MASS MURDERERS IN DARK SUITS 

by Elias Davidsson

  10 December 1997

    Mass murderers are generally considered as mentally disturbed individuals who commit their heinous crimes in the shadow.  When they are found, such individuals are normally prosecuted and sentenced to lengthy imprisonment. Mass media usually follow-up such cases in detail, both as regards the acts committed and the persons involved.

    Mass murderers in dark suits are a totally different sort of people. Even when found guilty, they are treated with great reverence. The most known among them were the Nazi leaders who were treated with great courtesy at Nurnberg in 1945.   Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi leaders,  presided over the annihilation of Hungarian Jewry in World War II.  At his trial in Jerusalem Eichmann declared that he never hated Jews.  His participation in genocide was merely the execution of orders given by his superiors, which he attempted to fulfill as conscientiously as possible.  

    Most heinous crimes of our times are in fact committed by gentlemen in dark suits: National leaders and high-ranking public officials. Their weapon is the pen, not guns or  bombs. These bureaucrats never see their victims cry for mercy and die slowly in agonizing pain. Their decision to commit murder is often taken thousands of miles away from the place of death. Is there any human act more abhorrent than to kill people from a remote place without incurring oneself the slightest risk?

    From August 1990 until this day governments across the world have participated in the extermination of 750,000 Iraqi children. Why ? It appears that these children’s “Godfather” (Saddam Hussein) is threatening world peace, whatever that terms means.  As “world peace” is as elusive as ever, and as there are still children remaining in Iraq, the infernal machine continues to grind to death 6 Iraqi children an hour, day and night, seven days a week.  The weapon inflicting death are the so-called “UN trade sanctions against Iraq”, a misnomer for what is an “economic siege of the entire Iraqi population”. This collective punishment of an entire nation has led to large-scale food and medicine shortages, epidemics, permanent health damage and death, to name but a few of the dramatic consequences.  God have mercy upon those, such as Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, who considers such human sacrifices as “worth the price”.

    It is sometimes claimed that the aim of the “trade sanctions” is not to hurt Iraqi civilians but to force the Iraqi authorities to respect UN resolutions (by imposing “hardship” on the civilian population). The massive deaths of Iraqi children is thus claimed to be an unfortunate side-effect in the accomplishment of a noble aim, a price which “we” must be ready to pay.

    Trade sanctions is a weapon. When they are aimed at the economy of an entire nation, they become a weapon of mass destruction. Those who wield this weapon are fully aware of the consequences ensuing from its use.  That’s why they push the trigger again, and again.

    But who are the people who wield this deadly weapon?  They are well groomed gentlemen, known as government ministers. And they know each other as members of an international platoon.  Among the members of this platoon each reader will probably identify his own Minister of Foreign Affairs, as participating in summarily executing  Iraqi children.

    And when an international platoon of ministers executes somebody, somewhere, none of them is personally responsible. Absolutely none of them. Because not one of them knows for sure who had inflicted the fatal shot. When somebody inadvertently asks what they have been doing in this platoon, these cowards wail: “It is not me who killed the innocent infant, it is not me”. But they return next day to execute a new batch of infants. By their signature.  By failing to lift the sanctions.

    Adolf Eichmann sent half a million human beings to death. He fulfilled his duty conscientiously in accordance with a superior order. For this he was rightfully condemned to death, his body burnt and the remaining ashes spread over the sea. The act was primarily symbolic for it is not humanly possible to punish one person for killing half a million people.

    But what can and what should be done with the members of the international platoon who individually and collectively signed the death warrant of over one million Iraqi civilians, and who cannot even put forward the defense that they were just following superior orders?