Did we need 391,823 documents on the U.S. war in Iraq to know that the Bush administration has committed the worst war crimes in modern history since 1945? There was enough evidence to prosecute the Bush administration and its senior members for war crimes even before the Wikileaks documents were published (it is said that there are 15 thousand additional documents being prepped for publication), but now came these documents to settle the score: The Bush administration has planned for the invasion of Iraq before the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, and these attacks then gave the U.S. the excuse for the war. The administration then falsified premises for an invasion, with the result that for the three thousand Americans killed in New York, around 1.3 million Muslims were killed, and the killing is still ongoing. While terrorists who claim to be Muslim are killing other Muslims, I hold the Bush administration responsible for this, because it spawned them thanks to its anti-Arab anti-Muslim policies, and then gave them momentum to thrive by continuing to pursue such policies. The additional information that these recently released documents imparted on my knowledge was that the crimes were committed deliberately. The occupation soldiers killed thousands of civilians, women and children deliberately and publicly, while the command lied and did not publish the names of all the victims. The British group “The Iraq Body Count Project” found that 160 thousand Iraqis were killed according to the occupation figures, but then discovered that 15 thousand victims had not been named. This number may appear small in comparison with the current tally of the casualties (1.3 million Arabs and Muslims). Nonetheless, it is still five times the number of those who perished in the terrorist attacks of 11/9/2001, and I ask the reader: what would have happened if the number belonged to Americans or Jews who were killed in a terrorist attack? The American right, which killed or was complicit in facilitating the killing, did not go into hiding in the aftermath of the Wikileaks documents. Nor did the war criminals rush to change their names and assume different identities. Instead, it is Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who became a wanted man. He now has to change his place of residence and his mobile phone number every day, and cannot find one single country that claims to be democratic or humane in the West to protect him from the gang of evil that is in his pursuit. On the other hand, Fox news, which provides 24 hour propaganda against anyone who dares criticize Bush's wars, and the American Enterprise Institute, which led the campaign to justify the war and continues to support it even today, have both proposed to launch a war on Wikileaks. This is while the extremist publication “The Washington Times” found the documents to condemn Iran, which supported the gunmen against the occupation. But what is wrong about that? Bush's declared policy was regime change in Iran and Syria after Iraq, and Iran responded by defending itself when it was faced with this clearly declared policy. However, those who are complicit in the war on Iraq are condemning the Iranian regime for defending itself on its own turf, instead of having the decency to commit suicide to satisfy the wishes of the enemies of Arabs and Muslims. Read with me the introduction of an article entitled “The Page That Refuses to Turn”, published in The New Republic, a Likudnik publication: “Julian Assange and his obnoxious Wiki-leakers just don't get it: As far as Americans are concerned, the Iraq war is over, done, finished. We've turned the page, changed the (TV) channel…" Would this vile publication, which had endorsed the war, have said this if those killed were Jews? If we follow the same logic of the Likudnik Americans who endorsed the war on Iraq for the sake of Israel and oil interests, the page should also be turned on the Holocaust. The Holocaust is 60 years old, not just five years old like the crime that took place in Iraq. And yet, they continue to exploit the Holocaust which was committed in the first half of last century, and do not want Arabs and Muslims to investigate into a holocaust that was committed only recently. This logic then also means that the Likudniks have inherited the racism of the Nazis in viewing everyone else as inferiors whose blood is cheap. There is a hitherto unseen arrogance when it comes to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, even when it is known that the first victim of war is the truth. While it is expected that the American right will wage a full scale attack on Wikileaks and on Assange personally, I cannot understand why the U.S. Department of Defense, or the Department of Justice, in the Obama administration, wants to investigate the leaks from the standpoint that they subject U.S. security interests to danger and threaten those who collaborate with the occupation. But those who collaborate with the occupation deserve to be tried before others, lest we forget the Iraqis who returned to their country on the back of an American tank. Equally important here is that the 70 thousand documents published by Wikileaks on the war in Afghanistan last July, did not lead to the death of even one collaborator with the occupation. What is being suggested, then, is yet another attempt to suppress damning evidence and the bid to prosecute the war criminals. [email protected]
