From Tyranny to Democracy?
By
Grant White



Since 9th April 2003 some 5383 people have been killed in Iraq, including 1200 people alone in Fallujaha over the last week.586 coalition troops have also been killed leaving many embitted back home.But is this the reaction Mr Blair and Mr Bush expected from the liberated people of Iraq? But of cause the perpetrators of these killings, if we are to believe Blair and Bush, are terrorists from outside of Iraq taking advantage of the situation.However neither leader can explain that out of the 8500 people detained only 150 of them are actually none Iraqi.
So why do the people of Iraq behave in this uncivilized manner?. It is not because they, as the Bush junta would have us believe, hate freedom but because they see one set of freedoms they were denied for so long have still not been given back, in fact little has fundamentally changed, other than under Saddam there was at least some order and rule of law where as now there is none, other than the kind of law enforced with bullets and helicopter gun ships like those used in Israel,this is not surprising as Israel has kindly given the US a copy of their “rules of engagement” of which they are making good use of. The recent ceasefire in Fallujha is reminiscent of the ceasefire carried out by Israel in the west bank and in Lebanon in 1982.The other changes in Iraq are no more encouraging , the citizens of Iraq have little clean water and only twelve hours electricity a day, again both of which were at least abundant under Saddam.
Yes but at least now they have freedom of speech and the chance of real political representation I hear you say. Well actually no, the Shia uprising we have seen in the past week in Fallujha was sparked by the closing down of a newspaper owned by Maqtada Al Sadr by Paul Bremer Americas pro consul in Iraq because he didn’t like what they were saying about him.Plus the recurring scenario of US troops firing on peaceful demonstrators is not what we in the west associate with free speech. And as for political representation , the Iraqi governing council is made up of largely people who have not lived in Iraq for many years and are entirely appointed by the US. Not only this but it was reported in the Newstatesman magazine on 15th March 2004 by Stephan Grey that the interim government had already started killing their political opponents , reminiscent of Saddam Hussain. On 19th January 2004 professor Abdulatif Ali Al Mahr was killed as he drove down a main street in Baghdad , he was a human rights campaigner and a opponent of the American led occupation of Iraq. The previous day Dr Al Mahr appeared on television criticizing the Governing council ,his assassination was the latest in a series of seven political assassinations in the preceding four weeks. A senior police commander has been quoted as saying “Dr Abdulatif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for the people on the street here, he made some politicians quite jealous “. He said “You can look no further than the Governing council , there are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people, they are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived in Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies, I’ve seen these lists they are killing people one by one”. independent witnesses confirm this.
These incidents are among only the most recent motives for Iraqis not to agree with the west’s idea of freedom. Although they were pleased to see the back of Saddam, their next move was to ask why America and Britain had supported him for over ten years, and only then because he’d become an embarrassment not because of what he was doing to the Iraqi people, indeed were it not for the west’s help Saddam would not have been able to commit his vast catalogue of atrocities for so long. Even when the opportunity to over throw the dictator did arrive the US and UK once again physically helped him, not just turn their back on him as is frequently implied by Tony Blair, by first refusing to hand over the arms dumps to the Shia so they could continue their advancement to finish the job, and then by opening up the “no fly zone” so that Saddam could massacre the rebels into submission, in much the same manner the US has done in Fallujha.
Some people in Iraq are saying that “ it was bad under Saddam but not this bad” how wrong do you have to be to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussain.We once went to war to stop an evil dictator from invading countries, now our leaders lips drip with the same justifications as him, and with that we become morally bankrupt as the death toll rises and our children’s eyes become soiled with the images of death.
We bomb a country, starve a country, kill over one million people over twelve years, including 500,000 children through sanctions and then expect those same people to trust “us” to deliver to them a better life, a life we helped to destroy in the first place. Hell, I don’t even trust them. So lets hope Tony Blair can grow a conscience and do whats right,not just for the British people but for the people of Iraq, although I fear it will take a lot more to win forgivness from the people of the Islamic world as whole.