Only couple of weeks ago, hundreds of women and children were killed as a direct result of the use of overwhelming firepower by the US forces, which was criticised as heavy-handed tactics even by its staunchest ally, the UK. The US claimed that 95% of the victims were from the Iraqi freedom fighters (‘insurgents’). Subsequently, Al-Jazeerah was heavily criticised for airing the pictures and reporting the actual eyewitness accounts from the hospital doctors in Fallujah. The western dominated mass media remained relatively docile on this point, made no effort to contradict or confirm Al-Jazeerah’s ‘bias’.
Today’s tragedy in Basra had a different reaction from the western dominated mass media. All emphasised the number of children and civilians killed. This is expected as the most likely ‘culprits’ were the Iraqi freedom fighters targeting the illegal occupying forces and the collaborators but unfortunately, the innocent civilians and children were caught up in the attack. So far this is what the picture looks like as reported by the mass media. Thus, in the words of Colin Powell the children were collateral damages from the perspective of the Iraqi freedom fighters, just like children of Fallujah are from the US perspective.
However, there is no moral equivalence between the two conflicting parties since the war has been proven to be clearly illegal even according to the twisted criteria(s) of the aggressors. As there is a clear difference between the violence of the aggressor and the violence of the oppressed, the aggressor has no ‘moral’ grounds to claim collateral damages. Those children in Basra would have been alive if the Police stations were not bombed, and it would not have been bombed if Iraq was not attacked and occupied in the first place. Thus, the invaders are the real culprits in all cases. They have the blood of the innocent Iraqi women and children in their hands.
On the point of children, why do they celebrate by dancing around the dead American or British soldiers or any other dead foreign mercenaries in Iraq? Why do these children and teenagers resent these benevolent-capitalist ‘liberators’? Could it be because the children have lost their parents or other relatives due to this “war of humanity” in the words of Rumsfeld? Perhaps, they have been buried in the mass graves of Fallujah, or on the “road to Basra”, which has the stamp “made in USA” all over it.
In any case, these attacks upon the coalition forces are suppose to represent a tiny minority, just like those who ‘elected’ Bush in Florida! However, despite the fact that Saddam has gone, so has his sons, the secret police and the Bath party exists no more, the majority of the Iraqis are still not coming out on to the streets to shower rose petals over the American soldiers as was predicted by one of the leading neo-conservative (neo-shylock), Paul Wolfowitz.
So, where are the American-loving (implicitly Israel-loving being a chief ally of the US), free Iraqis? Are they sitting comfortably in the American appointed IGC? Perhaps, the US forces should look amongst the privileged elites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar or simply import more Ahmed Chalabi type stooges from the US and Europe, and they can also help with building a new ‘democracy’ in Iraq.
