“The Shelling of Fallujah”

by Ed Felien

[from Southside Pride, December, 2006:]
The shelling of Fallujah will no doubt be remembered by Middle Eastern scholars in the same way we remember the bombing of civilian populations in Lidice and Guernica by the Nazis or the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were horrible crimes against unarmed civilians.

The Iraqis must certainly see the occupation of their country as a terrorist campaign. The midnight raids, the roadblocks, the cruel acts of murder, rape and torture must seem the actions of a terrorist state.

They must see us as the cancer that is trying to destroy them.

What do the Arab terrorists want? They want the same things that most people in the Middle East want. They want the U.S. to withdraw its bases from Saudi Arabia.

To have military bases around the holy sites of Mecca and Medina is like having Muslim warriors standing guard around the Vatican and Lourdes. That military presence would, no doubt, be offensive to Catholics. In the same way, our actions are offensive to Muslims.

They want an end to the U.S. corruption of governments in the Middle East. Almost every country in the region has been overthrown by the CIA (Lebanon, Iran and Iraq—Saddam Hussein was encouraged by the CIA to murder the President and take power), or bribed or intimidated by the U.S.

And they want a just settlement of the Israel/Palestine problem. Israel must return to the 1967 borders and recognize the nation of Palestine.