BUTCHERS OF BUSHLAND: IS THE PRICE WORTH IT?
By Luciana Bohne

Online Journal, FL
Oct 16 2006

There is no longer any doubt that Bush’s policy in Iraq is facilitating
genocide. The recent Lancet study makes that very clear.

Bush’s unprovoked attack on Iraq was a premeditated and documentable
conspiracy to subvert the peace — a crime for which the Nazi
elites were hanged. The war crimes Nuremberg Tribunal, Protocol,
and Principles would have no qualms calling the invasion of Iraq "the
supreme crime," a crime from which all other war crimes have derived,
including genocide.

The war against Iraq was, as far as international law is concerned,
the mother of all crimes. It violated the Constitution two, three times
over, starting with violating the UN Charter, which is the "supreme
law of [our] land," according to the Constitution, and encompasses
the principles of the Nuremberg Judgment. The occupation violated the
Geneva Conventions against mistreatment of prisoners. It violated
the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the occupier’s obligations 1)
by failing to provide Iraqis with security and basic services,
while at the same time disbanding the Iraqi army, 2) by failing to
safeguard the sites of their national patrimony (National Library,
museums, etc), 3) by attempting to sell off Iraqi assets, banks,
services to foreign bidders 4) by altering Iraq’s tax laws without
representation (Bremer’s "Orders"). Now comes evidence of national
dying on a genocidal scale from the Lancet study.

We live in a grotesque rogue state. Its disregard for law and human
life endangers the planet, yet the larger the crime grows the less
we are able to fathom it. A terrible numbness envelops us. We are
becoming one of "them" — the freaks at the helm. Or, are we hoping
that "elections" will deliver us from evil? We have to realize,
sooner rather than later, that the only thing that stands between
the horror and their victims is our willingness to oppose it. This
empire thing will not stop by electing the Democrats: they

have never opposed this war. They will send more troops; they will
expend more funds; they will tell more lies.

Unless they start to fear us.

We say we "support the troops." Do we know what that means?

It means supporting the death and injury not only of nearly 3,000
US troops and 20,000 casualties but also the death of over 650,000
Iraqis, the detention, torture, and disappearance of an unknown number
of others, and the projected partition of the country.

It means supporting genocide by denying it. Five hundred Iraqis
per day have been dying since 19 March 2003, when Bush decided to
despoil, rape, plunder, poison, bomb, torture and steal Iraq from
Iraqis because they were oppressed by Saddam Hussein.

It means supporting George Bush, the humanoid predator in the White
House, who sneered at the Lancet’s study, referring to the results as
"whatever they guessed at" — and that was just before he added as an
afterthought that the "innocent" death of Iraqis concerned him greatly.

It means supporting the US bullets that directly killed about 150,000
Iraqi men, women, and children, or 31 percent of the Lancet’s total
estimated deaths. The Lancet study, based on cluster sampling, used
the standard methodology employed to estimate mortality in cases of
conflict and disasters.

Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom has liberated Iraq of 2.5 percent
of its population in three years. Is the world better off without
Saddam? I wouldn’t ask an Iraqi that question!

France has just passed a bill in the lower chamber, proposing to
make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide of 1.5 million people
by the Turkish government in WWW I. The war in Iraq is half way to
that number, and the warmongers are saying they won’t pull out until
2010 or 2011 (though I wouldn’t hold my breath; the US has 60 nuclear
warheads in bases in South Korea, half a century after that war,
and a similar number on Italian bases; it never "leaves"). If one
adds 1.5 million Iraqis killed by the US sanction regime (1990-2003)
and now over half a million killed as a result of the US occupation
regime we’re way over the number of people who died in the Armenian
holocaust — and the fat lady has not sung yet!

It means supporting more than 50 percent unemployment and 100 percent
anarchy in crucial parts of Iraq.

It means war crimes such as the destruction of cities such as Falluja,
Ramadi, Tel-afar and others.

It means one Iraqi child in four suffering from malnutrition.

It means a cost of $500 billion for the US wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq thus far while US citizens have scant defenses against natural
disasters and catastrophic illness.

It means no end in sight.

It is time we ask the butchers in the White House a question the poet
W.H. Auden asked in verse about another war: "To save your world
you asked this man to die:/Would this man, could he see you now,
ask why?" (Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier)

Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University of
Pennsylvania. She can be reached at lbohne@edinboro.edu.

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