The unprovoked attack upon Iraq in 2003, and the resulting war crimes are simply of genocidal proportions. This crime simply cannot be brushed away. Nor can any self-respecting nation simply pronounce “We want to look forward,” as Barack Obama recently did. Americans may go around like all this is business as usual (which it is, to them, given the historic record)- but genocide it is, to the rest of the sane world.
This nation is obsessed with identifying “Axes of Evil,” yet its own actions demonstrate far greater inhumanity and criminality. I am also witnessing, within the past 3 decades, how rapidly Israel is exhausting its “Holocaust” capital- given its selective ethnic cleansing, and continuing human rights abuses in Palestine.
I am equally appalled to hear about the so-called “sentence” given to Tariq Aziz, former Prime Minister of Iraq. Again, Justice at its most ironic, its most skewed and skewered. Iraq did not attack the U.S., Iraq had nothing to do with the events involving the WTC towers, Iraq was, and still is, a sovereign nation with the full rights and privileges appropriate to a sovereign state. Yet, it is really the United States that has used WMDs on that nation (and others; think depleted Uranium, cluster bombs, drone-fired missiles, and the like); it is the United States that has attacked it without provocation; it is the United States that is 100% responsible for the murder of 1-million-plus of its citizens (definitely in the Karmic sense).
If Adolf Hitler was a genocidal maniac, then without any doubt, so is the unrepentant executioner from Texas and the immediate past occupant of 10 Downing Street (as was pointed out by Harold Pinter in his Nobel lecture). One could also throw Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert into that mix for good measure.
If Goering, Ribbentrop, Hess, Himmler and rest were contemptible war criminals, then so are Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and Colin Powell (the last one to a lesser degree).
If Adolf Eichmann and Edouard Roschmann were criminal enablers and minions, then so are John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Richard Perle, Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, John Bolton, and the rest of that vile bunch. Yet, these remorseless mass-murderers go about freely, continuing with impunity to espouse their hateful and racist rhetoric.
Finally, the most tragic case of Muntadhar al-Zaidi. In all civilized nations (including those of the West) throughout history, those that stand up against oppressors, tyrants and invaders, are held up as national heroes. This is why this nation has its John Paul Jones, its Frederick Douglass, its Martin Luther King, Jr. It is why England has its Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. Or Mexico has its Miguel Hidalgo, Latin America its Simon Bolivar, South Africa its Mandela, or India its Gandhi, Bose and Shivaji. Perhaps al-Zaidi would need a more prolonged record to rise up to the same stature as those listed. However, there is little doubt in minds driven by the sense of justice, that al-Zaidi demonstrated symbolically what most Iraqis should feel about the oppressor, tyrant and invader- epithets that the executioner from Texas deserves rather richly.
I have little doubt that history will resurrect his small act of protest and revulsion towards a war criminal with honor and empathy, and the temporally convenient act of “Justice,” whereby he is thrown in prison, will become his badge of honor for all time.
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