The British nation is said to be in shock as shocking images of 25 year old, Lee Rigby, a member of 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was hacked to death by two Muslim men on the streets Woolwich in front of eyewitnesses, their message to the British people, “I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your Government, they don’t care about you.”
Whilst the mainstream media in Britain has focused on the death of Lee Rigby and the violence associated with his death by the two assailants, Michael Adeboloja and Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale, there is little focus on the roots which has led to this tragedy and violent murder.
In the Middle East, on the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan butchery and savagery as witnessed by those who saw Lee Rigby decapitated and hacked to pieces is witnessed on almost a daily level by Muslim populations, committed by Western troops.
There was no media outcry when in 2004, in the city of Basra, Iraq, 8 year-old Hanan Saleh Matrud gathered along with other children outside an armoured vehicle which stopped near an alley that lead to her home as British soldiers emerged out of the vehicle. Children being curious they gathered closer and a soldier opened fire hitting Hanan in her lower torso. According to the website British Army Killings: Time For Truth – Time For Justice, the soldiers were reluctant to even take Hanan to the hospital, but when they did she died the following day after an operation. No decent inquiry was even held and no British soldier was held accountable for the murder of this 8 year-old girl despite witnesses saying that it was a deliberate attack. Instead, the British military sent a letter to Hannan’s family saying that she may have been accidentally killed when British soldiers fired a warning shot into a mob of youths. That was the official account and the matter was dropped.
There was no media outcry when Rolling Stone magazine printed disturbing pictures of US soldiers posing for photos with dead Afghan children and innocent civilians, one of the pictures shown at the top of this page is of Gul Mudin, an Afghan boy of around 15 years of age who was murdered by US soldiers; and in the most barbaric act of disrespect Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes took pictures with the dead boy. According to Rolling Stone, “Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reportedly used a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears to cut off the finger, which he presented to Holmes as a trophy for killing his first Afghan.” (Read The monstrous atrocities of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan).
Rolling Stone said, “At one point, soldiers in 3rd Platoon talked about throwing candy out of a Stryker vehicle as they drove through a village and shooting the children who came running to pick up the sweets.”
Even soldiers themselves have testified to the war crimes committed in the Middle East which has had little coverage in the mainstream media in Britain. In an article I wrote in April 2010, titled U.S. military lied about war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan I said that:
“Between March 13-16, 2008 Veterans Against War held a national four-day conference titled, “Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan”, outside Washington, D.C., where veterans from all over the country testified to their experiences in those countries.
In an article by Dahr Jamail, on the Inter Press Service (IPS) website, on October 20 titled, “We have to share this pain”, he describes how a crowd of 300 people gathered inside the Unitarian Church, in Portland Oregon, to hear soldiers recall their disturbing memories of the conflict at a five-hour event.
Iraq war veteran Chanan Suarez Diaz told the audience, “War is very numbing…it comes to a point that you see so much destruction you become numb. This bullshit about bringing democracy or liberation is nonsense — we’ve killed over one million Iraqis.”
Evan Knappenberger was with the Army 4th Infantry Division working as an intelligence analyst, and served one year in Iraq. He said, “We are responsible as soldiers, we are murderers of over one million Iraqis. I participated in burglary, trespassing, knowledgeable negligence, criminal assault and battery, rape by association, and gangsterism, I am standing here today as a criminal — in a sense of the word that only someone who has worn the uniform can understand.”
David Mann was an Army Specialist in Nasiriyah, Iraq in 2003, and returned to Balad, Iraq in 2005, and what he had to say was disturbing. He said, “We were told not to stop when children ran in front of our vehicles as we invaded Iraq”
Mann was forced to return to Iraq despite threatening to kill himself if he was forced to return, but his pleas fell on death ears. He said, “…every man, woman and child who has died in this war has died in vain, because it was a war based on lies and profits.”
Twenty-three year-old former marine and Iraq war veteran, Benjamin David Lewis spoke about how he witnessed war crimes in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, in 2004.
Speaking to IPS, he said, “My battalion in spring 2004 was operating in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions (GC). During the spring siege we sent military-age males back into the city, and were ordered to kill them.”
Lewis added, “The intention of the military was to take over and occupy the main hospital in Fallujah, which violates the GC’s, as well as our being ordered to target all ‘military age males‘.””
The British media and the Western media in general claim to have the deepest respect for the soldiers who fight the wars overseas, and yet they ignore the stories of these soldiers who dare to speak the truth, why?
The truth behind the ‘War on Terror’
In my article, The greatest spin story ever told: Obama’s Iraq withdrawal speech, I outline in detail how the invasion of Iraq by Western forces led to Iraq’s oil being owned by the US and its allies. This was the real reason behind the so called ‘War on Terror’.
In another article titled, Spy cameras in Birmingham linked to Britain’s terrorist actions in the Middle East I outline a report by Michel Chossudovsky on the Global Research website, on June 17, titled “The War is Worth Waging“: Afghanistan’s Vast Reserves of Minerals and Natural Gas. The War on Afghanistan is a Profit driven “Resource War“, who said “According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess “previously unknown” and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively to be of the order of one trillion dollars (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010).”
According to retired British army general, Sir Michael Rose when asked whether Iraqi insurgents were right to fight the US-led coalition, he said:
“Yes I do. As Lord Chatham [the politician William Pitt, the Elder, who, in the second half of the 18th century called for a cessation of hostilities in the colonies and favoured American resistance to the British Stamp Act] said, ‘if I was an American as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms’. The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don’t excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the Americans.”
How come General Rose’s comments have never been explored in the British media?
British Labour MP, Michael Meacher has spoken out about the real reasons for the ‘War On Terror’. In an article titled, This war on terrorism is bogus, (Saturday, 6 September, 2003) Meacher wrote that America had planned global dominance of the world’s energy resources since the tear 2000, in a document titled Rebuilding America’s Defences, by neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).
Meacher said:
“The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world’s oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.
This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing “severe” gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.”
He added;
“Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that “the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts” with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).”
Is ignorance an excuse?
You have groups like the English Defence League (EDL) declaring war on Islam and Muslims. Since the Woolwich murder members of the EDL have attacked Mosques in revenge attacks. (Read: Masked English Defence League supporters clash with police in Woolwich near scene of horrific killing as mosques are attacked in Home Counties)
Read the comments at the end of Sky News article, Woolwich Suspect ‘Handed Out Radical Leaflets‘, and you will see comments condemning Muslims and Islam without reference to what MP Michael Meacher has said, without reference to the same imperialist greed that past and present British governments have practised for over 400 years.
One of my favourite political writers is Jay Janson, who frequently contributes to this website. Janson is an archival research peoples’ historian activist, musician, and writer. He is the coordinator of the King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign: and website historian of Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign featuring a country by country history of US crimes and laws. He has lived and worked on all the continents and his articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England, India and the US.
In his articles Janson, who is in his 80s cannot understand how in this age of technological revolution and instant global communication at the tap of a button, that people can remain blind to the injustices carried out by the US and its allies overseas.
Why do members of the EDL refuse to address the crimes of their government? Is it ignorance or a sinister expression of racist colonial attitudes? What about the many comments by British people regarding the killing of Lee Rigby, comments calling for a ban on Islam, the deportation of Muslims who oppose British military actions in Muslim lands and so forth. If MP Michael Meacher can see and speak the truth about his government as a white, British male, if Jay Janson as a white American male can speak the truth about the crimes of his government, then why do so many British people remain silent?
Michael Adeboloja, one of the murderers of Lee Rigby told witneses to the brutal murder they witnessed:
“We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
“I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your Government, they don’t care about you.”
“You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bussin’ our guns? You think politicians are going to die?
“No it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children.
“So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace.” (Read Woolwich Suspect ‘Handed Out Radical Leaflets‘)
If members of the EDL and members of the British public were to address the roots of the grotesque murder of Lee Rigby, if they were to address the terrorist actions of the British government’s foreign policy in Muslim lands the battle against extremism could be won.
As it stands, the real extremists and terrorists are not the British soldiers, or the Muslims who decide to fight back, but the high officials sitting in office, on corporate boards and big businesses who plan to control the world’s resources through war and conflict, these are the real extremists who all of us should be fighting against to end the needless bloodshed.
For further research:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3705903.stm
http://www.britisharmykillings.org.uk/page/113/The-Issuess
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/woolwich-suspect-handed-radical-leaflets-125619985.html#cklpHFb
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woolwich-attack-live-lee-rigby-1905653
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq
