June 02, 2005

Here’s a bit of disgusting news ( http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/52163 ) you won’t see reported by the Bush Ministry of Disinformation and Pathological Lies (i.e., Fox News and their slavish emulators): "US occupation forces announced on their propaganda radio beamed at local residents of ar-Ramadi that the US military would stop raiding houses and mosques, would open roads to local people and turn the electricity and drinking water supply in the city back on if local residents would cooperate by informing the American occupation troops of the locations and bases of Iraqi Resistance fighters operating in the city against the Americans."

In other words, if the residents turn in their families and neighbors (and thus endanger their lives as collaborators), the U.S. military will stop committing war crimes (in particular, the Fourth Geneva Convention on the status and treatment of protected persons, specifically in regard to "collective penalties" and "measures of intimidation," etc.: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/c525816bde96b7fd41256739003e636a
/72728b6de56c7a68c12563cd0051bc40?OpenDocument ... ).

The United States is now approaching Hitleresque proportions in its victimization of and disregard for civilians. In October 1941, the Nazis launched "Operation Punishment" to wipe out the resistance in Yugoslavia, including massive reprisal massacres of civilians in central Serbia. "Along with a brief background of German invasion and occupation, historian Carl K. Savich analyzes the German policy of terror in Kragujevac, its impact on the rival resistance forces, and the decision in Nuremberg that recognized these massacres as crimes against humanity," writes Nebojsa Malic ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/savich3.html ).

If the resistance in Iraq continues—and it most certainly will, as people under brutal occupation almost universally resist—how long before the Pentagon steps up the severity of its "counter-insurgency" tactics? Carpet bombing cities (Fallujah), targeting ambulances and hospital staff, rounding up "men of military age" and disappearing them into gulags like Abu Ghraib, denying electricity and water (and destroying critical civilian infrastructure) are crimes against humanity only less severe than what the Nazis did by a matter of degree and will certainly result in a more determined and violent resistance.

Consider the following edict issued by Wehrmacht Commander Southeast List to General Paul Bader for treatment of the Serbian population on October 4, 1941:

The male population of the territories to be mopped up of bandits is to be handled according to the following points of view: Men who take part in combat are to be judged by court martial. Men in the insurgent territories who were not encountered in battle, are to be examined and, if a former participation in combat can be proven of them to be judged by court martial.

If they are only suspected of having taken part in combat, of having offered the bandits support of any sort, or of having acted against the Wehrmacht in any way, to be held in a special collecting camp. They are to serve as hostages in the event that bandits appear, or anything against the Wehrmacht is undertaken in the territory mopped up or in their home localities, and in such cases they are to be shot.

Bush and crew are the process of acting likewise, with the exception of summarily executing people (it should be noted, however, that US special forces were trained by Israeli Defense Force "urban warfare specialists" in assassination at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, according to Julian Borger of the Guardian: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1209-03.htm ). Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, Camp Gitmo, Bagram AFB and other localities essentially serve as "special collecting camps," not much different than the camps created by the Nazi Wehrmacht in Serbia. As we discovered back in January, the Pentagon has unleashed its "Salvador Option" (a news item that has more or less fallen off the corporate media radar screen), that is to say a program not dissimilar from Operation Phoenix in Vietnam (wholesale murder and assassination).

Hopefully, some day Bush and Cheney and the Strausscons will be held to account for their Nazi-like war crimes. Unfortunately, this will not happen anytime soon, as Bush is riding high and the Strausscons are firmly in control, now calling for an increase in the size of the military (call it conscription, or bullet-stopper slavery) while simultaneously demanding Syria, Iran, and other countries be "dealt with," that is to say bombed and their citizens subjected to brutal practices illegal under the Geneva Convention. Sooner or later the rest of the world will put an end to this murderous insanity. I’d rather Americans arrest Bush and crew and pack them off to The Hague to face indictment and prosecution, but the way things are going (there are way too many couch potato Americans as there were Good Germans) it appears the arresting parties will be Chinese, Russian, and Indian (members of "Primakov’s Triangle": http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/366/15273_alliance.html
). Let’s hope in the process half the planet is not irradiated—like Hitler, no doubt Bush (or the next "elected" president, Jeb Bush or some other reactionary sociopath connected to the Bush crime family) will demand a firestorm designed to inflict misery on the entire world, including the United States, from the momentary refuge of his bunker.