censoring the views of those who oppose the war against Iraq.... [View All]

[mike_c]

I'm getting really tired of having posts deleted when they question the "service" of military men and women fighting in Iraq. I generally do so without using heated language, without resorting to name-calling, and as respectfully of other people's disagreement as I can. I understand that those posts express a minority viewpoint, and I also understand the importance of doing so without trampling the rights of others to disagree. I only wish the "support our troops" crowd would extend the same courtesy.

The essence of my argument is that fighting in Iraq is not "defending America" or even serving American interests. The war against Iraq is a war of aggression, a war crime by definition, and under the Nuremberg protocals and the U.N. Charter, a crime against humanity. I believe that participating in that war is exactly the same as Nazi military participation in the invasion and occupation of Poland (and the siege of Falluja sure does offer parallels with the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but that's another story). We can't have it both ways-- we denied the Nazis absolution for "just following orders," even orders that were legal in Germany, and we established the principle that wars of aggression are themselves criminal enterprises, no matter how they are conducted. The Nuremberg decisions specifically stated that they applied to the United States as well as to the Axis powers during WWII.

Over and over again my attempts to discuss this perspective, or simply to make the point, are deleted from DU-- presumably because someone does not want to face the harsh truths about what our military is doing in Iraq. Either the moderators or other members of the DU community find criticisms of "our" military offensive. This is hypocritical in the extreme-- it's the same sort of hypocrisy that the GOP employs when it attempts to excuse its crimes as being somehow different from other people's crimes.

But you know what? Crime is crime, and war crimes are war crimes. Dismissing the argument that OUR military is involved in an ongoing war crime is hypocrisy of the worst sort. Deleting reasoned posts that state that argument is censorship of the worst sort-- the sort that prohibits a critical self examination. Two such posts were deleted within the last hour, and that total will probably have risen by the time I post this comment. There is every chance that this post itself will be locked because it criticises not just the war against Iraq, but the U.S. military that is an essential component of that war of aggression.