Soldiers in silent revolt in Iraq

"A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

What is the Iraq war all about again? Why isn't this getting covered in the corporate controlled media? What happens when Turkey invades Kurdistan? Is it patriotic to support the war? If so, what does that mean and why? Isn't it more "patriotic" to support the people who are forced to fight in the war? Or maybe patriotism is a useless concept? Who's interest does patriotism serve?

British and US troops are turning away from confronting the Iraqi resistance – despite the rhetoric from Gordon Brown and George Bush that they are “winning” the war.

Revelations from both British and US troops show that morale has plummeted and that soldiers are avoiding all encounters with anti-occupation forces.

A senior British commander told the Sunday Telegraph that since they withdrew from Basra this summer they have not once returned to the city. They patrol around their base at the airport, with the occasional forays to the Iranian border.

He admitted that the military and the resistance have struck a deal not to attack each other. The oil rich southern Iraqi city is now in the hands of rival resistance organizations.

One senior British officer said, “We are tired of firing at people. We would prefer to find a political accommodation.”

Other soldiers said they saw little point in fighting on. One captain admitted, “If we went into the city every night, we would still be doing it in ten years’ time.

“There is nothing the military can do any more without the backing of politicians, and no politician wants to touch Iraq with a barge pole. Having the military out here without political backing is pointless.”

If the British military is “officially” pulling back from the war, US troops are doing so unofficially.

In an echo of the Vietnam War, US troops told independent journalist Dahr Jamail that they run fake patrols and send false reports as part of a strategy of “search and avoid”.

One soldier, who had recently returned from Iraq, admitted, “Morale was incredibly low. Most men in my platoon in Iraq were just in from combat tours in Afghanistan.

“We were hit by so many roadside bombs we became incredibly demoralised, so we decided the only way we wouldn’t be blown up was to avoid driving around all the time.

“So we would go find an open field and park. Then we would call our base every hour to tell them we were searching for weapons caches in the fields and doing weapons patrols and everything was going fine.

“All our enlisted people became very ­disenchanted with our chain of command.”

Another soldier said, “We’d go to the end of our patrol route and set up on top of a bridge and use it as an over-watch position. We would just sit with our binoculars and observe rather than sweep. We’d call in radio checks every hour and say we were doing sweeps.”

“It was a common tactic, a lot of people did that. We’d just hang out, listen to music, smoke cigarettes and pretend.”

A third soldier told Jamail, “One of my buddies is in Baghdad right now and we email all the time. He just told me that nearly each day they pull into a parking lot, drink soda, and shoot at the cans.

“They pay Iraqi kids to bring them things and spread the word that they are not doing anything and to please just leave them alone.”

Soldiers in silent revolt in Iraq. Socialist Worker. 30-Oct-2007.

The 300 Movie Review

Movie Review "The 300":

The movie "The 300" Spartans is a movie based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, the deviant behind the Sin City series. I say deviant, because, although Miller is truly gifted, his work is essentially the output of a highly cynical and nihilistic mind.

Interestingly, Miller's movie version of "The 300" perfectly intersects with the world-view of the Bush-loyal wing of the Republican party and their neocon (for instance Felipe Calderon of Mexico, and John Howard of Australia) allies across the world.

In "The 300" we learn of a king (Leonidas, aka G W Bush) who has identified that Sparta (aka USA) must go to war with Persia (aka Persia/Iran) in order to preserve the liberty of the freemen of Sparta (aka largest slave-holding city of Greece at the time). He knows this because the big black man who came to ask him to surrender to Persia insulted his very white wife (I guess, he didn't say anything to her that a typical Republican traditionalist would not have, but he was black after all).

Unfortunately, the corrupt Senate (elected officials versus hereditary king) won't send the army to fight. So the king must go on his own, with his loyal posse of 300 soldiers, not nearly enough to fight off the 1 million Persians! Gosh darned pesky elected officials!

Leonidas' wife (pictured) waves him off in a field of golden grain (slaves not show, of course) as he and his 300 go to face Al-Qaeda, er that is, the Persians.

Leo is able to kick butt and kill may an Arab in gruesome form. Xerxes, the king of the Persians, turns out to be an eight foot tall drag queen, who offers Leo to come (literally and figuratively?) to his side by kneeling before him. Leo is no fag though, and he rebuffs Xerk.

Xerk sends wave after wave of blacks, gays, retards and Arabs to attack Leo. But Leo and his men are too white and too hetro to be overcome.

Unfortunately, there is one deformed retard from Sparta (who escaped the logical tradition of killing deformed babies in Sparta, because his weak and damed mother loved him too much, the nerve!) who betrays Leo.

This retard leads the Persian immortals (also deformed, hardly even human, but what do you expect, they are Persian Al-Qaeda fags after all!) to surround Leo.

Leo is trapped but does not surrender, not to a bunch of fags! No, he and his men would rather die than suffer that fate, and they do. Fortunately, Leo dies with his arms outstretched and as the camera pans out we, the audience, cannot but help wondering whether he reminds us of a certain savior who died on the cross.

Fortunately, queen hetro was able to finally convince the Senate to surge the military into action and thus stop the Persians from taking over the homeland. In her speech she declares that "freedom isn't really free at all, it requires the sacrifice of blood." Interestingly, this exact sentiment is echoed thousands of years later in the aptly titled poem "No, Freedom Isn't Free" by Kelly Strong, and of course countless new millennium country songs.

So the drill down is basically that this movie is complete propaganda, perhaps even funded by the US Army. There is no objectivity at all and there is zero historical accuracy. Read any history of the Battle of Thermopylae and it is clear that the authors of this terrible film had one single objective - to promote their own sick and corrupt version of the "War on Terror."

What are other bloggers saying?

• The 300 is so blatantly an allegory for the right-wing fantasy called "The War on Terror", [...] the movie is really an attempt at Republican propoganda. - Daily Kos
  
  
• "Freedom isn't free"..and yes Frank Miller is a bigot. - All Day, Every Day
  
  
• Athens has ceased to be the ideal for western culture... John Angliss
  
  
• Gorgeous Slaughter - Lenin's Tomb
  

Rather not see blatant fascist propaganda in the movies? Sign the petition at 300, An Unethical Movie Picture.