Felicity Arbuthnot11 maart 2008 – 14:07

We are entering the eighteenth year since the slow, agonising crucifixion of Mesopotamia began and about to commemorate the 'unbearable mourning' of the fifth year of the final rape and dismembering of her body, her people and humanity's history, in a declared 'Crusade', engendered of monumental illegality, wickednesses and crimes of historical enormity, by a gang of declared Christians. Underscoring this deviant distortion of faith were the British entering Iraq flying the Crusader's (St. George) flag on their tanks and vehicles with the Spanish troops with their Crusading Saint's emblem sewn onto their uniform.
 
The American army's strange version of faith is to pray before they mutilate, murder, decimate and violate: 'Satan lives in Fallujah', was included in 'worship', before two football pitches were filled with the shredded remnants of the ancient 'City of Mosques' sons and daughters. Pogroms which have been replicated throughout the 'cradle of civilisation'.
 
True believers must feel God Himself is weeping.
 
The slaughter, both overt and silent, has created a holocaust estimated one and quarter million deaths, one million widows, four million displaced and virtually the entire child population clinically traumatised. Iraqis are the new Palestinians, their status and documents without the protections if international norms, within or without their own country.
 
Where Abraham, father Christianity, Judaism and Islam was suckled on two fingers, one which brought forth milk and the other honey - thus 'land of milk and honey' - at Ur, the ancient remains and ziggurat are damaged, believed beyond repair, as Qurna, believed site of the Garden of Eden, Babylon, Samarra's golden Shrine and wonders across the land, which survived the mongol hordes, but not those of America and Britain. Iraq, which 'once was the garden of the world', has been named, in its entirety, by the World Monument Fund, an endangered site, threatened with extinction.
 
And for the dead, the dying, the bereaved, the displaced, custodians of this 'land between two rivers', justice will be too late. But justice there must be and the clamour, urgency and determination for it is rising.
 
As Martin van Creveld wrote: 'For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men.--'
 
Leading International Law expert Professor Francis Boyle cites the Pentagon's military strategy of inflicting 'shock and awe' upon the city of Baghdad, stating that such terror bombings of cities have been criminal behaviour under international law: Guernica, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Dresden, London ... Further: President Bush Jr.'s attempt to assassinate the President of Iraq was an international crime in its own right. Of course the Bush Jr. administration's war of aggression against Iraq constituted a Crime against Peace as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as by paragraph 498 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).
 
Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial, reminds that waging aggressive war is ' the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.;
 
The calls for legal redress with Bush and Blair at the top of the list are growing. In a recent move, two Vermont towns, Battleboro and Marlboro voted to impeach President Bush. In Britain too there are constructive moves to bring former Prime Minister Blair to justice. Such actions may be dismissed as 'the mouse that roared', but those who remember the film will recall that the 'mouse' won.
 
And as Paul William Roberts has written of Baghdad, 'the Paris of the ninth century', in what could also be a metaphor for all of Iraq: ' Baghdad is just as glorious in its ruin as it was in its glory. For something noble crawls from the rubble, to spread golden wings in the light of dawn. The gate of God opens wider.’ And despite the barbarians through the gate, they too will pass and the Lion of Babylon will rise, yet again.

Felicity Arbuthnot,
journalist who has visited, written and broadcasted widely on Iraq, since the 1991 Gulf War. Arbuthnot has been nominated for a number of Awards for her coverage of Iraq, including the (EC) Lorenzo Natali Award for Human Rights Journalism, the Millenium Prize for Women; the Courage of Conscience Award and an Amnesty International Media Award.