Colonial Carnage

The USA finally let aid enter Fallujah, where supposedly no civilians were present:

Convoys carrying food, water, medicine and blankets are moving around Falluja but there is still no running water or electricity.

According to the Red Crescent, 60 people came out to get assistance in one street alone.

The organisation's president, Dr Said Haqi, said it had now set up an office close to the city centre.

He described how one man in his mid-50s had approached them after staying in his house for the past month - apparently living on water and sugar.

In comments reported by the UN information network Irin, spokesman Muhammad al-Nuri said the Red Crescent believed more than 6,000 people may have died in the fight for Falluja.

He said it was difficult to move around the city due to the number of dead bodies.

"Bodies can be seen everywhere and people were crying when receiving the food parcels. It is very sad, it is a human disaster," Mr Nuri reportedly said.

The civilian toll of this operation alone far outstrips the civilian toll of all terror attacks and uncareful guerilla attacks by anti-occupation forces. But those who think we should decide what's best for other people will deny reality.

Nothing new here. Recently there is much talk about idiot British professor Niall Fergusson, who unabashedly advocates the USA turning into a full-blown (even more) ruthless Empire - based on a view of the onetime British Empire through a rose-tainted glass (with some twisted post-colonial economic arguments added in). Steve Gilliard's three part series on how 'peaceful' colonial rule was.

Let's look at another colonialism of our day of European-American origin elsewhere - one of the latest utter inhumanities at Israeli checkpoints reminds even some right-wing Israelis of Nazi behavior. (Never mind the argumentation by some in the article that a crime committed by Germans and other Europeans in Europe justifies land-taking from and ethnic cleansing of Arabs in Palestine - or that similar 'low points' weren't reached much earlier. But there are some who didn't forget about Deir Yassin, and some who don't accept whitewashed obituaries of Rafael Eitan - the openly racist former Chief Of Staff who led the savage invasion of Southern Lebanon in 1982 [remember Sabra & Satila; Eitan himself even wanted to bombard a football station during match] -; and even some former far-right Israeli-American settlers who saw the light. Thanks to Mark Elf for the links.)