The Splendid Failure of Occupation
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:

1. The U.S. did not go to Iraq to institute democracy.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Democracy is not equivalent nor does it coincide with a particular �democracy model� as imposed by imperialism.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Must the U.S. kill half of the Iraqis, so the other half can enjoy �democracy,� Rumsfeld style?
9. 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.
10. Democracy cannot coexist, subsist, or interact with any form of occupation.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. Four fifths of world societies conduct normal life without western style democracy
14. Although it is a desirable form of government, democracy in any form, is neither vital nor necessary for survival or progress of societies.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. The democracy ideal is not alibi for colonialism, imperialism, or barbarity.
18. 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