Blood, the transporter of our genetic code, the carrier of our life force, the means by which we seek nourishment on all levels – and not just physically – is precious to all. The possibility of a trade off is not conceivable when it comes to this most precious God-given gift of life. It is precious to a people whose strength comes from their relationship with God, a relationship that is difficult for an invading force to understand.  

History Repeats Itself

Envy to the point of greed is an ugly characteristic in man. To want something somebody is or has, and then to disguise one’s actions in order to destroy or obtain it has become too acceptable. From time to time, we come across it in our daily lives, but to subdue a people because of want of a quality or commodity has also become far too commonplace. Listening to President Bush after the invasion talking to his voters about the forthcoming prosperity scars the beginning of the 21^st century with the exchange of blood for oil.

The history of the colonization of the region is full of spilt blood. Ancient Mesopotamia, the world’s first urban civilization, with the world’s first city, Samaria, was south of modern Iraq. This was as a result of the annual floods that led to establishing the world’s first agricultural system, allowing for a settled life. Alas, in 1258, the Mongols completely destroyed the Iraqi irrigation system and killed thousands of Iraqis. Those deaths were heavily mourned, but it was not until the 20^th century that agricultural land began to recover from the Mongol onslaught. 

European interest in the region began in the 19^th century. British and French archaeologists turned the Western perception of Iraq’s history upside down when they found the remains of a civilization that had discovered the wheel 5,500 years ago, and had established the key mathematical concept of “0,” the division of the circle into 360 degrees, multiplication tables, square roots, cubes, logarithms, the value of “pi” etc. They discovered theological concepts older than Judaism and Christianity. Having excavated the ancient cities of Nineveh and Nimrod, those British and French archaeologists found huge libraries of clay tablets and sculptures that can be seen today at the British Museum and the Louvre.

Having this in mind, one should consider the method of this 21^st-century re-colonization, whereby the heritage of a people continues to be plundered. The Museum at Mosul was once packed with 7000-year old artifacts, and, as in the mind of Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site, the widespread plundering of Mosul, Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk was deliberately encouraged by the Pentagon and the Bush Administration. The National Museum alone was stripped of over 50,000 artifacts, and the Museum catalog was destroyed. This catalog would have identified the artifacts stolen. In defense of the people, obliterate their past so that they can be conquered!¹

McGuire Gibson, President of the American Association for Research in Baghdad, stated: “It looks as if part of the theft was a very, very deliberate planned action… [The thieves] were able to obtain keys from somewhere for the vaults and were able to take out the very important, the very best material.” The US Business Week magazine stated: “They have known just what they were looking for because dealers ordered the most important pieces well in advance.” Ann Talbot, also of the World Socialist Web Site, commented on the systematic destruction of the Ministry of Irrigation: “We might say that by this act the U.S. administration seeks to drive Iraq back to the dark ages, except that Iraq has never known a dark age in the sense that Europe had. By attacking the irrigation system, the US Administration is causing more damage in a few weeks than any other previous invader.”²

Britain, without the aid of the US, invaded more than once. Britain explored and spied on Iraq and navigated its rivers through trading, and became anxious about Iraqi oilfields. After WWI, the British expelled the Turks, ending the Ottoman Empire in that region, and, as in the scramble for Africa, divided up a region that was to form the modern-day Iraq. The West has never been able to leave the region alone since then. The region’s oilfields supplied the Royal Navy. Favoring Baghdad for colonization, like now, they felt their invasion would be met with little resistance. An Anglo-Indian army landed in Basra in 1914. Now, it is the British who have claimed Basra, where the British once stood.

Britain and France aimed at absorbing the region into their empires with a mandate from the League of Nations – this was met with local resentment and was perceived as a veiled colonization. To quell the backlash, General Sir Aylman Haldae called for supplies of poisonous gas along with indiscriminate air-power to cut the people off from what is now Kuwait. Britain enforced a monarchical rule under the 1930-Treaty, retaining Iraq as a part of the British Empire. British military bases were maintained along with an agreement to train the Iraqi army. During WWII, the British rushed to protect oilfields in the North, killing 3,000 Iraqi soldiers.

The rich cultural heritage of the people has held them together for so long despite the temporal man-made laws of the West that has continually sought to undermine the region. The memories of the people are long and the lives of those lost live on in those memories.

This type of persistent domination can either strengthen one’s sense of self and one’s relationship with one’s Creator, or make one feel compelled to run from one’s self and one’s Creator. The Free Officers were determined to right all wrongs and rid Palestine of the Zionists. However, Saddam Hussein sought to dominate and rose above the other members of the Free Officers, seizing power in 1979. As the first Imam of the Shi’as and fourth caliph of the Muslim world Ali ibn Abi Talib commented: “It is amazing that a ruler can be good… for when he does wrong, he finds someone to back him up and praise him!”

Playing one against the other, Britain, Germany, France and the US (the heart of the Security Council) armed Saddam against Iran to quell Islam and protect their interests. The US continued to supply Saddam with weapons that would later be used against Kuwait. More blood was to be spilled by both Saddam and the US in the climax to the Gulf War.

Dr. Ameed Hamid, Director of the Iraqi Red Crescent, described the February 1991 incineration of 500 Iraqis in the Amiriya bomb shelter in northwest Baghdad: “I went to the shelter the next day after the bombing. There was flesh all over the place, and you could hear children screaming in the rubble, but you couldn’t get to them. I remember one woman with tears coming down her face, but making no sound, looking for her children. She found seven of them, but hadn’t found her two-year old. There were only charred bodies that she couldn’t recognize. She was saying ‘Maybe it’s him, maybe it isn’t’. I’ll never forget it. When I’m thinking or relaxing, it plays over and over in my mind… I have a son 5 years old. During the air raid he was shaking, shivering, saying ‘Bush is coming, Bush is coming.’ After the ceasefire American airplanes were flying over Baghdad, crossing the sound barrier, making this explosive sound, frightening the children, and writing with blue smoke, ‘USA.’ What was the purpose except frightening Iraqi children?”

In the course of the 1991 Gulf War, American bulldozers buried thousands of teenage soldiers; some of them were still alive. The entire country’s infrastructure was destroyed. A report by the Medical Educational Trust declared that 200,000 Iraqi men, women and children were murdered as a direct consequence of the US-led war on Iraq in 1991. Land was polluted with depleted uranium and water was contaminated with US frigates.

Did the allies seriously expect the people of Basra to be thankful when they handed out bottles of water, when it was the allied forces who caused them to turn to the polluted rivers, as they had been without potable water for ten days?³

Undisclosed Crimes

In this war, much remains undisclosed. John Pilger wrote in The Independent, “As Ali was flown to Kuwait, the Americans were preventing Save the Children from sending a plane with medical supplies into northern Iraq, where 40,000 are desperate.”⁴ Ali – Ali Ismail Abbas, a boy who lost his parents and his arms in the war and was flown to a hospital in Kuwait – got media attention, but the truckloads of dismembered bodies witnessed by Red Crescent members did not. The few allied soldiers that were injured got media attention, but the charred and twisted bodies in the streets did not. What couldn’t be televised were the emotional scars of a people who dared to exist. Who knows, maybe their bones will dematerialize enough to contribute towards the UK/US’s continuous demand for oil.

Also, Deborah Orr commented in The Independent: “Walking into the newsagent in the morning is like walking into an obscenely competitive paper collage rendition of a charnel house. The papers energetically battling for hearts and minds at home scream their headlines about the deaths of Iraqi civilians... This failure to see too much propaganda value in the deaths of Iraqi combatants, apparently, is very much to the credit of the West. Bombing markets, depriving large populations of clean water, flattening homes, destroying infrastructure, maiming and killing the vulnerable, these are all, depending on which side you're on, unfortunate consequences of a war of liberation, or up for grabs in the effort to place the desired spin on unspeakable events.”⁵

No matter what side you are on – and regardless of Deborah Orr’s argument –when it comes to war, when it comes to unveiling the lie that this was purely a psychological war, those lives should be counted, and what happened to those lives should be documented, because it is only when we are faced with the horrors we allowed to be perpetrated that we come face-to-face with what we have supported or have become complacent about. Everything from the warnings, the legalistic games, the preparation for war and the alleged purpose of the war were televised; why was not the real reason why?

1- Martin, Patrick, “How and Why the US Encouraged Looting in Iraq,” World Socialist Web Site April 15^th , 2003.

2- Talbot, Ann, “US Governments Implicated in Planned Theft of Iraqi Artistic Measures,” World Socialist Web Site April 19^th, 2003.

3- Fox, David, “Thousands Flee Basra in Search of Food and Water,” The Independent March 28^th, 2003.

4- Pilger, John, “The Unthinkable is Becoming Normal,” The Independent April 21^st, 2003.

5- Orr, Deborah, “Death and the media: The Twisted Ethics Over Displaying Victims of War,” The Independent March 28^th, 2003.