_______________________________________________________________
 |
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/merciful/
 |
 |
 |  Religious arguments for war is part of official U.S.
 |  propaganda.  Therefore it is relevant to discuss such
 |  arguments on a site dealing with The Ideology of American
 |  Empire.
 |
 |
 |    Can a merciful God justify NOT invading Iraq?
 |    By Leif Erlingsson
 |
 |    Saturday November 8, 2003
 |
 |
 |  How can anyone who believes in a merciful God justify
 |  arguing against the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
 |
 |
 |  I received an email saying that the person found it
 |  surprising is that anyone who believes in a merciful God
 |  could justify Saddam Hussein, saying that arguing against
 |  the U.S. invasion was a justification of Saddam Husseins
 |  government as legitimate.  And further arguing that fewer
 |  people are dying on a monthly basis in Iraq under U.S.
 |  occupation than under Hussein, and writing that no children
 |  are having their eyes gouged from their heads in front of
 |  their parents anymore.  The person asked if the Iraqi's
 |  having it better off now didn't count for anything, if my
 |  whole argument was that Bush lied, the U.S. is corrupt and
 |  it doesn't matter if Iraq is better off now or not?  And if
 |  the Iraqi freedom fighters I was mentioning in our
 |  correspondence wasn't the same people who chopped off limbs
 |  of fellow citizens and raped innocent women and children? 
 |  The person who asked all these questions also wanted to see
 |  me argue my position to a family who have lost their sons to
 |  torture under Hussein.
 |
 |
 |  My response is general enough that with the removal of the
 |  persons name, there is no reason why I should not publish it
 |  for all to see.
 |
 |
 |  Dear Name Withheld, I am not aware that I have justified the
 |  actions of Saddam Hussein.  He is a despicable dictator. 
 |  (He, and many others that the U.S. is supporting or has been
 |  supporting.  He is not even the worst dictator that the U.S.
 |  has been very supportive of with weapons and otherwise.)
 |
 |  However, Iraq is a sovereign country.  The illegal
 |  occupation does not change that.  If you justify that
 |  invasion based on the argument that the inhabitants have it
 |  better now -- fewer are killed and tortured by the Americans
 |  than before the U.S. invaded -- then it will follow that any
 |  aggression anywhere in the world will, according to your
 |  argument, be justified if the inhabitants are better off
 |  afterwards.  I can see many things in your own country that
 |  needs fixing.  Maybe the rest of the world ought to form a
 |  coalition of the willing in order to invade the U.S. so we
 |  could fix all these bad things so your inhabitants would
 |  have it better afterwards?  And there is no reason to ask
 |  the U.S. citizens what _they_ want, because you have shown
 |  us that this wasn't necessary in the Iraq case.  (Saddam
 |  even offered to hold democratic elections, but no-one was
 |  willing to take the offer.  [
 |  http://truthout.org/docs_03/110703A.shtml ])
 |
 |  I can understand that your personal loyalties are with the
 |  family you know who have lost their sons to torture under
 |  Hussein.  I would probably feel the same if these people
 |  were my personal friends.  A lot of Iraqis were very happy
 |  to see Saddam go, though most of them would have preferred
 |  the U.S. to leave again once that was accomplished.
 |
 |  But I find it extremely disturbing that members of the same
 |  church that I have a testimony is the true Church of Christ
 |  can freely accept just one side of the story without even
 |  questioning the motives and reasons behind.
 |
 |  You know, if not about 10 - 20 million people in the free
 |  world had protested the U.S. coalition plans in worldwide
 |  peace-demonstrations in February, the Arab people would have
 |  believed that this was definitely a religious and cultural
 |  conflict. That the Muslims are the "bad guys" and that it is
 |  a religious war.  We who protested may have saved the world
 |  from a world war.  They who did not protest brought the
 |  world to the brink of disaster, by their quiet acceptance of
 |  what was happening.
 |
 |  I talk with people from several countries in the region. 
 |  The man who owns the restaurant where I occasionally eat my
 |  lunch is from Pakistan.  I correspond with a social
 |  secretary who comes from Iran originally.  I also correspond
 |  with people who regularly traveled and still travels to
 |  Iraq.  I also study the reports from Human Rights
 |  organizations.
 |
 |  You wrote that you'd like me to argue my case in front of a
 |  family you know who have lost their sons to torture under
 |  Hussein.  I would not.  I respect their feelings more that
 |  that.  And I do not believe that you would like to argue
 |  your case to the Iraqi mother Anwar Jawad who first thought
 |  that the U.S. troops were good news, but now thinks they are
 |  scum.  ( An Iraqi mother, Anwar Jawad, after telling us how
 |  the U.S. army massacred her family:  "Only God knows why
 |  they opened fire on us like that," says Anwar.  "I was happy
 |  when the troops came in April and ousted Saddam Hussein, but
 |  now I think they are scum." [
 |  http://occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=1501 -- Case
 |  study: Iraqi civilian deaths by Martin Asser, BBC News
 |  October 22nd, 2003 ])
 |
 |  And I do not believe that you would like to argue your case
 |  to the Kassims, who saw three of their children
 |  machine-gunned in their car in Nasiriyah by a U.S. tank, and
 |  then after having been taken to a U.S. Army field hospital
 |  with their wounded five-year-old daughter Mawra, on the
 |  third night ``there were some Americans wounded that night,
 |  in the fighting.  . . .  So they told us we had to go
 |  outside.  I heard the order - "put them out" -- and they
 |  carried us like dogs, out into the cold, without shelter, or
 |  a blanket.  It was the days of the sandstorms and freezing
 |  at night.  And I heard Zainab crying: "Papa, Papa, I am
 |  cold, I am cold."  Then she went silent. Completely
 |  silent.''  Kassim breaks off in anguish.  His wife continues
 |  the story of the night.  ``What could we do?  She kept
 |  saying she was cold.  My arms were broken, I could not lift
 |  or hold her.  If they had given us even a blanket, we might
 |  have put it over her.  We had to sit there, and listen to
 |  her die.'' [ Ed Vuillamy, The Observer, July 6, 2003
 |  http://observer.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4706830,00.html
 |  ]
 |
 |  There are scores of similar stories.  You can read some at
 |  Iraq Body Count | Adding Indifference to Injury
 |  http://iraqbodycount.net/editorial_aug0703.htm
 |
 |  And I really recommend that you print out the recent Human
 |  Rights Watch report and read it.  The Kassim case is
 |  included:
 |
 |  Post-war Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by U.S. Forces
 |  http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq1003/iraq1003full.pdf
 |
 |  HTML: http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq1003/
 |
 |  It is horrible as a parent to see ones children having their
 |  eyes gouged from their heads in front of their parents.  It
 |  is also horrible as a parent to see ones children being shot
 |  to shreds or dying from cold because they are not worth a
 |  blanket to cover them from the desert cold after they have
 |  been shot by soliders and their parent arms having been
 |  broken.  I agree that in all likelihood, Saddam has a larger
 |  number on his conscience than does Bush, but the
 |  indifference seems the same, to me.
 |
 |  There are many U.S. soliders that care.  But there are also
 |  many that hate the Iraqis because they are there.  Only,
 |  it's the Iraqis country, not the U.S. soliders.  They should
 |  direct their anger in a different direction....
 |
 |  And it is clear that higher command has only contempt for
 |  U.S. and Iraqi life alike.  The U.S. GI's is as much victims
 |  as are the Iraqi.  (Use of radioactive munitions proves
 |  this.)
 |
 |
 |  You asked if the Iraqi freedom fighters I mentioned in order
 |  to make you see things from a different perspective were the
 |  same people that chopped off limbs of fellow citizens and
 |  raped innocent women and children?  Some might be.  Some
 |  might not be.
 |
 |  But in either case, in their actions as guerilla fighters
 |  they have the law on their side.  Your country and your
 |  coalition partners in crime doesn't.  They are waging a
 |  guerilla war against a foreign invader.  Your country is the
 |  unlawful invader.  Note that I am not defending the crimes
 |  that the Saddam government committed.  But I am defending
 |  the sovereignty of Iraq and the right of the people of Iraq
 |  to decide their destiny.
 |
 |  As for there being fewer people dying on a monthly basis
 |  under U.S. occupation than under Saddam, you simply don't
 |  know that.
 |
 |  The U.S. doesn't count Iraqi dead.  If we ignore deaths from
 |  lack of drinking water and from lack of other essentials,
 |  and from crime that has really increased after the U.S.
 |  invasion, just the civilians killed by the U.S. since "the
 |  hostilities ceased" on May 1, 2003 had by Aug 7, 2003
 |  reached 7798, as far as Iraq Body Count could determine. [
 |  http://iraqbodycount.net/editorial_aug0703.htm ]
 |
 |  But these numbers are collected by volunteers, and it is
 |  quite possible that many innocent victims of U.S. force are
 |  overlooked outside the Bagdad area.
 |
 |  Saddam acted with impunity.  So does U.S. troop.  You can't
 |  defend the one against the other based on the number of
 |  casualties!  It's like saying that murder A is innocent
 |  because he murdered less people than murderer B.
 |
 |
 |  I am reading the Human Rights Watch report and it shows that
 |  the rules of combat in Iraq permits the killing of innocent
 |  civilians that does not pose any threat to the soliders. 
 |  I've only gotten to page 33 (of 72), but already I have read
 |  a great number of cases where the U.S. Judge Advocates
 |  General's (JAG) office have determined that various
 |  instances where innocent civilians were murdered were "in
 |  accordance with the rules of engagement".  It was also "in
 |  accordance with the rules of engagement" to kick civilians,
 |  to humiliate civilians and to deny civilians access to
 |  lifesaving medical care.
 |
 |  If the JAG is right, then The Universal Declaration of Human
 |  Rights says that the U.S. rules of engagement are in
 |  violation of said charter, that the U.S. has signed.  Take a
 |  moment and study it at: 
 |  http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
 |
 |
 |  I do NOT believe this to be so, but:  By your own argument,
 |  terrorists have all the right in the world to "correct"
 |  errors in your own society.  Because you say that the U.S.
 |  is justified by the crimes formerly committed by the Iraqi
 |  government.  [ http://propaganda.lege.net/tactics/ ]
 |
 |  Dear Name Withheld, don't open that Pandoras Box!  If we
 |  start to enumerate the crimes committed by your own or by
 |  any government in the world -- including my own -- we will
 |  never be finished. The CIA has committed lots of terrorist
 |  acts.  So has U.S. Special Forces.  I have lot's of
 |  references.  The U.S. trains terrorists.  It's no big
 |  secret.  [ http://ideology.lege.net/ ]
 |
 |  It is also no big secret that the U.S. has aided and
 |  supported genocide.  And torture.  And numerous other crimes
 |  against humanity.  [ E.g.
 |  http://zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-2-06.html -- killing over 2
 |  000 000 South Vietnamese in defense of a puppet regime, and
 |  in total 3 000 000 people in Viet Nam.  There are numerous
 |  other examples.  Start here, at my anti-propaganda site: 
 |  http://propaganda.lege.net/resources/ .  Just think "The
 |  Indian Wars", for starters...  That's a genocide for you.]
 |
 |
 |  There is a huge discrepancy between how you Americans feel
 |  about your own motives and the way you act.  Or with these
 |  words:
 |
 |  ``[ http://ideology.lege.net/american_empire/#noted ] 
 |  Leaders like Wilson viewed America as abjuring selfish
 |  motives and as being, therefore, above all other nations. 
 |  Babbitt commented:
 |
 |  We are willing to admit that all other nations are
 |  self-seeking, but as for ourselves, we hold that we act only
 |  on the most disinterested motives.  We have not as yet set
 |  up, like revolutionary France, as the Christ of Nations, but
 |  during the late war we liked to look on ourselves as at
 |  least the Sir Galahad of Nations. If the American thus
 |  regards himself as an idealist at the same time that the
 |  foreigner looks on him as a dollar-chaser, the explanation
 |  may be due partly to the fact that the American judges
 |  himself by the way he feels, whereas the foreigner judges
 |  him by what he does.'' [ Claes G. Ryn,
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/hilights/ or
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/american_empire/#noted ]
 |
 |
 |  It's apparent that many Americans feel that America is above
 |  moral suspicion. [ http://ideology.lege.net/hilights/ or
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/american_empire/#above ]
 |
 |  But the simple fact is that the rest of the world does not
 |  see it that way, and by putting the lid on on open and free
 |  discussion about the motives, one only fuels the suspicion
 |  that what we really have is a war between civilizations and
 |  for oil.
 |
 |
 |  It's often said that Americans have no memory.  But most of
 |  the rest of the world has a pretty long memory, and you
 |  can't simply ignore the crimes of your own country of the
 |  (not always so distant) past when judging other countries. 
 |  Or your country's support of other murderous dictators. 
 |  Your country's motives are certainly not above suspicion,
 |  and _must_ be discussed.
 |
 |  There must be an open and free discussion.  If it is a
 |  democracy.  If.
 |
 |  [ See "Reporters Without Borders ..." etc at this link: 
 |  http://propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/  where
 |  it is shown that U.S. press freedom is far down on the list,
 |  compared to the rest of the world. ]
 |
 |
 |  Leif Erlingsson
 |
 |  _ _ _
 |
 |  PS:  Important links in this email and otherwise:
 |
 |  http://occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=1501
 |  http://observer.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4706830,00.html
 |  http://iraqbodycount.net/editorial_aug0703.htm
 |  PDF:   http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq1003/iraq1003full.pdf
 |  HTML:  http://hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq1003/
 |  http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
 |
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/hilights/
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/hilights/#noted
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/hilights/#above
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/american_empire/#noted
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/american_empire/#above
 |
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/holy_warrior/
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/a_soldier_speaks/
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/backyard_terrorism/
 |  School of the Americas Watch:  http://soaw.org/new/
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/backyard_terrorism/cia_support_of_death_squads.txt
 |  http://propaganda.lege.net/resources/
 |  http://propaganda.lege.net/misperceptions/examples/
 |
 |  http://ldsvswar.lege.net/
 |  http://ldsvswar.lege.net/prove_it/
 |
 |  From a Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future
 |  Research (TFF) newsletter:
 |
 |  Michel Chossudovsky, TFF Associate, October 28, 2003
 |  Regime rotation in America. Wesley Clark, Osama bin Laden
 |  and the 2004 Presidential Elections
 |  Thoroughly documented analysis of the links between the
 |  Clinton administration, Al-Queda, the Kosovo-Albanian
 |  Liberation Army (KLA), the UN mission there, mercenary
 |  companies and intelligence services - of which the Bush
 |  regime's war agenda is but a continuation. How fast have
 |  media and most experts forgotten? US administrations promote
 |  terrorism, then and now.  [
 |  http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO310B.html ]
 |
 |  Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF
 |  [ http://www.transnational.org/sitemap.html ]
 |
 |   _ _ _
 |
 |
 |  A version of the present article suitable for email can be
 |  downloaded here: 
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/merciful/merciful.txt
 |
 |
 |  Additional reading:
 |
 |  Resources
 |  http://ideology.lege.net/resources/
 |
 |  If we are to throw Human Law overboard
 |  http://ldsvswar.lege.net/humanlaw/
 |
 |  Human Law vs. War "for Dummies"
 |  http://ldsvswar.lege.net/humanlaw/fordummies/
 |
 |
 |  Copyleft © 2003 Leif Erlingsson or author.
 |
 |  Updated  9 November 2003
 |______________________________________________________________