Part 20: Colin Powell, the emissary of colonialist slavery
By B.J. Sabri
Online
Journal Contributing Writer
Oct 30, 2004, 20:09
''Samarra is a beaming
success story over here. We were getting ready for a takedown there right after
Najaf. We told the locals, �Hey, see what happened in Najaf? Is that what
you want? Cause we're coming. It took the locals about two days to get the bad
guys out.''�Lt. Col Jim Rose,
a Tennessee Marine, serving in Iraq. [Emphasis added]
[Note: After Baghdad, Samarra was the second capital of the Arab Abbasid
Empire. It is over 1,200 years old. Contrary to what Rose claimed, Samarra was
not a beaming success story, but a premeditated barbarian crime. In fact, U.S.
warplanes and ground forces, in their attempt to quell the anti-occupation
uprising, destroyed a great part of the ancient city, killed over 400 civilians
(mostly women and children), and wounded over 2,000.
Colin Powell is a master theorist on the future of Iraq, except that his
theories are incoherent and lack corroboration. As U.S. secretary of state,
Powell feels the pressure of having to clarify issues he is not adept at
debating. Despite the voids in his arguments, he is still an invaluable
asset�he describes U.S. mechanisms for converting Iraq into an American
colonial protectorate.
It is important to note that, as the U.S. is devouring Iraqi financial
and oil assets by the chunks, and employing its military resources to change
its geopolitical and economic realities. Powell seems attentive not to theorize
on the prospect that the most powerful nation in history is inexorably
heading toward a major defeat. (According to reliable Iraqi sources from inside
Iraq, the resistance is inflicting heavy fatalities and casualties on the
occupiers on a daily basis. Because of self-imposed censorship and coordinated
blackout, neither the U.S. press nor international news agencies report on the
real plight of the occupation force.)
Politically, while true sovereignty means ending the military
occupation, its vestiges, and its decrees, Powell considers it only a matter of
tactical shifting from one form of occupation to another. His imperialist
convictions make him view sovereignty not as a structural change, but as a
nominal transformation of a denominator.
Long before the U.S. enacted a transfer of false power to Iraqis with
ties to the CIA on June 28, 2004, Powell discussed the conditions for restoring
sovereignty by advancing a convoluted paradigm, as follows:
Powell�s Theory on Iraq
Sovereignty
Powell�s conditions for restoring �sovereignty� resemble those Israel
places on the Palestinians for withdrawal from what remains of historic
Palestine. While Powell puts the onus on the Iraqis for regaining sovereignty,
Israel puts the burden on the occupied Palestinians for obtaining meager
Israeli concessions.
The parallel between the American occupation of Iraq and the Israeli
occupation of Palestine is striking. Both occupations are illegal; both share
similarity in military tactics; and both use indiscriminate killing, Nazi
collective punishment, and generalized destruction of property as a means to
end resistance. The similarity also extends to the management of occupation.
For example, as Israel demands that the Palestinian Authority eliminate
all those Palestinians who attack the Israeli occupying forces and colonists,
Powell charges the American-appointed �Iraqi Authority� with the task to
suppress the anti-occupation insurgency. The peculiar parallel between both
types of occupation is not by chance�Zionists in Israel and the U.S. conceived
them.
To prolong the occupation, so conquest can set in, Powell imposed on the
Iraqis a string of unfeasible conditions that no one could satisfy, not even
under normal, peaceful circumstances:
Powell:
�This is our single goal, our only goal, to allow the Iraqi people to
regain sovereignty, but sovereignty based on democracy, sovereignty based on
freedom, sovereignty based on peaceful co-existence with one�s neighbors.
This has been the president�s [sic] goal from the very beginning, and this new
resolution will move us further along that goal.� [Emphasis added]
With slogans such as, �our single goal� and �our only goal,� Powell made
Joseph Goebbles (German propaganda minister under Nazism) look like an amateur
by comparison. Not only did he lie about the objectives of his single goal, but
also concocted a supposedly pragmatic paradigm comprising three U.S. conditions
for restoring sovereignty. Aside from the fact that Powell did not provide any
clues about the future status of the American military occupation once his
conditions were satisfied, he did not elaborate on the hypothetical
consequences, should the Iraqis fail to meet them. Thus, Powell tactically
separated the issue of sovereignty from the occupation regime.
The important aspect of Powell�s paradigm of sovereignty is that each of
its three conditions is incurably afflicted with flawed logical construction. Even
more important, Powell is the wrong entity at delivering such conditions�a
willful occupier, necessarily, has an agenda that differs from the principles
he is propagandistically advocating.
Ideally, only two entities could come up with logical paradigms opposing
Powell�s own. The first is an already sovereign national leader in search of
refining national identity. This leader could announce something like this: �We
aspire to preserve our sovereignty, strengthen our democracy, expand our
freedom, and continue to enjoy peaceful co-existence with our neighbors.� The
second is an occupied nation in search of independence. A leader of this nation
could say, �We have to struggle to achieve complete sovereignty from foreign
military occupation, total freedom from its dominations, a democratic rule that
guaranties the rights of citizens, and live by the principle of peaceful
co-existence in the world and among our neighbors.�
Meanwhile, as Powell is placing his colonialist conditions on Iraq, the
building of military bases, the Nazi-style massacres of civilians and
destruction of Iraqi historical cities continue unabated under the fascist pretext
of fighting �terrorism.� Critically, while hegemonic agendas of world Zionism
and predatory U.S. imperialism motivated the occupation of Iraq, from a legal
standpoint though, said occupation has no validity from any other viewpoint. Logically then, the legal
invalidity of the occupation of Iraq categorically voids any U.S. pretense
to neither deny nor confer sovereignty to it.
Nonetheless, an unaccountable U.S. can certainly invade at will, and
impose a military occupation on any non-nuclear country�nuclear states with the
exception of Pakistan can retaliate. Iraq is the case in point. However, when a
major power occupies a small state, and imposes coercive structural and
cultural changes on the occupied society, it is unavoidably implementing slavery
through violence. How is this so? In the Iraqi example, as the U.S. is imposing
its imperialist order, such imposition could be successful only through the
liberal use of generalized violence on all sectors of Iraqi society refusing
the occupation regime.
When an occupying power applies violence to make the occupied people
accept its order, it actually implements the first requirement to establish a
slavery system. Conclusively, imperialist violence paves the way for the total
subjugation of entire societies to the diktat, military punishment, ideological
motivations, and economic objectives of the imposers regardless of all opposing
dynamics of history.
Based on the motivation and bloody occupation of Iraq, it is beyond
speculation that the U.S. is imposing on Iraq a new type of colonialist
slavery�Hyper-Imperialist Slavery [HIS]. (I shall discuss
this concept in the upcoming parts of this series.) Powell is a principle
missionary of HIS�he took an effective role in the 13-year long mass
destruction of the Iraqi people without a second thought, and proceeded to
enslave the remaining.
Powell is impervious to the timeless lessons of history. One such lesson
is that the freedom of people is an inborn quality of life that cannot be
negotiated, traded, or abdicated. When imperialism or colonialism violates or
severs the natural right for freedom, the only means to re-establish it is
unyielding armed struggle. Within this logic, the expanding anti-occupation
resistance proved to Powell that the 21st century is not yet �another American
century� as U.S. imperialists like to call their new expansionist experience,
but a universal century where hyper-imperialism, as another aberration of
history, would end.
Powell should know that freedom, sovereignty, and independence from
external subjugation are a birthright of the rightful owners of a land.
Criminal minded impostors posing as leaders of the world, demigods, and
liberators, have no moral or any other authority in shaping the life of any
society through criminal violence and colonialist motivation. Powell should
also know that present day Iraq as well as all developing world, is not 16th�19th
century America where African and Indian slaves were murdered for not
conforming to the rules of slave owners.
Condition Number 1: Sovereignty Based on Democracy
Because Powell just throws the word
�democracy� at us, without detailing its concept, origin, and historical
processes, we offer him the following concise point-by-point primer on seeding
democracy in Iraq:
- The U.S. did
not go to Iraq to institute democracy.
- Based on the
evolution of world societies, there is no relation between the right to
sovereignty and any form of government. A form of government is a matter
of domestic affairs of a state.
- Democracy is
an evolutionary process and the sum of cumulative societal structural
changes. Consequently, democracy is neither a cosmetic surgery to
embellish an existent society, nor a violent Caesarian operation to
deliver a new one.
- No world society
asked the U.S. to lead or educate on the notion of democracy, nor was the
U.S. an inventor of the notion.
- Democracy is
not equivalent nor does it coincide with a particular �democracy model� as
imposed by imperialism.
- Democracy is
not equivalent nor does it coincide with cancer by depleted uranium, daily
mass killing of Iraqis, destruction of cities, prison pornography,
suffocation of prisoners to pass time, and shooting at laughing children.
- Democracy is
not equivalent nor does it coincide with the pillage of Iraq�s
archeological, cultural, and historical heritage; and robbery of its oil
and financial assets to finance the occupation.
- Must the U.S.
kill half of the Iraqis, so the other half can enjoy �democracy,� Rumsfeld
style?
- If the U.S. objective
was to bring �democracy� to Iraq, it could have forced Saddam to adopt
democratic reforms without war. If the U.S. can force a pusillanimous and
criminal U.N. to prostitute itself and issue war resolutions, it could
have certainly issued a resolution that Saddam makes internationally
supervised elections.
- Democracy
cannot coexist, subsist, or interact with any form of occupation.
- Based on
verifiable events of history, the U.S. was never interested or ever wanted
democracy for Iraq, the Arabs, and non-white developing nations.
- If democracy
would prevail in the Middle East, the U.S. will lose all the regimes that
are in line with Washington and its strategic plans.
- Four fifths
of world societies conduct normal life without western style democracy
- Although it
is a desirable form of government, democracy in any form, is neither vital
nor necessary for survival or progress of societies.
- The U.S.
insistence on the democracy charade for Iraq is only to enact a
small component of democracy, which is the periodical election of new
political leaders. Through
manipulated elections, the U.S. would insure its presence by making Iraqis
vote for pro-American Iraqi allies and appointed personnel.
- To remain
within the boundaries of definitions, America itself is only a form of
democracy and not a pure democracy. Because of its imperialistic nature,
American representative democracy is a corrupted democracy, and its
constant transformation into a totalitarian directorate proves the
hypothesis of corruptibility.
- The democracy
ideal is not alibi for colonialism, imperialism, or barbarity.
- Why, in the
opinion of Powell, must Iraqis celebrate a fascist occupation by the
so-called �greatest democracy on earth,� while it is planting bullets in
their chests and destroying their homes and cities?
Democracy is not necessarily a synonym with integrity, lofty principles,
and respect for human rights. The United States, Britain, and France, albeit
possessing several working mechanisms of democracy, have the worst record of
colonialist atrocities. As for Israel, the �beacon of democracy� in the Middle
East, it is the highest human achievement in the practice of fascism, racism,
Nazism, and pure terrorism, combined and inseparable.
Furthermore, because the entire imperialist circus that operates now in
Iraq rotates around an abstract notion called �democracy,� then, what is the
U.S. designing for Iraq? The answer could not be easier: give the Iraqis
another dictatorship, but call it �democracy.�
In his visit to Iraq on October 11, 2004, Donald Rumsfeld, a pernicious
relic from the cold war, an exemplification of American Modified and Accepted
Hitlerism, and a dinosaur of hyper-imperialism, gave his best interpretation on
the upcoming Iraqi �democracy� when he stated that, �It is the Iraqis who must
choose and develop their own system.� If this were the case, then what is the
U.S. doing in Iraq?
If we translate Rumsfeld�s speech reversal in the context of the
occupation and pertinent U.S. policy, what he actually said is the following:
�We are not interested in democracy for Iraq despite our fanfare and excessive
talk about it. Our presence in Iraq is independent from democracy or
dictatorship.�
In other words, he is washing his hands from the often-repeated slogan
that the U.S. wants to bring democracy to Iraq, by indirectly saying that the
Iraqis have no love for democracy and they need a strongman. In practice, as
the U.S. is struggling to impose its imperialist order through secular Arabs
(Allawi, Chalabi, and Communists), Arab Shiite clergy (Sistani, Jaafaree, and
al-Hakim), and the Kurds (Talabani and Barazani), Rumsfeld has a plan. He
expects Allawi and his fascist clique to manipulate the farcical and limited
elections thus bringing to power a �legitimate� government that the imperialist
nuclear thugs of the Security Council are ready to recognize.
Condition Number 2: Sovereignty
Based on Freedom
Rhetorically, literally, and ideologically,
Powell erred in using the concept �sovereignty based on freedom,� thus exposing
his inability to define abstract concepts with immense practical consequences.
Powell, ignorant of the implications that such a concept carries, imposed a
stringent subjective or immaterial requirement on hard objective or
material reality.
Imagine Hitler telling the French, �I cannot
give you back your sovereignty, unless you are free,� or Charles De Gaulle
telling the Algerians, �I cannot negotiate independence with you, unless you
are free.� Imagine Benito Mussolini telling Omar al-Mukhtar of Libya, �We will
end our occupation of your country, once you are free,� or Henry Kissinger
telling Ho Chi Minh, �We shall withdraw from Vietnam once you are free and
sovereign.�
Long after a racist Mussolini and genocidal
Hitler tried to enslave nations around and beyond them, here arrives an
atypical missionary of imperialism, who, paradoxically and most probably,
descends from enslaved or colonized Africans, trying to impose colonialist
slavery on the Iraqis.
In an archetypical speech reversal, Powell
actually is saying this to the Iraqis, �We will not give you back your
sovereignty that we abolished. Instead, we will give you our version
of sovereignty. You have to base this version of sovereignty on �freedom.�
Since we are occupying you, your freedom does not exist. Because your freedom
does not exist, you cannot exercise it. Finally, since you cannot exercise your
freedom because it does not exist, you cannot be sovereign.�
If Powell claims that he freed the Iraqis
from dictatorship, and that after his invasion the Iraqis became free, then why
did he impose the condition of �sovereignty based on freedom� on people he just
freed!
To respond to Powell and his freedom
charade, I shall quote the following words by an Iraqi woman that I translated
literally from an Iraqi website. �They say they came to free us; but they
killed my two sons who were bystanders, destroyed my home, killed many hundreds
of people in my town, and destroyed their homes, and even dug up our cemeteries
to search for weapons . . . And as we were weeping in despair, they laughed and
spat at us. I am 82 years old, but, if I were younger, I would get out and
fight these savage Mongols, killers of children . . . my children.� (By
Mongols, she was referring to the Mongolian invasion of Baghdad in 1258 that
destroyed the city and killed hundred of thousands of Baghdadis).
Condition Number 3: Sovereignty Based On Peaceful
Coexistence with Neighbors
�Peaceful co-existence with neighbors,�
theatrically, intoned Colin Powell. My impression is that either Powell was
giving the performance of his life, or he experienced momentary imperialistic
amnesia. Is it possible that Powell forgot that he is the secretary of state of
the United States of Interventions and Wars that has despised peaceful co-existence
since the birth of the 13 colonies?
Because Powell alluded to the Iran-Iraq war
and to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, we have to investigate the third condition
of his paradigm. First, the Iran-Iraq war was an American war by proxy. The
U.S. supplied Saddam with intelligence, conventional and chemical weapons; it
bombed Iranian oil facilities on his behalf, and it liberated for Iraq the
Iraqi Fao peninsula that the Iranians captured in battle by bombing the
entrenched soldiers to oblivion. The U.S. involvement in that war was such that
Ronald Reagan had a civilian Iranian Airbus shot down over the Persian Gulf,
killing all 290 passengers (July 3, 1988) as a warning to Tehran to accept a
ceasefire with Iraq (indeed on August, 1988, Iran agreed to stop the fight).
Because the U.S. was Saddam�s partner in that war, Powell should have left it
out of his indictment.
As for the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam
launched it with the full acceptance of the United States. Saddam informed
April Glaspie, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, that he was about to invade
Kuwait. Later the U.S. claimed that, they did not think that Saddam would
occupy all of Kuwait. Consequently, Powell should have also, left Kuwait out of
the picture. I submit that co-partners in crime, must not point fingers!
Incidentally, in recent U.S. gimmicks on
Iraq�s debts, the U.S. demanded that Kuwait and other Gulf States forgive those
debts, because Iraq fought Iran on their behalf. This has a very precise
meaning: the U.S. condoned and approved of the war against Iran.
Arguably, if the U.S. or Israel can invade
any state in the Middle East to �protect their national interest,� then
sovereign Iraq, whether it is ruled by dictatorship or western style democracy,
could invade Kuwait to �protect its national interests.� I contend that if the
U.S. and other imperialist powers want to practice the law of the jungle, then
they set a precedent that other states would follow by example.
Furthermore, if European, American,
Ethiopian, Iranian, Moroccan, Yemeni, Slav, Romanian, Kurdish, and other groups
adhering to Judaism can claim Palestine where they and their ancestors never
inhabited, why can Iraq not claim Kuwait that was part of it until Britain
severed it in 1921?
Historically and aside from the ancient
Acadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian Empires that ruled Mesopotamia,
Northern Arabic Peninsula and Greater Syria, Iraq, with Baghdad as a capital,
was the birthplace of the Arab Abbasid Empire (750�1258 AD) that included all
the current countries of the Asian Middle East. If that was not sufficient to
prove that Kuwait was an Iraqi territory by implication, then Turkish and
British historical documents prove that Kuwait was part of the Iraqi Basrah
Province under the Ottoman rule that ended in 1918 with Turkish defeat in WWI.
It is safe to conclude, that Kuwait was always part of historical Iraq.
If the U.S. rebuts that, regardless of
history, Iraq could not invade or claim Kuwait because it had become a
sovereign state recognized by the United Nations, and even by Iraq itself, then
why did the U.S. invade and occupy Iraq that was a sovereign state recognized
by the United Nations, and by the U.S. itself?
In the end, one must take Iraq�s troubles in
the region as a totality involving the geo-political struggle between U.S. and
Israel from one side, and the Arab world from the other. Powell as an
opportunist imperialist likes to pass Iraq�s history through a propagandistic
sieve where he chooses what to keep and what to discard. It is arrogance and
hypocrisy combined when Powell behaves as if the U.S. were a neutral observer,
and not the imperialist power that shaped the region, its conflicts, and
catastrophes.
Curiously, what did Powell mean when he
said, �Peaceful coexistence with neighbors�?
Of Course, he meant Israel. Powell,
following the imperialist adage, �make the world safe for democracy,� wants to
make the Middle East, �safe for spurious yet powerful Zionism.
The natural question is, �Who dictates that
Israel must be safe, but not Iraq?
This is, of course, another story that we
shall discuss in the ensuing parts.
Next: Part 21: Colin Powell, procedure for conquest
B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. He
can be reached at bjsabri@yahoo.com.
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