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SADDAM: OF SAVAGES AND THUGS [Col. Writ. 4/6/04] Copyright 2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal It is hard not to read an article, which does not name the former Iraqi president, without the added adjective, "brutal." One popular Black talk show host recently described the former Iraqi head-of-state as a "thug." His comments reminded me of an article I read several years ago, before the (latest) Iraq War, written by a Jesuit scholar who worked with the anti-war group, Voices in the Wilderness. Rev. Dr. G. Simon Harak, writing in the October-November 2002 issue of *BLUEPRINT*, a Loyola University bi-monthly journal, wrote tellingly of the false justifications for the then-upcoming war, and told of a parade of US officials who came to Baghdad to support the Hussein regime. Rev. Dr. Harak writes: As [Saddam] Hussein's human rights violations became more and more flagrant, the US response was to send a parade of US government representatives to support Hussein -- *Donald Rumsfeld*, Alan Simpson, James McClure, *Robert Dole*, Frank Murkowski, together with US Ambassador April Glaspie. Typical of their statements is one from Senator Howard Metzenbaum, announcing himself "a Jew and a staunch supporter of Israel." He went on to tell Saddam that "I have been sitting here and listening to you for about an hour, and I am aware that you are a strong and intelligent man *and that you want peace."* [ p. 2] To quote that great American actor, Keanu Reeves, "whoa." I think what 'the Honorable gentleman' meant was, "as long as you're whacking who we want you to whack (meaning the Iranians) you're cool with us." And Saddam Hussein *did* want peace; peace through war, which, *with the assistance of American arms dealers on both sides*, sent over 800,000 people, perhaps as many as a million men, women and children of both Iraq and Iran, to the final peace of death. As long as Saddam was wreaking bloody havoc upon the Islamic Republic of Iran, he had no shortage of American 'friends.' One wonders, if he was a 'brutal thug,' what of those who aided, abetted, and armed him? Again, this fulsome praise of Saddam came *after* the horrors of poison gas dropped on Halabja, the Kurdish town. Indeed, when Iraq was lobbing chemical warfare against the Iranians, the US support for Iraq went so far as the altering of US law, to allow US companies to sell Iraq the resources for his WMDs, and giving him satellite targeting support for his chemical weapons. When I hear such references to 'thugs', or 'brutes', or 'savages', I am reminded of what every American schoolchild reads by 2nd grade -- the Declaration of Independence. In this declaration, penned by Thomas Jefferson, to state a claim against the British Crown for "excit(ing)" the "merciless Indian Savages" against "us", who adopt a "Rule of Warfare" of "undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions," the US announces its basis for independence from its imperial ruler -- England. This is one reason, Jefferson writes, why King George was "unfit to be the Ruler of a free People." Around the same time as Jefferson was blaming King George for unleashing the fury of "merciless Indian Savages" upon the white settlers, a Shawnee warrior named Tecumseh was rapping with Osages in Missouri. His comments, designed to achieve Indian unity, certainly questions who were the "savages": Brothers. -- When the white men first set foot on our grounds, they were hungry; they had no place on which to spread their blankets, or to kindle their fires. They were feeble; they could do nothing for themselves. Our fathers commiserated their distress, and shared freely with them whatever the Great Spirit had given his red children. They gave them food when hungry, medicine when sick, spread skins for them to sleep on, and gave them grounds, that they might hunt and raise corn. -- Brothers, the white people are like poisonous serpents: when chilled, they are feeble and harmless; but invigorate them with warmth, and they sting their benefactors to death. The white people came among us feeble; and now we have made them strong, they wish to kill us, or drive us back, as they would wolves and panthers. Brothers. -- The white men are not friends to the Indians: at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun. Brothers. -- The white men want more than our hunting grounds; they wish to kill our warriors; they would even kill our old men, women, and little ones ... Who, one wonders, were the real 'merciless Savages?' Copyright 2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal Read Mr. Jamal's latest work,"WE WANT FREEDOM: A Life in the Black Panther Party", from South End Press (www.southendpress.org). "When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice." — Mumia Abu-Jamal MUMIA'S COLUMNS NEED TO BE PUBLISHED AS BROADLY AS POSSIBLE TO INSPIRE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT AND HELP CALL ATTENTION TO HIS CASE. The campaign to kill Mumia is in full swing and we need you to **please** contact as many publications and information outlets as you possibly can to run Mumia's commentaries (on-line and **especially off-line**)!! The only requirements are that you run them *unedited*, with every word including copyright information intact, and send a copy of the publication to Mumia and/or ICFFMAJ. THANK YOU!!!

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