Now
Available from
CounterPunch for Only $10.50 (S/H Included)
Today's
Stories
October
9, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
October
9, 2003
Hope Takes Action
Seeing the Iraqi People
By RAMZI KYSIA
It would be impossible for me to overstate or
exaggerate the devastation that has been imposed on Iraq, and
the most troubling, consistent, and unacceptable reason for this
devastation has been the failure of the international community,
over long decades, to see the Iraqi people. International policy
toward Iraq has never been made with the desires and interests
of the Iraqi people at heart, and our advocacy today is just
as blind.
Opposition slogans such as "End
the Occupation Now!," or "Bring Our Troops Home,"
may be emotionally satisfying, but--like our governments' policies--our
protests at home reflect little on the reality of daily life
in Iraq.
For 30 years, Iraqis suffered under one
of the worst dictatorships this world has witnessed. Hundreds
of thousands of human beings were arrested, tortured, disappeared,
and often murdered. For 20 of those 30 years, despite this tyranny,
Saddam Hussein was the world's friend. Governments all across
the world loaned him money, sold him weapons, and ignored how
he used them. America, Russia, Europe and the Middle-East all
enthusiastically supported his war with Iran--which resulted
in the deaths of over 1 million people.
It was only when Saddam invaded Kuwait
in 1990, and threatened oil supplies, that the world "discovered"
how terrible he was. How did we respond? By dropping 88,000 tons
of explosives, in six-short weeks, on Iraq. Military targets
were bombed--but so were schools and hospitals, roads, bridges,
and electrical plants. Iraq was devastated by the war. At least
150,000 human beings--most of them civilians--were killed. And,
according to Marti Ahtisaari--the ex-Finnish president who led
a UN mission to Iraq after the war--Desert Storm "wrought
near-apocalyptic results," and set the country back to "a
pre-industrial age."
When Iraqis rose up to overthrow Saddam
Hussein, in the weeks after the 1991 war, we stood by--US troops
were short kilometers away--and allowed Saddam to slaughter them
by the tens-of-thousands. During the Uprising, helicopters were
exempted from the so-called "no-fly-zones" which had
been imposed supposedly to protect the Iraqi people, and the
world quietly watched as Saddam used those helicopters to quell
the rebellion and kill 30,000 human beings.
For 13 long years, the world imposed
devastating economic sanctions on Iraq that prevented the country
from being rebuilt, created critical shortages in food and medicines,
and impoverished all Iraqis. Families sold everything they owned
just to be able to buy food. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children
were killed as a direct result of the embargo. This was an act
of genocide. I don't use the world lightly.
After this most recent war, we saw US
troops quickly move to protect oil fields and oil ministries,
and stand by while looters tore down everything else. Hospitals
were looted, schools were looted, UN buildings and the Red Cross
were stripped of all their supplies. Under the 4th Geneva Convention,
the US had a responsibility to provide law and order in Iraq
after they overthrew the government. Instead they told the police
not to come back to work, their tanks knocked down the gates
of government buildings, encouraged the looting to begin, and
stood by--for months--while organized mafias developed that today
terrorize everyone in Baghdad.
It's hard to explain to outsiders how
fundamentally humiliating the looting of Iraq has been to the
Iraqi people. Everywhere you go, Iraqis compare these days to
the time of Halaka Khan--when the Mongols looted Baghdad and
burned it to the ground. But today, despite the fact that the
looters are a vanishingly small fraction of the population, the
image the world has of Iraqis is of an out-of-control and rabid
people destroying themselves. After 30 years of Saddam, to finally
be free of his tyranny and humiliation, only to be drown in further
humiliation, is almost unbearable. Grown men have cried in front
of me, to see what's become of their country.
During the power blackouts in the US
this summer, President Bush told us that 6 hours without electricity
were a "national emergency," but 6 months without electricity
in Iraq only elicits a shrug. While Paul Bremer and his staff
hide behind the walls of Saddam's palaces, US soldiers--frightened
by the attacks against them--fire randomly in all directions
every time they get spooked. Innocent Iraqis are being killed
every day. You cannot visit one neighborhood in all of Baghdad
without local residents telling you of some shooting incident
that "accidentally" killed one of their neighbors.
And, while we learn the names of every American soldier who gets
killed in this conflict, what their dreams were, how their families
are suffering--the Iraqis killed are nameless, faceless, storyless.
No one is paying attention to their families' suffering. No one
is thinking about what their dreams might have been.
Gandhi once said that "poverty is
the worst form of violence," and the poverty and isolation
deliberately created in Iraq by 20 years of war and sanctions
has not ended. Unemployment is still over 60%, and Iraqis today
are just as poor and just as cut off from the world as they were
before the war. They remain, living in disaster.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were
killed by Saddam's regime. Hundreds of thousands were killed
during the war with Iran. Hundreds of thousands were killed during
the war with the US in 1991. Hundreds of thousands more died
under sanctions.
Where was the world when this happened?
Where is the world today?
I can't tell you what the political solution
to this crisis should be. I doubt most Iraqis yet know for themselves.
If US troops were to quickly leave, the power vacuum could result
in civil war. If the Bush Administration is forced to hand over
military or political control to the UN, while economic power
remains in the hands of the US, I do believe that the resistance
and insecurity would continue. A political solution in Iraq is
not yet clear.
But I'm not a politician. And what I
do know is that I have never seen a people as strong or as resourceful
as Iraqis. There is hope. People are organizing on the ground,
such as in the Union of the Unemployed or the Organization for
Women's Freedom, in order to struggle for their rights. Others
are beginning to build Iraq's civil society, forming groups to
take care of orphans and the elderly, or start schools, or rebuild
the country themselves.
There is hope. But hope takes action.
We live in a pregnant time, and each of us in this world--through
our action or our inaction--will have a say in what is born from
the crisis of Iraq.
Some international activists have come
together with Iraqis to help start an organization called "Occupation
Watch," keeping track of the violence of the Occupation,
and putting pressure on governments to stop violating human rights
in Iraq. We should support them.
For the last 5 months I've helped a group
of young Iraqis to start a newspaper and independent media center
called "Al-Muajaha: The Iraqi Witness." These kids
are amazing, and they need our continued support.
We've also helped a group of Iraqi artists
and teachers start their own art school for children, teaching
theater and music and painting to children suffering from years
of poverty and violence. We can work wonders when we work together.
Iraq is unsafe. The UN has all but pulled
out of the country, and many NGOs have left entirely. Those that
remain have massively scaled back their operations. We cannot
let this trend continue. We must not forget these people yet
again. Iraq is unsafe--for the 25 million people who call it
home.
If nothing else, Sept. 11th should have
dramatically demonstrated the reality that for as long as any
of us are unsafe in this world, all of us are unsafe. We have
to realize, deeply realize, that our security cannot depend on
the insecurity of everyone else.
After decades of violence, of humiliation
piled upon humiliation, we must begin to work for peace and reconciliation.
After long years of isolation, we must engage.
We cannot trust our governments. None
of them have ever demonstrated a willingness to see the Iraqi
people. We cannot trust George Bush. The man is a violent fool,
and US policy toward Iraq has never been governed by anything
other than contempt for Iraqis.
If we would believe in democracy, if
we believe in peace, then we have to demonstrate it. These are
not abstract ideals we can simply argue about, or protest for,
and then go home to quietly forget.
Peace and freedom--true freedom--are
tangible realities that we can only build if we decide to stand
up and be present. They take struggle. They take risks. It starts
with the connections we make, today, right now, with each other
and with all our sisters and brothers around the world. It never
ends.
It is dangerous to oppose our governments.
It is dangerous to acknowledge our deep responsibility to people
living in disaster. It is dangerous to risk our liberty and our
lives in opposition to violence. It's also dangerous not to,
and if it weren't so dangerous it wouldn't be so necessary.
Ramzi Kysia
is an Arab-American peace activist and writer. He is currently
doing public speaking in Europe after having lived a year in
Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness.
Voices in the Wilderness is being fined $20,000 by the US government
for illegally taking medicines to Iraq.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|