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"THE world has grown honest . . . the challenge to the post-modern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open co-operative security. "But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the post-modern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era � force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary � to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. "Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle," wrote Tony Blair�s chief policy advisor Robert Cooper, in his publication entitled "Re-ordering the World: The Long-Term Implications of September 11th", a publication which bemoaned the collapse of the old colonial empires and advocated a new imperialism. This is the jungle law being used by United States troops like Private Lyndie England, who was pictured dragging a naked Iraqi man by a leash around his neck. Other photos showed US female soldiers sexually taunting naked Iraqi men and then compelling them to masturbate in front of female inmates at Baghdad�s Abu Ghraib prison. Other prisoners were forced to wear female panties and perform lewd sexual acts to satisfy the carnal desires of the perverted troops in the Coalition of the Killing (inappropriately termed Willing). Other prisoners were raped and sodomised as part of the "interrogation process" approved by the Pentagon. Women prisoners were also stripped and sexually abused according to unreleased footage consisting of over 1 800 new photos which were screened in a top secret room on Capitol Hill, where the US Congress and Senate deliberate, last Wednesday. Prisoners who resisted were murdered in cold blood. These images so shocked US Democrat Senator R Wyden (Oregon) who confessed to CNN: "I expected these pictures would be very hard on the stomach lining and it was significantly worse than anything I had anticipated, take the worse case and multiply it several times over." The same reaction the horrible photos have evoked in right-thinking people the world over. Paradoxically, the abuse was carried out by people who claimed they were on a mission to liberate Iraqis from Saddam Hussein, so as to restore their "rights" as citizens, the same promise US President George W Bush gave Afghans before the invasion of their country in 2001. Bush gushed: "The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and its Allies. As we strike military targets, we will also drop food, medicine and supplies to the suffering men and women of Afghanistan." This promise, which was also extended to Iraqis, just like all US rhetoric, was false as the "liberators", instead of dropping medicine, dropped banned cluster bombs which Afghan and Iraqi children mistook for toys. These bombs are still maiming innocent children to date. This is a manifestation of the torture of the innocent that has found exposure in Iraq. Iraq is a Moslem nation, and its citizens are deeply religious. The destruction of what they hold dear is being done through what the Americans consider normal sexual practice in their country: sadism and homosexuality. Moslem men and women are always covered from head to toe in their purdah, hence merely making them strip in public, more so in the presence of members of the opposite sex, is unprecedented torture that destroys one�s will to live, let alone public masturbation, rape and unnatural sexual acts. All this is part of the dehumanisation of indigenous peoples that preceded and accompanied colonialism through the ages. This humiliation is meant to break the people�s spirit of resistance and religious conviction that has seen more body bags hitting US shores. The torture, however, began way back after the 1991 Gulf War, with the unjustified sanctions which brought untold suffering in a country where children make up 44 percent (12 million) of the total population. It reached a peak on March 20 2003, when the so-called Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq with the intention to shock and awe Iraqis to submission. The International Committee of the Red Cross�s report has since revealed that these abuses began as early as March last year and Abu Ghraib is just a microcosm of the situation at detention centres throughout Iraq. The use of unconventional weapons to shock the people went against the 1980 United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. This was hardly surprising, for the US, for all its rhetoric, violated international law when it invaded Iraq without a UN mandate. As such, the Iraq war was an illegal adventure from the outset, hence the aggressors did not have parameters to observe or limit their sanguinary excesses. Thus, precepts of international law such as the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war were irrelevant as this is Bush�s war and the Bush or jungle law applies. As Cooper pointed out, when in the "jungle" Anglo-Saxons use jungle law. Hence they did not see the need to inform US-United Kingdom guards at Abu Ghraib prison about the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, which stress minimum standards for the treatment of POWs. The guards have since admitted that they have never seen the Conventions as the rules are not even posted at the prison. But that is no excuse, for the abuses at Abu Ghraib were last equalled by Nazi revelations at the 1945 Nuremberg trials. The way Saddam was subjected to cattle inspection in camera when he was captured on December 13 last year was very revealing as it clearly showed the extent of the US�s disregard for human rights. If they could do it to Saddam before the whole world, what more behind the high walls of detention centres? That the coalition troops are brigands is not debatable. What is astounding is the inaction of the UN Security Council. Of course, to all intents and purposes it is indistinguishable from the US, being headquartered in New York City and receiving its major funding from the same US. As they say, he who pays the piper calls the tune. But this is the time for the world body to regain its legitimacy which was trashed when Bush insulted it as a talking shop as irrelevant as the League of Nations before it. It does not matter that the US has the largest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and that it considers the world as its empire because good always prevails over evil. Former US ambassador to London Raymond Steitz�s comments to the London Telegraph in June last year to the effect that: "Our power is so great, and so unlikely to be challenged for many, many years that you have to go back to Rome to find any kind of parallel." "It�s a misnomer to speak of the US as being merely a superpower, we are a super-duper power, and I don�t think the world has seen one of those before." This is sufficient testimony to the extent of US arrogance and megalomania. A world in union can drive these war criminals out of Iraq and straight to The Hague for the numerous crimes they have committed against the Iraqi people. The Iraqis have since shown that the bully can be beaten after all, just like the Vietnamese before them. These two members of the Security Council � the US and UK � have obviously done in a year what they accuse Saddam of doing in over two decades. As such, their legitimacy as defenders of human rights, if it ever existed, is gone, and they have no right to continue masquerading as liberators of Iraqis when the whole world has seen what they really stand for. If Europe had just watched Adolf Hitler�s megalomania, cowering before the panzers fabled might, where would it be today? Indeed, where are we going to be, if we do not bell this cat, now that the likes of Steitz and Cooper have clearly stated the new drive by the Westerners to establish the empires of old, under a "new imperialism acceptable to a �civilised� world"? It is high time the UN moved from rhetoric to action, otherwise it risks going the way of the League of Nations that failed to rein in Hitler. After all the UN Charter boldly pledges to 'save mankind from the scourge of war which twice in our lifetime has brought untold suffering to people". Already in less than four years Bush has subjected the world to two wars. To make matters worse, Bush is not even showing any remorse, apart from the damage-controlling public "apology" he begrudged Iraqis. If he was really sorry he would have brought Defence Secretary Don Rumsfeld to book, but according to him, Rumfeld�s conduct in Iraq was "superb". Could any case for intervention be clearer than this? The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" |
