Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Perche' gli Irakeni resistono

"Mr Griffin said he believed that the Americans soldiers viewed the
Iraqis in the same way as the Nazis viewed Russians, Jews and eastern
Europeans in the Second World War, when they labelled them
"untermenschen"."
Da un'intervista a un'ex-membro delle SAS, le forze speciali
britanniche, veterano dell'occupazione Irakena.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/12/nsas112.xml
He said: "I saw a lot of things in Baghdad that were illegal or just
wrong. I knew, so others must have known, that this was not the way to
conduct operations if you wanted to win the hearts and minds of the
local population. And if you don't win the hearts and minds of the
people, you can't win the war.
"If we were on a joint counter-terrorist operation, for example, we
would radio back to our headquarters that we were not going to detain
certain people because, as far as we were concerned, they were not a
threat because they were old men or obviously farmers, but the
Americans would say 'no, bring them back'.
"The Americans had this catch-all approach to lifting suspects. The
tactics were draconian and completely ineffective. The Americans were
doing things like chucking farmers into Abu Ghraib [the notorious
prison in Baghdad where US troops abused and tortured Iraqi detainees]
or handing them over to the Iraqi authorities, knowing full well they
were going to be tortured.
"The Americans had a well-deserved reputation for being trigger happy.
In the three months that I was in Iraq, the soldiers I served with
never shot anybody. When you asked the Americans why they killed
people, they would say 'we were up against the tough foreign fighters'.
I didn't see any foreign fighters in the time I was over there.
"I can remember coming in off one operation which took place outside
Baghdad, where we had detained some civilians who were clearly not
insurgents, they were innocent people. I couldn't understand why we had
done this, so I said to my troop commander 'would we have behaved in
the same way in the Balkans or Northern Ireland?' He shrugged his
shoulders and said 'this is Iraq', and I thought 'and that makes it all
right?'
"As far as I was concerned that meant that because these people were a
different colour or a different religion, they didn't count as much.
You can not invade a country pretending to promote democracy and behave
like that."
On another operation, Mr Griffin recalls his and other soldiers'
frustration at being ordered to detain a group of men living on a farm.
He said: "After you have been on a few operations, experience tells you
when you are dealing with insurgents or just civilians and we knew the
people we had detained were not a threat.
"One of them was a disabled man who had a leg missing but the Americans
still ordered us to load them on the helicopters and bring them back to
their base. A few hours later we were told to return half of them and
fly back to the farm in daylight. It was a ridiculous order and we ran
the risk of being shot down or ambushed, but we still had to do it. The
Americans were risking our lives because they refused to listen to our
advice the night before. It was typical of their behaviour."
Mr Griffin said he believed that the Americans soldiers viewed the
Iraqis in the same way as the Nazis viewed Russians, Jews and eastern
Europeans in the Second World War, when they labelled them
"untermenschen".
"As far as the Americans were concerned, the Iraqi people were
sub-human, untermenschen. You could almost split the Americans into two
groups: ones who were complete crusaders, intent on killing Iraqis, and
the others who were in Iraq because the Army was going to pay their
college fees. They had no understanding or interest in the Arab
culture. The Americans would talk to the Iraqis as if they were stupid
and these weren't isolated cases, this was from the top down. There
might be one or two enlightened officers who understood the situation a
bit better but on the whole that was their general attitude. Their
attitude fuelled the insurgency. I think the Iraqis detested them."

"Mr Griffin said he believed
Peccato che non ha niente per sostenere i suoi "believes" :)
-Stefano