RW ONLINE: U.S. Invaders Can't Be Liberators\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhat the Real Evidence Shows\r\nU.S. Invaders Can't Be Liberators\r\n<\/p>
Revolutionary Worker #1186, February 9, 2003<\/i>, posted at rwor.org<\/p>\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n
Soon, the president will speak.
He will have something \r\n to say about
bombs and freedom and our way of life.
I will turn the \r\n TV off. I always do.
Because I can't bear to look
at the monuments \r\n in his eyes.<\/i><\/p>\r\n \r\n
<\/i>Poet Sam \r\n Hamill<\/p>\r\n
President Bush stepped in front of the cameras of the world on January 29 to \r\nclaim his planned invasion will be \"liberation\" for the people of Iraq. \"We \r\nexercise power without conquest,\" he said, \"and we sacrifice for the liberty of \r\nstrangers.\"<\/p>\r\n
What unbelievable words from a shameless posturing bully! This frontman for \r\ncorporate theft dares to talk about liberty and liberation, while he prepares to \r\nsacrifice the lives of soldiers on both sides and many thousands more among the \r\nIraqi people.<\/p>\r\n
Plans have already been made to rain down huge stockpiles of guided missiles \r\non Iraq. On the first day alone, the Pentagon plans the launch of 300 to 400 \r\ncruise missiles on the Iraqi landscape. The next day, hundreds more will follow. \r\nU.S. war-planners call this massive attack \"Shock and Awe\"-- comparing its \r\neffect on the people to the shock of a Hiroshima-type bomb at hundreds of \r\nsites <\/i>across Iraq.<\/p>\r\n
One of the war-planners told CBS News that \"no one in Baghdad will be safe\" \r\nand that the attacks on Baghdad will \"take the city down--by that I mean you get \r\nrid of their power and water.\"<\/p>\r\n
Millions of people will be cut off by the destruction of bridges and key \r\nhighways, shaken by the thud of death flying from the skies day and night, \r\ntrapped as the whole country becomes a ground zero for U.S. attack. The British \r\nmedical association Medact estimates that at least 10,000 Iraqi people will die \r\nin the first wave of attacks, with another 260,000 dying of disease and hunger \r\nin the following month. The UN estimates that 900,000 people will be made \r\nhomeless.<\/p>\r\n
Meanwhile, the U.S. command is determined to decapitate the Iraqi command-- \r\nusing massive bombings of government targets. It is openly discussed that if the \r\nlatest non-nuclear \"bunker busters\" don't work, the Pentagon war-planners are \r\nconsidering the use of nuclear weapons to dig into the heart of the Iraqi \r\ncapital. President Bush has signed an unprecedented order --in violation of \r\ninternational law-- authorizing the use of nuclear weapons in the case of any \r\nchemical or biological attacks on U.S. troops. And Pentagon planners are also \r\nconsidering the use of nuclear weapons \"to pre- empt\" such an attack. In other \r\nwords, the basis is being laid for the U.S. military command to claim \r\n<\/i>that Iraq's forces might <\/i>be preparing chemical attacks, as a pretext \r\nfor nuclear attacks on Iraq.<\/p>\r\n
Meanwhile, in vast military zones in northern Kuwait, U.S. commandos are \r\nwaiting for a quick takeover of the oil fields--to establish U.S. control there. \r\nThen, from forward bases in Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait, would come the U.S. \r\nground forces--to roll into the bombed cities, occupy the country and establish \r\nsome new political order that suits Washington.<\/p>\r\n
Secretary of State Powell's UN appearance on February 5 is meant to provide \r\nthe pretext for this terrible war on the Iraqi people.<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
The Lie of Imperialist Liberators<\/p>\r\n
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Millions of victims--remembered in sorrow and anger by people all over the \r\nworld-- seem to cry out in protest, as an American president claims the mantle \r\nof \"liberator.\"<\/p>\r\n
The U.S. has used the last two centuries for a bloody climb toward world \r\ndomination--starting with the stolen lives from Africa, the broken lives of \r\nIndian peoples and the broken borders of Mexico. This war path has been \r\npunctuated by infamous acts of mass murder--including the smoking ruins of \r\nJapan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the deaths of millions of Vietnamese.<\/p>\r\n
Nelson Mandela recently said: \"Because they decided to kill innocent \r\npeople in Japan, who are they now to pretend they're the policeman of the world? \r\nlf there is a country which has committed unspeakable atrocities, it is the \r\nU.S.\"<\/i><\/p>\r\n<\/i>
The history of almost every \"neighbor\" in the Western Hemisphere is \r\nfilled with vivid records of invasion, intervention and coup. Cuba, Puerto Rico, \r\nHaiti, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Panama have seen U.S. troops come in \r\nconquest and occupations that lasted decades.<\/p>\r\n
The whole world has seen rich evidence of what U.S.-imposed \"regime change\" \r\nmeans. Look at the governments the U.S. has imposed in the past: The Shah of \r\nIran; General Suharto in Indonesia; CIA-favorite General Pinochet in Chile; the \r\n\"kleptocrat\" Colonel Mobutu in the Congo. U.S. arms propped up murderous \r\nmilitary juntas in Turkey, Greece, El Salvador, and Brazil.<\/p>\r\n
These imposed governments have three things in common: they were established \r\nby bloodbath, they rule by torture and bribes, and they serve the U.S. \r\nimperialists loyally. FDR coined the real slogan for such U.S. policy when \r\ndiscussing Nicaraguan dictator Somoza: \"He's a son of a bitch, but he's our \r\n<\/i>son of a bitch.\"<\/i><\/p><\/b>\r\n<\/i><\/b>
No Right to Speak<\/b><\/p>\r\n
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With a record like that, what right does the U.S. government have to make \r\nitself the judge <\/i>of other governments? By what right does it claim to \r\nremove them at will, and replace them with someone more to U.S. liking? And who \r\nin their right mind can imagine that U.S. invasion and \"regime change\" can \r\nsomehow serve the people?<\/p>\r\n
The record of history makes this clear: any vision of real liberation for \r\nIraq (or anywhere else in the world) must start, first of all, with the \r\nexpulsion of imperialists like the U.S. from any power over the people--over \r\ntheir lives, their work, their resources or their future.<\/p>\r\n
Powell's attempt to make a long list of indictments against Saddam Hussein's \r\ngovernment in Iraq--to somehow paint this poor besieged country, with its \r\nbattered military and primitive weapons, as a threat to the world--is nothing \r\nbut a pretext for a war of empire, in the tradition of the fabricated incident \r\nat Gulf of Tonkin that started the Vietnam War.<\/p>\r\n
We are told to swallow ridiculous and self-serving double-think: The U.S. \r\nthreatens Iraq with nuclear attack--but uses as its excuse that Iraq may \r\n<\/i>be trying <\/i>to develop some primitive nuclear device. The U.S. accuses \r\nSaddam Hussein of murdering opposition, of killing people in their own country, \r\nof using vicious weapons, of invading neighbors--while they <\/i>have done all \r\nthat, and more, on a scale Hussein can't dream of.<\/p>\r\n
To borrow a well-known biblical passage: \"Why do you see the speck [mote] \r\nin your neighbor's eye, but not the log in your own eye.\" <\/i>(Matthew 7:3)<\/p>\r\n
And further, it needs to be pointed out, the complete hypocrisy of the U.S. \r\n\"suddenly\" discovering the \"tyranny\" of Saddam Hussein--after they themselves \r\nhelped consolidate his Ba'athist Party in power. After they themselves helped \r\norganize the $30 billion flow of arms and support to Iraq to unleash a bloody \r\neight-year war against Iran in the 1980s. Now they accuse Saddam Hussein of \r\n\"gassing his own people,\" even though--as a former CIA senior analyst wrote in \r\nthe New York Times <\/i>(January 31)--Defense Department documents at the time \r\nof the Iran\/Iraq war concluded that the notorious gas attack on Kurdish \r\ncivilians in Halabja most likely came from Iranian <\/i>military forces. Over \r\nand over, <\/i><\/i>the U.S. (including both the Nixon and Reagan \r\nadministrations) dismissed Saddam Hussein's repression of the Kurdish people. \r\nIraq's government was, after all, a potential partner in a highly strategic \r\nregion--and when it served them, they supported it and praised Saddam Hussein; \r\nand when he crossed them, they portrayed his government as some mystical focus \r\nof \"evil\" in the world.<\/p>\r\n
How can the U.S. government dare claim to \"care\" about Iraq's people? Look at \r\nits record: For 42 days in 1992, the U.S. and allied planes pounded Iraq, \r\ndropping 88,000 tons of bombs-- targeting electrical and water systems as well \r\nas military targets. Overall, 100,000 to 200,000 Iraqis were killed during the \r\nwar. For the people, that war never stopped: U.S. planes have flown over 280,000 \r\nsorties in Iraq over the past decade, bombing at will. The U.S. ally Turkey has \r\nrepeatedly invaded northern Iraq. The UN has estimated that, because of \r\nU.S.-imposed sanctions, 4,500 Iraqi children a month died from disease and \r\nmalnutrition--over half a million in all. Now the U.S. is about to launch yet \r\nanother massive war of bombs--and follow up with invasion.<\/p>\r\n
The U.S. thinks that Iraq's people have no national rights at all--no right \r\nto control their air space, no right to pursue self-defense against U.S. \r\nattacks, no right to pick (or overthrow) their own government, no right to \r\ndecide who gets control of their oil. Who can believe that these invading armies \r\nwill bring \"liberation\" to the people?<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
*****<\/p>\r\n<\/b>
George Bush opened his State of the Union speech with the sentence: \"We \r\nwill answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people.\" In \r\nother words, all the brutal acts now about to be unleashed will be done in the \r\nname of \"the American people.\"<\/p>\r\n
We have a special responsibility <\/i>, here within the U.S., within the \r\nvery \"homeland\" of the empire, exactly because our safety and interests are used \r\nto justify this madness. We owe it to the people of the world to expose the \r\ntruth and oppose, with all our strength and creativity, this shameful and bloody \r\nconquest.<\/p>\r\n
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This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker \r\nOnline
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