Naked City

Rahul Mahajan (Photo By John Anderson)

"In an era of universal deceit," began Austin author and activist Rahul Mahajan Monday night, "telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Mahajan, recently returned from a visit to Iraq, cited that passage from George Orwell's "Inside the Whale" as an invocation to his attempt to recount what he saw in Baghdad, the Iraqi countryside, and especially Fallujah during a two-week journey to that city in April, when the U.S. military lay siege to the town. Referring to the widely published photos of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, Mahajan said, "The photos may be shocking in the intensity of the depravity" they represent, "but they are not surprising to those of us who have spent some time in Iraq."

Mahajan said that he has spoken to hundreds of groups about the war and U.S. imperialism over the last several years, but that his recent experiences in Iraq (he also visited in January) have left him trying to find ways "to communicate, not to uplift, but to galvanize people" to take action against the war. He said it is important for people to understand that the scenes of abuse revealed in the Abu Ghraib scandal are not isolated incidents, but are more generally "representative of the brutality of the average American soldier" now in action in Iraq, and more broadly reflective of the "inevitable nature of colonialism."

Mahajan quoted a British soldier to the effect that the Americans seem to consider Iraqis as "Untermenschen" – the Nazi term for "lower orders" or subhumans – and that he saw evidence that this is increasingly true among the occupation soldiers.

"Casualties and deaths among civilians, even among women and children," Mahajan said, "are of little or no consequence to the U.S. military. All that matters is 'force protection' – making certain no Americans are killed or wounded. They act as though Iraqis are not human beings."

Mahajan said the "mujahideen" leading the resistance in places like Fallujah are indeed often Islamic fundamentalists, and that the U.S. presence is exacerbating divisions between ethnic groups like the Kurds – who still welcome U.S. troops – and other Iraqis more directly subject to the occupation. "These internal divisions are absolutely necessary to colonialism," he said, "and they are becoming virtually the only asset the U.S. has in Iraq." He called the eventual U.S. retreat from Fallujah "the biggest defeat of the U.S. military since Vietnam." He called on those in the audience to find ways to amplify their opposition to the war – "Whatever you're doing, whatever any of us are doing – it isn't enough." (For more of Mahajan's reports from Iraq, see his weblog at www.empirenotes.org.)