[Mb-civic] Howard Zinn: Occupied Territories: Iraq, America

Sat Aug 13 14:49:34 PDT 2005

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0812-27.htm

Published on Friday, August 12, 2005 by the Guardian / UK
Occupied Territories: Iraq, America
My country is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits
By Howard Zinn

It has quickly become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an 
occupied country. We became familiar with that term during the 
second world war. We talked of German-occupied France, German-
occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied 
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the 
Soviets, who occupied countries. The United States liberated them 
from occupation.

Now we are the occupiers. True, we liberated Iraq from Saddam 
Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from 
Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the US 
established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. US 
corporations moved into Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the 
oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The US framed and imposed, 
with support from local accomplices, the constitution that would govern 
Cuba, just as it has drawn up, with help from local political groups, a 
constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation. An occupation.

And it is an ugly occupation. On August 7 2003 the New York Times 
reported that General Sanchez in Baghdad was worried about the Iraqi 
reaction to occupation. Pro-US Iraqi leaders were giving him a 
message, as he put it: "When you take a father in front of his family 
and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had 
a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his 
family." (That's very perceptive.)

We know that fighting during the US offensive in November 2004 
destroyed three-quarters of the town of Falluja (population 360,000), 
killing hundreds of its inhabitants. The objective of the operation was to 
cleanse the town of the terrorist bands acting as part of a "Ba'athist 
conspiracy".

But we should recall that on June 16 2003, barely six weeks after 
President Bush had claimed victory in Iraq, two reporters for the Knight 
Ridder newspaper group wrote this about the Falluja area: "In dozens 
of interviews during the past five days, most residents across the area 
said there was no Ba'athist or Sunni conspiracy against US soldiers, 
there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been 
hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home 
searches and road stops ... One woman said, after her husband was 
taken from their home because of empty wooden crates which they 
had bought for firewood, that the US is guilty of terrorism."

Soldiers who are set down in a country where they were told they 
would be welcomed as liberators and find they are surrounded by a 
hostile population become fearful and trigger-happy. On March 4 
nervous, frightened GIs manning a roadblock fired on the Italian 
journalist Giuliana Sgrena, just released by kidnappers, and an 
intelligence service officer, Nicola Calipari, whom they killed.

We have all read reports of US soldiers angry at being kept in Iraq. 
Such sentiments are becoming known to the US public, as are the 
feelings of many deserters who are refusing to return to Iraq after 
home leave. In May 2003 a Gallup poll reported that only 13% of the 
US public thought the war was going badly. According to a poll 
published by the New York Times and CBS News on June 17, 51% 
now think the US should not have invaded Iraq or become involved in 
the war. Some 59% disapprove of Bush's handling of the situation.

But more ominous, perhaps, than the occupation of Iraq is the 
occupation of the US. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, 
and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has 
taken over. I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president 
surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad 
or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care 
nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what 
kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that 
something is terribly wrong. More and more every day the lies are 
being exposed. And then there is the largest lie, that everything the US 
does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on 
terrorism", ignoring the fact that war is itself terrorism, that barging into 
homes and taking away people and subjecting them to torture is 
terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us 
more security but less.

The Bush administration, unable to capture the perpetrators of the 
September 11 attacks, invaded Afghanistan, killing thousands of 
people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. Yet it still 
does not know where the criminals are. Not knowing what weapons 
Saddam Hussein was hiding, it invaded and bombed Iraq in March 
2003, disregarding the UN, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers 
and terrorising the population; and not knowing who was and was not a 
terrorist, the US government confined hundreds of people in 
Guantánamo under such conditions that 18 have tried to commit 
suicide.

The Amnesty International Report 2005 notes: "Guantánamo Bay has 
become the gulag of our times ... When the most powerful country in 
the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants 
a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity".

The "war on terrorism" is not only a war on innocent people in other 
countries; it is a war on the people of the US: on our liberties, on our 
standard of living. The country's wealth is being stolen from the people 
and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of the young are being 
stolen.

The Iraq war will undoubtedly claim many more victims, not only 
abroad but also on US territory. The Bush administration maintains 
that, unlike the Vietnam war, this conflict is not causing many 
casualties. True enough, fewer than 2,000 service men and women 
have lost their lives in the fighting. But when the war finally ends, the 
number of its indirect victims, through disease or mental disorders, will 
increase steadily. After the Vietnam war, veterans reported congenital 
malformations in their children, caused by Agent Orange.

Officially there were only a few hundred losses in the Gulf war of 1991, 
but the US Gulf War Veterans Association has reported 8,000 deaths 
in the past 10 years. Some 200,000 veterans, out of 600,000 who took 
part, have registered a range of complaints due to the weapons and 
munitions used in combat. We have yet to see the long-term effects of 
depleted uranium on those currently stationed in Iraq.

Our faith is that human beings only support violence and terror when 
they have been lied to. And when they learn the truth, as happened in 
the course of the Vietnam war, they will turn against the government. 
We have the support of the rest of the world. The US cannot 
indefinitely ignore the 10 million people who protested around the world 
on February 15 2003.

There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change 
is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at 
points in history and creating a power that governments cannot 
suppress.

Howard Zinn is professor emeritus of political science at Boston 
University; his books include A People's History of the United States.

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