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Executive Crimes
The Forbidden C-Word
Counterpunch
March 22, 2007
By Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS
President Bush is
literally getting away with mass murder. The Commander-in-Chief
"decider" is committing the "signature" war crimes of the 21st
century. In broad daylight. Before America and the world.
Camouflaged in a neatly tailored conservative suit, white shirt,
and dark red tie-with an American flag pinned to his lapel.
Initiated and justified by blatant and repeated lies about
Saddam Hussein's "mushroom cloud"-threatening weapons of mass
destruction and ties to Al Qaeda and the horrific 9/11/2001
attacks against America. War crimes and crimes against humanity,
the enormity of which demands redefinition dressed in
predictable denial and projection, and laced with palatable
patriotic and democratic and religious motives for American
public consumption. Monstrous crimes in which many in US
politics and mainstream media and religion are complicit.
Offenses so hideous and immoral that they require widespread
avoidance of the C word.
The obvious criminality
is made oblivious. The violation of Iraq's national sovereignty
by the Bush administration's deliberate falsely-based
pre-emptive war and occupation is called "Operation Iraqi
Freedom." The principal American base near Baghdad is named
"Camp Victory." The extensive deaths of Iraqi people and
destruction of their life-sustaining infrastructure are paved
over with fear-mongering about "protecting Americans from
terrorists" and with platitudes about "advancing democracy" and
"peace" in the name of "the Author of liberty." And a recent
reversal of reality is the Bush administration calling its
present "surge" in Baghdad, to quell the intensifying resistance
of Iraqis to its violent illegal invasion and brutal occupation,
"Operation Enforcing the Law." [italics added]
The war crimes committed in
Iraq by the Bush administration, in our name, are hidden by
catch phrases and platitudes and code words. President Bush
would have us believe that his administration's war of choice
against and occupation of non-threatening and sanctions-weakened
Iraq are about protecting us from 9/11-like "radicals" and
"extremists" and "terrorists," driven by "blind hatred," who
want to "kill Americans." (State of the Union Address," Tape
Jan. 23, 2007) Thus the Commander-in-Chief "decider's" war
crimes are made to disappear and recast with catch phrases like
"Victory in Iraq is achievable. . . . Retreat
would embolden radicals. . . . The American people . . . want to
see success. And our objective is to put a plan in place
that achieves that success. [italics added] ("Press
Conference by the President," The White House, Dec. 20,2006)
In January, President Bush put
his war crimes disappearing act to the members of Congress in a
similar way: "America must not fail in Iraq, because you
understand that the consequences of failure would be grievous
and far reaching. . . . extremists on all sides. . . . Ladies
and gentlemen," he continued, "we went into this largely united
in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you
voted for, you did not vote for failure." [italics added]
(State of the Union Address, Jan. 23, 2007)
President Bush has repeated
"staying the course" and "accomplishing the mission: so often
that "staying the course" apparently is "the mission"-and for
good reason. Failure in Iraq threatens to expose criminality
in Washington! That is believed to be a primary reason why
Bush told Republicans at a leadership retreat regarding his
planned "surge": "Failure is not an option" in Iraq. ("Bush:
Iraq failure 'not an option,'" UPI, 26 Jan. 2007)
Thus President Bush is
"carrying out a new strategy in Iraq: a plan that . . . gives
our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete
their mission." He then states their mission in such glaring
self-contradictory terms: "a democratic Iraq that
upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people,
provides them security and is an ally in the war on terror (Ibid)
. . . A functioning democracy that . . . answers to
its people." [italics added] ("President's Address to the
Nation," The White House, Jan. 10, 2007)
"A democratic Iraq that
upholds the rule of law?" Former UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan condemned the Bush administration's pre-emptive war
against Iraq as "illegal," a violation of international law
because it lacked UN Security Council approval. Annan said about
President Bush's "Operation Iraqi Freedom," "Those who seek to
bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who
invoke international law must themselves submit to it." (The
New York Times, Sept. 22, 2004)
President Bush and Vice
President Cheney and officials of their administration have
committed Crimes against Peace and War Crimes and Crimes against
Humanity as defined in Article 6 of the Nuremburg War Crimes
Tribunal. (Sheldon Drobny, "Bush War Crimes: The Nuremburg
Precedent," The Huffington Post, Sept. 9, 2006). They
have also violated various articles of the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush administration's
Crimes against Peace began in 2000 with its plans to attack
non-threatening Iraq when President Bush took office, and the
9/11/2001 attacks against America provided the pretext and
fear-mongering lies on which the invasion was based. The war
crimes are so obvious: "Operation Iraqi Freedom" with its
violent "shock and awe" campaign and occupation, and the
reported deaths now of over 650,000 Iraqi men, women and
children civilians. ("Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll
Has Reached 655,000" by David Brown, The Washington Post,
Oct. 22, 2006) The destruction of Iraq's life-sustaining
infrastructure and the devastating affect on the livability and
health of the Iraqi people. The war profiteering of
carpet-bagging American corporations like Bush
administration-connected Halliburton, which have failed greatly
in reconstructing what the Bush administration's "march of
democracy" in Iraq has destroyed. The US-led invasion and
occupation triggering a deadly massive sectarian civil war. The
flight rather than "freedom" of a United Nations-estimated 2
million people from Iraq and another 1.8 million displaced
inside their country. ("Bush agrees to help Iraqi refugees: A
new opportunity in US for 7,000" [italics added], The
Boston Globe, Feb. 15, 2007)
"A democratic Iraq that
upholds the rule of law?" The right of due process denied to
detainees, held for four years now in the US prison in
Guantanamo Bay, pierces the heart of our Constitution's rule of
law. The torture of inmates in Abu Ghraib prison. The secret
"extraordinary rendition" program of outsourcing torture to
countries for whom torture in "the rule of law." The US
military's brutal 2004 assault on the citizens of Fallujah. The
unconstitutional spying on American citizens.
President Bush says about
those Iraqis resisting his administration's invasion and
occupation of Iraq: "These are people that will kill innocent
men, women and children to achieve their objective, which is to
discourage the Iraqi people, foment sectarian violence and to,
frankly, discourage us from helping this government do its job."
("Press Conference by the President," The White House,
Feb. 14, 2007) Here is classic projection, which more Americans
need to join much of the world in seeing through. The "decider"
used the barrel of a gun to bring "democracy" to Iraq, killing
hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children
to achieve his administration's imperialistic objective: the
overthrow of a sovereign government and creation of a "young
[puppet] democracy" to carry out America's political and
corporate will, namely that of feeding the US's
military-industrial complex, controlling Iraq's vast oil
reserves, and using its land for military bases to facilitate
the "untamed fire of freedom . . . reach[ing] the darkest
corners of our world," in Bush's words, i.e., "bringing
democracy to the Arab world." (The New York Times, Jan.
21, 2005; The Boston Globe, Jan. 31, 2005)
Iraq is not about "liberation"
but about lies. It is not about "victory" but about victims. Not
about "success" but about suffering. Not about "peace" but about
war profiteering. It is not about "the ways of Providence," as
President Bush would have us believe, but about the workings of
power in the hands of arrogance and entitlement.
Iraq is about the continuing
avoidance of the C word by people professing to know "the
ways of Providence." People guided more by profits and power
than by prophets speaking truth to power. People who also see
"the ways of Providence" as evangelical far more than ethical.
For example, United
Methodism's Southern Methodist University is in the process of
selling its soul (and possibly that of United Methodism's) in
its president's and Board of Regents' eager negotiations to have
the university selected as the site to "enshrine" the
presidential papers of United Methodist, and international war
criminal, George W. Bush. The negotiations are supported by the
South Central Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church, which
recently voted 10-4 to approve leasing a site on campus "for
George W. Bush's presidential library, complete with a partisan
think tank." ("Methodist Panel Backs Bush Library," By Angela K.
Brown, washingtonpost.com, Mar. 14, 2007). And the
College of Bishops of the South Central Jurisdiction of The
United Methodist Church adopted a resolution blessing the
negotiations. ("Methodist Bishops' Resolution on the Bush
Presidential Library," (SMUdallas, Feb. 5, 2007). With
Bush and Vice President Cheney both members of the United
Methodist Church, one might assume that United Methodists
especially would be in the forefront of confronting, rather than
avoiding the C word. Some are. But many are not. The
papers of this most secretive president should be made public
for all Americans to see, and not just those papers
suitable for students and tourists and scholars and researchers
with a particular ideological bent.
The issue of our time is not
about "the Battle for Iraq" nor "the Struggle for Iraq" as
certain mainstream media bill it, but about the crime against
Iraq. Nor is it about "restorative" editorials, such as the
following in The New York Times: "It's bad enough that
the soldiers are being asked to risk their lives without
President Bush demanding that Iraq's leaders take any political
risks that might give the military mission at least an outside
chance of success." (Feb. 15, 2007). Neither is it about the
caption of New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof's
piece, "Let's Start a War, One We Can Win," (Feb. 20, 2007) The
war Kristof advocates is a virtuous one against
blindness-creating diseases in Ethiopia, but the caption's
implication is that war is about winning, and therein the
criminal context for the war in Iraq is made to disappear.
Iraq is not about the
"mistakes" of a "misguided policy," morally evasive political
leaders tell us, but about the machinations of criminally-guided
policy-makers. It is not about a "foreign endeavor," as
Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain has called
the war crimes. (The Boston Globe, Feb. 18, 2007) Nor are
these crimes of our time found in the words of Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney: "We have major problems in
Iraq because of the way we've mismanaged the war there." (WBZ AM
radio Feb. 18, 2007) Nor is Iraq just about President Bush "misus[ing]
the authority we gave him and making "mistakes" and "mislead[ing]
this country and this Congress," as responsibility-avoiding
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says. (The
New York Times, Feb. 18, 2007)
Iraq is about using love of
"God and country" as pretexts for sacrificing American lives and
wasting national resources to serve corporate profits, domestic
political control and world domination. It is about gung-ho
"supporting the troops" on the battlefields far more than the
wounded veterans at home. It is about glaring "high crimes and
misdemeanors" that still wait for Congress to end the war crimes
and impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and also
bring to justice their criminal co-conspirators. Congress
needs to stop Bush and Cheney before their killing spree spreads
to Iran. Iraq is about all of us confronting the C word
for the sake of America and Iraq. For the sake of our children
and grandchildren everywhere.
--
Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain, and a
diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision and
Psychotherapy. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United
Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and
articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be
reached at
william.alberts@bmc.org.
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