Review of “Genocide in Iraq . Volume I. The case against the UN Security Council and member states” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani originally published as Dr Gideon Polya, ““Genocide in Iraq, The Case Against UN Security Council And Member States ” Book Review”, Countercurrents, 8 February, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080213.htm (see also "Book Reviews by Dr Gideon Polya": https://sites.google.com/site/bookreviewsbydrgideonpolya/ ) .
“Genocide in Iraq . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani (Foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino; Clarity Press, Atlanta) is an extremely important book that sets out the case for prosecution of people involved in the Zionist-backed, US-spearheaded genocide in Iraq during the period of Sanctions (1990-2003). Of course, as recognized by the authors, the carnage continued after the illegal US-led invasion and occupation. However the authors have chosen here to limit consideration to the horrendous effects of Sanctions because they were UN sanctioned, and in being associated with an estimated 1.7 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation (1990-2003; substantially children; an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide) violated the intent and letter of international law and international humanitarian conventions devised to protect non-combatants and children. This book should be in every state, city, local, school and university library so that everyone throughout the world (and especially children) can see for themselves the horrendous consequences of mass collective punishment of civilian populations to achieve political and strategic ends i.e. of state terrorism or more precisely, collective state terrorism. However, before reviewing “Genocide in Iraq ” in detail it is important to define critical terms such as Holocaust, Genocide, Terrorism, State Terrorism and War Crimes.
1. Holocaust. Holocaust is the destruction of a large number of people. The term was first applied to a WW2 atrocity by Jog in 1944 ( Jog, N.G. (1944), “Churchill's Blind-Spot: India”, New Book Company, Bombay ) in relation to the “forgotten” man-made Bengal Famine (Bengali Holocaust) in which 6-7 million Indians (many of them Muslims, and hence the term WW2 Muslim Holocaust) were deliberately starved to death by the British in 1942-1945 (Australia was complicit in this atrocity by withholding grain from its huge wheat stores from starving India). The term “holocaust” was subsequently applied to the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) which was part of a horrendous WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed in the Nazi German Lebensraum genocide).
Unfortunately the genocidally racist Zionists (who were complicit in the Jewish Holocaust by collaboration with the Nazis, opposing placement of Jewish refugees anywhere but Palestine, and by persuading pro-Zionist Churchill (who used poison gas against Iraqis in the 1930s) to oppose the Joel Brand scheme to save 0.7 million Hungarian Jews) have appropriated the term Holocaust to mean only the WW2 Jewish Holocaust to the exclusion of all other holocausts, including recent Zionist-backed holocausts e.g. (deaths from violence or from violently-imposed deprivation in parenthesis) the Palestinian Holocaust (2 million since 1936), the Iraqi Holocaust (4.6 million since 1990), the Somali Holocaust (2.2 million since 1992), and the Afghan Holocaust (5.0 million since 2001).
2. Genocide. Genocide is very precisely defined in International Law as “ acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”, as set out by Article 2 of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Supporters of US state terrorism argue that even if millions of Iraqis died, there was no “intent” on the part of the US Alliance and that most of these deaths were “collateral damage”. This argument is fatuous. Thus the “intent' of a serial killer is not abolished by his refusal to confess or otherwise explicitly declare “intent” – it can be clearly established simply by the evidence of sustained, remorseless actions leading to serial deaths. Likewise, for example, the sustained, remorseless actions (and inactions) of the British and Australians caused the deaths of 6-7 million Indians in 1942-1945 (an Indian Genocide and a Bengali Genocide), and sustained perpetrator actions brought about the continuing post-1936 Palestinian Genocide, post-1990 Iraqi Genocide, post-1992 Somali Genocide and post-2001 Afghan Genocide. These very specific genocide terms and the magnitude of the death toll are remorselessly excluded from Western Mainstream media (MSM) which act as propaganda tools for US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, French state terrorism and Israeli state terrorism. As set out in “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, MSM adopt the position that the “good guys” (the West) liberate, democratize and certainly don't commit genocides or holocausts, crimes that are only committed by the “bad guys” (Third World people, Serbs, and, in general, the people the US doesn't like (see “Book Review “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson”, Countercurrents, 5 December 2011 : http://www.countercurrents.org/polya051211.htm ).
Thus Denis Halliday (who resigned after 34 years with the UN, including being UN assistant secretary-general, over the Sanctions imposed on Iraq, characterizing them as “genocide”) (2000): “All the members of the Permanent Security Council, when they passed 1284, reconfirmed that economic sanctions had to be sustained, knowing the consequences. That constitutes ‘intent to kill', because we know that sanctions are killing several thousand per month. Now, of the five permanent members, three abstained; but an abstention is no better than a vote for, in a sense. Britain and America of course voted for this continuation. The rest of them don't count because they're lackeys, or they're paid off. The only country that stood up was Malaysia , and they also abstained. But you know, by abstaining instead of using your veto, when you are a permanent member you're guilty because you're continuing something that has this deadly impact. However, I would normally point the finger at London and Washington , because they are the most active in sustaining sanctions: they are the ones who will not compromise" (see: Denis Halliday, interviewed by David Edwards, “Half a million children under five are dead in Iraq – who is responsible. An interview with Denis Halliday - Former Assistant Secretary-General of The United Nations”, Media Lens, May 2000: http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77:an-interview-with-denis-halliday&catid=6&Itemid=47 ).
3. Terrorism and State Terrorism. These terms are explored by outstanding Jewish American humanitarian and linguistics scholar Professor Noam Chomsky of 77-Nobel–Laureate Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in an interview with David Barsamian in November 2001: “ Barsamian: Your comment that the U.S. is a “leading terrorist state” might stun many Americans. Could you elaborate on that? Chomsky: I just gave one example, Nicaragua . The U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. It continues international terrorism… Barsamian: Could you very briefly define the political uses of terrorism? Where does it fit in the doctrinal system? Chomsky: The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low–intensity warfare.” That's the official doctrine. If you read the definition of low–intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of “terrorism” in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they're almost the same. Terrorism is the use of coercive means aimed at civilian populations in an effort to achieve political, religious, or other aims. That's what the World Trade Center bombing was, a particularly horrifying terrorist crime. And that's official doctrine. I mentioned a couple of examples. We could go on and on. It's simply part of state action, not just the U.S. of course. Furthermore, all of these things should be well known. It's shameful that they're not” (see “The United States is a leading terrorist state”, Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian, Monthly Review , vol. 53, no. 6, November, 2001: http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/200111--02.htm ).
4. War Crimes. War crimes are crimes committed that violate International Law as, for example, set out in the UN Genocide Convention and the Geneva Convention. In a post-WW1 era of increasingly high technological war, civilians have increasingly become the victims, dying in millions through violence and through war-imposed deprivation. While International Law outlaws the killing of civilians, it can be estimated that 38 million Asians , mostly civilians, have died from violence or from war-imposed deprivation in post-1950 US Asian wars. Yet collective punishment of civilians is a war crime and Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War unequivocally demand that an Occupier must provide the conquered subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. In Iraq avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation under sanctions (1990-2003) and Occupation (2003-2011) totaled 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively, as determined from UN Population Division data (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ). Apologists for the US-led war criminals falsely argue that many deaths under Occupation were due to “civil war” and would also falsely argue that Iraq was not “occupied” under Sanctions. Yet Iraq under Sanctions was “occupied “ in a similar sense to how Vietnam was “occupied” and the Gaza Concentration Camp is still “occupied”, subject to relentless, life- and infrastructure-destroying bombing, in the case of Iraq by the UK, the US (and, I am informed by a Defence expert, by Apartheid Israel) – “control without occupation”. Indeed the Americans under Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama now have a policy of policing the whole Muslim world (plus presumably other regions as well but excepting some powerful, sensitive or White countries) by using drones for extrajudicial killing of people and destruction of infrastructure they don't like (see Greg Mitchell, “Outrage mounts in media over Obama drone “kill rules””, The Nation, 6 February 2013: http://www.thenation.com/blog/172694/outrage-mounts-media-over-obama-drone-kill-rules# ).
In his Foreword to “Genocide in Iraq ”, Professor Joseph Castellino (Professor of International Law, Middlesex University , UK ) writes: “ The Al-Anis' book provides a context to Iraq that many commentators on Iraq seem unaware of. Their and our engagement with this text is crucial if we are going to begin to address the injustice that is collectively being felt in Iraq . Yet in many ways this book is not about Iraq at all. It is about the distance to which we have fallen as an international community in debasing the values contained in the United nations Charter” (p12 ). Thus, for example, sanctions imposed by nuclear terrorist states such as the UK , US, France and Apartheid Israel on nuclear weapons-rejecting and nuclear weapons-free Iran are currently associated with an estimated 100,000 avoidable Iranian deaths each year. Conversely in this Orwellian world , about 100,000 people die from opiate drug-related causes each year due to US Alliance of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in 2001 to 90% in 2007 (see “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).
The Introduction to “Genocide in Iraq” outlines the purpose of the book which is to record the devastation of Iraq under sanctions, contextualize Iraq within an Arab World subject to hegemony, invasion, occupation, and devastation by an endlessly greedy, interventionist, exceptionalist, warmongering, and Zionist-beholden America and by genocidal, racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel, and to make out a legal case against the UN Security Council and member states for their involvement in the destruction of Iraq, the Iraqi Genocide. The Al-Anis : “The purpose of this book. The imposition of sanctions on Iraq was one of the most heinous of crimes committed in the 20th century. Never in modern history of the world has any nation been subjected to such indiscriminate and brutal collective punishment. But that crime received very little attention in the Anglo-American world. The explanation of this failure was most eloquently summed up by Professor Thomas Nagy [ George Washington University Business School ]: “Many, including the author recoil from contemplating the possibility that a Western democracy, particularly the USA , could commit genocide. However, it is precisely this painful and even taboo possibility which needs t be examined”” (p15).
Chapter 1, Iraq's millennia of rich history” describes the long history of Iraq back to the dawn of human civilization in Mesopotamia and up to invasion by Britain in 1914 and the subsequent infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) between Britain and France to divide up the Middle East: “The Wilaya [province] of Baghdad inherited the Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, Mosul (formerly Nineveh) inherited the Assyrian Empire, while Basrah inherited Uruk and Ur- the Akkadian/ Sumerian Empire. At no time until the beginning of the 20th century, and even after the arrival of the colonialists, had there been a political entity of any form on the Western side of the Persian Gulf between Oman and Basrah. The political authority of the Wali (Governor) of Basrah extended, to varying degrees, down to the borders of Oman ” (p19). This chapter also deals with the Shi'a and Sunni divide in early Muslim Iraq, the glories of Muslim culture based on Baghdad and the genocidal sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols under Hulagu in 1258, destruction of a kind that was to be repeated by the US Alliance in the period 1990-2011.
Chapter 2, “From monarchy to occupation,. Iraq from 1916 to 2003” details Iraqi history under the British invaders and post-independence up until the illegal and war criminal US Alliance invasion in 2003 (for a very succinct, avoidable mortality-related history of Iraq and indeed of all countries from neolithic times up to the present see my book .”Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ ). Chapter 2 deals with the UK-installed puppet monarchy; oil; successive military and Ba-athist regimes; Iraqi concessions to Iran to stop the Israeli-backed Kurdish revolt, and the subsequent disastrous invasion of Iran in the US-backed Iran-Iraq War; the disastrous invasion of Kuwait (greenlighted by the endlessly mendacious Americans); and suppression of Shi'a interests by secularist Ba'athist but minority Sunni-origin Saddam Hussein: “Thus when the American tanks rolled into Baghdad on 9 April 2003, many Shi'a in Baghdad felt it was not their battle” (p57).
Chapter 3, “The Bas'ath pursues the economic development of Iraq ” is summarized by its first sentence: “Whatever one's opinion regarding the Ba'ath regime, no one can deny that between 1968 and 2003, Iraq had been transformed from a non-developed country to a semi-industrialized one” (p58). The Ba'ath [renaissance, resurrection) Party's motto “Unity, Liberty , Socialism” summed up its pro-Arabism, anti-imperialism and socialist agenda. Under Ba'ath regimes Iraq made huge strides in oil exploitation, industry, irrigation, agriculture, electrification etc and in generating a requisite large, educated population.
Chapter 4, “The Ba'ath's progressive social and political policies” summarizes how the Ba'athists established a public welfare-based socialist state. Ba'athist Iraq sought Kurdish and other participation, noting that “It is worth noting here, almost 40 years later, Turkey, a NATO member and a contender for the EU, still refuses to recognize the Kurdish language, which Iraq made official in 1974” (p98). The Ba'athists variously espoused non-Ba'athist participation, encouraged religious freedom and womens' rights, hugely expanded free education and made huge strides in public health. Democracy ultimately means satisfying the will of the people and a fundamental desire of all people is for the survival of their children. Thus Table 4.4 (p108) indicates that under-5 infant mortality (deaths per 1,000 births) was 171 (1960), 127 (1970), 83 (1980) and 50 (1990). This enormous achievement was to be undone by 2 decades of Zionist-backed , US - UK -imposed sanctions, bombing, war and occupation. Indeed infant mortality jumped to 125 deaths per 1,000 births after imposition of sanctions (although this is denied and falsified by the Maliki Puppet Regime).
Chapter 5, “The destruction of Iraq” details the progressive destruction of Iraq after its 2 August 1990, US-greenlighted invasion of Kuwait that had been part of Iraq since time immemorial but existed as an entity under International Law through illegal actions of genocidal British imperialists . In contrast, colonization- and genocide-based, and only 65-years-old Apartheid Israel still occupies territories it illegally seized in 1967 from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, the peoples of which had been living in those territories from the dawn of history – however it was not subject to international sanctions and still has the full backing of the US, UK, EU, Canada and Australia (except for increasingly disingenuous and meaingless assertions about the “peace process, 90% of Palestine now having been ethnically cleansed of Indigenous inhabitants). In 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (the Malvinas), formerly uninhabited islands that the British had claimed and settled from circa 1770 onwards; the Argentinians were expelled by the British but Argentina was not bombed back to the Stone Age (649 Argentinians were killed in the 1982 Falklands War as compared to the 4.6 million Iraqis killed in the period 1990-2011). The Al-Anis state: “Regardless of what explanations and justifications were given for the military assault on Iraq in January 1991, in reality, the destruction began on 6 August 1990, the day the Security Council adopted resolution 661 which imposed the most brutal total blockade against Iraq . Never before has a state been subjected to such collective measures, a blockade, not dissimilar to the sieges of the Middle Ages, which prevented everything from going in or out of the country” (p114).
The UN-ordered “Ahtisaari Report” was submitted on 20 March 1991 and stated in part: “The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society … Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy an technology” (p127). A further dozen years of sanctions , coupled with UK, US and Israeli bombing, were to further destroy Iraqi power, water, sanitation, irrigation, agriculture, education, industry, oil production, and health infrastructure as detailed in “Genocide in Iraq” e.g. “By 2002, nearly 20-30% of Iraq's potentially irrigable land had become unusable, i.e. had been converted to desert by salinization of irrigation projects” (p142) – an immense crime against humanity in the land that invented agriculture 7,000 years ago.
The most damning part of the book describes the impact on children: “Numerous studies have been conducted on the effects of continuing sanctions on the people of Iraq … A survey undertaken by two independent scientists in November 1995 on behalf of the FAO found that there has been a nearly five-fold increase in mortality among children under the age of five in Baghdad compared to the period prior to the imposition of economic sanctions. The sustained mortality has resulted in half a million child deaths related to the war and the sanctions occurring over the past five years. The study concluded, “At this level of malnutrition and excess mortality, among children under the age of five, Iraq is increasingly becoming like a concentration camp. The economic pressure exerted by on the country by the U.S. and the international community effectively serves as a barbed wire”” (p136).
Chapter 6, “Sanctions and International law”, commences by comparing UN Resolutions on Iraq versus Resolutions on Israel : “But one example of ongoing double standards in UN application of punitive measures” (p143). A key point made by the Alanis in the sub-section “Invoking Chapter VII: the abuse of international law”, is that “Despite all the wars, interventions and aggressions that have plagued international relations since WWII, Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which enables action to be taken against a faulting state, has rarely been invoked and only ever against Third World states… in fact it is submitted here that the imposition of sanctions on Iraq, when it was no longer a threat to international peace, was itself an act of war or aggression and, by imposing sanctions, the Security Council was itself guilty of breaching international law… sanctions are unjust because the most fundamental principle of justice is that the innocent should not be punished and sanctions are clearly indiscriminate punishment” (p147-150). The Al-Anis point out that “The Hague Regulations (1907) concerning the Laws and Customs of Wars on Land is a good starting point. Article 50 of the Regulations provides that “No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible”” (p152). The Al-Anis proceed to examine gross violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Rights of the Child by the imposition of sanctions on Iraq .
Chapter 7, “The Genocide Convention and the question of intent” considers the articles of the UN Genocide Convention, most notably genocide as “ acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” and the claims of the Anglo-American war criminals that they did not “intend” to kill Iraqi children through sanctions and that these were “collateral damage” in an attempt to “make the world a safer place” Of course there was no evidence for the alleged Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (and if Iraq had had them would surely not have contemplated committing national suicide by using them for whatever reason against remote Britain or even remoter United States.) The Al-Anis tellingly state “In the USA “intent” is not one of the classifications of mental states. The influential Model Penal Code in North America sets out the following classes of mental states: Purposefully, Knowingly, Recklessly, and Negligently. It is immediately apparent that while common law in England acknowledges “intent” there is no such recognized corresponding class in the US” (p185). Remorseless, sustained violent action, knowingly causing the deaths of huge numbers of people over a prolonged period (4.6 million Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation , 1990-2011) is “intentional” and, accordingly, genocide.
The Al-Anis quote former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark; “There can be no doubt that the sanctions against Iraq intentionally destroyed in major part members of a national group and a religious group, as such, killing members of the groups, causing bodily and mental harm to their members and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, at least, in part. If this is not genocide, what is?”. They also quote Professor George Bisharat (Professor of Law at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, California,) on genocide in Iraq: “Knowing pursuit of a policy that kills members of a group, causes serious bodily or mental harm to them or inflicts on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part constitutes genocide under international law” (p195).
Chapter 8, “The Sanctions Committee oversight”, describes how the UN Sanctions Committee reported at 90-day intervals to the Security Council on implementation of Sanctions against Iraq i.e. they were well aware of the horrendous human consequences. In 2000 the Secretary General of the UN stated: “Let me conclude by saying that the humanitarian situation in Iraq poses a serious moral dilemma for this organization… I am particularly concerned about the situation of Iraqi children, whose suffering and, in all too many cases, untimely death, have been documented in the report prepared last year by UNICEF and the Iraqi Ministry of Health” (p207). Many other people expressed similar concerns but to no avail.
Chapter 9, “Sanctions as genocide”, commences “ When a country is put under total blockade for some thirteen years during which nothing was allowed in or out and even essential medicine and medical equipment was subject to restrictions, then any of the results in Article 2 of the Genocide Convention were either intended by the perpetrators, or the perpetrators had no doubt that their actions would lead to these results, or they knew that these results would occur in the ordinary sense of events – each of which amounts to specific intent under English law” (p215). The Al-Anis reasonably conclude; “We submit that every state that acquiesced in the continuation of sanctions in Iraq , when all international bodies were reporting the genocidal effects of sanctions, ought to be considered guilt of complicity in genocide. To fail to do this signals a weakening of public international legal norms, and subjects the discipline to the politics of power – indeed in matters where it matters most, throws it out the window… This assertion is supported by Article IV of the Convention which reads: “Persons committing Genocide or any of the acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”” (p219).
The final chapter of “Genocide in Iraq ”, “Conclusion. The need for an appropriate judicial inquiry”, commences with the following damning assessment: “ Imposing sanction on Iraq was one of the most heinous of crimes committed in the 20th century. Yet it has received little attention in the Anglo-American world. Despite the calamitous destruction resulting from the sanctions, no serious attempts by legal professionals, academics or philosophers have been undertaken to address the full scope of the immorality and illegality of such a criminal and unprecedented mass punishment” (p222). The authors attribute this disaster to British and French colonialism, US imperialism and greed for oil, and the that “:the creation of the State if Israel was precisely to serve the purpose of having a geographical barrier between the Middle East Arabs and North African Arabs in addition to solving the Jewish problem for the civilized Europeans” (p223).
This extremely important book concludes “As there is no statute of limitations with regard to bringing action in any of the crimes committed against Iraq, it is hoped that this book will serve not only as an indictment of and barrier to future global imposition of sanctions, but also as a tool in bringing the actual perpetrators of this crime to a Nuremberg-style day of judgment” (p228).
I have been reporting the horrendous human cost of Western imperialism for several decades. I have endlessly apprised my own country Australia about the Iraqi Genocide (see “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ; Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/home ) and have made repeated, detailed complaints to the International Criminal Court about the Iraqi Genocide and related atrocities (see: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/9-january-2010 ). However Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist-perverted Mainstream media resolutely look the other way. Indeed the US-installed Iraqi Government has evidently falsified UN Iraq infant mortality statistics to claim that Iraqi infant mortality decreased under sanctions and Occupation and that under-5 infant deaths totalled 0.4 million (1990-2003) and 0.8 million (1990-2011) - whereas pre-Maliki Puppet Regime UN Population Division data indicate that Iraqi under-5 infant deaths increased enormously under sanctions and Occupation, totaling 1.2 million (1990-2003) and 2.0 million (1990-2011).
What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) tell everyone they can and ensure that “Genocide in Iraq” is in every library ; (b) demand war crimes trials and removal from public life for all the leaders and their associates of the US, UK, Australia and other countries involved in the Iraqi Holocaust; and (c) urge and apply sanctions as consumers and voters against all countries, corporations, people, politicians and parties complicit in the Iraqi Genocide. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.
Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
Review of “Genocide In Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration Of A Modern State” by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani & Tariq Al-Ani, originally published as Gideon Polya, ““Genocide In Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration Of A Modern State”” Countercurrents, 15 March, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150315.htm .
Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani have published “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State” (Clarity Press, 2015), a carefully documented, must-read account of the Zionist-backed US Alliance destruction of Iraq and the killing of millions of Iraqis over the last quarter century for oil, US hegemony and for military dominance of the Middle East by a nuclear-armed, genocidally racist Apartheid Israel. This is a damning case that everyone should read to prevent recurrence (history ignored yields history repeated) and for ultimate legal recourse and Nuremberg-style justice for the Iraqi people.
Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani is an Iraqi-born British-trained barrister who has PhDs in electronic engineering and international law and is the author of “The Trial of Saddam Hussain”. Tariq Al-Ani is a Finland-based architect, translator and researcher on Arabic and Islamic issues.
“Genocide in Iraq Volume I . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” by Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani (foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino; Clarity Press, Atlanta) [1] is an extremely important book that sets out the case for prosecution of people involved in the Zionist-backed, US-lead genocide in Iraq during the period of Sanctions (1990-2003) that was associated, by my estimation based on UN data, with 0.2 million violent deaths, 1.7 million avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation, and 1.2 million under-5 year old Iraqi infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to gross violation by the US Alliance of the Geneva Convention [2, 3, 4].
Neocon American ad Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted and perverted Western Mainstream media utterly ignore expert assessments of how many people the US Alliance has killed in Iraq and resolutely ignore the crucial epidemiological concept of non-violent avoidable deaths (excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) associated with war-imposed deprivation (for detailed analysis see [4]). Thus, by way of example, on the occasion of US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 the endlessly lying Australian ABC (US lackey Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC) reported that “The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead" [5]. In contrast, the expert and eminent US Just Foreign Policy organization estimates, based on the data of expert UK analysts and top US medical epidemiologists, 1.5 million violent deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011) [6, 7, 8] and UN data indicate a further 0.8 million Iraq avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in this period [3]. Accordingly, Iraqi deaths from violence (1.7 million) or war-imposed deprivation (2.9 million) since 1990 total 4.6 million [6].
However it gets worse. Assuming excess mortality of Iraqis under British rule or hegemony (1914- 1948) was the same as for Indians under the British (interpolation from available data indicate Indian avoidable death rates in “deaths per 1,000 of population per year” of 37 (1757-1920), 35 (1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950) [9]), one can estimate from Iraqi population data [10] that Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation under British occupation and hegemony from 1914-1950 totalled about 4 million. Thus ignoring Iraqi deaths associated with the US-backed Iraq-Iran War, one can estimate that about 9 million Iraqi deaths from UK or US violence or imposed deprivation in the century after the 1914 invasion of Iraq by Britain
Holocaust is the destruction of a large number of people and 9 million Iraqi deaths from Anglo-American violence or violently-imposed deprivation certainly constitutes an Iraqi Holocaust. The term “holocaust” was first applied to a WW2 atrocity by Jog in 1944 [11] in relation to the “forgotten” man-made Bengal Famine (Bengali Holocaust) in which 6-7 million Indians (many of them Muslims, and hence the term WW2 Muslim Holocaust) were deliberately starved to death by the British in 1942-1945 (Australia was complicit in this atrocity by withholding grain from its huge wartime wheat stores from starving India) [11, 12, 13]. The term “holocaust” was subsequently applied to the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation according to the recently deceased, pro-Iraq War, Iraqi Genocide-ignoring, Iraqi Holocaust-ignoring, Bengali Holocaust-ignoring, genocide-denying, holocaust-denying, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, UK Zionist historian Professor Sir Martin Gilbert [14]), noting that the WW2 Jewish Holocaust was part of a vastly greater WW2 European Holocaust in which 30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies were killed [4].
The appalling carnage in Iraq certainly justifies the “Genocide in Iraq” title of the Al-Anis' 2 volumes “Genocide in Iraq Volume I . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” [1] and “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State”[15]. Genocide is very precisely defined in International Law as “ acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”, as set out by Article 2 of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” [16]. Any argument that the British and Americans did not “intend” to kill 9 million Iraqis is belied by the remorseless consistency of the slaughter over 100 years.
The Anglo-American Iraq Genocide has been associated with 2 million under-5 year old infant deaths comprising 1.2 million (1990-2003) and 0.8 million (2003-2011), 90% avoidable and due to gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War which demand that an Occupier must supply their conquered Subjects with food and medical requisites to “the fullest extent of the means available to it” [17]. The Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide was also war criminal mass infanticide and mass paedocide.
A succinct chapter-by-chapter summary with commentary of “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State”[15] is set out below.
Chapter 1, “The imperialist design for Iraq. A new strategy for the Middle East”, summarizes Western conquests in the Arab World prior to the commencement of the US wars on Iraq in 1990, including the crusader invasions of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria (1095-1291); Portuguese, Dutch and thence British involvements in Arabia; British formation of the Saudi dynasty and dominant Saudi Arabian Wahabism through alliance between Ibn Saud and Ibn Abdul-Wahab (late 18th century onwards); French conquest (1801) and subsequent British conquest (1882) of Egypt; French invasion and colonization of Algeria (1830); British creation of a Kuwait protectorate (1897) and of other Gulf state protectorates with the commencement of a policy of containment of Iraq; the Anglo-French dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916) that divided the Arab world between France and the UK; the Balfour Declaration (1917) and British support for genocidal Zionism and a Jewish state in Palestine; violent British domination and suppression of Iraq (1914-1948); British opposition to Arab nationalism as exhibited by Abdul Gamal Nasser in Egypt and the Ba'ath Party socialists in Syria and Iraq; creation of the race- and genocide-based colonizer state of Israel in 1948; after the Anglo-French and Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, and an increasing American involvement with massive diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and, after Israeli conquest of all of Palestine and acquisition of nuclear weapons in 1967, extraordinary Zionist domination of US and indeed Western politics and foreign policy.
The France, UK and US (FUKUS) Alliance had a sophisticated approach to dominating the Arab World and indeed the Muslim World involving selective support for Muslim World dictators (notwithstanding ostensible Western democracy) and variously on/off support for Muslim religious fighters (notably in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria). Thus Afghan deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation in the post-2001 Afghan War against the Taliban have totalled about 6 million [18]. The US backed Muslim fundamentalist jihadis in the overthrow of the secular and progressive Afghan Government in 1978 and in the subsequent decade of war of the US-backed Taliban, mujahadeen and al Qaeda against the Russians after the 1979 Russian invasion, 1979-1989 Afghan avoidable deaths totalling 2.9 million [4]. Libya was the most prosperous African nation apart from South Africa but was destroyed in 2011 when the FUKUS Alliance airpower was decisive in Islamist victory against the secular Gaddafi regime. A secular, and increasingly educated and prosperous Iraq was destroyed by the US Alliance with the US installing a sectarian Shi'ia administration with a resultant sectarian Sunni-Shi'ia civil war. Muslim deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation in the Zionist-backed, post-1990 US War on Muslims now total 12 million [19].
The al-Anis comment thus on the US Alliance destruction of a secular, peaceful and religiously tolerant Syria through backing fanatical Muslim rebels: “Despite the open recruitment of Muslim fanatics from all over the world, the massive Gulf financial and military support, the huge arms shipments to the rebels, the training of these fanatics by US/UK/French personnel in Jordan and Turkey, and the massive, unprecedented media war, the political and military resilience of the Syrian regime has shocked its adversaries… At this writing, it is reasonable to conclude that imperialism has attempted to change its strategy for controlling the Arab world from that of direct military invasion and occupation, to relying on political Islam and the full support from Gulf oil money” (pages 22-23, [15]).
Chapter 2, “Iraq on the eve of the 2003 invasion”, summarizes the Western crippling of Iraq between the British invasion in 1914 and the US Alliance re-invasion in 2003 and successively deals with the 1922 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of Alliance and its 1932 extension that ensured British domination of Iraqi “foreign, military, financial, and judicial affairs… and gave over the whole of Iraq for British exploration for oil for the next 75 years” (page 25, [15]); the 1941 Iraqi Revolution that was brutally suppressed by the British; the 1958 Coup by Qasim that removed the British-installed monarchy; the 1963 socialist, nationalist and pan-Arabist Ba'athist coup followed by the 1979 accession to power of Saddam Hussein; the 1980-1988 US-backed Iraq-Iran War over Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf and which was associated with chemical warfare and the killing up to 800,000 Iranians and 400,000 Iraqis); the 1990 dispute with Kuwait over exploitation of oil reserves and the US green-lighting of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; the 1990-1991 Gulf War by the US Alliance (0.2 million Iraqis killed); and the 1990-2003 Sanctions War on Iraq involving no-fly zones, crippling sanctions and massive destruction of infrastructure (1.7 million Iraqi deaths from violently-imposed deprivation under Sanctions) [2-4].
The Al-Anis make a chilling comment on the Zionist- and US-backed Iran-Iraq War: “US delight with the war was best expressed by [Jewish Zionist US Secretary of State] Kissinger, who is stated to have said that he wanted both sides to win” (page 34, [15]). The genocidal sanctions applied to Iraq between 1990-2003 utterly devastated the country and are dealt with in great detail in ““Genocide in Iraq Volume I . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” [1, 2]. Using UN data one can estimate that 1.7 million Iraqis died avoidably from violently -imposed deprivation and 1.2 million under-5 year old Iraqi infants died, 90% avoidably and due to gross US Alliance and UN violation of the Geneva Convention [3]. The Al-Anis conclude: “Dismantling Iraq was pivotal to the [imperialist] plan of dividing the Arab world into sectarian statelets and obliterating any regime that threatened to come to the aid of Palestine” (page 39, [15]).
Chapter 3, “Preparation for the invasion”, describes US claims of genocide in Kurdistan involving the deaths of 50,000-180,000 Kurds in the 1988 Anfal campaign to justify invasion of Iraq; the 1997setting up of the neoconservative and imperialist “The Project for the New American Century” (PNAC) that stated: “America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia and the Middle East” (page 45, [15]) ; the 9-11 atrocity that provided a “casus belli” (even though no Iraqis or Afghans were involved according to the “official” lying Bush version of what happened); sanctions and massive aerial bombardment of Iraq in the period 1990-2003; and the UK and US fabrication of evidence for Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD).
The Al Anis quote Col, Lawrence Wilkerson who prepared US Secretary of State Colin Powell's notoriously false UN speech on Iraqi WMD: “George W. Bush. Dick Cheney and others had decided to go to war with Iraq long before Colin Powell made that presentation” (page 59, [15]). The Al Anis also make the following key observations about 9-11: “Anyone who reads “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators” [by Lenni Brenner and exposing Zionist-Nazi links] would not find it difficult to accept as possible the theories about the collusion of some US official circles in the 9/11 attack. It is not inconceivable that some circles in the US needed to speed up the implementation of the strategy for Iraq and the rest of the Arab World through the attack on the New York towers. The mood of the public after the attack was not dissimilar to that following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The imperialists were granted free hand to make war with impunity and free from public scrutiny, arguing that they were acting in defence of the nation. 9/11 was the gift Bush and his group of Neocons were waiting for. They got their casus belli. What is relevant here is here is how the US wanted to use the attack as an excuse to attack Iraq. The following events will show clearly that the US was not interested in who really carried out the attack of 9/11 but was more interested in how to use the event as a cover to implicate Iraq” (page 48, [15]).
The Al-Anis' critical view is well justified. Numerous science, engineering, architecture, medical, aviation, military and intelligence experts reject the “official” lying Bush version of what happened on 9-11 [20]. Indeed the US Center for Public Integrity documented 935 lies told by the Bush Administration about Iraq between 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq [21]. The remorseless lying by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialists (NAZIs) is succinctly encapsulated by e-LIARS as an anagram for ISRAEL. It took many decades to emerge but it is now apparent (overwhelmingly so to Japanese scholars) that the US and UK Governments were well aware of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [12].
Chapter 4, “The Shock and Awe Invasion”, details the illegal and war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq and the destruction of the Iraqi armed forces. Of special note the Al Anis write “There has been speculation that a Neutron bomb was used , and increasing evidence that the Americans want to cover up that issue… The former commander of Iraq's Republican Guard Saifeddin Fulayh Hassan ar-Rawi has said that the US forces used neutron and phosphorus bombs during their assault on Baghdad airport before the April 9 capture of the Iraqi capital. He has explained that “,,, there were bodies burnt to their bones” and that bombs annihilated soldiers but left the infrastructure at the airport intact”. Captain Eric H. May a former intelligence and public affairs officer in the military had this to say about it: “The best evidence that I have from international sources, scientific sources, is that our position was becoming untenable at the Baghdad Airport and we used a neutron warhead , at least one. That is the big secret of Baghdad Airport”… There are grounds to suspect that the US used “battlefield” nuclear weapons on Iraq. The International community needs to take some action against such covert, lawless tactics defying conventions of war” (pages 78-79, [15]). The Al-Anis conclude: “But the Iraqis fought even though they lacked the equipment and the means. Baghdad was left in ruins and ten years after the occupation its infrastructure has not been rebuilt” (page 81, [15]).
Chapter 5, “The failure of the Security Council”, sets out how the Security Council did not approve the war criminal US Alliance invasion of Iraq but after the invasion grossly violated international law by approving aspects of US Alliance occupation of Iraq. The Al Anis state: “Between March 2003 and July 2012 , the SC [Security Council] adopted 27 resolutions on Iraq. Resolutions between March 2003 and August 2004 were still adopted under the heading of the “Situation between Iraq and Kuwait”… During that period the SC breached international law in many ways ”, and list 10 key areas in which the SC breached international law, notably “10. Bestowed false legitimacy, in the series of resolutions between May 2003 and June 2004, on the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] while the latter was in breach of international law in dismantling Iraq, so deceptively and effectively that Lord Hope ruled that he could not judge a case of possible breach of law because he believed the authorities in Iraq were acting under the authority of the SC” (pages 98-99, [15]). The Al-Anis conclude “The above observations raise a fundamental question that has been omitted from the [UN] Charter. What happens when the SC breaches international law, especially if it is a peremptive norm and, more seriously, what happens when a permanent member commits an international crime?” (page 99, [15]).
Chapter 6, “Bremer dismantles Iraq”, summarizes how Paul Bremer, the US-appointed Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) disestablished the Ba'ath Party of Iraq (that had ruled Iraq for 4 decades); sacked hundred of thousands of public servants and soldiers on the basis of Ba'ath Party connections (in a process akin to post-1945 de-Nazification of Germany); eliminated Iraq's defence system, destroyed Iraq's military industry; permitted sectarian and corporate militias; converted Iraq from socialism to a neoliberal free market; liquidated major Iraq banks that had been crucial for Iraq's previous economic advance; restructured and politicized the judiciary; permitted massive squandering of seized Iraqi assets and rorting of the US Development Fund for Iraq; and through Order 81 criminalized the saving of seed by Iraqi farmers, a millennia-old practice by which Iraqi farmers – the world's first scientists and geneticists - had started and continued the agrarian revolution of Humanity in Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago.
Chapter 7, “Instituting Federalism: Planting the Seeds of Ethnic and Sectarian Division”, describes how the US and British conquerors suppressed the Sunnis, gave de facto independence to the Kurds and reconstituted the Iraqi Army as a sectarian army. The Al-Anis state: “Today with Government supporting militia being 100% Shi'ia and with armed forces of over 90% Shi'ia after most of the Sunnis who enlisted in the new army having left it since, it is fair to say that the new democratic federal Iraq has, for the first time in it history, a sectarian army” (page 133, [15]) – just as in quasi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan, the various zones of Lebanon and in genocidally racist Apartheid Israel. Today the French, UK and US (FUKUS) Alliance plus Apartheid Israel, Jordan, and US lackey Australia are variously involved in killing Sunni rebels in Iraq and Syria. Indeed one notes that Australia has invaded 85 countries (as compared to the British 193, the French 80, the Americans 70, and the Israelis 12) and is now engaged in Australia's Seventh Iraq War in the post-1915 century in which 9 million Iraqis have died from Western violence or from Western-imposed deprivation [22, 23].
Chapter 8, The Destruction Continues”, commences with the chilling observation “We understand how difficult it is for a Westerner to accept that so many people had taken part in a campaign whose purpose from the outset was to destroy another nation. That is precisely what Professor Thomas J. Nagy expressed when he wrote [re Iraq]: “Many, including the author recoil from contemplating the possibility that a Western democracy, particularly the USA, could commit genocide. However , it is precisely this painful and even taboo possibility which needs to be examined”” (page 153, [15].
The Al-Anis consider the number of Iraqis killed by the US Alliance and quote estimates of the carnage by Dirk Adriaensens (coordinator of SOS Iraq and member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal on Iraq, member of the International Organizing Committee of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2003-2005), co-coordinator of the Global Campaign Against the Assassination of Iraqi Academics, and co-author of “Rendez-Vous in Baghdad” (EPO, 1994), “Cultural Cleansing in Iraq” (Pluto Press, London, 2010), “Beyond Educide” (Academia Press, Ghent,2012)), stating in relation to Iraqis “Here are his figures: 1,450,000 killed, 7,700,000 refugees, 5,000,000 orphans, 3,000,000 widows, 1,000,0000 missing … all in a country of nearly 30 million” (page 3 160, [15]). To this the Al-Anis add the number of wounded – if the ratio of wounded to killed is about 5 then 7.5 million Iraqis were wounded in the 2003-2011 Iraq War. It gets worse. Thus whether a child is killed by bombs of bullets or dies from war-imposed deprivation (lack of food, shelter, potable water, medical services) the death is equally final, irreversible and horrendous. Iraqi avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation total 1.7 million under Sanctions (1990-2003) and 1.2 million under Occupation (2003-2011) for a total of 2.9 million such deaths (1990-2011) [3, 4].
In addition to the killing, wounding and displacement of millions of Iraqis, the Al-Anis documents large-scale imprisonment and torture (as exampled by Abu Ghraib), cultural cleansing (looting of museums and destruction of archaeological sites), cultural genocide (including the mass murder of teachers, academics, and other professionals), destruction of health services, mass abuse of children (through trauma, malnutrition, and child labour), massive deficits in education and health, active mass killing and passive mass murder, horrendous abuses of women (through violence, deprivation, sex slave trafficking, and reversal of sex equality), destruction of utilities (electricity, water and sanitation) and the seizure of Iraq's oil: “Forty years after Iraq nationalized its oil industry and ran it successfully, foreign multinational oil companies were brought back by the invasion to control Iraq's oil under the disguise of Iraq's need for technical and financial support. The new contracts have been awarded to the same companies whose interests were nationalised in the 1970s. It is part of the continuous destruction of Iraq” (page 198, [15]). ”
Chapter 9, “The Right of Remedy”, describes the crimes against international law committed by the US Alliance by invading Iraq and then the horrendously abusive occupation of Iraq with the connivance of the Security Council. The major US Alliance crimes are invading a remote country that posed no threat to the invaders (the ultimate war crime), crimes involving the use of WMD (widespread contamination of Iraq with depleted uranium, the use of phosphorus bombs to burn targets alive, and possible use of neutron bombs in the initial invasion), crimes against Humanity (mass killing and de-Ba'athification), crimes breaching basic human rights (notably abrogation the right to life-sustaining requisites resulting in 1.2 million avoidable Iraqi deaths from deprivation under Occupation). The Al-Anis conclude: “The above brief summary of the rights denied and rights for remedy show that there is a catalogue of breaches and opportunities open to any future Iraqi Government that has the integrity to secure the interests of Iraqis, and to individual Iraqis today or in the future , to seek justice and damages. It is obvious that war reparations should be sought from the invaders who occupied Iraq and left it in ruins. Personal damages should be sought by every Iraqi who has suffered injustice whether in arrest, detention, expulsion form work or displacement as a result of the invasion and occupation and the 12 year blockade” (p219, [15]).
To which one must add that the US Alliance war criminals - and the Mainstream media, politicians and academics complicit through their silence or partisan lying (e.g. see [24]) - should be held accountable before the International Criminal Court for the 4.6 million Iraqis killed by violence or by violently-imposed deprivation in the quarter century Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide [3,4].
Conclusions.
“Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State”, by Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani is an important, must-read catalogue of horrendous Western war crimes against Iraq and merits the same recommendation I made in relation to their “Genocide in Iraq Volume I . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” and which was printed on the back cover of the present edition of “Genocide in Iraq Volume II” : “This book should be in every state, city, local, school and university library so that everyone … can see for themselves the horrendous consequences of mass collective punishment of civilian populations to achieve political and strategic ends” [2].
Shortly before he died the late anti-racist Jewish British writer Harold Pinter declared in his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice” [25]. 1990-2011 Iraqi deaths from US Alliance violence (1.7 million) or violently-imposed deprivation (2.9 million) total 4.6 million and one can in 2015 paraphrase this great humanitarian: “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? 4.6 million? More than enough, I would have thought.”
Unfortunately the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a racist, cowardly, partisan, genocide-ignoring, genocide-complicit organization that strictly confines its war crimes attention to war criminals that the US Alliance doesn't like (e.g. non-European and Serbian war criminals) (for discussion see “The Politics of Genocide” by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson [26, 27]). The ICC has repeatedly ignored complaints over the Iraqi Genocide (e.g. [28, 29] and that means the world must accept recourse to eminent, ICC-independent international tribunals to assess the war crimes of the US Alliance in Iraq and elsewhere.
What can decent people do? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people must (a) circumvent the lying and ignoring by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted Mainstream media [30] by resolutely attempting to inform everyone they can about the Iraqi Genocide, informed by books such as “Genocide in Iraq” Volumes I and II and other humane works documenting this immense atrocity [1-4, 15, 31], and (b) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) – of the kind successfully applied against Apartheid South Africa and currently applied against US Alliance-backed, nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel – against all people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries involved in the Iraq Genocide and the Zionist-promoted Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide of which it is a part [19].
References.
[1]. “Genocide in Iraq Volume I . The case against the UN Security Council and member states” by Dr Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani (foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino; Clarity Press, Atlanta).
[2]. Gideon Polya ““Genocide in Iraq, The Case Against UN Security Council And Member States”. Book review”, Countercurrents, 8 February, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080213.htm .
[3]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .
[4]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ .
[5]. “US military marks end of its Iraq war”, ABC News, 16 December 2011: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-15/us-military-marks-end-of-its-war-in-iraq/3733982 .
[6]. “Just Foreign Policy”: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq .
[7]. ORB (Opinion Research Business), “January 2008 - Update on Iraqi Casualty Data”, January 2008: http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=88 .
[8]. Les Roberts, “Les Roberts: Iraq's death toll far worse than our leaders admit”, Uruqnet: 14 February 2007: http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=30670&s2=16 ).
[9]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna wins Cambridge Prize”, MWC News, 20 November 2011: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/14978-economist-mahima-khanna.html .
[10]. “Iraq Population”: http://www.populstat.info/Asia/iraqc.htm .
[11]. Jog, N.G. (1944), “Churchill's Blind-Spot: India”, New Book Company, Bombay.
[12]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008, now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/2008/09/jane-austen-and-black-hole-of-british.html .
[13]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .
[14]. Gideon Polya , “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm .
[15]. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State” (Clarity Press, 2015).
[16]. UN Genocide Convention: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .
[17]. Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: https://www.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/380 .
[18]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .
[19]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .
[20]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .
[21]. “Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statement in run-up to war”, CNN, 24 January 2008: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/ .
[22]. Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 09 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm .
[23]. Gideon Polya, “"Australia's Seventh Iraq War", MWC News, 28 February 2015: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/50028-australias-seventh-iraq-war.html .
[24]. Dirk Adriaensens, “The scandalous underestimation of Iraqi civilian casualties”, BRussells Tribunal, 27 March 2013: http://www.brussellstribunal.org/article_view.asp?id=803#.VQOAIeFG270 .
[25]. Harold Pinter, “Art, Truth and politics”, Countercurrents, 8 December, 2005: http://www.countercurrents.org/arts-pinter081205.htm .
[26]. Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The Politics of Genocide”.
[27]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “The Politics Of Genocide” By Edward Herman And David Peterson”, Countercurrents, 05 December, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya051211.htm .
[28]. SEARCH Foundation, “ Australia's former Prime Minister Howard accused of war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague”, Countercurrents, 7 June 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/searchnew2.pdf .
[29]. “9 January 2010 Formal Complaint by Dr Gideon Polya to the International Criminal Court (ICC) re US Alliance Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Muslim, Aboriginal, Biofuel and Climate Genocides”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/9-january-2010 .
[30]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .
[31]. Michael Otterman, Richard Hil and Paul Wilson, “Erasing Iraq. The human costs of carnage”, Pluto Press, 2010 (foreward by Dahr Jamail).
Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript
) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .