Murder, resistance and US state terrorism
by Paul Balles
*Paul J. Balles highlights the self-perpetuating circles of violence in Iraq, where US forces respond to Iraqi resistance with ever more vicious acts of what can only be described as state terrorism, thereby prompting further resistance.
Coalition forces in Iraq kill 100 "insurgents". Families, friends and acquaintances of the 100 dead insurgents become 200 new insurgents, fighting to avenge the first insurgents' deaths.More troops join the occupation in "surges" needed to deal with the "insurgents”.
More insurgents get killed "out of necessity" to protect the occupation. That produces even more new insurgents.
The leaders of the coalition forces are either too idiotic to recognize that they are responsible for the increasing insurgency or they know it well and have a pathological desire to murder.
Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: "The US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”
David Brown, writing for the Washington Post reported: “A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.”Michael Schwartz, writing in Counterpunch, said:
Over half (56 per cent) were due to gunshots, with an eighth due each to car bombs(13 per cent), air strikes (13 per cent) and other ordinance (14 per cent). Only 4 per cent were due to unknown causes.We can be very confident that the coalition had killed at least 180,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. Moreover, we have every reason to believe that the US is responsible for its pro rata share (or more) of the unattributed deaths. That means that the US and its allies may well have killed upwards of 330,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006.
According to Schwartz, the electronic and print media simply do not tell us that the US is killing all these people. We hear plenty about car bombers and death squads, but little about Americans killing Iraqis, except the occasional terrorist, and the even more occasional atrocity story.
“In the city of Haditha on 19 November 2005,” wrote Schwartz, “American marines deliberately murdered 24 civilians, including executing – with point blank head shots – 19 unarmed women, children and older men in a single room, apparently in retribution for the death of one of their comrades earlier in the day.”
First Lieutenant Adam P. Mathes, the executive officer of the company involved, argued against issuing an apology to local residents for the incident. Mathes advocated that instead they should issue a warning to Haditha residents, that the incident was "an unfortunate thing that happens when you let terrorists use your house to attack our troops”.
Reminiscent of films of World War II Nazi stormtroopers, the Germans used the same kind of terrorism to frighten villages and towns into submission to their occupation. The Nazis were more honest about their tactics. They stood civilians up against a wall and mowed them down in front of the whole village. They even allowed the massacres to be filmed for use in terrorizing others.
We hear a great deal about terrorist threats. It’s been G.W. Bush’s constant theme song. We never hear or read about state terrorism. Noam Chomsky once wrote: “It's very simple. If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counter-terrorism. That's a historical universal.”
The coalition forces in Iraq do the same thing with greater stealth, murdering innocent civilians in the dead of night. The only natural response moves the resistance to a larger, more active insurgency.
Vicious circles of violence do not get quelled by more viciousness. They become more self-perpetuating, more deadly, more widespread, more useless and more idiotic.
*Paul Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for 38 years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.
