User:Revolt2007

Denmark's murderous war alliance with USA

By Ron Ridenour

Aug 18, 2007, 05:42

Denmark, one of the few nations left in the US war coalition, withdrew its 500 battlefield troops from Iraq during the first week of August only to send in 80 “instructors” with four helicopters, while also sending more soldiers to kill and die in Afghanistan (about 650) and the Sudan.

The majority of Danes believe that their country is now out of the hopeless war against Iraq, and that their eight dead soldiers—six killed by combatant resistance forces, one killed in “friendly fire, one dead of a heart attack—are innocent victims and heroes.

I believe that Denmark continues warring and that all who participate—both those who give the orders and those volunteer soldiers who fulfill them—are guilty of mass murder and war crimes. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rassmussen told the daily “Ekstra Bladet”, August 10, that Denmark continues to send “instructors” to Iraq, that it was “right to go in” and that he “regrets nothing.”

So long as Danes subjugate themselves to USA’s permanent war strategy they will die on the various battlefields the hegemonists choose. The only way to prevent more deaths and the only decent morality is to withdraw from their terror wars everywhere.

The majority of Danish anti-war activists see the troop withdrawal as a victory for peace. So do I but only partially, because the government—with the backing of the opposition in Parliament including the formerly left-wing People’s Socialist Party—continues to be a warring occupier, albeit in the false name of “rebuilding” the lands they destroy. These politician terror warriors are war criminals just as those who vote for them act criminally.

I believe that most Danes are completely indifferent that Iraqis are killed and tortured yet they can not accept that invading Danish soldiers shall be killed.How hypocritical it is that the invading murderers are called victims and heroes while the innocent invaded people, who defend themselves, are called “terrorists”! When one states this obvious hypocrisy one is labeled “terrorist spokesman” and “traitor”.

If the invading troops were not killed by the occupied peoples in their legitimate armed resistance struggle the invading states would have no reason to withdraw, as most are doing with the one exception: the United States of America.

Denmark is a belligerent war-criminal state, according to the nation’s own constitution (paragraph 19.2 and 20), former United Nations general secretary, Kofi Annan, and the UN Charter articles 2, 4, 42, 51. The UN Charter and the 1987 Geneva Convention grant the legal and moral right for the invaded to take up arms in their defense.

Furthermore, according to the UN Charter, several UN resolutions and the Nuremberg Court, war criminals shall face trials at the International Court. That means not only George Bush, Richard Cheney, Tony Blair but also Anders Fogh Rasmussen and company, those responsible for defying international law, who lied about the reasons for warring—the false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al-Qaida, in order to rationalize launching an unprovoked oil-war against Iraq—shall be arrested and placed before the Haag Court.

K.E. Loegstrup

My impression is that many Danes, just like US Americans, would rather follow Danish (or American) culture and religion than they would comply with United Nation laws, regardless that Denmark (and the US) has signed them. So let us hear what K.E. Loegstrup, one of Denmark’s most respected theologians and philosophers, has to say about co-responsibility and guilt.

In his master work, “The Ethical Demand”—published originally in Danish, in 1956, (last published in English by Notre Dame/London, 1997)—he wrote:

“The individual citizen…is an accomplice in all the disparity and need, which fellow citizens and countrymen experience due to insufficiency and poor rule…political responsibility lies in being co-responsible for others actions, especially the governors.”

In one of his sermons, “Piety’s unnatural difference between the powerful and ordinary people”, Loegstrup wrote that to be a Christian means: “To be joyous with justice and peace as a good and gracious vicissitude and struggle for that…”

My Denmark, My America

Many Danes still have not comprehended why Denmark has become hated by so many people around the world. This hatred hangs together with Denmark’s obsequious support for the USA’s constant warring and world domination goal.

Since the US invaded Vietnam, I have understood that the United States, with its rapacious capitalist economy and imperialist world reach, is a violent monster and therefore I took co-responsibility and supported the peoples it oppresses and invades. I continued thusly when I immigrated to Denmark and witnessed that that once peaceful country began to act as my former country does—in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

My consciousness took form after I enlisted, in 1956, as a naïve “patriot” in the US Air Force. I had been raised with systematic lies just like the contemporary generation. When I entered college, in 1960, the US was already warring against Vietnamese but the war was hidden from US Americans in the name of “national security”. At that time, US invaders were called “instructors” for the “democratic” South Vietnam Quisling government troops, just as Danish soldiers are now called “instructors” for the “democratic” Iraqi government troops.

Once I understood the truth, that the majority of South Vietnamese and all North Vietnamese defended their country against the invading horde, I was compelled to support their just struggle otherwise I would have been immoral, a passive supporter of the mass murderers. Such is it to this day for both US Americans and, for the past decade, for Danes.

The Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, was their guide and hero, and “Uncle Ho” became mine as well. Afterwards, I realized that other oppressed peoples and their leaders were “the good guys”: Fidel and Che, Nicaragua’s FSLN, El Salvador’s FMLN, and many others who struggled for their country, to have a roof over head, for their own resources, for the right and necessity to kill the aggressors.

In 1984—as Reagan’s Administration was actively warring against Nicaragua, even supporting the brutal counter-revolutionaries in their gruesome torturing and painful murdering of Nicaraguan children, students, teachers, social workers, even some international aides, and especially farmers—I worked for several months in public relations and propaganda for the FSLN’s Association of Sandinistas Cultural Workers (ASTC). (1)

The difference between then and now is that it was formerly legal to speak the truth about the invaders, even to support the invaded. Western bourgeois democracy was then obliged to allow criticism of the illegal, murderous invaders. But today—with the perfect 11/9 rationalization followed up by the US’s “Patriotic Act”, and mimicked by the “terror laws” of Denmark and the EU—such statements of truth can land one behind bars for several years. Armed with the fascistic “terror law”, the Danish state is about to prosecute two citizen groups, Uproar and Fighters and Lovers, for their support of liberation fighters in Colombia and Palestine.

Nazis, the racist Danish People’s Party, and the warring government’s mass murderers have civil liberty protection but that does not apply to anti-imperialists and war resisters, who support the just resistance fighters in many countries.

Another difference between then and now is that we live in a declared Permanent War Age, and we are supposed to simply swallow such without protest and without telling one another the truth. George Orwell’s worst 1984 nightmare has become daily life.

The Permanent War Age Goals: • To spread and strengthen US hegemony over the whole world. • To establish a long-term US military existence in all lands with oil and other natural resources and in lands where transportation of oil is most economical, such as Afghanistan; and in countries where there is significant resistance to US jingoism. This goal is beneficial for other rich capitalist states, such as Denmark whose A.P. Møller owns the world’s richest shipping company, which he uses to transport US’s troops and war machinery to their battlefields. (Møller also owns a new weapons industry, one of four in Denmark. Before 11/9 Denmark only had one small weapons producer.) • The terror wars shall last for an unlimited time, in order, in part, to transform sections of civilian production into military production as well as give greater profit to oil, weapons and other heavy industries. • Those of us living in the empire and its allied conquerors’ nations shall be frightened of the dark-skinned “terrorists”—not the terror warriors, of course—real and imagined. We shall especially not view the oppressed and invaded peoples’ armed resistance for what they are: real defenders of their countries’ sovereignty. We shall not think or act in solidarity. We shall accept the powers that be, their brutal jingoism and despicable racism. We shall either be active aggressors or passive by-standers. If we refuse to accept their endless, chaotic profit grab we shall be incarcerated.

We should realize that even when unacceptable terrorist actions against civilians do occur by individuals or groups, they take place after and because of the aggressors’ illegal and brutal incursions.

If one is determined to be a moral person one must stare the evidential reality in its face and condemn the United States of America for what it is: the world’s biggest terror state. Then we must take the next step and act in solidarity with the oppressed and invaded peoples. We must accept what international law has determined, that the aggressors can justly and legally be fought with arms, and that the aggressors must be brought before the International Court. Once tried and convicted, they must be incarcerated for their war crimes, genocide, and brutal racism.

The proof of my assertion, that the US is the world’s biggest terror state, lays in its contemporary wars of aggression and its long history. From the very first days of US sovereignty the “land of opportunity” has intervened against or invaded other peoples hundreds of times in a hundred lands. Throughout the late 18th and the entire 19th century, it conducted approximately 100 separate wars against Native Americans. Nearly all their tribes and nations were attacked, burned down, and hundreds of thousands of the country’s original people slaughtered. The US government has ignored or acted in opposition to every treaty it has signed with defeated tribes.

The federal government and some regional governments have tolerated or openly supported civilian paramilitary groups who have attacked, tortured and murdered Native Americans, black slaves and freed blacks, and Mexicans. The federal government has also supported paramilitary groups in their invasions of other countries: Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and others. Much of this information can be found in the US government’s own websites and library records.

On June 23, 1969, it was reported in the U.S. Congressional Record that the US Marine Corp had made 180 military landings. Today, the US military has troops, bases and war materials in 120 of the 189 states in the United Nations.

The US has arranged 35 coups in 28 lands just since 1947!

I take from www.krysstal.com/democracy, a website based in the UK concentrating on education and information. It has a wealth of information with excellent sources, some of them official government sources, regarding coups, other interventions and invasion.

In six of the 28 countries’ in which governments were toppled the US has repeated their “teaching democracy” tactic with military might: Greece in 1949 and 1967; Guatemala in 1954 and 1963; South Vietnam in 1955 and 1963; Laos in 1958, 1959 and again in 1960; South Korea in 1960 and 1979; Bolivia in 1964 and 1970. It failed in Venezuela against the popularly elected president, Hugo Chavez, in 2002.

In addition to this illustrious record of democracy, the US has intervened with barrels of money, bombs and conventional weapons, with weapons of mass destruction including chemical, biological and atomic weapons, political and economic sanctions, and direct invasions with troops and bombings in 66 countries a total of 159 times just since 1947. (2)

The first country that the US intervened against following the Second World War was a key European ally, France. In 1947, it forced its will over the former empire’s elections, in order to secure France’s re-colonization of Vietnam, a prelude to its own imperial invasion. When interventions are inadequate, the US has no qualms about outright invasions with bombings or troops or both. This it has performed in 15 countries since WW11: Korea 1950-53; Cuba 1961; Vietnam from 1962 to 1975; Dominican Republic 1965; Laos between 1965 and 1972; Cambodia 1969-73; Lebanon 1982-3; Nicaragua 1982-1988; Panama 1989; Iraq 1991, with severe bombings thereafter and then the 2003 invasion; Somalia in 1992 and again in 2007; Sudan 1998; Afghanistan 2001.

Although the United States of America has far surpassed all other empires in its number of invasions and interventions against nearly half the world’s population, it has not received any sanctions by the UN or any other political or legal body. It was once judged by the International Court for mining Nicaraguan harbors, in 1984. Although it was the only nation so condemned by the International Court, the US was not punished, not even made to pay redemption. The US is so mighty that no nation, not even the United Nations, dare touch it. Words of admonition are the most that can be expected in this “real world”.

One nation, Japan, did attack it at its Pearl Harbor military base. That mistake, in 1941, will not be repeated, at least in any foreseeable future. And one time, a few individual terrorists did attack its Twin Tower buildings in Manhattan—where many very rich companies have offices and headquarters—and the empire’s generals’ Pentagon.

This shocking daring attack, on September 11, 2001, was a godsend for the so-called Neocons. Donald Rumsfeld had not long before prayed for an event like Pearl Harbor, in order to push throw the Project for a New American Century imperial plans, starting with the take-over of Iraq.

How the empire can be stopped

Ancient and contemporary history has taught us that what is necessary to overcome an invading nation are the following factors:

• The invaded people must fight back with arms and if the invaders manage to occupy their country they must continue armed struggle with strategies such as guerrilla warfare. • The loyal armed resistance must exact such significant losses to the enemy that its will to continue is weakened by loss of money and material and the invading soldiers morale is depressed. • That decent people in the aggressor land(s) act against the war for peace and, hopefully, in solidarity with the liberation fighters, in order to legitimize their righteous struggle in the eyes of working people in the empire. A mounting anti-war campaign will also encourage officials and civil servants in the empire to resign, even to act in solidarity with the oppressed.

Conclusion

I close with quotes I’ve compounded from Loestrup’s book, “The Ethical Demand”, for its prose and as an expression of my own philosophy:

“We are in each other’s hand…The individual never has anything to do with another person without holding something of his/her life in his hand…so it simply is up to the individual whether the other’s life is fortunate or not…To accept the fact without wanting to hear the challenge is thus the same as being indifferent to the question of whether life shall be supported or destroyed.”

If we wish to be free from more war deaths, both our own and others, we must take co-responsibility and act against the powers’ terror wars. © Copyright 2007 by AxisofLogic.com

________________________________________ See Ron Ridenour's entire series on his volunteer farm work in Cuba on axis! Read the Biography and Additional Articles by Axis of Logic Columnist, Ron Ridenour. ________________________________________ About the author

Ron Ridenour, born in the United States, has been an activist for  justice since 1961. He took up participatory journalism as one  tool to realize a humanitarian  world revolution. He has written thousands of articles for scores of  publications.

Ron Ridenour's expanded edition of his eariler book, CUBA: BEYOND THE CROSSROADS Socialist Resistance was recently released. You can obtain it at http://www.ronridenour.com/ His other books are: "Yankee Sandinistas" (Curbstone  Press, Connecticut, USA, 1987);  "Backfire: The CIA's Biggest  Burn" (Editorial José Martí,  Havana, 1991); "Cuba at  the Crossroads" (Infoservicios,  Havana-Los Angeles, California,  1994); "Cuba: a `Yankee reports"  (Papyrossa, Cologne, Germany,  1997). He is co-author of several books in English and Danish. ISBN 978-0-902869-95-0 EAN 9780902869950  £10, Euros15, $20 “Yankee Sandinistas: interviews with North Americans living & working in the new Nicaragua” is available at Curbstone Press, Connecticut, 1986. Ridenour's book about the use of chemical and biological weapons against Cuba: “Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn” Editorial José Martí, Havana, 1991. See also William Blum’s books: “Killing Hope”, Common Courage, Maine, 1995 & 2003; “Rogue State: a guide to the world’s only superpower,” Zed Books, London, 2000.