[South Asia Citizens Web | April 9, 2003]
The new Mongols
by Aseem Srivastava
"I do believe this city is freakiní ours"
ñ Captain Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Georgia, upon entering Baghdad.
History repeats itself, each time more farcically than the time before.
In 1258 the marauding Mongol army of Hulegu Khan, youngest son of the legendary conqueror Chingiz Khan, deposed the caliph of Baghdad and sacked the great city, killing, maiming and raping thousands of civilized people, children, women and men, putting an end to the glory of the Abbasids. It is said that over 80,000 people were murdered in the infamous sacking of Baghdad 745 years ago.
Todayís liberators have been given strict instructions to appear civilized. And yet, they canít help betraying their barbaric depths:
"We had a great day," said Sgt. Eric Schrumpf of the US marines during what appears destined to become the decisive weekend. "We killed a lot of people." When asked to explain why he killed a woman, he complained that he was trying to get an Iraqi soldier "but the chick was in the way."
Vietnam, 1968. Remember My Lai?
Last week the war for the defence of civilization required cluster-bombing the children of Babylon. The week before, it needed the bombing of a maternity hospital, a teaching hospital, several residential neighborhoods, food warehouses, market-places, schools, universities, and power-plants. The British liberators of Basra have had to deny water and food to over a million of the mortals they have set out to liberate.
Some civilization it must be which requires such heroic defence! When asked for his opinion about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi had replied "it would be a good idea."
"Operation Iraqi freedom" is about to reach its climactic goal. The inevitable approaches. Baghdad has all but "fallen", even if Saddam Hussein is still on the sly. Tikrit may yet hold out for a while.
It was unthinkable in the first place that a country, according to UN inspectors, more disarmed than any in recent history (annual military expenses 300 times less than that of the US), and starved of basic necessities of life, thanks to a monstrous UN sanctions regime imposed at the command of Washington, should be able to resist the most devastating war machine known to man. It is doubtful if Iraq even has an air force! Meanwhile the Anglo-Americans have directed over 25,000 air-sorties at Iraqi cities and have dropped over 1 million tonnes of ammunitions on the worldís oldest recorded civilization.
Everyone has a right to homeland security, not just the Americans. The fact that disarmed Iraqis have been able to resist such a massive, unprovoked air and ground invasion for three weeks is in itself a tribute to their hearty courage (and they are NOT defending Saddam Husseinís brutal regime so much as their homeland), for that is what you need, to keep breathing when you are up against the cowardice of an empire which plants the barrel of its imperial gun on a nuclear arsenal of cosmic proportions, and takes aim at a people who it has denied (in the name of justice!) water, food and medicines for over a decade. All this for civilization? No, all of it for oil and power.
Well done Washington! You have made it amply clear where barbarism in the modern world has its origins.
The sobering irony is that if Iraq had kept its nuclear weapons this invasion would not have taken place. The UN inspectors, de facto, served as spies for the US government, clearing the land of weapons of mass destruction. The Bush-Blair preventive war on Iraq has sent a resounding, unambiguous message to the governments of the world: to stand any chance of avoiding Anglo-American imperialism, they must quickly acquire nuclear weapons. Follow North Koreaís example.
So far, less than 10000 Iraqis have been liberated ñ from their bodies. And the nearest thing to Weapons of Mass Destruction that has been discovered is pesticide, which the American troops initially took for nerve gas.
All the important oil fields have been secured by Anglo-American troops.
Freedom knocks at the doors of the Iraqi peopleÖis there anyone left to be liberated?
TIME magazine has done a survey recently asking a quarter million Europeans which country represented for them the greatest threat to world peace, Iraq, North Korea or the US? 8% indicated their fear of Saddam Hussein, 9% of North Koreaís Mr.Kim, and 83% of Washington. If that is the extent of fear Washington has injected in European hearts, itís worth speculating how the people of a small, resource-rich, Third World country are feeling at this point of time.
150 years ago, the great American writer, Herman Melville, had spent a few years living with the Typee people in the South Pacific. He had been impressed with their civility, even friendliness, with which he contrasted the organized barbarities of what Westerners had come to accept as civilization. He wrote something which bears repetition even today, (especially today!), when the United States has ironically appointed itself the guardian of civilization, claiming for itself, one would imagine, a monopoly of decency:
"The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of
death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on
our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their
train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white
civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the
earth."
Little Laila in Hillah, two limbs missing and eyes lost to eternity, must make Melville turn in his grave.
Barbarism has won, while civilization is unashamed of its cowardice.
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