The Mamma Mia Anti-War Movement

One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions. - Mike Hastie, U.S. Army Medic - Vietnam 1970-71

Is it a perfect resistance? No. How could a resistance be pretty when the occupation is so brutal and ugly. The senseless violence inflicted upon the Iraqi people by the occupation results in a violent response. It was no different when the Algerians fought the French to a standstill in the early Sixties of the last century. When a leader of the Algerian resistance was asked why they often bombed cafes and killed civilians, he replied: 'Give us planes and helicopters and then we will only target French troops.' - Tariq Ali

Today ZNet offered its progressive readers two interesting articles; one by Cindy Sheehan and the other one by Amy Goodman. Good articles. They make sense and light important aspects of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I can only hope that people reading these two articles can also remember (better: guess) that there are 1 million Iraqi killed by this illegal, immoral war of aggression and a country completely destroyed.

The same with Afghanistan, where, day after day, the US and its allies keep slaughtering children, women, innocent people and these heroic actions of our boys and girls go unreported by mainstream media but also by many among the so-called alternative ones. Meanwhile what is called the anti-war movement’s policy makers close their eyes on that front, the just war.

What is called the "anti-war movement" doesn’t even consider to use the word “resistance” while we are presented, day after day, with the compassionate side of patriotism. As US peace movement’ spokesperson (by the way, by whom and when she was elected?) Phyllis Bennis recently wrote, “I don't think we gain strength by making sympathy with resistance fighters a demand of our movement.”

But that sympathy is always granted to the mass murderers, our troops.

I guess our boys and girls in Iraq and Afghanistan must feel comforted by so much sympathy. It probably helps them to better carry on the carnage.

About the Iraqi resistance (ops, pardon, insurgency) Phyllis Bennis writes, “We know virtually nothing of what most of the factions stand for beyond opposition to the U.S. occupation - and from my own personal vantage point, of the little beyond that that we do know, I don't like so much.”

Once again, with few noble exceptions, Bennis' Orwellian words met the silence of leftists, activists and intellectuals. Freedom of speech anyone?

Phyllis Bennis can keep fighting for the Mamma Mia anti-war movement. On my blog, I can still use that old common sense coming from the history of the Italian Resistance to Fascism and against the Nazi occupation of my country. From that common sense, this is my point of view:

- I do not support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

- I consider those troops mass murderers

- Nobody forced them to go there and kill, rape, torture innocent people nothing had done to them or their countries

- If they are old enough to rape, torture and kill, if they are aware of what they are doing there, then they are surely old enough to refuse to keep doing it

- I have sympathy and compassion for all the suffering victims of this madness, including those veterans who come back home with their lives destroyed. But I am disgusted by what is called the anti-war movement’s double standards. My sympathy, solidarity and compassion go first of all to the Iraqi and Afghan children, women and innocent human beings whose lives have been tortured, maimed, killed, destroyed by those mass murderers, “our troops”

- I give all my sympathy to the Iraqi and Afghan resistance movements. They are fighting for their land in their land and that’s all we need to know. If we have to use an abused word, they are the real heroes. Not those mass murderers who fly their fat asses on those expensive death toys and drop tons of bombs upon homes, mosques, schools and hospitals. If they want my sympathy, they need first to get home and get home now. They don’t need their mummy’s permission to do that. They are adults with a conscience. They just need to use it and refuse to keep the butchery going. The anti-war movement’s hyper protective attitude toward “our troops” is immoral and counterproductive.

- This “anti-war movement” is a disgrace.