Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 28, 2003
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Website of the Day
Pot TV
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
28, 2003
Dying and Lying
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
By TARIQ ALI
The recolonisation of Iraq is not proceeding smoothly.
The resistance in the country (and in Palestine) is not, as Israeli
and Western propagandists like to argue, a case of Islam gone
mad. It is, in both cases, a direct consequence of the occupation.
Before the recent war, some of us argued
that the Iraqi people, however much they despised Saddam Hussein,
would not take kindly to being occupied by the United States
and its British adjutant.
Contrary to the cocooned Iraqis who had
been on the US payroll for far too long and who told George Bush
that US troops would be garlanded with flowers and given sweets,
we warned that the occupation would lead to the harrying and
 killing of Western soldiers every day
and would soon develop into a low-intensity guerilla war.
The fact that events have vindicated
this analysis is no reason to celebrate. The entire country is
now in a mess and the situation is much worse than it was before
the conflict.
The only explanation provided by Western
news managers for the resistance is that these are dissatisfied
remnants of the old regime.
This week Washington contradicted its
propaganda by deciding to recruit the real remnants of the old
state apparatus - the secret police - to try to track down the
resistance organisations, which number more than 40 different
groups. The demonstrations in Basra and the deaths of more British
soldiers are a clear indication these former bastions of anti-Saddam
sentiment are now prepared to join the struggle.
The bombing of the UN headquarters in
Baghdad shocked the West, but as Jamie Tarabay of the Associated
Press reported in a dispatch from the Iraqi capital last week,
there is a deep ambivalence towards the UN among ordinary Iraqis.
This is an understatement.
In fact, the UN is seen as one of Washington's
more ruthless enforcers. It supervised the sanctions that, according
to UNICEF figures, were directly responsible for the deaths of
half a million Iraqi children and a horrific rise in the mortality
rate. Two senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck,
resigned in protest against these policies, explaining that the
UN had failed in its duties to the people of Iraq.
Simultaneously the US and Britain, with
UN approval, rained hundreds of tonnes of bombs and thousands
of missiles on Iraq from 1992 onwards and, in 1999, US officials
calmly informed The Wall Street Journal that they had run out
of targets.
By 2001, the bombardment of Iraq had
lasted longer than the US invasion of Vietnam.
That's why the UN is not viewed sympathetically
by many Iraqis. The recent Security Council decision to retrospectively
sanction the occupation, a direct breach of the UN charter, has
only added to the anger.
All this poses the question of whether
the UN today is anything more than a cleaning-up operation for
the American Empire?
The effects of the Iraqi resistance are
now beginning to be felt in both the occupying countries. The
latest Newsweek poll reveals that President Bush's approval ratings
are down 18 points to 53 per cent and, for the first time since
September 11, more registered voters
(49 per cent) say they would not like to see him re-elected.
This can only get worse (or better, depending on one's point
of view) as US casualties in Iraq continue to rise.
In Britain more than two-thirds of the
population now believe that Tony Blair lied to them on Iraq.
This view is shared by senior figures in the establishment. There
was open disquiet within the armed forces before the war. Some
generals were not too pleased by the sight of their Prime Minister,
snarling at the leash like a petty mastiff, as he prepared to
dispatch a third of the British army to help occupy one of the
country's largest former colonies in the Middle East.
After the capture of Baghdad, Sir Rodric
Braithwaite, the former head of the joint intelligence committee
and a former national security adviser to Blair, wrote an astonishing
letter to the Financial Times in which he accused Blair of having
deliberately engineered a war hysteria to frighten a deeply sceptical
population into backing a war. Fishmongers sell fish, warmongers
sell war, wrote Braithwaite, arguing that Blair had oversold
his wares.
This anger within the establishment came
to a head with the alleged suicide of the Ministry of Defence's
leading scientist, Dr David Kelly, and forced a judicial inquiry,
a form of therapy much favoured by the English ruling class.
This week Blair will be interrogated
before Lord Hutton, but already the inquiry has uncovered a mound
of wriggling worms.
There is talk now that New Labour will
offer the Defence Secretary, a talentless mediocrity by the name
of Geoff Hoon, as a blood sacrifice to calm the public. But what
if Hoon refuses to go alone? After all, he knows where the bodies
are buried.
And Australia? Here the Prime Minister
- a perennial parrot on the imperial shoulder - managed to pull
his troops out before the resistance began. They were badly needed
in the Solomon Islands. Like Blair, John Howard parroted untruths
to justify the war and, like Blair, he's lucky that the official
Opposition is led by a weak-kneed and ineffective politician
scared of his own shadow.
And one day, when the children of dead
Iraqis and Americans ask why their parents died, the answer will
come: because the politicians lied.
Meanwhile, there will be no peace as
long as Palestine and Iraq continue to be occupied - and no amount
of apologetics will conceal this fact.
Tariq Ali
is an editor of New Left Review and the author of The
Clash of Fundamentalisms and the forthcoming, Bush
in Babylon, to be published in October by Verso.
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|