Friday, May 14, 2004

How it looks from the other side

The west is suddenly aware of atrocities being meted out by the crusader forces in Iraq. A combination of lying politicians and a desire to bury their heads in the sand has sheltered them from the stark realities of invasion and occupation. Reams of texts and newsprint column inches have little effect on the North American population with a kindergarten mentality. Pictures are what bring the message home to the MTV generation.

...These are the facts on the ground, but the US President commented that “Their treatment does not reflect the nature of the American people,” Indeed, but it is in the nature of the circumstances that Bush has authorised the holding of 10,000 prisoners without trial, many in unknown, secret prisons. "That's not the way we do things in America," he said. This may be the case, but it is the way that they do things in Cuba, Iraq, Bagram and even Gambia. If George Bush is unsure about the American way he could always ask his dad, who used to be head of the CIA. The brains behind the interrogating team at Abu Ghraib was from the CIA. So what is the US intelligence agency capable of? There are clues from that organisation's history that it has found ill-treating detainees to be useful in the past. Two CIA interrogation manuals surfaced in 1997 after the Baltimore Sun obtained them under freedom of information laws. Reading them in the context of the pictures from Iraq and accounts from Guantánamo suggests that the advice they contain is still being applied.

...Before the start of hostilities in Iraq George W Bush used the phrase “lets go over there and kick some ass.” This is really appropriate wording, because this is quite literally what the Americans thought they were supposed to do. That is, capture unarmed innocent citizens strip them naked and brutalise them. Bush is not an intellectual heavyweight, but that same insulting language has been used by neo conservative “thinkers.” Both Kenneth Adelman and Paul Wolfowitz have spoken of "snakes" and "draining the swamps" in the "uncivilised parts of the world". The apparently more tempered British use the same base racist language. Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser, Robert Cooper, declared human rights are only for the civilised: "Among ourselves we keep the law but when operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle." So the Islamic world, Iraq, is a jungle full of wild animals just waiting to be tamed by being buggered by broom handles. We need to regard the photos coming out of Iraq not as "deviant" or one-offs, but as the genuine sentiments from the heart of America. This is from the heart of the system that is seeking control of the globe.
  Khilafah article

Actually, that's pretty much how it looks to me, as well.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.