Killing Kids is So American

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

By Dave Lindorff

------snip------

Take Fallujah, a city of 300,000 in Iraq that in 2004 was the scene of one of the most brutal and brutish fighting of the US invasion of Iraq.

In what was clearly a war crime, the Bush/Cheney administration and the Pentagon ordered the leveling of Fallujah in retaliation for the killing by resistance fighters of four Blackwater mercenaries in the city, and the hanging of their burned bodies from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The assault on the city was a pure case of “collective punishment,” a tactic which is expressly declared a “war crime” by the Nuremberg Charter, drawn up and approved by the Allies at the end of World War II, and encoded in the Geneva Conventions in 1949.

The assaults on Fallujah, first in April, when the onslaught was called off because of nationwide protests in Iraq over the massive civilian casualties, and then in November when a larger and even more devastating assault was mounted that leveled nearly half the buildings in the city, also featured more war crimes, including the deliberate attack on and bombing of hospitals, and the executing of captured and wounded enemy fighters.

One of those crimes though, well documented by American reporters (though none of those from the mainstream press ever labeled what was happening as a war crime), was the deliberate entrapment of all “combat-aged males” in the city before the assault began. Under the Geneva Conventions, all civilians must be allowed to flee the scene of a battle or impending battle. Furthermore, since 1970, all those under 18, even if they are armed fighters, are defined as having “protected status” and must to be offered special protection by military forces. . . .

source: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/05-9

[sabrina 1]

1. I will never forget the Fallujah war crime. One of the reasons we were frantic to get rid of

Bush back then was that many people knew he would escalate the killing in Iraq.

I remember his arrogant hubris right after he stole a second election when he made this statement 'I have political capital now and I intend to use it' and suspected that more innocent people were about to die. After which I could not bear to see him on TV, even by accident.

I read recently that the anger over Fallujah is still intense in Iraq. As can be imagined. It was a brutal war crime in action, as hospitals and ambulances were bombed, and bodies left on the streets to rot and anyone trying to get to them, murdered also.

Dahr Jamail's photos of Iraq were the only factual record of the horror of that war, the dead bodies of children being the most disturbing and there were so many. But the American public was shielded from the carnage their government was reigning down indiscriminately on a whole population of people and largely still have no idea of the horrors of a war many of them supported.

History will not absolve us. Until we hold the war criminals accountable.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. Well said, Sabrina, and so true. nt.

[sabrina 1]

2. Btw, I don't think killing kids is American

I think that is why the news of these wars is so censored. If the American people had seen a daily account of what was actually taking place, a majority of them would have been outraged. The warmongers learned that controlling the media was as much a part of being able to continue to get funding for their foreign adventures as anything else that helped them profit from the death and destruction they reign down on innocent populations.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. I wasn't too crazy about the title myself...

...but that's what Lindorff chose to call his piece, so into the subject line it went.

And I certainly agree, most Americans would never condone the wanton slaughter of children.

[sabrina 1]

5. Yes, it was the only reason I did not rec it. Lindorff is a good writer and passionate in his

opposition to the Bush wars. I remember him from the Bush years and could never fault him for his position on these horrific wars, then or now. But the truth is I believe that most Americans if they were to see some of the photos of wounded and dead children, most of them just like their own, this war would have ended long ago.

[PDJane]

6. I would like to think that is the case,

but I'm not entirely sure.

Why? Because there are still a fairly large number of Americans who choose to ignore the fact that the US was the aggressor, and consider those deaths just retribution. I've listened to and spoken to a number of them, and I find the whole idea outrageous.

[Scuba]

7. More light please.