New York Times calls for more troops in Iraq

The lead editorial in Monday’s New York Times calls for an increase in US troop levels in Iraq by 40,000 soldiers.

The editorial begins with mild criticisms of the “ambitious political and military goals President Bush announced last week for Iraq,” which the Times worries may be unrealizable.

The newspaper proceeds to declare: “[I]f Mr. Bush intends to keep American troops in Iraq until his stated aims are achieved, he must face up to the compelling need to increase their strength, and to commit the resources needed to give present policies at least some chance of success. That would require a minimum of two additional combat divisions, or nearly 40,000 more American troops, beyond the just over 140,000 currently planned for the Iraqi election period.”

The editorial goes on to say, “If Mr. Bush feels he now has a mandate from the voters to stay the course until he creates a stable, unified Iraq, he owes it to the Iraqi people and Americans stationed there to commit enough additional troops to make that look like a plausible possibility.”

The Times’ editorial coincides with the American military’s launching of a massive invasion of Fallujah, a crime of immense proportions that will result in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis. It was written a day after the declaration of martial law by the Iraqi stooge leader Ayad Allawi, a measure intended to give the American military an even freer hand to carry out arbitrary arrests and the violent suppression of resistance.

The newspaper of American liberalism does not offer an ounce of criticism of these actions. On the contrary, it cites the “battle for Fallujah” as one of the challenges confronting the US military, whose “success” necessitates the introduction of more soldiers.

This position is entirely consistent the Times’ past support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is also entirely consistent with the newspaper’s endorsement of Democrat John Kerry for president. During his campaign, Kerry repeatedly criticized Bush for not carrying out a full-scale invasion of Fallujah and called for an increase in the size of the American military and a doubling of Special Forces soldiers.

It is highly significant that one of the first post-election editorials on the war from the New York Times—the most influential newspaper of the liberal establishment—calls for an escalation of American involvement. It underscores the fact that in the elections the Democratic Party offered no alternative to Bush. The Times is articulating the positions that Kerry would be promoting had he won last week’s election.

The editors suggest that the sending of more troops to Iraq will serve a civilizing purpose. With more troops, “there might be fewer scenes of stressed and frightened patrols kicking in doors and conducting humiliating household searches. There might be fewer air strikes on populated neighborhoods and fewer prison abuses.”

This is a bare-faced lie. More troops in Iraq will serve one and only one purpose: to increase the efficiency and capacity of the American military to suppress though mass killing and terror what is a growing popular resistance to foreign occupation.

With more troops, there will be more household searches, more air strikes and more abuse. The devastation presently being inflicted on the people of Fallujah will be repeated elsewhere in an effort to crush all resistance. There is no doubt that these actions will likewise receive the support of the New York Times.

According to the newspaper, employing two more divisions in Iraq will require the addition of six active-duty divisions to the Army to allow for proper rotation. The Times declares, “There are more than enough potential fighting-age volunteers to do that without resorting to a draft.”

Another lie. The logic of the Times’position—and the policy of the Bush administration—leads precisely to the reintroduction of the draft. The launching of an illegal war against Iraq and the brutal methods employed by the occupation have generated enormous resistance. The only response that the American government has is an escalation of repression. But the escalation of repression requires more and more troops, and the military is already straining against the limitations of a volunteer army. When the time for a draft comes, the Times will lend its support.

The lies of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda—lies that the Times did much to promote—have been thoroughly discredited. The newspaper and the American media as a whole have resorted to simply repeating the propaganda that the American government puts out about defeating terrorism and ensuring “stability.”

The Times has published nothing that seriously analyzes the purpose of the American occupation or the nature of the opposition that it confronts. It has done nothing to justify its call for sending tens of thousands more American youth to kill and be killed.

The shameful position being staked out by the New York Times demonstrates once again the complete complicity of the media and the liberal establishment in the crimes that are being carried out in Iraq.

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US faces stiff resistance in Fallujah

A United States tank company commander in Iraq says guerrillas are putting up a strong fight in the Jolan district of north-western Fallujah, a rebel stronghold.

US troops with crack Iraqi soldiers have surged towards the heart of Fallujah in a hail of explosions and gunfire, on the second day of the largest operation in Iraq since last year's US-led invasion.

Tank company commander Captain Robert Bodisch says troops are meeting fierce resistance.

"These people are hardcore," Capt Bodisch told Reuters. "They are putting up a strong fight and I saw many of them on the street I was on.

"A man pulled out from behind a wall and fired an RPG at my tank. I have to get another tank to go back in there," he added without giving details.

A high-ranking US officer has told AFP that troops have moved to less than one kilometre from the centre of Fallujah.

In a two-pronged assault, thousands of US troops poured into the Jolan neighbourhood and the Askari district in the north-east, where they took control of the city's railway station overnight.

"The offensive is from north to south," the high-ranking officer told AFP.

The troops "faced resistance at the beginning but there is almost no resistance now", the officer said.

Fearful of roadside bombs as they stormed the Jolan sector, seen as the heart of rebel activity in the city, US marines smashed through a railway line and ploughed through fields, an AFP reporter embedded with the unit said.

Knocking down walls, they moved house-to-house through the neighbourhood, spraying rounds of machine gun fire at buildings from where militants fought back with mortars.

A smattering of specially trained Iraqi forces accompanied the marines, while many more were poised on the outskirts of the city, preparing to enter.

Iraqi and US officials believe that Iraq's most wanted militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and his followers have turned Fallujah into an operating base.

They gave the residents an ultimatum to surrender the fighters or face assault but city leaders insist such people are not there.

Up to 90 per cent of Fallujah's 300,000 residents fled the city to surrounding camps or Baghdad as living conditions deteriorated and fears of the assault grew.

Doctors inside the besieged city painted a grim picture amid a chronic lack of medical equipment, trained staff, water and electricity.

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Blair has departed from the rule of law, says his former adviser


Tony Blair's former senior diplomatic adviser on Europe has accused the Prime Minister, and George Bush, of acting illegally over the war on Iraq.

In a speech last night, Sir Stephen Wall, who served under Baroness Thatcher, John Major and Mr Blair before leaving Downing Street this year, questioned the Prime Minister's judgement and accused him of "departing from the rule of law".

The timing of Sir Stephen's remarks, as the battle for Fallujah begins, were seen as highly damaging for Mr Blair, who faced criticism yesterday for committing British troops to support the assault. Sir Stephen, well-known for his pro-European views, is widely respected in the diplomatic community.

One source said: "He is an ultra-loyalist mandarin. It is astonishing that he has done this." His comments also raised further questions about the number of senior civil servants who privately believed the war to be illegal.

Sir Stephen, speaking at Chatham House, formerly known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, said it should have been possible for a common European view on Iraq to have been reached before Britain became committed to an "unstoppable course of action" by the United States.

"I believe that in Britain we allowed our judgement of the direct consequences of inaction to override our judgement of the even more dire consequences of departing from the rule of law," he said.

In a sideswipe at Mr Blair, he added that to portray the choice as between effective action American-style, and inaction European or UN-style, was a caricature.

Downing Street played down the remarks, saying: "Sir Stephen Wall is entitled to his opinion. This was not his area of responsibility when he worked for the Government."

Last week, Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, made an appeal for the Fallujah attack to be avoided. Mr Annan has also said the war was illegal.

Mr Blair rejected the UN letter calling for caution, when he was challenged about it by Labour MPs and Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader

"The secretary general in his letter said the Iraqi elections were the keystone of progress in Iraq. That is true. It is true also that he went on to express reservations about the action in Fallujah," Mr Blair said. "It is important we retain the moral high ground in fighting for elections in Iraq but part of us doing that is to keep emphasising [that] if the terrorists were to stop the elections would go forward. Why do the terrorists fear elections? Because they know that, given the chance, Iraqis would reject extremism and fanaticism."
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How many dead innocent Iraqis is too many?

Surely we have not been reduced to arguing that we are not as bad as terrorists, writes Waleed Aly.

Too many innocent people are dying in Iraq. A recent report, in the medical journal The Lancet, estimates 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the beginning of the US-led invasion. Half of them are women and children. Almost all were killed by coalition air strikes.

Take a minute to think about the enormity of this human cost. Think of it as September 11, 30 times over.

Though it wildly exceeds all previous figures, The Lancet estimate is credible, and perhaps even conservative, according to independent statisticians who analysed the data and found the report's methodologically sound.

But what if it is not? Even the lowest estimate, unsurprisingly that of the British Foreign Secretary, places the number of civilian deaths at 10,000. The popular website http://www.iraqbodycount.com puts the figure at a minimum of 14,000. We are still talking about four times the number of September 11 casualties. That's eight planes and eight towers.

Surely now, the governments that took us to this war and we, as people who are happy to re-elect them, must face up to our culpability for this carnage. We claim to hold that the lives of civilians are sacrosanct. We assert that the fabric of humanity is torn with every death of every innocent civilian. Indeed, that is why terrorism sickens us.

So why do we not think of these deaths as tragic in the same way we do those of September 11, Bali, Madrid or Beslan? For the Iraqis, we will hold no multi-faith services, no commemorative anniversary functions and we will give no human faces to them. Perhaps some innocent lives are more sacrosanct than others.
We are talking about four times the number of September 11 casualties. Eight planes and eight towers.

Of course, there is a crucial difference between the civilian deaths caused by terrorism, and those caused by the US-led coalition in Iraq. Coalition forces did not target the innocent as terrorists do.

True, we should not lose sight of this. But we should also not abuse it to dehumanise those we have killed, and evade the responsibility we rightfully bear. We speak of Iraqi civilians, even 100,000 of them, not as victims, but as collateral damage. We did not murder them as terrorists murder their victims, because there was no intention to kill them.

It is simply not good enough to hide our guilt in this way. Our actions were always destined to claim thousands of civilian lives. This was not merely probable; it was certain. We recognised that certainty and pressed on anyway. The fact that killing innocents was not the aim, but rather a guaranteed byproduct of our action, does not absolve us.

Australian lawyers call this reckless murder, and once stripped of euphemism, that is what collateral damage is. We own the responsibility for the foreseen, likely consequences of our actions.

Confronted with The Lancet's grotesque estimate, Defence Minister Robert Hill fell back on the standard defence that Iraqis would be better off without Saddam Hussein. This is the argument that killing is justified where it is necessary in defence of another.

However, on the basis of The Lancet estimate, it is ridiculous to suggest that justification applies here. It took Saddam several decades to kill 300,000 people. We have managed a third of that in just 18 months.

But whatever the death toll, if removing Saddam was really the goal, can we honestly say all this deadly "shock and awe" was necessary to achieve it?

Sergeant Scott, a soldier in Iraq, clearly did not think so when he told Britain's Daily Telegraph: "You could have sent two men in to kill Saddam. Why did we have to kill so many people?" He was speaking less than a month after the invasion began. I cannot imagine what he would say now.

This does not mean there is moral equivalence between al-Qaeda-style terrorism and our civilian killings in Iraq. But does there have to be? That our actions do not meet the depravity of terrorism does not justify them. Since when have terrorists provided the moral standard against which we judge ourselves? Are we really reduced to arguing that we are not as bad as them?

Our concern, as people whose governments are waging war in our name, should be for the legitimacy of our own actions. When it comes to our actions in Iraq, that legitimacy has been fatally eroded. We have now run out of excuses.

Waleed Aly is a Melbourne lawyer and a member of the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria.

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