October 4th, 2007 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
A U.N. special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, has held talks with the totalitarian regime in Burma and has also met with Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and one of the leaders of the pro-democracy movement in that country:
[Gambari] had waited four days to see Gen Than Shwe before the chairman of Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) made himself available.
No details have emerged but Mr Gambari was intending to urge the general “to cease the repression of peaceful protest”, release detainees and embrace democracy and human rights, a UN spokesman said before the talks.
The US called on the UN envoy to press upon the military the need for a “real and serious political dialogue with all relative parties”.
The SPDC — i.e., the totalitarian military junta — has no interest in democracy and human rights. As I and many others have argued before, it will take tough international sanctions and above all the support of China and India, the two major powers propping up the SPDC, for any such pressure to work, that is, to bring about real change.
September 30th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
The video and YouTube age makes if more difficult for cover stories. One of the images literally flashing around the world is of Cameraman Nagai Kenji being shot dead from the back. It’s there for everyone to see - a graphic document of repression:
Once upon a time if outrages occurred, they could be contained. Governments, organizations, celebrities or security forces could put out tidy cover stories and most people wouldn’t notice.
But then came the video camera revolution which spread the word throughout the county and often beyond. Then came the 24-news cycle with cable news networks craving more new info and images to fill hours naysayers once scornfully said pioneer CNN could NEVER fill and keep audiences.
And now we’re into the YouTube era, where anyone official or otherwise can post an image on the Internet that will be carried throughout the world — not just influencing those (particularly young people) who increasingly get news online, but television programs, print news editors and television news directors who find interesting tidbits that spark program or story ideas.
Myanmar is now being pitchforked into the headlines with more and more stories each day. For instances, as you read this:
China is the key to political change in Myanmar, not UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari who has met the military junta, the former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said here.
But there was no sign that Beijing would change tack and pressure the junta, Bolton told BBC television while attending Britain’s opposition Conservative party conference in Blackpool, England.
‘I think it’s very unclear that (Gambari) will be able to achieve anything. I have a lot of respect for Ibrahim Gambari personally but he’s in a very difficult position because the Security Council is divided,’ he said.
Gambari was dispatched to Myanmar at the weekend by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to intervene after the junta unleashed a military campaign to shut down mass protests several days ago, leaving at least 13 dead and hundreds arrested.
A worried Pope Benedict XVI added his voice Sunday to calls from abroad for Myanmar’s military leaders to peacefully end their crackdown on protesters demanding democracy.
Benedict made his first public comments on the deadly crackdown a few hours after a U.N. envoy met with some Myanmar government leaders and detained opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyi, whose steadfast, peaceful challenge to the regime earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has spent years under house arrest.
“I am following with great trepidation the very serious events” in Myanmar, the pope told pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.
He expressed his spiritual closeness to the “dear” people of Myanmar during their “painful trial” and he asked the entire Catholic Church to follow his lead in praying intensely for them.
He said he “strongly hoped that a peaceful solution can be found for the good of the country.”
And he should worry: according to Al-Jazeera, the military’s control is tighter than ever:
Ahmadinejad Invites U.N. Inspectors to Search for Homosexuals
Permits Use of Advanced Gaydar
Just days after asserting that there are no homosexuals in Iran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today invited United Nations inspectors into his country to search for homosexuals.
“We have nothing to hide,†Mr. Ahmadinejad said in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. “You can search the entire country – even the airport bathrooms.â€
While some senior U.S. diplomats expressed skepticism about the Iranian president’s offer to allow U.N. inspectors to search his country for homosexuals, Mr. Ahmadinejad attempted to silence the skeptics by permitting the use of “advanced gaydar technology†as part of the proposed inspections.
“In Iran we have the most advanced gaydar in the world and we are prepared to share it with you,†he said.
Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.
During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.
Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.
One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.
In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: “Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur’s genocide?”
A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.
If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.
July 24th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Some musicians seem like they’re made to lead the world. Some seem born citizens of the earth, regardless whichever country, heritage, religion they’re born into. Regardless what their parents wanted for them; regardless of childhood introjects… they travel the world, often as what I’d call ‘rememberers,’ musicians who help us remember that water can flow through stone.
If spoken words are capable of too easily offending some, destroying and dividing us, then music seems far more often able to unite, to cross tightly controlled checkpoints that bar babblers and blabbers, but let through musicians carrying a stringed, wind, or percussion instrument… like water through stone. Maybe the musicians who are Rememberers could for a while, lead the detente talks, the conciliation talks, the cease fires and peace agreements. Arion of Methymna and Orpheus of Thrace are celebrated in song to this day, for Arion surrounded Thebes with walls by the power of music, and Orpheus tamed the wild beasts by the mere might of song. Some element inside the mythic is always very real.
Tisha B’av is about mourning what has been destroyed and finding a way to build a new, even more beautiful temple, whether cultural, personal, religious or creative. Here are some musicians who are pylons and piers and guy wires and girders for bridges across roiling waters:
Jewish-Muslim music: Gerard Edery…”I’m not naive about the political reality, or about how polarized Jews and Arabs have become.” Edery is a singer and classical guitarist …Standing before a room full of Muslims, this Jewish musician launched into “a very Jewish song” in Hebrew about Elijah the prophet. Then, “without even thinking,” he started teaching the audience the words. “At first, I sensed a hesitation from the audience… After a few measures…700 to 800 Muslims [were] singing with me in Hebrew.” Edery, who was born in Casablanca, moved to Paris at age 4 and then the United States at age 8… Like those of Central Asia, Jews and Muslims in pre-Inquisition Spain, the place of Edery’s maternal ancestry, “shared similar, musical, poetical and artistic” license. There was a tolerance and a cross-pollination…”I’m not a politician or a scholar. I’m a musician. And I believe in doing what I can through music…: “We should all delve into our past and embrace all our traditions, whether Jewish or Muslim. Let me sing to you in Arabic and you can sing to me in Hebrew and let’s realize, very specifically, that we Jews and Arabs are from the same soil.”
Hindu-Muslim music: Bismillah Khan’s ancestors were court musicians who played in Naqqar khana in the princely states of Bhojpur. His father was a shehnai player in the court of Maharaja Keshav Prasad. Despite his fame, Khan’s lifestyle retained old world Benares: his chief mode of transport was the cycle rickshaw. A man of tenderness, he believed in remaining private, and that “musicians are supposed to be heard and not seen.” He was a pious ShiÃa Muslim and also, like many Indian musicians regardless of creed, a devotee of Mother Saraswati. He often played at various temples and on the banks of the river Ganga in Varanasi, besides playing outside the famous Vishwanath temple in Varanasi. Khan is one of the finest musicians in post-independent Indian Classical music and one of the best examples of Hindu-Muslim unity in India. He said, “Even if the world ends, the music will still survive… Music has no caste”.
AfricanAmerican-Jewish music: In New York, The American Symphony Orchestra wove this: concerts that “contribute to the current political debate by presenting a moment of history when matters were different. Not nostalgia, but rather the exploration of different models from which to draw inspiration for the present and future. The composers on this program born into Jewish families who integrated African-American materials in their work–Gershwin, Gruenberg and Gould–did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their African-American contemporaries and colleagues. The composers of African-American descent–Price, Ellington and Kay–who integrated European traditions with African-American traditions, did so in ways which earned the respect and admiration of their non-African-American contemporaries and colleagues. Read the rest of this entry »
Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it’s grown sick and cynical — partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.
At a session in Geneva last week, the council — established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission — listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both “rapporteurs” in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a “consensus” in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.
While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” In other words, Israel (or “Palestine,” in the council’s terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That’s in keeping with the record of the council’s first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government [My emphasis].
Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia — and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements — will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.
The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting “a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole,” frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed “the worst of the worst” by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations.
The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn’t just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week.
This record is far darker than Kofi Annan’s “shadow.” You’d think it would be intolerable to the democratic states that sit on the council. Sadly, it’s not. Several of them — India, South Africa, Indonesia — have regularly supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement in their assaults on Israel and defense of Cuba, Belarus and Sudan. The council’s chairman, who rammed through last week’s decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico.
The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council’s 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council’s attention on the world’s worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union “has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions.” At one point before last week’s meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe’s representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel “is certainly not ideal . . . we have a basis we can work with.”
What about Western human rights groups — surely they cannot accept such a travesty of human rights advocacy? In fact, they can. While critical of the council, New York-based Human Rights Watch said its procedural decisions “lay a foundation for its future work.” Global advocacy director Peggy Hicks told me that the council’s focus on Israel was in part appropriate, because of last year’s war in Lebanon, and was in part caused by Israel itself, because of its refusal to cooperate with missions the council dispatched. (Sudan also refused to cooperate but was not rebuked.) Hicks said she counted only nine condemnations, not 11.
Never mind how you count them: Is there a point at which a vicious and unfounded campaign to delegitimize one country — which happens to be populated mostly by Jews — makes it unconscionable to collaborate with the body that conducts it? “That could happen, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near there,” Hicks said.
That’s the human rights movement, seven years into a century that’s off to a bad start.
I disagree with Diehl on only one point. He says the target of the delegitimization effort is a country that “happens” to be populated mostly by Jews. I would use the word “because” instead. Perhaps that’s what he really means; if so, why not come out and say it?
June 23rd, 2007 by DAVID SCHRAUB, Assistant Editor
The outgoing UN envoy for the Israel-Palestinian conflict thinks he’s figured out where the UN is going wrong: it’s too “tender” towards Israel and allows them to make “unrealistic” demands of the Palestinians like…recognition.
When Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress before the invasion in 2003 that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to pacify Iraq, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz ridiculed him.
To justify the war, the Administration pushed Gen. Colin Powell, by then Secretary of State, into a UN presentation from which he tried, not altogether successfully, to remove Scooter Libby’s “garbage†supplied by Ahmad Chalabi.
Cheney didn’t even try to hide the fact that he and Bush were using Powell’s credibility to sell the war. Poking him in the chest, the Vice President told Powell, “You’ve got high poll ratings, you can afford to lose a few points.”
Last week, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace faced Senate opposition for being too compliant, the Bushies dropped him with a thud. Loyalty works only one way with them.
Now it’s Petraeus’ turn. Everything in his past suggests that he is an honest, capable man, which of course is why they are using him to front for the Surge. As a good soldier, he may want to look at what happened to Powell, Shinseki, Pace et al when he makes his crucial report to Congress at the end of summer.
He is sworn to serve the American people, not the parody of a Commander-in-Chief.
Last weekend, the 53 member countries of the UN’s Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) elected their new chair. The head of the commission is rotated on a regional basis, and it was Africa’s turn. Against objections from the U.S. and Europe, the nations voted 26-21 (with three abstentions) in favor of Zimbabwe.
According to the BBC, “Zimbabwe’s Environment Minister Francis Nheme will now become chairman of the CSD. Mr. Nheme is the subject of European Union travel ban because he is a member of President Robert Mugabe’s government. That means he cannot travel to the EU to meet ministers on commission business.†Nheme also faces a similar ban in the United States, and although UN rules allow him to visit the UN in New York, he can travel no further than 25 miles from UN HQ.
So a country that, in the words of the Guardian, “has destroyed a once-thriving farming industry, has a failing economy, an appalling human rights record and a poor record of looking after its wildlife and national parks,” is now heading a commission on sustainable development. Zimbabwe’s current inflation rate is a mere 2,200 percent. That’s right, two-thousand-two-hundred percent.
Keep your eyes on PrawfsBlawg over the next few weeks, as Washington & Lee Law Professor Mark Drumbl is slated to be a guest-blogger. Drumbl is one of the more intriguing theorists on the punishment of mass atrocities, and his book, Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law, looks fascinating. Given what is going on in the world today (especially in Uganda, which is a perfect case-study of the problems Drumbl has identified with current models of mass atrocity adjudication), he should have some great insights.
“Two wars and a decade of sanctions have led to a huge rise in the mortality rate among young children in Iraq, leaving statistics that were once the envy of the Arab world now comparable with those of sub-Saharan Africa.
“A new report shows that in the years since 1990, Iraq has seen its child mortality rate soar by 125 per cent, the highest increase of any country in the world. Its rate of deaths of children under five now matches that of Mauritania.
“Figures collated by the charity show that in 1990 Iraq’s mortality rate for under-fives was 50 per 1,000 live births. In 2005 it was 125. While many other countries have higher rates - Angola, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, all have rates above 200 - the increase in Iraq is higher than elsewhere.
“Precisely how many children died because of sanctions is unknown but a report in 1999 from the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), suggested that between 1991 and 1998 an additional 500,000 died.
“Denis Halliday, who resigned as the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in protest at the sanctions, said at the time: ‘We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral.’
“Kathy Kelly, an anti-war campaigner with Voices in the Wilderness, said last night: ‘The punishment of children through the economic and military war against Iraq has been the greatest scandal’.”
It is said that the test of any civilised country/society lies in its visible concern about women and children, especially during wars and conflicts. If it is absent then the thin line dividing civilised behaviour/thought and barbarism simply vanishes.
I have enjoyed writing for The Moderate Voice blog for more than a year now.
However, what I have experienced (and what has baffled me most) is the priority (in America?) to first ascertain whether a blogger/writer/commenter is a “leftist”, “moderate”, or a “rightist”, or a “liberal”, or a “neo-con”, or whatever.
This tendency to label would have appeared funny (if not eccentric)…but for the fact that even human tragedy and suffering are at times viewed from within the prism of these labels.
I wonder which label would cover the writer of this tragic story on the impact of war and conflict on the children in Iraq?
May 1st, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
India’s leading and respected 129-year-old newspaper, The Hindu, carries an interesting and in-depth write-up The War of Ideas: Mindsets and Options. The author of the article is Hamid Ansari, a former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations.
Excerpts:
“The problem essentially is with definitions and the assumptions underlying them: Tyranny, freedom, modern, moderate are all interpreted unilaterally and in terms of prescriptive political preferences…
” ‘The War on Terrorism,’ said President George W. Bush in National Security Strategy 2002, is ‘a struggle of ideas’ in which America ‘must excel.’
“Five years on, an informed analysis by Bruce Riedel in Foreign Affairs concludes, ‘Al Qaida is a more dangerous enemy today than it has ever been before.’ It suggests a new narrative, and a re-packaged effort. The admission is damaging, the urge to rethink encouraging.
“From the viewpoint of the United States and its allies, the 2003-2007 period has been a humbling one. The euphoria of victory has given way to a ‘long war.’ The urge to modernise West Asian societies has all but vanished under the twin imperatives of local resistance and external convenience.
“The realisation has dawned that an unthinking assault on a faith and its adherents has stiffened the resolve to defy. The ‘neocon moment’ is admitted to be a folly. Altogether, the hegemonic impulse has failed to deliver.
“A re-conceptualisation is said to be in progress. It covers military strategy, political approaches, even the ideological thrust. Each of these could be genuine or simulated; analysis therefore necessitates deconstruction in terms of motives and objectives…
“Defence Secretary Robert Gates has publicly accepted that the U.S. is ‘not winning’ the war…
” ‘The U.S. repression of Sunnis,’ writes Professor Juan Cole, ‘has allowed Shiites and Kurds to avoid compromises’ and radicalised Sunnis to the point that 70 per cent of them consider attacks on U.S. troops legitimate. The corresponding figure for 2003 was 14 per cent!
“A set of contradictions emerge from the resulting situation: (a) the mismatch between American military thinking and the American domestic timetable for the war effort; (b) the gap between American military effort and the Iraqi ground reality; (c) the chasm between the political perceptions of Iraqi factions. How are these to be resolved?
“The key to prevent an intensified civil war, argues Professor Cole, is ‘a U.S. withdrawal from the equation to force the parties to an accommodation. Therefore, the United States should announce its intentions to withdraw its military forces from Iraq, which will bring Sunnis to the negotiating table and put pressure on Kurds and Shiites to seek a compromise with them.
“But a simple U.S. departure would not be enough; the civil war must be negotiated to a settlement, on the model of the conflicts in Northern Ireland and Lebanon.’
“Regional diplomacy has a role to play in shaping the modalities and content of such negotiations. The idea has been around for over a year but made no progress while the Americans and the Iranians manoeuvred for the high ground. There is some hope now of it being pursued seriously.
“In such an effort, Saudi Arabia and Iran could be encouraged to emerge as brokers to nudge the principal adversaries to a comprehensive, balanced, compromise package capable of being monitored and one in which the gains of each would be evident. An overarching coordination mechanism of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the U.S. would be a prerequisite, and so would the support of other neighbours of Iraq.
“A peacekeeping force could supplement the arrangements arrived at; it should avoid the pitfall of peace enforcement…”
April 30th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
(Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki)
It is official. The US and Iranian top officials would meet this week to discuss Iraq and the ongoing violence there.
The New York Times reports: “The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran announced Sunday that it would attend a regional conference on Iraq later this week, setting the stage for the first cabinet-level meeting between Iran and the United States since the end of 2004.
“The American envoy to the meeting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that she would not rule out the possibility of conferring directly with Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
“Since the United States announced last month that it would attend the conference, it has been assumed that Iran and Syria, which border Iraq to the east and west, would also attend.
“The regional meeting, set for Thursday and Friday in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el Sheik, is expected to draw the foreign ministers from Iraq’s neighbors, including Syria, as well as Egypt, Bahrain and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
“Many of those attending represent Sunni Muslim governments that worry that Iran and Iraq, which are both dominated by Shiite Muslims, represent a growing threat to regional stability and their own power.” For more please click here…
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki completed his undergraduate studies from India in 1976, and received his MA from Tehran University in 1996 in the field of international relations. Mottaki has a good command of English as well as Urdu and Turkish languages.
He was a member of parliament in the first Majlis, head of seventh political bureau of Foreign Ministry (1984), Iran’s ambassador to Turkey (1985), Foreign Ministry’s secretary general for West European affairs (1989), deputy foreign minister for international affairs (1989) and deputy foreign minister for legal, consular and parliamentary affairs (1992).
He has also been Iran’s ambassador to Japan (1994), advisor to foreign minister (1999), deputy head of Culture and Islamic Communications Organization (2001) and Head of foreign relations committee of 7th Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.
I don’t know much about Counterpunch, an American newsletter, or its credibility. However, the two articles I read recently are quite provocative and, alarming, if true.
April 22nd, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
I wonder how long the United Nations and the world leaders go on looking the other way despite mounting evidence during the past four years of the crimes being committed against the civilian population in Iraq, directly attributable to the occupation of the country by the US forces.
Are we living in 18th or 19th century when the masters were allowed to do whatever with their slaves? Has the United Nations and world leaders come to the conclusion that Iraq is a colony of the United States and beyond the ambit of the comity of nations?
Can the Secretary-General and the Security Council members of the UN be absolved of their complicity in the crime/genocide going on in Iraq? It appears that the UN is not even concerned about the Iraq civilian killings. Read here…
Even investigations conducted by the US military has blamed its own members for indulging in murder, mayhem and worse.
Here is the latest from The New York Times: “A military investigation has found that senior Marine Corps commanders in Iraq showed a routine disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians that contributed to a ‘willful’ failure to investigate the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis by marines in 2005, lawyers involved in the case said.
“The report, completed last summer but never made public, also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq learned of the killings within hours that day, Nov. 19, 2005, in the town of Haditha, but failed to begin a thorough inquiry into how they occurred.
“The 130-page report, by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army, did not conclude that the senior officers covered up evidence or committed a crime. But it said the Marine Corps command in Iraq was far too willing to tolerate civilian casualties and dismiss Iraqi claims of abuse by marines as insurgent propaganda, according to lawyers who have read it.
Well, well, well…Is it not a crime that the corps command tolerated military excesses ??? The Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, sitting in the safety of the White House, brazenly maintains that the situation in Iraq is ‘improving’ while hundreds of civilians are massacred every month, if not week.
“ ‘All levels of command tended to view civilian casualties, even in significant numbers, as routine and as the natural and intended result of insurgent tactics,’ General Bargewell wrote in his report, according to two people who have read it. ‘Statements made by the chain of command during interviews for this investigation, taken as a whole, suggest that Iraqi civilian lives are not as important as U.S. lives, their deaths are just the cost of doing business, and that the Marines need to get the job done no matter what it takes’.â€?
Pray how is George W. Bush, or the USA, any different from Saddam Hussein & Co for an average Iraqi civilian? In fact the US occupation has aggravated the situation and led to a blood bath involving Sunnis and Shias.
It will be criminal and unfair if only the US Marine officers were punished. Mr Bush and the top echelons of the US administration cannot be allowed to go scot-free as their hands are as much tainted with the blood of Iraqi civilians as anyone else. The US Marines are being sacrificed to satisfy the lust and greed for Iraqi oil.
The complicity, right up to the C-in-C in the White House, becomes all the more glaring because civilian casualties are rising every day as the excesses of the US forces are being overlooked, as the report indicates.
Come to think of it, at least during Saddam Hussein’s rule there was no such anarchy, murders and mayhem that are now being witnessed in Iraq non-stop for the past four years.
April 18th, 2007 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The Iraq war was supposed to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, but to date its most palpable result has been to spread Iraqis throughout the world, reports The Independent.
“UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, believes that up to two million have sought refuge outside the country since the war started, and 1.9 million have been forced to move within Iraq in fear of their lives.
“The agency’s chief, Antonio Gutteres, appealed for help yesterday at the first conference on the refugee crisis…
“The flood of refugees has put a huge and growing burden on neighbouring nations, especially Syria and Jordan, which in consequence are making it more and more difficult for Iraqis to enter their countries.
“Others in the Middle East are battening down the hatches: Kuwait now never admits Iraqis; Saudi Arabia is building a fortified barrier at a cost of $7bn (£3.7bn) to stop people crossing the border; and Egypt is accepting far fewer Iraqis than it used to…” For more please click here…
