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Heroic Fallujah

Gary Sudborough | 16.11.2004 16:54 | Anti-militarism | World

US imperialism experiences a stumbling block in Fallujah and the whole of Iraq in its drive for global hegemony and corporate control.

Whenever the US corporate news media are silent about events in Fallujah or other parts of Iraq and spend a lot of time on tabloid journalism, it indicates that the military situation in Iraq is not improving and there are numerous US casualties. Otherwise, they would be crowing about glorious US victories over the forces of evil.

Before the invasion of Fallujah began, notice the terminology used to describe the resistance fighters there. A US military commander said that Satan was inside Fallujah. Fundamentalist Christian soldiers among the American troops were incited by invective against believers in Islam. It was like a replay of the Crusades of the Middle Ages, only with advanced weaponry. Spokespeople for the US military in Iraq described those fighting the US as "anti-Iraqi" forces. How can Iraqis fighting against US occupation of their own country possibly be described as "anti-Iraqi?" Then, it was said that there were foreign fighters in Fallujah, as if the Americans, British, Bulgarians, Poles, Italians, Danes, Ukrainians and others were native to Iraq. It was said that the people of Fallujah were being held hostage by evil terrorists, making it seem like the Americans were their rescuers and actually deeply loved by the Iraqi people, the resistance fighters being despised. Oh yes, people who have kept a murderous embargo on your country for over ten years, given your children cancers and birth defects from depleted uranium and tortured and killed your fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers would naturally be greatly loved. This is the old propaganda trick of reversing victim and victimizer. It is similar to making the Palestinian children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks into the victimizers of the poor Israeli troops who have to endure such a barrage. People fighting back against the most powerful and sophisticated military machine the world has ever seen with only small arms at their disposal are not victimizers. They are the real victims of this imperialist aggression for oil and exhibit enormous courage for fighting against such overwhelming odds. As La Pasionaria said during the Spanish Civil War: "It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."

As the US forces made one vast slaughterhouse out of Fallujah by seizing or bombing hospitals and preventing wounded people from getting treatment and other people from leaving the city, it was entirely predictable that they would claim to have found "slaughterhouses" used by "terrorists" to execute their hostages. It reminds me of the time after the US invasion of Panama in 1989 when the US military claimed that they had discovered Manuel Noriega's so-called lair, complete with pictures of Hitler, vats of blood, tons of cocaine, Brazilian witches and virtually everything else their psychological operations officers knew would inflame American public opinion. Why not? No matter how outlandish and bizarre, they know if the corporate media repeats the lie often enough, the majority of Americans will believe it. Most Americans accepted all the lies concerning weapons of mass destruction and all the fakery concerning the pulling down of Saddam Hussein's statue and the Jessica Lynch rescue. Also, they just elected a bloodthirsty moron, who can't even speak English properly, as President of the United States. Skepticism and logical analysis are not virtues greatly prevalent in American society today.

The US corporate media are painting the attack on Fallujah as a liberation of the Iraqi people from foreign terrorists or preventing these terrorists from disrupting the so-called free elections scheduled for Iraq. What a crock! Fallujah is more similar to the street to street fighting in Stalingrad and Hue or the rising of the Warsaw ghetto. The Iraqi resistance forces are fighting for their homes, their families and to prevent the conquest of their country for the aggrandizement of the US ruling class and the pirating of their oil. This is truly a heroic resistance against vastly superior military forces.

If American soldiers ever realize that they aren't really fighting terrorism at all, but are instead fighting for the interests of the Rockefeller family and many other rich American capitalists, the US ruling class will be in serious trouble. When Russian soldiers discovered the truth about the reasons for World War 1, it propelled the Russian revolution to victory over Czar Nicholas II and the subsequent bourgeois Kerensky government. That has to be a very disconcerting thought for the rich and powerful in this country and makes the brainwashing of American soldiers even more imperative.



Gary Sudborough
- e-mail: IconoclastGS@aol.com
- Homepage: http://www.theblackflag.org/iconoclast

Comments

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This is very one-sided

16.11.2004 20:26

This 'news' article displays all the signs of bias and propaganda that it criticises. Let's be realistic about the resistance fighters in Falluja. They are very brave men as they have decided to walk into certain death at the hands of an overwhelmingly more powerful army. Have they done this for their families or their children? No. Many of them have decided to die because they think it is worth fighting for the creation of an Islamo-fascist state or some other dictatorship in which a select group dominates. The fighters do not want the Iraqi people to be able to choose their own destiny but want to impose their ideas on the people, so they are no better than the US neo-cons. Prior to the attack on Falluja, these 'resistance' fighters were regularly massacring Iraqi civilians and policemen, such was their concern for their fellow countrymen. Let's not glorify them. As brave as they have been, they are not heroes but fools. Most reasonable people would accept that it was wrong for the US to bombard a city such as Falluja which was full of civilians. The bombardment showed no regard for human life, and instead of bombing, the world should have negotiated with the fighters in Falluja and addressed their grievances, for example by creating jobs, instead of savagely massacring them. However, the responsibility for the carnage does not lie solely with the US. The fighters in Falluja were irresponsible for resisting the enormous power of the US and inviting the inevitable destruction of themselves and their city. They knew that if they resisted they would be wiped out and would die. They could have laid down their arms. They could have chosen peaceful means. Sometimes it is necessary to crawl on your knees before you can walk on your feet when you are facing an infinitely stronger enemy. Instead of choosing peace, the fighters in Falluja maintained their foolish resistance and, along with the US, plunged the sad city of Falluja into death and darkness. We should be sad about all loss of life in this awful conflict, but let's not glorify the fighters of either side.

Asylum Seeker


what deluded crap

16.11.2004 22:58

Where do you loony RESPECT/SWP/Workers Power/MAB loonies get off, by jumping into bed with islamist seperatists? you make the anti war occupation movement look like a bunch of apologetic pro-sadame and pro- islamist seperatist. Do you want to see another iran? we have top push fro peace from all sides, we must push for diplomacy so then the people of iraq can have some peace from which to find there own voice, and open up there own class war.

anarchris
- Homepage: http://www.wmanarchists.org


er

17.11.2004 01:29

If you look at the link it's from a magazine called Blackflag in the USA....

Possibly not an SWP publication I would venture to suggest

"we must push for diplomacy so then the people of iraq can have some peace"

Care to expand on that?

Sonic


expanding

17.11.2004 21:48

we dont want an imperialist run iraq and we dont want another islamic republic like iran or another afghanistan, if we urge all parties to negotiations and to a ceaserfire and ask our comrades in iraq to work, and urge the iraqi people to demand peace, then that way there will be no total victorious faction, leaving the country in limbo, and leaving the ruling classes divided so that the workers themselves can find a voice of there own to work towards a society they want.

I apologise, that publication is anarchist, and those who wrote that article i have no respect for.

anarchris
- Homepage: http://www.wmanarchists.org


Sorry but

17.11.2004 23:22

"if we urge all parties to negotiations and to a ceaserfire"

Do you really expect George W Bush and the US army to agree?

Sonic