Lorie Byrd has an interesting post about a British Leftist whose view of the Iraq war changed when he read the new book Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (The Black Book of Saddam Hussein). Saddam Hussein killed over one million civilians, and the book is a firsthand account of some of those murders.

It's a biting indictment of both the Hussein regime for the countless attrocities it committed against its own citizens, and the French government's support of that regime. Next to the Soviet Union (and later, Russia), Saddam Hussein's biggest arms dealer was France.

The book is especially condemning of Jacques Chirac's cozy relationship with the tyrant. Not surprisingly, Lewis Jones reports the book has been ignored by Le Monde & other leading French publications. You can read AEI's review of the book here.

Unfortunately, the book has not yet been published in English. However, it's publisher Oh Editions, has released several excerpts in English, some of which I've republished below. While the authors clearly come from the European Left--they repeat the tired arguements that the "neo-cons" were looking for any reason to justify the war, have naive faith in the power of the U.N. and its resolutions, and repeat the lie that the Bush Administration never mentioned human rights or democracy building during the lead up to the war--they do support the end result of the war--the removal of the dictator Saddam Hussein. I eagerly look forward to the English language edition. Excerpts:

Hearing the Victims

by Bernard Kouchner [of Doctor's Without Borders]

It was Saddam Hussein himself who proved to be his country’s main weapon of massive destruction. For 35 years, he turned brutally on his own people. Right up to the final days of his regime, he conducted an “Arabization” campaign against Kurd-populated areas. Code-named Anfal, or the “spoils” of war, it resulted in nearly 500,000 people vanished without a trace, most of them women and children, and more than 4,500 villages erased from the map. Sadly, victims can’t be identified since the Iraqis lack sufficient DNA testing capability. As of 2005, some 4.0 million exiles still seek to return to their homes. The years of war and military operations have left some 1.5 million wounded and handicapped. Spoils of war, indeed.

The road to Ruanduz

November, 1974. It all began for us on the road to Ruanduz, the celebrated Hamilton Road, which had served as a lifeline of British colonization. With Dr. Jacques Béres and Dr. Max Récamier, we struck out on the first independent Doctors Without Borders mission. Along with Chris Kutschera, we had found the Kurds to be a people without borders, a people we would never really leave.

On the way back, going towards Iran, Saddam’s helicopters launched an attack on us, amid a crowd of fleeing Kurds. I can still see the machine guns spitting out their rounds, the missiles exploding into the asphalt and dozens of bodies in the ditches. The aircraft and missiles were Made in France. Back then, Saddam Hussein was Iraq’s vice-president, and our country was doing good business in death.

The American war

By December, 2002, America was preparing for war in Iraq. I wanted to know what my Kurd and Shiite friends thought about it, and so I returned to the autonomous Kurd zone created after the first Gulf war in 1991. In a now democratic Sulaimaniyah, the mayor’s political opposition was demonstrating publicly on local issues, while supporting the war of liberation being prepared. Of the 4,000 women enrolled at the university, not one wore a veil. You could choose from a total of 17 dailies and weeklies, representing all convictions. I returned towards Halabja, where thousands of women and children had perished in a few seconds of Saddam’s chemical bombing. There, I encountered a veiled woman who in despair unleashed her long-repressed anger on me. What was I doing there, she asked? Why should I, a former cabinet minister who couldn’t save these people from their tragic destiny during previous visits, why should I now return to this wounded land? How could I now face the victims, Frenchman that I am, whose government supported the regime, she asked? And what hope could I possibly offer them, me the humanitarian physician, when the French Doctors had long ago left the scene?

How could one reply to her formidable accusation of western selfishness? What reasons could ease the consternation of this young woman with delicate hands whose veiled body had been entirely burned, still causing her constant, gruesome pain? All her family members had been killed by the bombs of a man who at the time claimed French support....

In France and in Germany, the year 2003 saw some sincere defenders of freedom inadvertently support the worst oppressors by protesting American policy choices. They accused us of selling out the right to involvement in favor of aggression, of preferring expediency over compassion. Weren’t they revealing a soupçon of revisionism in such simplifications? Putting aside Saddam’s crimes, they distanced themselves momentarily from defending human rights so they could express political enmities, forgetting our shared concern about protecting minorities. They hadn’t taken the time to listen to the Iraqi people, who wanted for a long time to be rid of Saddam Hussein. And yet, his victims had a first claim to be heard....

We didn’t claim we could have avoided war. We said that the French militant position, actually facilitated it rather than the opposite. France’s initial diplomatic move, aimed at forcing a Security Council debate, was in fact smart. Then our nation veered off towards a fruitless veto threat....

Posted by: Rusty at 02:59 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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