IRAQ-PORTUGAL: ‘Revolution’ Officers Speak Out against War

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Apr 4 2003 (IPS) - The invasion of Iraq is an illegal war, one that uses 21st-century technology and medieval ideology against freedom, democracy and progress, say several influential Portuguese military officials who are famed for their role in the 1974 ”Carnation Revolution” that ended their country’s long dictatorship.

The invasion of Iraq is an illegal war, one that uses 21st-century technology and medieval ideology against freedom, democracy and progress, say several influential Portuguese military officials who are famed for their role in the 1974 ”Carnation Revolution” that ended their country’s long dictatorship.

Top armed forces officers on active duty also oppose the U.S.- led war, but they generally keep their opinions to themselves because they run counter to those of the Portuguese government.

The 1974 Revolution ”of the captains of April” was led by young lieutenants and captains, who on Apr 25 overthrew the dictatorship that had been in place nearly 50 years, since 1926, erected by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

The leaders of the revolution, today highly ranked and mostly in the reserves, enjoy great social prestige. And there are many among them who are voicing harsh criticisms of the war against Iraq that was launched Mar 20 under orders from Washington.

Gen. Pedro Pezarat Correia, Adm. Victor Crespo, Col. Vasco Lourenço and majors Mario Tomé and Rodrigo de Sousa e Castro concurred in their conversations with IPS that serious problems will emerge in attempts to run an occupied Iraq, a nation that could turn into an ”enormous Palestine”.

The Portuguese are the only European military forces with extensive war experience in the second half of the 20th century, from 1961 to 1974, caught up in the wars of independence in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique against Lisbon’s colonial domination.

”As a military officer, I have experienced war. It cannot be ignored that even the most sophisticated missiles foster useless death and destruction, just like in our times. Faced with the adversities of military attacks and suffering, as we saw in Africa, the will of people to defend themselves is only reinforced,” Crespo told IPS.

”The decision of the world’s superpower to engage in a war against a country that is a member of the United Nations, without the approval of the UN Security Council, undoubtedly marks a regression of international law to an era that we thought had been long overcome,” lamented the admiral.

It is unlikely that Baghdad will withstand ”the enormous military power of the United States… and in a more or less limited amount of time,” the U.S.-led forces will dominate Iraq militarily, he said.

”But the difficulties to be surmounted in maintaining that occupation and achieving Washington’s political objectives should give one pause,” added Crespo.

The greatest danger is ”the neo-conservative doctrine” of the U.S. government, ”which already has admitted that the war might not end in Iraq, but extend to other countries, to those it has identified as terrorists or part of ‘the axis of evil’, located in the same region as well as being Israel’s leading enemies,” he concluded.

In early 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush asserted that an ”axis of evil” exists, consisting of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

”This is a clear and simple war of aggression,” says Lourenço, a colonel who is currently serving as chairman of the April 25 Association, a group of more than 3,000 military officials – many still on active duty – who participated in the 1974 overthrow of the dictatorship and the dismantling of the Portuguese colonial empire.

Lourenço, seen as the person who best maintains consensus among retired and active duty officers, slammed ”the justifications that the invaders cite for their actions and which they have modified at their convenience.”

Washington’s exhortations to respect the Geneva Conventions on the rights of prisoners of war are ”hypocritical” because the rights of the prisoners captured in Afghanistan and held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo are not respected, he pointed out.

And the United States has refused to sign the treaties establishing a ban on landmines and the creation of the International Criminal Court, added the colonel.

”Terrorism cannot be fought with other forms of terrorism,” and in war in Iraq the United States ”is relying on the power of its weapons as it throws the international order into the rubbish bin, with the consequent massacre of innocent people, and a warning of the potential (U.S.) use of nuclear weapons,” Lourenço said.

Pezarat Correia, professor of geopolitics and strategy at Portugal’s University of Coimbra, notes that ”the Iraqi armed forces are engaged in a war in which there is an immense disparity in the available means, in which the invaders’ absolute aerial domination is the determining factor.”

But the Iraqis have in their favour ”the tremendous error in calculation” committed by the U.S. military, ”which has shown ridiculous confidence that its victory march will be applauded by the Iraqi people, which Washington says would lend legitimacy to its invasion,” the general said.

”If Baghdad is occupied by this obscene military colossus, it is likely that Iraq’s armed forces would resort to a strategy based on widespread popular resistance and guerrilla warfare, as a legitimate instrument of a people who – regardless of who is in power – want to defend their national territory,” commented Pezarat Correia.

This would be completely justified because ”resistance and guerrilla warfare are the weapons of the weak against the strong, the recourse of the invaded against the invader.”

”Nothing about this situation allows one to confuse guerrilla tactics with terrorism,” he added.

During the wars in Africa, ”we learned well the significance of confusing the two,” stressed Pezarat Correia, referring to the fact that Portugal’s Salazar regime at the time called the independence forces of the Portuguese colonies in Africa ”terrorists”.

If the future of humanity is to be the most free and democratic possible, it is essential that the United States ”encounter resistance against its ambition to dominate the world, and that it realise that such efforts will have heavy costs,” particularly because Washington ”is already announcing the extension of its aggression to Syria and Iran,” the general said.

”An easy victory would be an invitation to aggression in any other point of the world that the imperial government decides is challenging its interests… but an effective resistance in Iraq could mark the beginning of a global resistance against the first sole global empire in the history of humanity,” said Pezarat Correia.

Iraq could turn into ”an enormous Palestine, where civilian victims are of no concern,” warned Major Sousa e Castro.

”If the nature of the war changes as a result of widespread resistance, it would be due to the simple fact that the United States has not understood a thing about the mentality of a country that is willing to stand up to an invasion of its territory,” he said.

From the military point of view, Washington ”would be left with no other alternative but to turn to massive destruction,” predicted the major.

His colleague, Major Tomé, underscored that ”democracy cannot be imposed by bombardments, canons and bullets, all flavoured with the lies and manipulation of the press.”

”The United States is utilising sophisticated technology of the 21st century, accompanied by a frightful ideology of the Middle Ages, in a dirty and brutal war. It is attacking the foundations of our own civilisation, which before Egypt, Athens and Rome, was born in Mesopotamia,” commented Tomé.