Resistance In Any Form Is The Right Of The Invaded
Harold Hark
31 March 2003

Hitler's Bush's Henchman, Defence Secretary Donald "I didn't do it!" Rumsfeld, is now blaming General Tommy Franks for the bungled war, while Svengali-tongued Richard "The Prince of Darkness" Perle--who just resigned as chairman of the Pentagon Defence Advisory Board, but gets to stay on as a member--is calling for the demise of the United Nation's Security Council. (The United Nations is only as strong as its weakest link. And the United States has been its weakest link for decades.) Both henchmen are just itching to get into Syria and Iran, if only this irritating conflict between the two would finish like Rummy thought it would.

And while the Coalition of the Killing are frantically searching for any Weapons of Mass Destruction anywhere to legitimise the conquest, everyone connected with it is screaming about Iraq's use of suicide bombers and every other guerrilla tactic known to desperate people in times of invasion. "Not cricket!" say the Brits, "Un-American" scream the Yanks, while the Aussies, without a voice of their own, rely on phone calls from Washington for suggested expressions of pique.

It's a bitch. Here the Coalition is doing its best to strategically bomb targets of opportunity ("Ain't no 'Raqis in there, let's git it!") and leave civilians to their neighbouring hovels and their buckets of hauled water and scraps of food. So how do they show their thanks? The uncivilised bastards are strapping grenades to their scrawny chests to blow up GI's, that's how!

Of course Western military folklore is full of suicide missions to which the highest honours were given. The pilot at the end of his tour in Vietnam who begged his Captain for "just one more mission, Sir! to get those gooks, Sir!", was given the sortie and blown to bits, his wife treasuring, not the rest of her life with him, but the little medal he received; the French Resistance units who hurled themselves at Nazi officials with little or no chance of survival. More to the point here (as a letter writer toThe Age, William Albert Pearce, writes): "In 1774, armed Americans in civilian clothes fired on British regular soldiers in the opening episode of the American War of Independence. These men are now revered as patriots." Big fat books have been written about the history of these valorous exploits.

Yet when the "swarthy heathens" sacrifice their lives to take out the enemy it is seen as barbaric. One reason is that the Americans, in particular, cannot see themselves as anyone's enemy. They are the good, the just, the God-fearing saviours of us all. Doing wrong is not possible.

But for Palestinians and, now, Iraqis, for whom the concept "quality of life" has been a bad joke for so long, the chance to sacrifice his or her life by taking out a few invading infidels is not only just but honourable. They hate Saddam, but they hate the arrogance of this invasion more.

It's all in the eye of the beholder and for those who cannot comprehend the existence of other beings, that eye is blind. If America, Britain, or Australia were being invaded, suicide missions, of one sort or another, would become commonplace.

Then again, maybe not. We Westerners are a soft, flabby lot for whom democracy means little. (The Americans got rid of theirs in 2000.) In fact, we don't really have democracies, just the chance to vote every four years for people we don't trust. Does this bother us? We really couldn't give a shit. Let's hope the millions or billions of enraged Muslims out there remain unaware of this. We could be had almost over night.

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