Dissident Voice

March 18, 2003

In less than 40 hours about 230,000 American and 30,000 British troops plus a small assortment of hangers-on, the so-called "US-misled coalition for the killing," are prepared to violate international law, the Geneva Convention and human decency by attacking and invading Iraq on their leaders' orders based on pretexts which time and again have proven to be lies and false allegations. Just like the Nazis' Waffen SS they are prepared to carry out the bloody handiwork for corrupt leaders by taking the lives of innocent men, women and children whom they have never seen. Their heroism will be evident by their will to launch a never before seen mass of bombs and missiles on a virtually undefended country from safe positions far away or aircraft flying at unreachable altitudes. Their capacity and massive destructive power will be evident by the carnage, the smell of burning corpses and the destroyed buildings. The illegality is demonstrated by the refusal, by the veto-carrying nations France, Russia and China and a crushingly massive majority of nations and people in the world, to condone military action at the present stage. Their brainwashed ignorance of the soldiers will be their only defence!

The American and British political leaders have no defence. They have, industriously, knowingly and with purpose manipulated, lied, cheated, bribed and threatened their way to their final goal, a war against Iraq, occupation of the country and its oil and an end to Iraq's short history of trading its oil for the Euro instead of dollar. When the bribes and threats are not enough to secure a mandate, the American and British leaders dismiss the world as irrelevant. History books normally give the winning side's version of the events. In this case few history books will. The aggressors are simply too obvious. When all the main characters, Bush, Blair, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld and Straw, are parroting the same lines at the same time, "Gassed his own people", "Threatens the world", "Time is running out", "Moment of truth", it doesn't take a genius to deduct a nasty Goebbels behind it, if named Karl Rove or John Doe doesn't matter!! The warmongers are too few compared to the world.

The administrators and officials who cooperated in the charade, the intelligence services who allowed themselves to sell out their honour, the media who suppressed truth and justice, all are guilty. All will be seen as the prostitutes of the American and British Hitlers. The dominant political opposition may not be guilty of more than cowardice but it has lost all credibility as future alternative.

At the Nuremberg trials after WWII, judges from the allied countries declared that even common soldiers had a duty to disobey criminal orders. A clear legal precedence exists. Dismissing the feeble tries by US to invoke U.N. resolution 1441, any attack on Iraq without a clear mandate from the Security Council IS illegal and thus criminal. No mandate exists, none can be secured under present circumstances and thus every soldier who takes part in Bush's illegal war is de facto violating international law. The pilots who regularly have bombed in the illegally and by US/UK unilaterally declared no-fly zones are actually already bona fide war criminals whether we like it or not. Apply the U.N. charter and the Geneva Convention! Those pilots should avoid The Hague in the future.

It doesn't matter what the real reasons are for the Bush-junta's feverish drive towards war on Iraq. If securing the continued hegemony of the dollar, controlling rapidly dwindling oil-resources, getting a strategic foothold for further expansionism or opening up new markets, the war is still illegal. The stated, but all the time changing pretexts for it have been taken apart one by one and found wrong, false, unproven and even ridiculous. No weapons of mass destruction are evident, nukes are declared nonexistent, the rockets were getting destroyed! There's no evidence of terrorist-links! No credible threat exists! The accusations of uranium deals with Nigeria were based on falsifications! The intelligence report from UK was a 10-year-old student-essay! And finally: The idea to "liberate" Iraq by a devastating attack is like killing everybody in a Vietnamese village to "save them from the communists"! The international community is not impressed by the US/UK "evidence", though stopped short of calling Bush, Blair and Powell liars, and that is why no mandate was or will be given in spite of Iraq's possession of a few old drones that unmanned might fly all of two kilometers with a payload of a few hand grenades.

When the war starts there will be many of us who feel shame for having allowed or encouraged the U.N. weapons inspectors to dismantle what little Iraq had in weaponry that might have caused US to leave it alone. Most of us made the mistake to trust American fairness. Without safeguarding the country from the aggressive forces stationed outside its borders UN has now effectively helped US to take it over with minimum losses. The world has learnt, thanks to North Korea, that the only way to stay free is to have nukes and keep them! What a beautiful lesson, Bush and Blair. The children of the world will not forget.

Once the war starts, the International Criminal Court in The Hague will no doubt have to be very busy. There will be a lot of American and British soldiers of various rank who need to be indicted together with their political lords and masters. All the newly created terrorists will be very busy too, unfortunately too often confusing normal Americans with the belligerent and stupid ones and striking blindly at anything that carries the hated flag.

But since the US as usual will refuse all international cooperation not ordered by itself, no American will stand trial in The Hague. The people of the world have to resort to boycotting US. From now on and until it is deemed fit to reenter the international community! Without its weapons, please! But by then it probably has become irrelevant as other countries have found a replacement for the oil that made US run amuck.

The moment of truth is indeed here!

Jerre Skog is a Swedish writer, musician and independent observer living in Germany. His writings, politics and satire, can be found on www.skog.de and comments are welcome at: jerre@skog.de