The Psychopaths
And
Fallujah Resistance
By Ghali Hassan
07 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
As
the hubris of the American election is passed, the people of Fallujah
are under new massive US assault. The world only superpower
is posed to flatten the city of 300,000 people in order to pacify (kill)
its citizens because of their opposition to US Occupation. This new
massacre is sold by the Bush Administration and mainstream Western media
as a necessary step to hold election in Iraq.
The US took over
the main hospital and converted to a military hospital. In other words,
the people of Fallujah no longer have a hospital to treat injured men,
women and children. The US Occupation forces are currently preventing
men of age 14-60 years from leaving the city. It is a crime against
humanity to massacre unarmed civilians. US forces are also preventing
journalists from entering the city to report on the ongoing massacre
of innocent civilians.
As I write, the
BBC reports that the US strikes on the centre of Fallujah have completely
destroyed the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. There
are no reports on casualties of a criminal attack on a hospital in the
centre of the city. Can you imagine this happening in Manchester or
Boston?
In April 2004, the
first US massive attacks on Fallujah killed more than 1300 Iraqis, mostly
innocent women and children, reported by AFP. The heroic Iraqi Resistance
forced the Marines to capitulate, and Fallujah became the symbol of
Iraqi Resistance to US Occupation.
According to Rahul
Mahajan of Empire Notes, who was in Fallujah at the time of the siege
in April 2004, [o]f 20 people I saw come into the clinic I observed
in a few hours, only five were "military-age males." I saw
old women, old men, a child of 10 shot through the head; terminal, the
doctors told me, although in Baghdad they might have been able to save
him.
Since then, the
city has been under constant aerial bombardments by US forces killing
many more innocent civilians. Reuters news agency reported on
September 02, 2004, the US killed 17 people, including 3 children, a
woman and an elderly man. Reuters reported on the night of September
07, 2004, US warplanes and helicopters pounded Fallujah all night
and killed up to 100 militants according to US military;
though local hospital sources reported only 6 dead and 23
wounded.
The new assault
comes even as Iraqi Muslim Scholars denounced the aerial bombardments
as terrorist acts. In a statement to Aljazeera, they pointed
out that the victims of the US air strikes were women and children,
most of them less than 10-years old. They urged the international
community to earnestly work for an end to the US acts of aggression
in Iraq.
The Fallujah community
leaders tried to negotiate a peaceful solution, but the US forces refused
any negotiation. Instead, the US forces through their spokesman, Iyad
Allawi, tried to paint a distorted picture of the people of Fallujah
and opted for military solution.
The pretext for
this barbarity is that the US intended to kill a terrorist
by the name of al-Zarqawi. According to the people of Fallujah, al-Zarqawi
does not exist. He is a made-up figure. The US Occupation forces
in Iraq have been claiming that al-Zarqawi and his Arab and non-Iraqi
Muslim fighters are hiding out in Fallujah. Dr Muhammad al-Hamadani,
a Fallujah resident told Aljazeera News that he had no knowledge about
any non-Iraqi fighters in the town.
It appears that
al-Zarqawi is replacing the old and elusive pretext of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). Unlike the WMD pretext, the al-Zarqawi pretext is
dangerous because the one-leg elusive man can move site. In other word,
if al-Zarqawi is not found in Fallujah, the Bush Administration can
say that he run to another city.
However, according
to Article 50 of the Geneva Conventions, [t]he presence within
the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition
of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.
The Bush Administration is committing war crimes in violations of international
law.
The Iraqi Resistance
has revealed the limits of the US superpower. Fallujah is the symbol
of resistance to US hegemony. Fallujah is an example the Bush and his
gang of terror are obsessed with and they want to destroy it. Bush and
his gang of terror naïvely think that if they succeed in Fallujah,
they will succeed in the rest of Iraq. Fortunately, they proved to be
dead wrong.
The election hubris
is over, but the fight must continue to get the Bush and his gang of
terror out of Iraq. A true progressive and anti-war movement must not
allow these crimes to continue. The aims should be to stop the war and
the true liberation of the Iraqi people from the Bush tyranny.
Ghali Hassan lives
in Perth, Western Australia. He can be reached at e-mail: [email protected]