The Iraqi Genocide

By Paul Craig Roberts

10/16/07 "ICH" -- - -Why has not the Turkish parliament given tit for tat and passed a resolution condemning the Iraqi Genocide?

As a result of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, more than one million Iraqis have died, and several millions are displaced persons. The Iraqi death toll and the millions of uprooted Iraqis match the Armenian deaths and deportations. If one is a genocide, so is the other.

It is true that most of the Iraqi deaths have resulted from Iraqis killing one another. But it was Bush’s destruction of the secular Iraqi state that unleashed the sectarian strife.

Moreover, American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents. The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as “informants” and by Sunnis setting up Shi’ites and Shi’ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes.

Not to be outdone, Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?

One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened
90 years ago.

People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”

I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.”

Americans are so full of themselves that they are blind to their extraordinary hypocrisy.

The US government has broken every agreement with Russia by withdrawing from the anti-ballistic missile treaty, pushing NATO to Russia’s borders, conniving to place missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, and buying governments in former Soviet republics and installing US military bases therein.

When Russian President Putin finally has enough and protests, the US Secretary of State blames Putin for being difficult and restarting the cold war.

Few Americans realize it, but they take the cake.

International polls show that the rest of the world regard the US and Israel as the greatest dangers to world peace. Americans claim that they are fighting wars against terrorism, but it is US and Israeli terrorism that worries everyone else. The rest of the world knows that the wars are about US and Israeli hegemony and that the US and Israel are prepared to engage in whatever acts of terror are necessary to achieve hegemony.

That is the bare fact.

When the US dollar loses its reserve currency status, the US empire will come to an abrupt end. Sooner or later the rest of the world will realize this and, in an act of self-protection, dethrone the dollar.

Paul Craig Roberts has a Ph.D. in economics. He has held a number of academic appointments and contributed to numerous scholar journals. He is author or co-author of eight books and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy.
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Genocide, from the Greek genos (family, tribe, race) and the Latin –cide (massacre), was originally coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish legal scholar, in 1943. There exists, however, a large debate on how to properly define the word “genocide” and moreover, what events constitute genocide or are otherwise crimes against humanity or war crimes.

In 1948, the United Nation’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:”

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Convention was ratified in 1951, becoming a part of the international body of law. However, the USSR did not join until 1954, China until 1983, and the US until 1988. 133 countries have now ratified the Convention and are subject to its responsibilities. The countries that have signed the Convention are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, in peace and wartime.

There are 8 stages of genocide, as identified by Genocide Watch. They are: Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Identification, Extermination, and Denial.

Classification includes the creation of the “other”, dividing society into defined groups. Symbolization is when a group is forced to wear or adopt a certain symbol, such as the yellow stars Jews were made to wear in Germany . Dehumanization is when the hatred against one group becomes so strong that murder, rape, and destruction does not become as deplorable. Organization, phase 4, is when special militias or army units are trained, recruited, and armed to stage the genocide; genocide is not a series of random acts, but rather is well-orchestrated and highly sophisticated. Polarization includes the usage of hate propaganda, intending to greater separate and fuel hatred between or among groups. Identification leads the victims to be identified and separated according to their race, ethnicity, or tribe. Extermination is when the physical violence and murders takes place. Denial, after the extermination, is when the perpetrators refuse to take responsibility for their actions.

There have been numerous noted genocides in the 20th and 21st century. The Armenian genocide of 1915 is regarded as the first of the 20th century, followed by the Holocaust of WWII, and followed by the Cambodian, Bosnian, and Rwandan genocides. The most recent genocide, as identified as such by the US , is that occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan , having begun in early 2003 and continuing through to today.

Genocide and Iraq - it doesn't quite fit, yet.