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I have a deeply held belief that the duty of a commentator is, to the best of one's ability, to record, to shine light in often dark places, to act as a voice for those whose own voice, fears, plights might not be heard or known.
To write about the emotions one sometimes feels when doing it, is an anathema and anyway a redundancy.
The purpose is to attempt to draw attention to wrongs, not to whine about the effects they can have - and any way, a private life should be just that. If politicians wish to strip themselves of their dignity and allude to everything from their sex life, to using private grief to gain sympathy votes, those with a shred of self-respect do not wish to emulate them.
Here, I am breaking my taboo, for
a reason.
Indeed, some child's father or mother,
able to shoot the children, toddlers, babies of others, in cold blood, drive
over them in tanks, leaving the pathetic remains to be eaten by stray dogs.
This is not a view I hold.
If family members who have survived, emergency workers (when not incinerated by U.S., troops themselves) medical staff, (if not shot, imprisoned, tortured, or tied up with a bag over their head) can view, identify, bury with love and respect - or in the case of medical staff, carefully photograph, and note time, location of finding, then number, wrap and retain for a period, before burial, hoping a relative will claim the charred, mutilated, or worse, remains.
It is a duty for those with any "voice", from countries responsible
for this first documentable U.S., U.K., genocide of the 21st century, to
draw attention to it, in the memory of and in tribute to, the voiceless,
nameless, uncounted victims, in the hope that eventually, legal recourse
might result.
And between the U.S., occupiers (now, surreally, re-branded "advisors" - same car, new paint) and what Hussein al-Alak of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign has called:
And, as since 1991, this is also a war against the unborn, new born and under fives.
After the bodies and the rubble, the gore, blood and limbs, there are the deformities. The fledgling life, born without eyes, brain, with one cyclops eye, with no head, with two heads, with no limbs, or fingers - or too many.
A biblical land turned to genetic and ecological Armageddon, for current and future generations, till the end of time.
Result: "Let genocide commence."
His response was allegedly :
But then, he had been
Kissinger Associates' man.
In July 2004, as U.S., troops were training for the Fallujah massacre, the coming November, the U.S., House of Representatives passed a unanimous resolution calling the tragedy of Darfur: "Genocide."
They asked the
administration to consider "Multilateral or even Unilateral" action, to end
this genocide. Reluctance to take proactive steps to prevent further loss of
human life was "criminal", they opined.
The Israeli Defense Force, trained U.S., troops for the two week November 2004, Fallujah pogrom. (2)
As two world wars, as Korea, Vietnam, the face of liberation never changes.
This in addition to:
The plight of Fallujah:
The photographs are testimony to the chilling description.
The unsung heroes are those who determined to record
them, so some time, some where, the crimes would be known and legal
retribution sought. These terrible, pathetic images, are the silent
testimony to the first known Western genocide of the 21st century. Sadly, it
is a near certainty that Iraq and Afghanistan will, in time, produce proof
of more.
One saw and shared to some extent, the unimaginable, being perpetrated in one's name, then one left. Across the border, in Jordan, the lights were on, the towns bustled, clean water came out of the taps, and the illegal American and British bombs were not dropping.
Yet so near, the children were dying, the people were dying, in
the name of "We the people ..."
Wondering what was happening and what to do about it, I did, in nightmare-land, what I often do when working something out (though not usually at 3 a.m.) and got the tools together and went out in to my garden.
As ever, to trim and nurture plants, and bushes, mostly grown from tiny, often quarter inch cuttings, cosseted indoors, until clement weather, then planted outside, in sheltered warmth, and further fed and tended until suddenly seemingly overnight, a vibrant, colored addition, standing on its own roots, is ready to face all seasons.
But my garden, with its protective hedges, (white flowers in summer, orange
berries in winter and thorns to deter the trespasser...) had gone. There
were just bulldozer tracks, deep, ruining, not a leaf, stem or bloom left -
just a wasteland.
What if anyone found me in this state? I turned
to the front door to try and figure a plan - but the building had gone. I
was alone, bloody, near undressed and all had vanished, turning back to
other familiar buildings, suddenly there was nothing. Just ruin, rubble and
wasteland, as far as the eye could see. My life, my books, my comfort zone,
were no more. Just the bloodied clothes I stood in remained.
To a hot
bath, a washing machine and a warm airing cupboard full of clean bed linen -
my garden still intact. The people of Iraq, with their destroyed homes and
gardens, fruit groves, date palm groves, or their vibrant plantings on
balconies or flat roofs; the Palestinians, suffering the same plight for
sixty two interminable years, and the people of Afghanistan in their
flattened compounds, destroyed with their scented groves and gardens of
blossoms and apricots, live a nightmare from which they never awake.
One picture had an abundance of flowers, carefully colored, in numerous hues, on the side were American soldiers - shooting at the flowers.
It was a deeply saddening moment, that she represented so many children, who saw American as representing only wrath, fear and deprivation.
She knew nothing of those Americans who had worked tirelessly
to reverse the situation. If she has survived, she will be a young adult.
She is unlikely to have changed her views.
In furtherance of this, he has now written to Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond and Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, calling for Scotland to adopt the recently agreed international definition of the crime of aggression into its legislature.
His letter reads:
He commented that, further, since the The International Criminal Court (ICC) has now agreed on a definition of the crime of aggression:
Dr Wilson, is adamant:
Dr Wilson plans to use Fallujah as an
example of this aggression, but also points out there there are surely
numerous others, undocumented, as yet.
As Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, now seem to be in would be imperial sights, a precedent which will flag a up a warning sign to leaders of ill intent, is surely needed.
Dr Gideon Polya, who's work on excess deaths from invasions since 1950, states, in Afghanistan:
The U.S., and U.K., whose leaders have trumpeted the dangers of the latest "new Hitler" in the countries they planned to decimate, have outdone the Nazis.
Enough.
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