horrors have been unleased in Iraq by the US military. Allegations of US atrocities include use of chemical weapons, poison gas and napalm(http://www.jregrassroots.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t10111.html ); torture of prisoners (I doubt you'd deny that); not to mention plain and simple murder. Here's an example :
Seems to me that the people unleashing the horrors are the insurgents. If they would stop sending suicide bombers out TO BLOW U ...[text shortened]... what makes you think they will change their spots if they were suddenly to find themselves in power?
• A 55-year-old Iraqi man had been removed from his house in August after a search by American soldiers found no weapons there. His family had been desperately searching for him for months, and they finally found him, brain dead in a Tikrit hospital.
After performing diagnostic tests, doctors told his family he had suffered massive head trauma, electrocution, and other beatings on his arms. The family was told he would be in a coma for the rest of his life from the obvious trauma suffered from torture.
It turns out that American soldiers had dropped him off at the hospital, saying he had had a heart attack.
(http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/john_kaminski/americans_ignore_atrocities_in_iraq.htm)
Plenty more examples if you look for them.
Your response to this is BUT the suicide bombers are worse. That doesn't negate the apparent fact that US troops are doing things that used to be called war crimes. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that US treatment of Iraqi civilians gave impetus to the resistance in the first place. From an article titled "How US Atrocities Sparked the Iraqi Resistance":
ORIGINS: 28 APRIL 2003
But how did Fallujah become the heart of the Iraqi insurgency? For the answer we must turn back to the events of April 2003, when US troops entered the peaceful city of Fallujah and occupied the local secondary school.
Local people angry about the US occupation, and demanding the re-opening of the school, demonstrated outside the school on the evening of 28 April, nearly three weeks after the fall of the regime. US soldiers fired on the crowd, killing 13 civilians immediately.
This is the same number of civilians as was killed by British soldiers in Derry in Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday in 1972. The Fallujah massacre was Iraq's Bloody Sunday, a similarly potent injustice sparking armed resistance. (http://www.occupationwatch.org/analysis/archives/2005/05/turning_point_f.html)
There is a long list of atrocities committed by US troops since WW2:. In Afghanistan, Kakarak (one example). Vietnam: My Lai, Operation Phoenix (wholesale authorised murder: read all about it in Wikipedia); and, news to me, even in South Korea:
"On April 3, 1948, the people of Cheju Island rose up to protest the rule of the U.S. military government and the separate election in South Korea which threatened to divide the nation. The uprising lasted for seven years, during which nearly one-third of the island's population, or approximately 80,000 people, were killed because they were accused of being communists. This uprising was the first anti-United States liberation effort and struggle for reunification in Korea. We call it the April 3 Cheju People's Uprising." (http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/DB/issues/97/04.09/view.yuk.html)
Having said all that, I do agree that the best thing for the insurgents to do would be to lay down their arms in a negotiated truce brokered through the UN, the same as it's done in other war-torn countries. I am not aware of any initiatives in this direction put forward by the US leadership--I'd be grateful if you could enlighten me on this.
ceRoy made a statement: that the war will be examined. You speculate as to whether war is legal or not. Then you say that certain US actions are reprehensible (it seems they are still going on) but imply that the Muslims are somehow worse. That's a matter of perspective. Suicide bombers killing kids--that's disgusting. US troops shooting civilians (men, women, children) in the street or from a helicopter--that's no better. Winning hearts and minds takes some skill.
[b]Every aspect of the war will be examined - its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation, the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted uranium munitions, napalm, and cluster bombs, the use of and legitimation of torture, the ecological impacts of the war, the responsibility of Arab governments, the impact of Iraq_s occupatio ...[text shortened]... ding on a box. We were ashamed of that. Ordinary Muslims root for terrorists to behead westerners.
Roy: This tribunal is an attempt to correct the record. To document the history of the war not from the point of view of the victors but of the temporarily - and I repeat the word temporarily - vanquished.
Sasquatch: Are you kidding me? The temporarily vanquished? The Sunnis, and the Baaths, who were the foot soldiers of one of the most brutal regimes in world history? And this idiot wants them back?
I interpret Roy as including the entire Iraqi population among the vanquished. When you defeat a nation, the entire population is defeated, is it not? She means that the whole story must come out, not just the official US view. You seized on the idea that she supports the Sunnis and Baathists (fair enough, I can see room for that interpretation) and failed to grasp her point.
Roy: Let me say categorically that this tribunal...is an act of resistance in itself. It is a defense mounted against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in history...
SQ: Oh yeah? What do you call killing 300,000 citizens of your own country? Gallant?
Me: You missed the point. She's advocating the use of the tribunal as a non-violent form of resistance.
Roy: a war in which international institutions were used to force a country to disarm...
SQ: I seem to recall a right damn amount of consensus in the international community about the danger posed by Saddam until it was time for the rubber to meet the road. I seem to recall...twenty-six?...UN resolutions telling Iraq to behave or the world was going to get out the big stick.
Me: you haven't addressed her point that Iraq was forced to disarm.
...and then stood by while it was attacked with a greater array of weapons than has ever been used in the history of war.
SQ: Oh, well, let's go ahead and make it a fair fight then. Let's go ahead and instead of using precision-guided munitions, we'll carpet bomb Fallujah just like Dresden in WWII, and try to top that significant feat of 90,000 civilian casualties in a single city. Let's go ahead and hell, since they don't have tanks, let's not use our tanks or F-15s or A-10s or Blackhawks - let's not use the most advanced weaponry in the history of man in an attempt to save our own troops' lives and the lives of Iraqi noncombatants, because after all, that wouldn't be fair.
Me: Your words here are totally valid. At the same time, you can't deny her point: that Iraq was forced to disarm and then attacked. Her use of "cowardly" is a piece of rhetoric, I'll give you that.
It (the tribunal) should become a weapon in the hands of journalists, writers, poets, singers, teachers, plumbers, taxi drivers, car mechanics, painters, lawyers - anybody who wishes to participate in the resistance.
SQ: Again, idiotic comparison of legitimate occupation resistances to one that, if it wins, will take its country back to the fifteenth century with a medieval government. And blatant support of the very same people who just blew up eighteen Iraqi kids.
Me: you've misread her sentence. She's talking about the tribunal, not the resistance in Iraq. There isn't a word in her article to suggest that she supports murdering children. You've clearly taken her words out of context and given them an emotional interpretation: she's not with you, so she must be against you, right? Don't you just hate artists?
Last one, thank God.
Roy: We recognize that the judgment of the World Tribunal on Iraq is not binding in international law. However, our ambitions far surpass that. The World Tribunal on Iraq places its faith in the consciences of millions of people across the world who do not wish to stand by and watch while the people of Iraq are being slaughtered, subjugated, and humiliated.
SQ: Well, this is right up StanG's alley. And again, I agree with the guy. I think most Americans would, too - they don't want to see Iraqis slaughtered, subjugated, or humiliated either. In fact, about 133,000 of us don't want to see Iraqis slaughtered, subjugated, or humiliated so much that they put on a uniform and put their lives at risk to protect Iraqi citizens who want to build a stable and peaceful country.
Me: You repeat the standard rhetoric that the US invaded Iraq as a service to its citizens. In a different thread you've stated that oil was probably the main reason with human rights a distant second. (The fact that Bush comes from an oil family has nothing whatsoever to do with it I'm sure).
My main objection to your reaction to "that bitch" Arundhati Roy is that you didn't take the trouble to read her text carefully (well it was posted by Stang...). Your outright dismissal of her stance without troubling to read her properly is in my view arrogant.
You have to understand that the USA has a terrible international image. People from South Africa (very misguided ones) went to Iraq as human shields. They didn't sign up as volunteers for the invasion. They made an emotional identification with the Iraqis as forthcoming victims of oppression. Winning hearts and minds takes a great deal of skill. Ordinary Iraqis are likely to hate Americans for a long time, I remember how surprised I was when I saw Iraqis chanting "my blood for Saddam" on tv. Had their children not been bombed to bits, I doubt they'd have expressed that sentiment.
Originally posted by TheBloopPerhaps you have a non-linear view of time, Bloop. Or are incapable of understanding a series of events.
those who ARMED HIM? Did this person say "THOSE WHO ARMED HIM?"
Haven't you forgotten something, Stang?? Saddam NEVER HAD ANY WEAPONS, remember? HE WAS NEVER A THREAT, remember? Bush lied!! Blair lied!!
How can this Sydney Prize winner claim that someone armed Saddam? He NEVER had weapons! Anyone who thinks he had weapons is a liar! Or, in the words of Darryl Worley, "Have you forgotten"?
Saddam was armed by Big Bush. He used the weapons with great glee. Then after Kuwait he had to disarm. That's why those weapons, which assuredly did exist previously, were not not found by Little Bush. Does that make sense?