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=> We Must Stop Sending Our Soldiers to Other People’s Countries

We Must Stop Sending Our Soldiers to Other People’s Countries

Posted by Kris K. (Guest) statement@assyrianconvention.com - Wednesday, January 18 2006, 19:37:37 (CET) from 69.32.174.5 - 69.32.174.5 - Windows XP - Mozilla Website: Website title:

AdBusters.com We Must Stop Sending Our Soldiers to Other People’s Countries Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. He spoke with Adbusters associate editor Deborah Campbell from Beirut, where he has lived for the past 30 years. AB: Why has the US invaded Iraq? Is it for oil? RF: Well, if the national product of Iraq was asparagus, I don’t think we’d be there, would we? So oil is part of it. But it’s also about power. Last year I was on Highway 8 investigating the murder of a Red Cross worker. As I was talking to an Iraqi family, the road started to vibrate and we could see this huge infantry division coming towards us. Apache helicopters hovered overhead a convoy of m1a1 Abrams tanks, armored vehicles, lorry after lorry with concrete and thousands and thousands of troops, all wearing shades, rifles pointing out the side like porcupines. I sat down on the side of the road in the muck with this family and tried to understand what it meant. Four and a half, five hours later, the convoy was still passing by. It dawned on me that 2,000 years ago, a little to the west, I would have been sitting on the road watching a Roman legion pass, feeling the vibrations of the centurions’ feet. And I realized that if you are the only superpower, like America, you need to project power. They’re essentially saying, “We will march over the lands of Sumeria and Mesopotamia, and we will go there because we can.” AB: How are journalists covering the conflict in Iraq? RF: They’re not. The greatest advantage for the US administration at the moment is that American journalists are not on the streets. They can’t travel without American firepower. They can’t move from their hotel bedrooms. The Associated Press, for example, lives on a floor of the Palestine Hotel behind two armored doors. They are using mobile phones and talking to the Green Zone. Or they send out Iraqi and other Arab stringers. That’s the colonial way of journalism, isn’t it? All of that might be fine if the reporters were up front with their audiences about it. But they’re not. They broadcast or report from Baghdad as if they have a tour de raison, as if a bomb goes off and they travel there. I’m one of the few reporters who actually goes to the sites of bomb blasts. AB: How does the American occupation of Iraq compare to the British occupation? RF: It is essentially the same. The British faced an insurgency in 1920 in Iraq. The first thing they did was destroy Fallujah with shellfire after a British officer was killed at Abu Ghraib. Familiar names? Lloyd George told Parliament that if the British forces left Iraq there would be a civil war. We’ve always been threatening the Middle East with civil war if we leave. It’s rubbish. There has never been a civil war in Iraq and the Shia and the Sunnis have never talked about one. I was at a funeral and asked the deceased man’s Sunni brother if there will be a civil war; he responded, “Why do you Westerners want us to have a civil war? I’m married to a Shia woman – do you want me to kill my wife?!” AB: Where are we heading? RF: I don’t know where we’re going and I don’t know if anybody knows. But we must stop sending our soldiers to other people’s countries. Arabs would like some of this shiny democracy which we offer; they would like some of this beautiful freedom, this liberty, which is why allegedly we’re in Iraq. They would also like freedom from us, from our culture, our demands, our wishes. But we don’t give them that. Instead, we give them more and more of us. You might see people queuing up for green cards and passports at US embassies. There is an enormous need, which is humiliating to people, to resurrect themselves economically, and if your own government and country are in desperate straits, obviously the US is a place you can resurrect yourself. Unless you become an American or a Westerner, you can’t participate fully, equally and with justice in the world. You can’t enjoy the fruits of the world which you deserve. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

The full topic: We Must Stop Sending Our Soldiers to Other People’s Countries Kris K. - Wednesday, January 18 2006, 19:37:37 (CET) Re: We Must Stop Sending Our Soldiers to Other People’s Countries pancho - 01/19 02:13

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