It's official

Ultra-left "journalist" John Pilger is openly supporting the "resistance" in Iraq:

Q: Do you think the anti-war movement should be supporting Iraq's anti-occupation resistance?

A: Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy. While we abhor and condemn the continuing loss of innocent life in Iraq, we have no choice now but to support the resistance, for if the resistance fails, the “Bush gang” will attack another country. If they succeed, a grievous blow will be suffered by the Bush gang.

"We cannot afford to be choosy." Such a short phrase, but it says so much - as does the notion of an "anti-war" movement supporting violent guerilla warfare. (Last time, folks: it's not "anti-war," it's "anti-America".)

Here's what Pilger wrote in the Green left Weekly just a few days ago:

Bush, Blair and the normalisers now speak, almost with relish, of opening mass graves in Iraq. What they do not want you to know is that the largest mass graves are the result of a popular uprising that followed the 1991 Gulf war, in direct response to a call by President George Bush senior to “take matters into your own hands and force Saddam to step aside”. So successful were the rebels initially that within days Saddam's rule had collapsed across the south. A new start for the people of Iraq seemed close at hand.

Then Washington, the tyrant's old paramour who had supplied him with $5 billion worth of conventional arms, chemical and biological weapons and industrial technology, intervened just in time. The rebels suddenly found themselves confronted with the US helping Hussein against them. US forces prevented them from reaching Iraqi arms depots. They denied them shelter, and gave Hussein's Republican Guard safe passage through US lines in order to attack the rebels. US helicopters circled overhead, observing, taking photographs, while Hussein's forces crushed the uprising.

In the north, the same happened to the Kurdish insurrection. “The Americans did everything for Saddam”, said the writer on the Middle East, Said Aburish, “except join the fight on his side.” Bush senior did not want a divided Iraq, certainly not a democratic Iraq.

Interesting, isn't it, that the same people who savage the Americans for "supporting" Saddam in the past are openly supporting the Ba'athists now?

Posted by damian at January 26, 2004 11:37 AM