As fighting rages on in Iraq whilst GWBush keeps on coming up with new reasons to justify the invasion and the US Army desperately tries to boost enrollment of recruits, the American casualty rate climbs upwards steadily and daily. Countless Iraqi civilians suffer from the effects of occupation, seeing their country afflicted with crime and destruction when not being victims of fighting or arrests by US forces. Widespread opinion maintains that this suffering and instability is the fault of the "terrorists" or "extremists" who are evil and don't want their country to prosper. People don't seem to realise that maybe these "extremists" represent the majority of Iraqis who want American forces out. The resistance is indeed putting up good resistance against American forces and show no signs of defeat.
Immense damage and death has been caused by both Americans and insurgents/resistance forces. One of them is the invader but is generally perceived as the "good" side.
Look at this site to see some graphic and horrendous images from the Iraqi occupation. Some of them are disturbing. There's a lot of debate over the righteousness of the invasion of Iraq and most of it centers around GWBush and his administration and whether they were right or wrong. It's easy to forget or overlook the suffering of the Iraqi people themselves. It seems that everytime the injustice of the invasion and occupation comes up, Saddam keeps coming up as an convenient excuse for justifying the actions of the Americans.
There's some parallels with the Vietnam war. While much was made of the Communist threat and the role of Americans in defending the South from the North, a lot of suffering was inflicted by the Americans on the North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese peasants.
This is an excerpt from Jane Fonda's book on her visit to North Vietnam and how she broadcast messages from Hanoi appealing to US pilots of the damage done to dykes which when destroyed could drown civilians. The sadness should be for your country, your soldiers. They don't know why they are fighting us
