FCNNEWSSOURCE
There was no illusion to the “Phantom Fury” unleashed on the civilians of Fallujah by the U.S. military and its allied forces during the recent week of intense combat. First proclaimed to be an effort to reclaim the city in the advance of peaceful election in January, the assault is nothing more than a bloodbath poorly hidden behind the shoddy, unclean curtain of America’s foreign policy. It is a massacre of Muslims meant to crush symbolic and real resistance in the city and throughout Iraq.
The city’s population of 300,000 has been reduced to an estimated 60,000, with people fleeing out of fear. U.S.reports on the casualties vary, but the estimated numbers tell the story: 38 U.S. soldiers, six Iraqi soldiers, 1,200 resistance fighters–and no estimate on civilian murders. While American media is touting a simple victory over insurgents in fallujah, many foreign newspapers describe the assault as a massacre.
This is no accident. The U.S. military seized the city’s general hospital shortly before the onset of the attack, according to one officer quoted by London’s Observer, to prevent “insurgent propaganda” over the casualties. Those who aren’t counted as dead might as well be, for the level of desperation they are now unjustly forced to face: no water, no electricity and no medicine. People are eating flour; there is no food. Civilians confine themselves to the spare shelter offered by their homes and dare not venture outside; they don’t want to get shot.
And perhaps in the most sickening case of American military paranoia masquerading in its preemptive policy, one journalist reported to the Observer that, the U.S. forces are destroying each and every car they see–in case it contains a car bomb. It seems the military is haunted by its own ghosts and phantoms that have formed out of the recognition that their actions have only continued to magnify the violence. In fact, volatile clashes have broken out in four neighboring areas as a demonstration against the massacre and decimation of the people and land of Fallujah.
These Iraqi fighters are not “insurgents” as the press continues to qualify them–for this term refers to rebels against an established government or authority. They are staunch resistance forces fighting against the illegitimate and imperial occupation of their land by the U.S. and her allies, all of whom have a history written in the blood-soaked lands of the people they oppress–the real red carpet beneath their feet.
The world community must ask itself why has the “freedom” the U.S. first said it was invading Iraq to bring turned into “fury”? Now, to the suffering masses of Iraqi men, women and children, freedom is as elusive as it was in America when they vanquished the Native tribes of this land; as it is in the occupied lands of Palestine as the ruthless Israeli authorities continue to strip the people of their lives, rights and dignity.
The devastating events in Fallujah are not a dream; a massacre is not an illusion; and the U.S. is not a liberator. If the world does not wake up to this reality and pursue true justice for the Iraqi people, the fury of the phantom America will not be any match for the Wrath of the One True and Living God who will set justice in the land.
