Looking at the Four Corners report on Secret Iraq, it is hard not be impressed by the desperate guts of civilians willing to fight the US army to the death.

While the US Marines were killing men, women and children by the thousands in Fallujah, the British, like the cat that swallowed the canary, were smug at how well they had done at pacifying the south. Until they started getting blown up badly, so they decided they’d better pack up and take their traveling death team to pick on … Afghanistan!

The sheer flagrant criminality of the State is so breathtaking. The ethic is always the same double standard: I have a right to be violent to you, you don’t have a right to be violent to me.

One of the marines explained, as if to a moron, “If you order a marine regiment to attack a city, they attack a city.” That’s as far as their ethics go. They don’t the question the ethics of orders to kill. They just kill and assume that the justification comes from the political process.

But what could possibly justify such high crimes on such a large scale? Obviously the pretexts given for war, the weapons of mass destruction and such, were lies and it was later proved that the politicians knew them to be lies at the time.

What about democracy? Here we see the entire justification for democracy stripped bare. Could a majority vote of the American people justify such blatant mass murder against the Iraqis? No! Could a majority vote of the Iraqi people justify it? No!

That being so, how could democratic government be in any better position than that of a majority using force and threats to coerce the minority into obedience and submission?

In war we see the essence of the State. For all States originate from armies and conquest somewhere along the line: all democracies originated from monarchies, and all monarchies originated from conquest. Government is the ethic of conquest carried forward against the subject population, democracy or no. Government is the spirit of conquest, institutionalized.

Peter, you are plain wrong on facts.

//But what could possibly justify such high crimes on such a large scale? Obviously the pretexts given for war, the weapons of mass destruction and such, were lies and it was later proved that the politicians knew them to be lies at the time. //

1/ They are not 'crimes' they are war.
2/ The Insurgents murdered 100s if not 1000s of civilians in Falluja
3/ Weapons of mass destruction. DID exist, but were shipped to Syria by plane. (General Georges Sada, Iraqi Air Force)

You've been reading your socialist/progressive rubbish for so long, and have not 'got out' to look at the bigger picture, you have simply been sucked in and swallowed the 'correct' line without even tasting the bait first.

Please don't insult our intelligence by trying the 'crimes' thingy.... we are brighter than that. It's freaking WAR Peter...and stragically, has had a good outcome. Saddaam was killing and slicing and dicing his own people by the 10s of 1000s without any help from outsiders, so don't further insult is by suggesting that it all started to happen when the Allies went in.

P.S.. are you a member of the Fabian society? You are quacking, waddling, and seem to have the appropriate 'apparel' to be one.

ALGOREisRICH

LOL That's the first time anyone's called me a socialist!

"They are not 'crimes' they are war."

You are only proving my point. So if you or I go around killing people by the hundreds or thousands, that's crime. But if government does it, that's not crime.

Right

Peter Hume, quite so.

I recalled the stories of WW2 that were part of my youth, all those German atrocities that sounded very much like last night's show.

As for that lowlife Tony Blair, now a 'devout' xtian, to cleanse hisself of his war crimes, he and Bush, as well as Howard for that matter, need to be in The Hague, and then doing their porridge.

While we wring our hands over 'our boys' up on charges in Afghanistan for killing civilians, what we saw last night was probably exactly what they were up to.

The mild mannered airforce jerk that appears on our TV news with trembling lips and tears welling in his eyes every time one of 'our boys' is blown to smithereens by a roadside bomb needs to explain what our taxes are really paying for....as do Gillard and that horrible pretender, Abbott, since they both stand behind the war crimes our soldiers are engaged in.

AGIR should consider signing up himself, if he thinks this is all such good, and honourable, fun.

All the actors in this debacle need to be held to account.
Shrub, Coward, Bleagh, et al representing the state.
Halitosisburton, Rootbrown and all the weapons manufacturers and the rest who have grown fat off this war representing the capitalists.
Any soldier (or terrorist) who has killed a civilian. They must justify their actions. They cannot "just follow orders" and expect immunity.
That is what the ICC is for. This is what the Geneva conventions are for.

Charge them all and let the court decide if they are criminals or not. To not do so reeks of war crimes and cover up and will forever be seen as another case of the west and its perfidious use of "the law" only when it suits them.
And people wonder why "they" hate us! sheesh.

As to Pete and his Mises inspired fantasy of privatised states.

Show me a single example of an improvement in service and utility of something that was once the sole province of government that has been privitised?

<<Government is the ethic of conquest carried forward against the subject population, democracy or no. Government is the spirit of conquest, institutionalized.>>

And capitalist firms, private property, patents, copyright etc etc are all exactly the same. The ethic of conquest and exploitation carried forward against the subject population and no democracy whatsoever. At least we can vote governments out. You cant vote out the boss. Capitalism is the spirit of conquest (and usury, exploitation and dominance) intitutionalised.

That people like Pete here cant see how much the capitalists rely on the state to keep them rich and in positions of power just beggars belief. Along with the church, the state and capitalism form a holy trinity dedicated to subjugating the vast majority while the privileged few live the life of luxury and get to make all the decisions for the rest of us.

Wake up Peter. I hate the state as much as you do and for pretty much the same reasons. It is just that to me the same reasons apply even more so to capitalism and its defining characteristics of wage slavery and private "property". If the state usurps your freedom and that is bad then how can you not see that the same applies to the capitalist system.