Thursday, December 15, 2011

Iraq. Murderous catastrophe for Iraqi people.

Bush proclaimed Mission Accomplished in Iraq some years ago. It has been going on since. Obama now says the war is over and the soldiers come home with their heads held high. However increasing reports exist about the massacre of Iraqi civilians. The most recent one is reported in today's New York Times. Apparently some documents which were meant to be dumped have been found in a junkyard. They were written by US officers who were talking about a massacre by US troops in the town of Haditha in 2005.

Here is what a US Colonel Thomas Cariker said. "I mean whether its the result of our action or other action, you know, discovering 20 bodies throats slit, you know beheaded, 20 bodies here, 20 bodies there..." This slaughter which Col. Cariker was describing he admitted was carried out by US marines. They killed 24 Iraqis, including a 76 year old woman in a wheel chair, women and children, some of the children as young as three. Not one marine was convicted.

This criminal murderous behaviour is what has resulted in the Iraqi government insisting that the US troops have had to withdraw. There is seething anger against the US presence in the country. After nine years of war around 1 million according to some estimates of Iraqis have been killed. this is why US imperialism has had to take its troops home. US commander Gen. Steve Johnson called this massacre and the countless others like it the :"cost of doing business." US imperialism has not won in Iraq. It has been a disaster for it and the Iraqi people.

US imperialism has spent hundreds of billions on this war which could have been spent to improve the lives of working class people at home and abroad. Not only that but as well as slaughtering up to 1 million Iraqis. US imperialism has also killed 4,483 US citizens in this war and wounded and brutalised tens and tens of thousands more. These are coming home now, many with no jobs and just about all of them with serious psychological problems arising out of the tasks US imperialism forced them to perform.

One officer described how some US soldiers became to desensitised that they would get another soldier to take a photo of them while they shot an Iraqi. The same General Johnson said he did not feel compelled to go back and examine events such as the one at Haditha as they: "happened all the time..throughout the whole country." You can see him shrugging his shoulders. Incredible. Disgusting.

The present government now being left behind in Iraq is headed by Maliki who is close to the government in Iran and based on the majority Shiite population. This is not in US imperialism's interest as it wishes to weaken Iran. There is increasing tension between the Shiite majority and the Sunni and Kurd minorities in Iraq. Maliki's Shiite base is very likely to act against the Sunni and Kurd minorities in Iraq and the country can very easily spiral down into into deeper crisis and sectarian civil war.

Imperialism is a sick and rotten and murderous system. It is far worse than you can even imagine. Those who run it like the Bushes and the Obamas and the Kissingers and the Cheyneys, and the Clintons are war criminals one and all. The 1% is the class on which these war criminals rest and whom they represent, whose profits and power they represent, in whose interests the 1 million Iraqis have been slaughtered and the thousands of Americans also. Tell me when have you see a Bush, a Clinton, a Cheyney, a Kissinger, an Obama, young person go to war. Maybe that would help. Maybe a constitutional amendment where there can be no wars unless all the children of the elected politicians and those who earn over $100 million go to fight first. I am not serious, just making a point. I against all wars. To achieve this we have to overthrow capitalism which is the basis of all wars.

Sean.

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