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High-tech Barbarians Give Rise To New Breed: "Today is a great day for Iraqis." (Especially the ones we haven't killed.) "Welcome to Amiraqa" See the chicken hawks crowing their little (and I mean tiny) hearts out. Newspaper commentators have gone troppo, and letters pages are jammed with I told you so's from a demographic that finally found its voice: the American collaborator. Like the Nazi collaborators of old, with their Sieg Heil's and hanky-waving adulation, this new breed has aligned itself with aggression and world domination. Harsh? When you side with an invader, you become a collaborator. Patriots, nationalists, and other entry-levels are gloating, but over what and against whom? The crushing of an inferior force by a superior one? Yes, these are the people who love to hate single mothers, dole bludgers, and anyone else who doesn't measure up to their Aryan ideals. And let's not forget how much they despise all those Iraqi refugees that high profile American collaborator John "Magoosolini" Howard put behind Australian razor wire to get himself re-elected. It would appear that they are more enthralled at proving the prognostications of the anti-war movement wrong than with the demise of Saddam. A further reductio ad absurdum of theirs placed those against the war as pro-Saddam. Well, we were never pro-Saddam, but we often cheered the setbacks of the invaders. Who wouldn't? Despising invaders is wired into the genes of most humans. We are all glad to see Saddam Hussein removed from power. But where are those weapons of mass destruction which, if I'm not mistaken, were the excuse for going in? Oh, yeah, regime change. WMD's were only a propaganda ruse to whip up the chicken hawks. Not to worry, they will be found, even if the CIA has to fly them in. The division over this war, indeed, the polarisation of the entire world, came with the method of Saddam's removal. For some psychologically disturbed reason, the pro-war faction wanted the thrill of slaughter over a peaceful means to regime change. As a card-carrying Y Chromosome, I can understand only too well the arrested decentration of the frontal lobes by which the adolescent male carries into maturity the desire to shoot first and ask questions later. But I decentrated, I grew beyond the fascist stage. Or, at least I've learned to control it. Sanity may be in the holster of the beholder, but there was nothing sane about this war. Reason was sent, clutching its cardigan, to the furthest corner. In its place stood George W. Bush and his junta playing a venal adaptation of Cowboys and Indians. Only the battle field was not a vacant lot in the neighbourhood, but an entire nation. The cheers of the Baghdadis who movingly toppled the statue of Saddam will soon turn to snarls when the reality of the occupation begins. (It's hard to take in the magnitude of difference between the world's response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the dramatic demise of Ceaucescu, with the fall of Saddam. The former two were met with universal joy; the latter with a foreboding for the future. And yet all three were necessary for any future.) The cheers of the Right will change too. The full throated whoopees will turn into larynx-pinched squeaks when they come to understand that with this unprecedented invasion that so delights them, the American Empire has firmly initiated its decline. (Professor Johann Galtung gives it twenty years at most.) History, of which the Right remains resolutely ignorant, shows that empires who overreach themselves sew the seeds of their destruction. The Europeans and smaller nations who have not been bought off will sooner or later start trading in Euros, perhaps as soon as America takes on the next country, inflated by its Iraqi Goliath over David. You can only put a majority offside for so long before they strike back. Like Germany's collaborators in WW II, the loathsome supporters of this long term disaster will eventually change sides or return to their traditional invisibility in the Silent Majority. As they have nothing real to believe in beyond might is right and the money to be made from it and other antisocial activities, they will easily merge with their enemies of today as if nothing had ever happened. Indeed, it looks like the cheers are turning to chickeny peeps already. Chaos rules everywhere in Iraq. The Imperial Marines have been ordered to stop widespread looting as lawlessness overtakes city neighbourhoods, and now we have the assassination of a high-ranking Shi'ite cleric in Najaf. Vendettas may become as widespread as the looting. Meanwhile, the Coalition of Carpetbaggers are already falling over each other to reconstruct Iraq in the name of multinational hegemony. And the new Caliph of Baghdad, retired General Jay Garner has these fine points to his credit: 1.) Garner exemplifies the revolving door between the Pentagon and weapons makers. Garner is still, despite his post in the Middle East, the President of SY Technology, which provides technical support for missile systems currently in use in the Iraq war. No matter your feelings about this war, appointing a weapons maker to the role of peace maker is a recipe for whipping up anti-American feeling in the Middle East. More on Garner: Who is Jay Garner? The major battles may be over, but the dreadful aftermath, in which the fate of Saddam Hussein may become an incidental footnote, is only beginning. The death toll may have been minimal ... to those for whom the death of others is an abstraction. But to the families of the nearly one hundred GI's and up to 1500 Iraqis who were sacrificed to the Washington junta's war and profit games, death can never be abstract. It is an abomination, and those supporting it are shamed for the rest of their lives. |
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Published in Melbourne, Australia by the Political Prisoners of the Future.