I’ve just got time for a quick comment today… well, more of an observation. I read this in today’s New York Times: “As American strikes on Shiite fighters in Baghdad have widened, Iran has suspended talks with the United States on Iraqi security, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday citing the continued offensive as the reason. The American forces have been responding to fire from Shiite militias in the Amel neighbourhood in western Baghdad.”
The bit that gets me is where it says: ‘American forces have been responding to fire from Shiite militias…’ It doesn’t occur to the Americans that it is they that are in a foreign country killing its inhabitants and that it is actually the inhabitants that are responding to invasion and occupation. If the US had been invaded by Iraq, would Americans have behaved any differently? Or if Australia was invaded by Iraq, would Australians not be fighting back – even if the Iraqi invader had seen to the demise of John Howard!
AUSTRALIANS AT WAR
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10 comments:
When you're dealing with nationalists, you should expect irrationality when it comes to how they see the world. I work with people who refuse to put the occupation of Iraq in the same context as the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 or the German invasion of Poland in 1939 - even though they all were wars of aggression based on false pretexts.
Like MCInsane said it was all about the oil not about the lies they told us to start the war! So then our country has been turn into this evil dark monster that will kill women and children to get what they want. And don't think that this up coming election will change this more likely they will expand and wage more wars for their masters. Here is their weakness "The Dollar" don't use it or accept it dump the dollar and the wars stop today please help us get our country back!
What I still don't understand is how the Hitlers and other lessor dictators who illegally invaded and killed people around the globe didn't get a free pass to do so as the Americans have?
America, with all your Paris Hilton types and braindead shitheads running around your country waiting for somebody else to fix the problems, it would be better to simply kill yourselves off instead of taking the whole world down with you.
It's our entitlement fantasy, our dreamworld of exceptionalism that allows them to get away with putting things like that, isn't it? It's like all the eye for an eye/revenge movies where the protagonist can do anything he wants as long as he feels righteous indignation.
People forget too quickly that "Australia", "America", and many other countries around the globe, all belong to that very bizarre group of countries which have not only been taken by force or deception, but re-named after their successful regime change, aka "colonization" (invasion).
Sovereign peoples were, and still are, slaughtered or herded into districts (reservations), by coercion or enticement, whilst all the while the underlying agenda is the gaining control, by force, of a peaceful sovereign people, and all in the name of progress.
IF YOU INVADE SOMEONE’S COUNTRY, SHOULD YOU NOT EXPECT THE INHABITANTS TO FIGHT BACK?
Then why the need for those inhabitants to kill so many of their own innocent people?
I don't know the civilians dying at the hands of insurgents who beat, bomb and behead them in markets, malls & mosques really like said "inhabitants".
The vast majority of civilians killed in Iraq - hundreds of thousands of them - have been killed by US bombing and attacks on insurgent areas. There are, however, many civilians that have been killed by criminal elements in Iraq who are taking advantage of the turmoil and lawlessness created by the invasion and occupation by the allies.
G'day Damian, I see you finally got one of the head firmly stuck up ... responses - "... why the need for those inhabitants to kill so many ...". Has an all too familiar "blame the Iraqis, the Yanks have done nothing wrong" ring to it. "Ring" being the appropriate word. Unfortunately,your response might have very little effect given the dense thicket of ignorance and prejudice that surrounds some people. They are fodder for the manipulators. On which I hope you have seen material I have been posting elsewhere - the David Bromwich I linked today is a very interesting piece.
As to the "American forces have been responding to ..." approach, yes, they have got it around the wrong way. But that's part of the use of language. So those who want to believe are fed the bs and swallow it whole ... and ignore the history of US adventurism.
Bob, there are people out there that still feel the need to justify the unjustifiable by, as you say, blaming the victim. The Bromwich piece you've linked to sums it up.
However, I think most reasonable people in the world are now beginning to realise just how utterly immoral, illegal and pointless the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been.
G'day.
On or about 2005/11/19, I wrote (in reference to super-profit, aka resource rent):
« .. if you can profitably dig up & deliver a barrel of Iraqi oil for US$1 (you can), and sell the same for US$61 (you can), then the US$60 difference is super-profit / resource rent. If you pay the Iraqis a pittance royalty (40%, 18%, 5%? [added: 0% is a distinct - and most likely - possibility]) and put the rest in your pocket, you are extracting immoral earnings.)
At US$61, it has been estimated that there is at least US$13,500bio profit in oil in Iraq.»
Since then, the 'asking price' for crude has reached $121 (say.) It means the then US$13.5trio potential oil-theft gross has doubled; the intended US oil theft could now gross the 'best' (actually, of course, the criminal worst) part of US$27trio. Sooo, even if the eventual cost of the illegal invasion turned brutal occupation (each more murdering than the other) - if that cost should reach US$3trio (say,) the ghastly 'profit' could approach US$24trio.
As Albright said: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
Admittedly, Albright was addressing a different theme - namely, ½mio dead Iraqi children thanks (but "No, thanks! ") to US-led sanctions - but it is the visible way the US does its business, no?
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