"Just as the Wall is Called a Fence, So are the Mercenaries Called Contractors"

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/glazebrook04182008.html


An Interview with Robert Fisk


-snip-

I've just had an interesting example of what's going on. I was lecturing in Ottawa to 600 Muslim Canadians, and I said to them "you are absolutely right to exercise your right to free speech to attack the United States and Israel when they kill people, commit torture, occupy other people's lands- but why don't I ever hear you condemning the regimes in Egypt, Damascus, Libya and so on?" Silence. I couldn't work it out.

So what was going on?

Later, I was driving across Canada with two Muslims and they told me. In Canada, if they speak out against these regimes--the Syrian regime, or the Egyptian--what happens is that these various countries have their own muhabarat people in Canada--security people--who will then pass home the message that certain people are speaking up against Mubarak, Assad, or whoever. Then, under the new friendship between intelligence services, the Syrian or Egyptian regime tells the Canadians that there is a potential terrorist--anti-regime, right?--and CSIS, the Canadian version of the FBI, starts putting taps on them. So, by exercising their freedom of speech against dictatorships, they end up being suspected of terrorism by their new country of citizenship. So the result is, at the end of the day, they are silent. As I would be too, in their position.

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The true extent of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan has been masked by the massive use of mercenaries--hidden from the troop figures. Estimates suggest 1000 have been killed in Iraq alone. Fisk is one of very few journalists to call them by their name, as opposed to the "contractor" euphemism:

"Just as the wall is called a fence instead of a wall, and it's a neighbourhood not a settlement, so these are now contractors rather than mercenaries. I've always called them mercenaries. When they say two 'contractors' have been murdered, the idea that they are going around in an armoured humvee loaded with weapons doesn't come into the brain pod immediately does it?"

-snip-

Whatever the occupier's plans for Iraq, and whatever barbarities it imposes, one thing is for sure--the future of that country is not entirely in their hands. Even with their full scale promotion of sectarian violence in 1950s Algeria, the French were still forced to leave. The dilemma for the US in Iraq, as Fisk puts it, is that "they must leave, they will leave, but they can't leave--that is the equation that turns sand into blood". For those who want to understand this process, and what it means in human terms, rather than simply be lied to about it, Robert Fisk's reporting is a good place to start.
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truth teller

[GliderGuider]

1. This has happened to friends of mine.

Thank you for posting.