Since you got past the subject line, please believe that I am not given to
hyperbole. I do not toss out terms like "genocide", "fascistic", or "racist"
as freely as some; but in the present instance I fear that "genocide" may be
the appropriate term to describe our present tactic in Iraq. I'm sick with
concern that we may be behind most of the so-called "sectarian violence"
devastating the Iraqi people. Whether the aim is to simply kill as many
Iraqis as possible or to drive them into exile so as to make it easier to
govern the few remaining, the immediate target of the tactic is the Iraqi
people as a whole - not enemy combatants, insurgents, or any identifiable
subgroup- and in this sense it constitutes genocide.

I have no proof of my supposition. It just seems to make the most sense,
unless you accept the media-inspired image of Muslims as wild-eyed fanatics
with so little regard for human life that they are willing to slaughter each
other in senseless acts of violence. Such a conception borders on one of
those other words I do not use lightly: racism. Why would Muslims, whether
Sunni or Shia, use most of their ordnance on each other instead of on the
foreigners who occupy their country? In last Friday's devastating mayhem,
many more mortars where fired indiscriminately into Shia areas than the two
mortars which lit up a US base near Sadr City on Sunday. And where do the
sectarians get all this ordnance? It would seem reasonable that after three
years of occupation the only faction in the country that has explosives in
the quantity we see being detonated on a daily basis is the occupier.

Consider how easy it would be for us to create a "suicide bomber". You
contract with some Iraqi to haul some cargo and in that cargo you place a
remote-controlled bomb. As the unwitting driver passes by some marketplace,
you detonate the bomb. Instant suicide bomber! We could engage some of the
more sociopathic elements in our own forces to engage in this activity, but
we don't even need to dirty our hands directly. We could leave the
bomb-making
to some rabid allies with no qualms about killing dark-skinned natives:
former South African policemen, Israelis, even Iraqis (of
whatever sectarian affiliation) alienated from their own people. Take the
case of the six Sunnis who were set afire exiting a mosque yesterday by some
supposed Shia attackers, while Iraqi soldiers witnessed the whole thing and
did nothing to stop it. Were the soldiers just disinterested or were they
there specifically to see that no one interfered with the murderers?
Sponsoring death squads would hardly be a first in the annals of American
foreign policy.

Should the perpetrators of these "sectarian" attacks get caught, we can
always disown them as a fanatical group operating on their own, which is
exactly what we are doing. According to reports, about the only people
apprehended so far for indiscriminate attacks are members of the Iraqi
security forces. Even the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, as much a
defender of the occupation as you could find, admits that the men in police
uniforms committing atrocities are not "sectarians", "terrorists", or
"insurgents" in disguise: "everybody in Baghdad knows that the killers and
kidnappers are real policemen". And who has ultimate authority over the
Iraqi security forces?

If you think such a tactic too diabolical for even the likes of Bush,
Cheney, and Rumsfeld... er, Gates, consider that in WorldWar II we levelled
whole cities (e.g., Hiroshima). What's blowing up a mosque or two compared
to that? Are today's leaders of higher moral caliber than those who led us
in World War II?

As I stated at the beginning, I'm sickened by the prospect that I am right,
sickened thinking of the horrors Iraqis are living through right now, but
even more concerned about what it would say about the soul of the American
people. Is there, as Jim Page, a folksinger from Seattle, sings, "a killer
instinct in this American race"?