Fallujah, Guernica : A historical perspective

by PEPE ESCOBAR

The Fallujah offensive has virtually disappeared from the news cycle. But history - if written by Iraqis - may well enshrine it as the new Guernica. Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre memorably writing about the Algerian War (1956-62), after Fallujah no two Americans shall meet without a corpse lying between them: the up to 500,000 victims of the sanctions in the 1990s, according to United Nations experts; the up to 100,000 victims since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, according to the British medical paper The Lancet; and at least 6,000 victims, and counting, in Fallujah, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent.

The new Guernica
Fallujah is the new Guernica. The residents of the Basque capital in 1937 were resisting the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Fallujah in 2004 was resisting the dictator Iyad Allawi, the US-installed interim premier. Franco asked Nazi Germany - which supported him - to bomb Guernica, just as Allawi "asked" the Pentagon to bomb Fallujah. Guernica had no air force and no anti-aircraft guns to defend itself - just like Fallujah. In Guernica - as in Fallujah - there was no distinction between civilians and guerrillas: the order was to "kill them all". The Nazis shouted "Viva la muerte!" ("Long live death") along with their fascist Spanish counterparts before bombing Guernica.

Marine commanders said on the record that Fallujah was the house of Satan. Franco denied the Guernica massacre and blamed the local population - just as Allawi and the Pentagon deny any civilian deaths and insist "insurgents" are guilty: after all, they dared to defend their own city, hiding inside their hundreds of formerly intact mosques.


www.atimes.com...

History is the only point of comparison we have when it comes to widescale crimes and massacres. How will history remember the american occupation ?

[edit on 1-12-2004 by Mokuhadzushi]

You just got my vote for that post pal

Exellent!

Gee, I guess I missed the part where we sent in our air force without warning to bomb a market square packed with civilians after first systematically destroying all thier lines of retreat.

And I guess I just imagined the part where we gave Falluja nearly a month's worth of warning that we intended to invade.

Mokuhadzushi -

Please learn how to use the QUOTES functions so that people will be able to tell the difference between your propaganda and the propaganda you post that was written by others.

[*quote*] propaganda [*/quote*] (remove the stars and they become commands.)

FThe article is not 'propaganda', but a well researched and enlightening historical perspective on the Fallujah massacre.

Originally posted by Corinthas
You just got my vote for that post pal

Exellent!

Thanks!

Propaganda can be well thought out and a bit of research is necessary in order to find some historical comparison to propaganda and fiction.