US military tactics condemned by allies
According to a story first published by the conservative Telegraph of London, British commanders in Iraq have condemned American tactics as “heavy-handed and disproportionate”.
The story goes to quote the particularly trenchant opinion of one unnamed British officer in southern Iraq:
“My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans’ use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don’t see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful.
“The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn’t in Iraq. It’s easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them”.
According to the story, ” The phrase untermenschen–literally ‘under-people’–was brought to prominence by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, published in 1925. He used the term to describe those he regarded as racially inferior: Jews, Slaves and gipsies”.
This is great. US authority in Iraq is infected by greed and, along with their media cheerleaders at home (President Bush included), is consumed with crusading messianic moralism. At the same time, at least some members of the US’s own allied coalition-of-the-willing sees US tactics in Hitlerian terms!
Remember, wingnuts, I am not the one who initiated the comparison of US and Nazi tactics here–it was a British officer watching the whole thing unfold in Iraq.
Blair is not listening to his own commanders
Meanwhile, Tony Blair has issued an apology for his/America’s Crimes Against Peace. Ranting about “who killed whom on September 11″, Blair cloaks himself in his own special brand of phony moralism. He’s out to prove his “stomach” to see through the colonial project.
No one denies that it is proper for Iraq to have freedoms. But true freedom for Iraqis would mean that the colonial authority does not get to decide what is or is not a proper opinion for an Iraqi to have, even if it supports the rebellious Shia cleric, al Sadr, who Blair says is “fundamentalist, an extremist, an advocate of violence”. If Iraqis were allowed to sort out the al Sadr movement without interference, they would be fine.
Despite Blair’s charitable view of American tactics, evidently not shared by his own people (see above), the unfortunate violence and rise of anti-occupation militias appears now to correspond to the vicious attacks the occupying forces undertake to “pacify” the country to America’s liking. Are these violent responses “terrorist” in nature. Clearly they are, if you are an American occupier. Is it right that some Iraqis, (or Palestinians for that matter) respond to America (Israel) with lethal force? I can’t say. I abhor violence. But how would we react if, say, a million-and-a-half Chinese soldiers landed in the US and began regime change by force because George W. Bush was seen as a threat to world peace? I have a feeling that many Americans would take up arms and attack the invaders.
Blair glows about electricity and democratic Iraqi control of the wealth of their nation. Blair lies. Oh, Iraq’s electric grid probably will be fixed in a drawn-out process after years of American attacks with sanctions and bombs. But the nonsense about Iraqi control of Iraq’s oil is insipid pabulum. The CPA has mismanaged the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) in a hideous manner. Billions of dollars have disappeared in unaccountable ratholes that the new overseer finds “has had little oversight until now”.
The future portends a puppet government in Iraq that can be counted on to make all the right decisions in US favor–troops will be invited to stay, oil and other state-owned enterprises will slowly but surely fall under the private control of US- and UK-based corporations. The French and Russians may be thrown a few consolation bones.
Blair paints an appealing picture of Iraq and its future. It is way, way too late to believe his characterizations are true.