Hang 'em High?: Tariq Aziz And Other War Criminals I Have Known
05 December 2010By Jane Stillwater
Is this really a good time to be sentencing former
Iraqi diplomat Tariq Aziz to death -- especially when
WikiLeaks has just exposed a whole bunch of the dirty
laundry stuffed into America's and Britain's
diplomatic pouches regarding their "Coalition of the
Willing" and its underhanded role in initiating and
sustaining a brutal and unnecessary war on Iraq?
"But everyone knows that Aziz worked for Saddam
Hussein and Hussein gassed the Kurds," you might
argue, "and Aziz was also found guilty of condoning
torture." Like I said, be careful about pointing your
finger on that one. It could very easily boomerang
back to hit certain American and British leaders in
the arse. How many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
have been "gassed," tortured and killed due to
American and British failed diplomacy? According to
Information Clearing House, the current number is
1,421,933.
And speaking of executing former leaders such as Aziz,
do we really want to hang former Congolese
vice-president Jean-Pierre Bemba because he didn't
stop his troops from killing all those women and
children in the Central African Republic? If we do
that, don't we also have to take a look at all the
women and children who have been killed in Afghanistan
by American and British troops too?
"Jane, just exactly where are you going with this?" I
don't know. But it just seems unfair to me that Tariq
Aziz and Jean-Pierre Bemba both face hanging while
George W. Bush gets to go on talk shows and actually
brag about how he approved torture.
PS: Speaking of war criminals, according to professor
Paul Larudee in an article recently published in
"Redress," http://www.redress.cc/palestine/plarudee20101123,
whole bunches of Israeli security guys are currently
madly scurrying around all across the internet,
frantically trying to block the publication of a
document that names 200 alleged Israeli war criminals.
"When unknown elements in Israel leaked the name,
rank, identification number and other information
about two hundred Israeli military personnel who
reportedly participated in the 2008-2009 invasion of
Gaza, the effect was sudden and profound, according to
sources in Israel. Although the first site on which it
appeared was taken down by the host, it has continued
to circulate via email, and has appeared on at least
one other site,
http://s242816488.onlinehome.us/criminals/. The
Israeli military and other Israeli agencies are
reportedly doing all they can to shut down every site
on which it appears, and to prevent it from 'going
viral.' At least one popular blog that links to the
site has received a record number of death threats."
Why has this list of only "alleged" war criminals seem
to have gotten so many of Israel's muckety-mucks'
knickers in a twist? Let's find out. According to
Larudee, "The publication of the list of two hundred
changes everything. The list contains the names of a
few high-ranking officers, but many of those named are
in the lower ranks, all the way down to sergeant. The
effect is to make ordinary Israelis concerned that
they, too, may be subject to arrest abroad, and
without the protection that well-connected higher
officials might enjoy. They know what they have done,
or been ordered to do, or have ordered others to do,
and they suspect that they may be held accountable by
foreign laws, over which their government has little
control."
And there are other ramifications here too. If Israeli
soldiers as a whole can be held accountable by the
international community for their actions in Gaza and
the West Bank and for agreeing to serve in a
trumped-up "war" that is against Geneva Conventions,
then perhaps American troops can also be held
accountable by the international community for
agreeing to serve in those chaotic shambles that Bush,
Cheney and Obama so cheerfully call the Afghan and
Iraq "wars".
PPS: World opinion is sometimes like a snake on a cold
day. It moves slowly -- but it does move. And while
most western media has been working its butt off for
the past one hundred-odd years to try to make war seem
sexy -- ever since Kaiser Wilhelm was first portrayed
as a Hun back in 1914 -- way down below all their
continual bombardment by war hype over the past one
hundred years, ordinary people everywhere are finally
and at last getting truly sick of all this war, war
and more war -- no matter what the alleged
justification for it may be.
****
Saddam Hussein aide Tariq Aziz sentenced to hang:
...He was sentenced to 15 years in prison for taking
part in forced displacement and 10 years for
committing torture. Judge Mahmoud Saleh al-Hassan
declared the harshest punishment — death by hanging —
for participating in deliberate killings but gave no
details. ...The Vatican urged Iraq to not carry out
the death sentence and said it may intervene to try to
halt it.... His Jordan-based lawyer, Badee Izzat Aref,
accused the government of orchestrating the verdict to
divert attention from recent revelations about
prisoner abuse by Iraqi security forces contained in
U.S. military documents released last week by the
whistleblower site WikiLeaks. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap
/20101026/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq
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