The torture scandal, which was not a customary event on the US or international scene, will not change anything in the pragmatic philosophy of the US state and society. It will not alter the logic of systematic violence that has dominated its military establishment since its early days when it eradicated the histories and entire cultures of the original inhabitants of the land after the European colonialists started to arrive.
The scandal will not teach the American mind something that it does not already know about itself, something that becomes stronger and more entrenched from one political era to another. The new and unexpected thing, however, is the manner in which this scandal erupted and the international scope that it is taking, which promises to expand yet further. Never before did something like this happen. It is like a major information revolution in which the world's media are participating, with almost identical banner headlines everywhere. It seems as if a media statement is issued everyday in various languages, each one focusing on the same subject, denouncing and condemning the incidents in question and raising them to the level of crimes.
Even the media of the guilty country itself did not break the rule. Indeed the very officials responsible for the crime, both senior and low-level officials, took part in describing the hideous acts that their men had perpetrated. The men of the ruling establishment, both those who are now in office and those who are currently outside government, hastened to join the chorus of general confessions. No one is denying the faults, sins, and shameful actions that occurred but they all evading responsibility and trading accusations, but all the ploys, evasions, and distortions at which diplomats, intelligence agencies, and their partisan and media extensions are so skillful are not working. It is a huge scandal in which the boundaries between judge and culprit, lawyer and prosecutor are not clear.
The public itself is almost enmeshed with the players themselves. The fictitious empire is being defeated by its lack of morality when it looks at itself in the mirror even before its invading armies are defeated by the popular resistance forces that are waiting for it everywhere, beginning with the lessons of Iraq and Palestine.
Nevertheless no one among Washington's rulers is being condemned by his "democratic" institutions, nor is anyone resigning his post under pressure from public opinion, which in this case seems impervious to the sufferings of other nations although its own media vie with each other in portraying the images of the inhuman debaucheries perpetrated by its valiant sons in the homelands of other nations, which are left defenseless for their soldiers to act recklessly and thuggishly in them, soldiers that they affectionately refer to as their "boys."
Finally John Kerry becomes daring enough to describe Bush as arrogant. Kerry has moved from one miscalculation to another since the decision to go to war against Iraq was made. Apparently Kerry thinks that this filthy American war should not err in anything even in hiding the number of its "enemy" victims, let alone when incidents of torture are uncovered. This is the major sin then. The current talk is about who is responsible for America's loss of credibility, as if it had any credibility to begin with when it waged a hellish illegitimate war against a small nation on the pretext of overthrowing its ruling regime. Later the army of the long-established "democracy" complemented the destruction of the regime by destroying the country's state, society, and culture. It formed gangs of murderers and thieves of all types or allowed the spread of this pestilence to terrorize innocent people in their homes and streets, to assassinate scientists, professors, and doctors, and force others to emigrate.
The torture is not limited to the Abu Ghurayb prison and other jails all over that afflicted homeland. The occupation itself has become the instrument of torture and major destruction that is directed against the Iraqi people, their achievements, and culture.
When Bush the father declared the first war on Iraq on the pretext of "liberating" Kuwait, he announced that he would bomb Iraq back into the Medieval Ages. This is the exact goal that his exceptional son has now implemented by borrowing a leaf from the Zionist book, which is based on the principle of clearing the land of its people and their culture to seize it and control its resources. Hence everything is permitted and acceptable for the sake of winning an Iraq that has no united population, no modern scientific society, and no strong state institutions.
This torture has been sanctioned by the military establishment and its longstanding traditions in eradicating the enemy. It is organized and systematic and programmed by psychologists, or to call them by their proper name, educated executioners. This torture is the exposed material proof of the only form of human relationship that can exist between the arrogant occupation and its barbaric instruments on one side and the oppressed but rebellious nation on the other.
When the torture scandal erupts and is exposed in this global fashion and the shield of the US system is pierced in its very homeland, it seems as if the hideous acts occurred in the offices and bedrooms of the officials themselves. Does this mean that the occupation has come close to the moment when it will turn against itself and its advocates? The expected reversal means that the planners and protagonists of the big sin will pay a political and perhaps also a legal price, that is, if the myth of combating terrorism has left intact the democratic relations among the institutions of the US state and the state's relations with the institutes of civil society including the press, the intellectuals, and the parties and individuals who oppose the state's policies.
The behavior of Bush and his cabinet members and the contradictory statements made by the senior symbols of official US policy and the Pentagon's military men all show that all of them are participating in the game of explaining away the crisis and avoiding any earnest attempt to do what has to be done. Although all of them admit that atrocities have been perpetrated, no one wants to be a scapegoat for the others.
Here the Europeans find their long-awaited chance to intervene directly in the heart of the crisis. This is something that friends are required to do even before the enemies. The ugly American has finally got caught in the consequences of his evil actions. These friends have been expecting this to happen ever since Bush turned a deaf ear to all the advice given to him by his colleagues, the leaders of the "old" world, namely, the formerly colonial Europe, which had a lot of experience in this sphere of activity especially its former conflicts with the Arab countries and the fate that its occupations met.
This does not mean that all of Europe agrees on any particular solution or that it claims that it can work miracles after the Americans, with their arrogance and compounded ignorance, allowed conditions in Iraq to reach this very difficult degree under the pressure of the torture scandal. The United States is no longer merely condemned of conducting an illegal occupation but also of lack of credibility in justifying the war and its false causes. Indeed the American nation has had its humanity undermined and appears humble and degraded in its ethical honor in the eyes of its citizens.
Europe is putting its hand on the wound and is trying to exploit it cleverly as long as Bush, Rumsfeld and their ruling team are trying to evade any real responsibility for their soldiers' hideous actions, which can be classified as crimes against humanity and were carried out in line with instructions from their commanders.
Will US society agree to become a substitute for its rulers in shouldering responsibility for their crimes? This is the difficult question that some intellectuals are debating and submitting to public opinion. No decisive answer is expected before the time of the presidential election. The political class, which is aware of all the secrets of the Iraqi jails and which has been silent about the programmed violations, appears unable to cover up the scandals after their terrible news have been disseminated by the domestic and international media. These media vie with each other to get the news of the terrible stories from the mouths of the executioner soldiers themselves and also from the reports made by the victims.
Some people in the United States are waiting to see the same preliminary events take place that formerly put an end to the Vietnam war when young Americans revolted against the war advocates. The photograph of the little Vietnamese girl was published in the newspapers with her innocent face torn by Napalm shrapnel. The public opposition to the war grew until President Nixon was forced to make the abrupt decision to withdraw the US military fully from Vietnam, north and south together.
Today such a historic decision is on the minds of some officials. Even civil administrator Bremer hinted to this openly when he linked this decision to what a future Iraqi Government would ask, although he ruled out that it would do so. Nevertheless US diplomatic efforts now focus on finding a suitable exit strategy through a UN Security Council resolution and this would force US Secretary of State Colin Powell to reword the draft resolution that would enable the United Nations to supervise the transfer of power to the Iraqis. France and Russia have rejected the first draft and their opposition has been bolstered by the echoes of the torture scandal. Furthermore these echoes have had an impact on the talks between Washington and the foreign ministers of the major industrial countries.
At this particular time the occupation scheme seems to be nearing its end. What is important now is to transform the term transfer of power to the original term which signifies the restoration of full sovereignty to the Iraqis. This would forestall the occupation's next planned ploy of transferring power to a puppet government that would abandon its authority over security matters in advance and that would be subservient to the authority of the gigantic US Embassy with its 3,000 employees under the command of an ambassador famous for his terrorist past that is full of acts of suppression, particularly in Latin America.
The date of 30 June must be the first day of liberation. This sacred date is no longer in the colonial possession of the United States. All the other forces in Iraq, even the United Nations, want to have a decisive say in what will happen after this date to compensate for the wretched period before it.
Halliburton and Bechtel will not be able to protect the occupation that protected them, gave them monopoly over the reconstruction projects, and allowed them to cite astronomical prices for the benefit of the clique that publicly robs the money and its well-known partners in the White House and the Pentagon. This is not a secret any longer. Its details reverberate daily between the two shores of the Atlantic even before any official Arab tongues dare to refer to it.
One should admit, however, that the internationalization of the Iraqi crisis does not mean that Iraq has actually regained its full, unabridged sovereignty. Any custodianship, even if it is international, can never be a substitute for real political independence. Perhaps Iraq, which has demonstrated its strong resistance and solid human immunity to the world's strongest army, will not easily allow any party to exclude it from the power equation whenever global power quotas are restored. This will occur after the United States pays the bill for its military, political, and moral failure by ending its black occupation after the exposure of the most hideous moral scandal ever to hit its army and ruling elite.
There is no solution to the international Iraqi crisis and no end to its implications to all other concerned parties except by letting this wounded country regain its real and full independence. It was the first Arab country to win its independence in the 1922 revolution. It defended this independence despite domestic upheavals and colonial meddling throughout the 20th century.
As to the army of the fictitious empire that no other army can defeat, it was defeated by its own immorality. The end of its first imperial expedition was written in Al-Falujah, Abu Ghurayb, and Karbala.
(Description of Source: London Al-Quds al-Arabi in Arabic -- London-based independent Arab nationalist daily with an anti-US and anti-Saudi editorial line; generally pro-Palestinian, tends to be sympathetic to Bin Ladin)
Translated from the original by WNC.
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