Heroic Fallujah

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.