Remember, remember.......5 years! The decision by President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq was
ILLEGAL because it didn't have U.N Security Council approval, according to Secretary General Kofi Annan in an interview with the BBC World Service on Wednesday 15 2004. On Wednesday after being asked three times whether the lack of council approval for the war meant it was
illegal, he (Annan) said:
" From our point of view it was
ILLEGAL."
Q: It was
illegal ?
Annan: Yes, if you wish.
Q: It was
illegal ?
Annan: Yes, I have indicated it is not In conformity with the U.N Charter, from our point of view and from the Charter point of view it Was
ILLEGAL.
International Herald Tribune, Friday, September 17, 2004 (U.N chief calls Iraq war Illegal) The Associated Press, United Nations, New York."
Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."Nuremberg War Crimes tribunal,1950.
"By any means necessary…" Malcolm X
Here is now my opinion on how we, the anti-war movement (at least here in Japan), should define the fight led by the Iraqi people against the U.S-British-led
ILLEGAL occupation of their country:It is
RESISTANCE !The Iraqi people should and have the right to fight the invaders of Iraq, and all the vultures that came with them, by any means necessary !It is
RESISTANCE ! There must be no doubt about it.Iraq is just another Algeria, Vietnam, Kenya, Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya…etcWe, the anti-war movement, must support the Iraqi
RESISTANCE no matter how ugly it may appear. No matter how many are beheaded, no matter how many heads we see being cut off on the Internet, no matter all that ugliness, we must support the Iraqi
RESISTANCE.
Frantz Fanon once said:
"The resistance is ugly because the occupation is ugly".Is more than 1000000 dead Iraqis so far, killed (for
OIL) by U.S high precision strikes pretty ?
It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.
That study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The graphic above provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the
Iraq Body Count. (See the
complete explanation.)
The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business
estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US invasion.
"We don't do body counts" U.S General Tommy Franks
We must support the Iraqi RESISTANCE because History demands it, because Justice demands it, because the ghosts of the victims of previous injustices demand it, because the ghosts of killed resistance fighters throughout History demand it, because the ghosts of the more than 600.000 dead Iraqi children (we, in our "democracies" let them die) in the 1990s under genocidal and illegal U.S-imposed, cowardly U.N-allowed economic sanctions demand it, because all those who cannot resist need it.
We must support the Iraqi
RESISTANCE because we owe it to all those before us who died resisting so that we, today, would have the strength to resist. We must support the Iraqi
RESISTANCE because it is the right thing to do ! We cannot pretend to do anything else before we have made a clear stand for this issue. We cannot go around in pitiful numbers, chanting anti-war slogans and asking for the withdrawal of these troops or those troops, an "end to the occupation" and so on before making it clear that we support the Iraqi
RESISTANCE ! We also must stop condemning "both sides" for their brutality, we must stop being hypocritically "even handed" because this kind of attitude only reinforces the aggressor.One thing must be made clear:
The Iraqis are the victims, the U.S-led occupation forces are the aggressors and the Iraqis fighting these criminals are the RESISTANCE!As for the "leaders" of the countries that took part in the rape of Iraq, here is the verdict:
BUSH, BLAIR, HOWARD, AZNAR, BERLUSCONI, KOIZUMI, KWASINEVSKI and all the others who supported the decision to invade and occupy Iraq are guilty of mass destruction and continued massacre in Iraq. They should be tried as war criminals in an international court for distorting the reality with lies upon lies, taking lives of thousands of innocent people and making the world more unstable than it was before their much vaunted noble war.As for us, the people, who elected these criminals, we have the right and duty to get rid of these scumbags
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
Noam Chomsky, speaking of George W. Bush, once said that
" if he (Bush) were to be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunal, he would be hanged. So too would every single American President since the end of WW2, including Jimmy Carter."And I say
Bush, Blair, Howard, Aznar, Berlusconi, Koizumi, and all the others in power who supported this war on Iraq as well as all those cowards, lackeys of the government in the mainstream "media", all these leeches should be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunals and be hanged !
WAR CRIMINALS
We, the anti-war movement, must identify with the Iraqi
RESISTANCE because if we don't then what are we? When I say that we must identify with the Iraqi
RESISTANCE, I don't mean that we must identify with the elements that the
RESISTANCE is led by, be they Islamic fundamentalist, ex-Baathists or some other religious or secular groups. We do not have to and must not identify with the ideologies of these elements if they are incompatible with ours, we must not compromise our beliefs, we do not have to espouse their beliefs in order to support the
RESISTANCE.
But there is one thing that we must recognize and it is that no matter how much their ideologies differ from ours, the people carrying out the battle against the rapacious U.S-led imperialist dogs
ARE the
RESISTANCE and that is what, without hesitation and delay , we must identify with and support. I repeat: without delay !
Because if we don't, we'll be confirming what Bertrand Russell once said:
"It is the nature of Imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know and care about circumstances in the colonies."We, the people who live in the imperialist ("democratic") countries that have taken part in the rape of Iraq (for
OIL), are responsible for what our leaders are doing and have the obligation to topple our criminal leaders because they do not represent us, the majority opposed to the war, anymore.We can do it, we have the real power, we are the power!
As for condemning "horrible" acts committed by the
RESISTANCE, we have no right to condemn the
RESISTANCE from the safety of our homes in our "democracies".
Che Guevara said:
"A people without hate cannot triumph over a brutal enemy".Two factors contribute to the increasing brutality of the Iraqi RESISTANCE: The U.S-British-led ever increasing brutal and illegal occupation of Iraq and our, the anti-war movement's, passivity, docility.
Instead of pretending being pacifists, of trying at all costs, when, say demonstrating, to abide by the rule of law (the very same law that allowed our government to take part in the slaughter of more than 1000000 ("
We don't do body counts" U.S General Tommy Franks) Iraqis (for
OIL) so far), instead of pretending to follow the principles of non-violence of M.L. King or Gandhi when, actually, it is our own cowardice that we are trying to disguise, instead of engaging in all these half-measures, there is one concrete step that we could take and that could pave the way to more concrete actions and that is to recognize, identify with and support the Iraqi
RESISTANCE.
We, the anti-war movement (at least here in Japan) have shied away from any association with the people fighting the imperialist invaders of Iraq. We have been demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq and an end to the occupation while ignoring or condemning the
RESISTANCE.We have been doing all that through actions that are called "parades" in some dailies (I took part in one of these parades and on the way a friend of mine was actually asked by a passerby if it were a festival) or ignored altogether and carried out mainly on the anniversary of the attack on Iraq (Afghanistan has again been forgotten) in a very colorful and cheerful fashion, and all this of course inside the framework of unjust and more and more restrictive domestic laws aimed at people dissenting with the government line.
Now, are our tactics really productive?
Supporting the Iraqi
RESISTANCE is not only about Iraq. It is about a global
RESISTANCE. RESISTANCE to war, exploitation, greed, plunder, colonialism, capitalism, destruction of environment, oppression, aggression, occupation, G7, the World Bank, the I.M.F, E.U, the U.N Security Council… in other words: Globalization, that ubiquitous and faceless MURDERER, which is just a euphemism for
IMPERIALISM !And Iraq is just another front in the
RESISTANCE to IMPERIALISM !
According to the Webster's ll New Riverside University Dictionary, Imperialism is the policy of extending a nation's authority by acquisition of territory or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations.
According to
LENIN, Imperialism is a struggle of the great powers for the economic and political division of the world characterized by the quest for spheres of influence for the control of markets, raw materials and cheap labor.
To all of us involved in the
RESISTANCE against injustice,
Frederick Douglass once said:
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle."To me RESISTANCE is about hope. Hope for a better world. Of course, by hope I don't mean sitting and waiting for something good to fall down from the sky. I mean hope in action. I mean Being hope by RESISTING, resisting to those who want to sell us hope.
St. Augustine said: "
Hope has two beautiful daughters: ANGER and COURAGE. ANGER at the way things are and COURAGE to change them."RESIST…BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY !
Brkic SULEJMAN
