Friday, July 20, 2007
Not in Our Name
No En Nuestro Nombre!
A Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement
By JOHN ROSS
El Bush's Holy War on Iraq is coming to a critical juncture. As the Yanqui president implements his so-called "surge" of 30,000 new troops (150,000 total) in a desperate move to secure Baghdad, the insurgency has surged too. The more troops Bush pours in, the higher the Yanqui death count climbs. The April -May-June quarter with 320 invaders killed was the highest three-month casualty toll since this brutal war began in March 2003.
Meanwhile, the body count of Iraqi dead escalates daily. So-called "sectarian" killings are again on the rise despite the increased gringo presence in Baghdad. Factoring in the monthly massacre tallies and extrapolating from the John Hopkins University (U.S.)/Lancet (UK) estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion began, it is probable that as many as 800,000 Iraqis have lost their lives to Bush's genocide. 4.2 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes - 2.2 million are internal refugees and another 2 million have fled into Jordan and Syria where they are unwelcome and treated as badly as the indocumentados are up in Bush-landia. The United Nations is calling the Iraqi refugee catastrophe the largest exodus in the Middle East since Israel ran the Palestinians off their land in 1948 and the most critical in the world today.
All of this carnage obeys a calendar - the Yanquis' electoral calendar - which in November 2008 will select a successor to the bloody Bush. The Yanquis are like sun kings. They really believe the sun revolves around them, that they are really in charge. But for once the tables are turned. The Iraqi resistance - the so-called "terrorists" - holds some heavy cards and the 2008 U.S. presidential election will be determined by the kill rate in that wounded land.
Compas, when this terrible war began four years ago, we came together to stop the slaughter in a coalition named "No En Nuestro Nombre" (since fragmented), a slogan that we picked up from our counterparts in the U.S. anti-war movement. But the truth is that Bush's war has never been fought in the name the Mexicas gave this country. This has always been a gringo war - Bush vs. the rest of the world. Our wars are in Oaxaca and Atenco, Chiapas, against the sinverguenzas that have stolen this land, cut down the trees and poisoned the water, disappeared the Indians, forced us to guzzle Coca Cola and pump petroleum, and buy our tortillas at Wal-Mart.
Yet even if Iraq is not Mexico's war, we are invested in it - more than 200 young Mexicanos y Mexicanas tricked into serving in Tio Sam's army, are dead in Iraq according to the lista de los muertos kept by Fernando Suarez del Solar, the father of Jesus Suarez, the first Mexica to die in the invasion. Mexican civil society sent two groups of human shields to Baghdad to stand between Bush's bombs and the Iraqi people even before the war began. The Mexican-born doctor Augustin Aguayo was imprisoned by the gabacho military for refusing to return to Iraq. Solidarity, the globalization of resistance, is embedded in the Mexica genome.
Click here for the rest of the article.
The entire linked article is well worth reading. It expresses everything in attitude on the matter that zatikia has been in posting here and also what we hear in our chat room from all but Americans. In short, there is no such thing as an American leftist movement, there will not be, and we should not be wasting time pretending there is but instead be building solidarity with those where one can and does really exist and matter.
It hard for the Americans, including and perhaps especially those who deem themselves on the left, to contrast their spoken ideals with frivolous lives enjoyed through suffering of others and yet not grasp why rest of the world properly considers not just their leaders but each of them as the enemy?
Granted that the system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, housewives, and yes, self adoring intellectuals claiming leftist credentials. Many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on and priveleged by the system, they will fight to protect it rather than join to destroy it. As long as they do, these people are a willing part of that system, and that makes them legitimate enemy targets.
