By Richard Mellor in California
I once took a train from Istanbul or Ankara (I can’t remember now) to Baghdad in 1971. I remember going through Nineveh, and Babylon and being fascinated with the fact that I was passing through towns I read about in the Bible. We would stop in these places and Iraqis selling water and candy and other wares would come to the carriage windows.
I passed through Mosul as well. I remember it with great fondness and I am so happy I took that opportunity. The Iraqis were kind to me I remember, despite the nasty role British imperialism has played there even in the country’s creation.
After staying in Baghdad for a while, I left with my friends and we headed by bus down to Basra. I remember being in a small room in some lodging place, sitting eating watermelon with traders from Goa. My recollection of them was that they had on the white pants and coverings that Indians wear, and they had long braided pony tails. My buddy and best friend, Jimmy Hall, o JB Hall, was with me as well as another friend from the UK, and two Frenchmen.
I eventually ran out of money
If I experienced nothing else in my life, I am so grateful I experienced that, although I did a lot of traveling in those days. I eventually ran out of money, was not successful in finding somewhere I trusted to sell blood, and I ended up going to the British Consul and to be repatriated for the second time. This is in the days when they gave you some money to get back, with papers to allow you to pass through different countries.
We took the bus and train back to Istanbul and from there we met a Canadian who had a van and he took us a little further up through Greece, Yugoslavia and into Italy. I can’t remember when or where it was that we parted with him, but we did reconnect back in the UK. He was an interesting man to say the least.
I do recall us picking up an American, and as we approached the Turkish/Greek border, someone said that if anyone had any hash they should throw it out now, as the penalty was severe. The US guy pulled out a big slab of it and had to chuck it. He had been to Pakistan, apparently.
Jimmy and I then headed north, hitchhiking as far as Udine in Northern Italy, and then in to a small town called Tarvisio where we took a train across the Alps in to Salzburg. The Alps were so beautiful, and Austria was so clean. I loved it.
Horrific, murderous slaughter
I am heading into a story I didn’t anticipate here, so I will halt the travel commentary and say that what made me get out of bed this morning and write this, is reading about the Iraq war and the horrific, murderous, slaughter the US government waged against these people.
I read a few articles and was at the demonstration against the US assault in London in 2003 with my young nephew. It was amazing, some million people, even more, marched to Hyde Park in protest. Some 40 million worldwide demonstrated, by some accounts.
This article gives some details about the death toll in Iraq, but even this is the tip of the iceberg. After the first Iraq war, the US imposed sanctions on Iraq that led to the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqis, predominantly women and children. When asked about this figure on US television, the US war criminal, Madeline Albright, said the deaths were “worth it”.
The US war machine, through its use of chemical weaponry in Iraq, also led to hundreds of thousands of Iraq children being born with deformities, even today. This continued when the US laid siege to Fallujah, after Iraqis killed four US mercenaries and dragged their bodies through the streets. Fallujah will forever be a shrine to Middle Eastern Muslims and the people of Iraq, where so many were slaughtered, resisting the invaders of their land.
Depleted Uranium in artillery shells
There were also reports of US soldiers dying of diseases related to the use of depleted uranium by US forces. Wives of US veterans complained of their husband’s sperm burning them and veterans suffered other debilitating respiratory problems. We may never know the extent of suffering for Iraqis due to the US invasion.
How quickly people forget when it comes to the suffering one’s own government inflicts on others. This memory loss is aided by the US mass media that reminds us endlessly about the attacks of September 2001 with military bands and flyovers at sporting events. “They hate us because we’re free” was the rallying cry.
Iraq, of course, had nothing to do with that attack. Before the onset of the 20-year war against Iraq, under the lie that it was a response to “terrorism”, most Americans couldn’t point to the country on a map. We learn geography and where countries are when we see them on CNN, after they have been bombed, some say.
At work, I remember walking through the machine shop and seeing a poster of Saddam Hussein with a target on him and just shaking my head. Some folks that took that position were conservatives that distrusted the US government and were indeed anti-government, or so they claimed, yet when the war cry went out, they all blindly followed the Pied Piper. Patriotism is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Major destabilising factor
The US presence in the Middle East, like their British hangers-on before them, has been the most destabilising factor in the region. The nation state of Iraq was created by the British and the French through the Sykes-Picot agreement, a secret agreement by which the British and French carved up the region between them, a region of various tribes with the same language and generally the same religion. These two states were created, not in the interest of the people living there, but of the colonial powers that entered the region after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Up until the US invasion and when I was there, Iraq was one of the most secular countries in the Middle East, bar Lebanon perhaps. As I walked through the streets of Baghdad or Basra, I felt no fear. The people were courteous and friendly. I sat by the river Tigris that I knew only through the Christian Bible, and smoked hookahs with old Iraqi guys one time.
This is not to say there weren’t problems, though I was not so political at that time that I would be aware of them, or the history of the region. I learned later, and after talking with Iraqi exiles I met in London who were fighting for democratic reforms, that Hussein was the US’s man and they were fighting a superpower. But in the main, things were normal, as long as you weren’t involved in politics, I guess. They certainly had electricity and water, things they cannot be sure they have now.
US invasion destroyed a nation state
What the US invasion has done is destroy a nation state. There are now three nations in one. The Kurds of the north, the Sunnis in the centre and the Shia in the South. The Turks will never support an independent Kurdistan on their border, with some 22 million Kurds within it, and the US chooses to blame any resistance to its occupation on Iran. British colonialism purposefully installed a minority regime, as it is always important for an occupying power to foster social divisions of one sort or another, as long as they can contain and manipulate it, much like racism in the US.
What US capitalism has done to Iraq, Yemen, and indeed the entire region, is a crime against humanity. It has cost the US taxpayer priceless resources that could improve life for workers at home; it has increased hatred for us abroad and is a recruiting tool for terrorism. The guilty, the war criminals, all the presidents, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, George W Bush, Blair, the mass media and so on; they are all complicit and they are all relatively safe when they travel rather, compared to the average US citizen.
There is no solution to these problems within the framework of capitalism. The sooner we recognize this, workers that is, the sooner we can embark on the path to a genuinely free world and a relationship with others and with nature based not on exploitation but on cooperation and harmony. For thousands of years before class society, this is how humanity lived and progressed.
From the US socialist website, Fact for Working People. The original can be found here.
