Who the hell do they think they are?

There is much to learn from the occupation resistance in Iraq that is successfully pinning down history's most powerful military, and keeping it from its planned global blitzkrieg.

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

What's unusual in all reporting on the war in Iraq is that no one in the media seems to notice that a big void has appeared in war coverage where the view and facts from the other side would normally appear.

No opinion writers seem to have paused to reflect on this absence, no daring field reporters have attempted to contact and report from the other side, and the other side has not had a press release, a press conference, or even a title for themselves appear in any Western media.

One might be led to believe there is no "other side" in this war, if it weren't for their 30 or so attacks every day efficiently taking out Americans and their collaborators. The original official line, dutifully reported intact in Western media, was that the other side was a ragtag bunch of "bitter-enders" merely firing off their remaining stocks of ammunition. That was before anyone noticed the coherent strategy unfolding, first in the bombing of the Jordanian embassy, then the bombing of the Red Cross offices, and then, to stress a point, the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. That's when they became the left-over Bathists. When the leader of the Bathists, Saddam Hussein was captured on December 13 last year, the line changed to "Al Qaeda"-a catch-all term for any troubles of any kind the White House can't pin on anyone specifically.

The American commanders in the field have unabashedly stressed repeatedly that they simply don't know who it is who attacks them and collaborating Iraqis. Local Iraqi collaborators sycophantically suggest the hand of Al Qaeda can be seen amongst the twisted car bumpers and severed limbs, knowing only that that is what the Americans would like to hear, and nothing else.

Even more bewildering is the subject of the motives of the shadowy people conducting the war of resistance. It is not the guessing about what the motives might be that is troubling, but the utter lack of guessing that is going on. No one in the Western media seems to care that we know nothing about this combatant that has managed to grind down the world's sole remaining superpower, and they seem to care even less about why this combatant is doing so. Still less does anyone seem inspired to wonder about how they are doing this.

And yet, whoever they are, and why they are doing it, and however they are managing it, there is one undeniable surprise here: the most technologically advanced military superpower the planet has ever seen, manned by the most coolly efficient and completely propagandized cadre of service people as any military can field these days, has been utterly neutered before the world on its most audacious and frightful mission in its 228-year history.

Bear in mind that prior to the American launch into Mesopotamia, there was serious talk of further imminent forays into Syria, Iran, and North Korea, all during the present presidential term. That is all off now. And whom does the world have to thank for stopping in its tracks this lunatic American scheme? We don't know, because absolutely no one has gone to find out who they are out there bravely confronting the blunt end of American superpower wrath-and living to tell about it, presumably, if anyone bothered to ask them.

Lest anyone think this shadowy resistance doesn't play fair by their propensity to attack civilian targets, one need only reflect that in fact, they haven't really been doing so. Foreign-controlled agencies like the UN and the Red Cross, and collaborationist police stations, have been the kind of targets struck. It was the Americans who, in the first Gulf War, invented the anti-septic term for civilians killed in the course of legitimate military attacks: collateral damage. It is in any event also the Americans who taught the world all about deliberate attacks upon large numbers of civilians, in Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in 1945.

And lest anyone think it would be so much better for everyone concerned if the resistance were to go away, one need only reflect upon the alleged cause for war proposed by the Americans in the first place: absolute bald-faced lies, all of them, as they now all too cavalierly admit. It cannot be anything but a disaster if governance is won by people capable of concocting lies of this magnitude, told so socio-pathologically to the world from the floor of the United Nations, and acted on so psycho-pathologically in launching a murderous attack costing thousands of lives and tens of thousands of shattered bodies, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of traumatized minds on both sides of the conflict. They in the White House are seriously twisted folks. It will not be good in any way for them to win anything. Thanks to the shadowy Iraqi resistance, they haven't yet.

So, without being able to go see for ourselves, and without the benefit of reading anyone else who has bothered, we are left to guess about who they are, why they are doing this, and how they are managing it. And we can all learn a lesson from this brave example unfolding before us.

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