Realism vs. fanaticism: Iraq at the end of the year
R Geovani
By Saul Landau
MEDIA
Yippee, "we got `em!" The Dow will soar! Forget the anxious two years
since George W. Bush assumed his throne! That's history!
REALITY
The dismissal of history does not help anyone understand the present
or plan for the future.
RECENT HISTORY
Almost ten months after Bush invaded Iraq, seven months after his
‘mission accomplished' speech-photo op on the aircraft carrier Abraham
Lincoln, and one month and many deaths after his Thanksgiving plastic
turkey pose in Baghdad, the President faces serious problems.
According to the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, half the
soldiers questioned described their units' moral as low and their
training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist. In an
article by Dana Milbank (December 12, Washington Post) "the cheering
soldiers who met him [Bush] were pre-screened and others showing up
for a turkey dinner were turned away," because they had not been
"pre-selected" by their officers.
Milbank quotes Sgt. Loren Russell, who imagined "their dismay when
they walked 15 minutes to the Bob Hope Dining Facility, only to find
that they were turned away from their evening meal because they were
in the wrong unit. They understand Bush ate there and that upgraded
security was required. But why were only certain units turned away?"
Capturing the big, bad witch and grabbing a turkey photo op presents a
flimsy faÁade for Bush's failure to define policies that will prevent
Iraq from turning into a Vietnam style scenario. Each week, US troops
get picked off killed or wounded by guerrillas, not directed by
Saddam, who then merge into the general population.
Bush, like most alcoholics even those who stopped drinking rarely
admit to causing messes. They assume others will clean up after them.
History, their own, their nation and its worldly relations, becomes a
pit of undesirable memories for some addicts. Better to look to the
2004 elections for lessons!
Three decades ago, Congress defunded the Vietnam War, having learned
the painful lesson of ‘exporting our order' by force through surrogate
exiles. The US-chosen Vietnamese President, Ngo Dinh Diem, or Bush's
choice for the Iraqi governing council, Ahmad Chalabi, Diem's
reincarnation, will not cut the proverbial mustard.
Chalabi, an Iraqi exile who spent much of his adult life in the West
telling the powerful what they wanted to hear, finally resides in
Baghdad, awaiting under heavy security —his anointment as next leader
of Iraq.
He should recall how by 1963 Washington had soured on Diem and had a
hand in his assassination when he refused to follow orders. The
understudy always stands in the wings, the one willing to accommodate.
By 1967, Washington had replaced Diem with Nguyen Van Thieu, who
willingly cooperated in the defoliation of his own country and the
slaughter of some 2 plus million countrymen and women. The Vietnam War
came replete with moralistic and a-historical babble about ‘bringing
democracy' to the region; in action, this missionary rhetoric evolved
into backing whatever corrupt tough guy willing to follow murderous US
orders.
Vietnam and Iraq both emerged from colonial rule. Today, Iraqis have a
national identity, albeit the religious and ethnic groups may struggle
internally for power. The Bushies, however, fearful of US combat
deaths staining their election campaign, consider re-Ottomizing Iraq
into regions.
What has history to do with the 2004 elections? In the 20th Century
alone, wrote Simon Jenkins (December 8 Sydney Times), US and British
meddling in Iraqi affairs "have made a mess of this nation. They owe
it the least blood-spattered path they can fashion to whatever the
future has in store."
A few incidents illustrate the perfidy and duplicity of the democracy
missionaries. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) convinced Arab
leaders that if by helping England defeat Turkey during World War I,
Westminster would provide them with an independent Arab state.
The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, however, replaced the Ottomans
alright, but with European bosses. The revolution that Lawrence had
helped inspire, however, continued as Arabs and Kurds reacted to the
imperial betrayal. European democracies responded with brute force. In
1925, for instance, the British Air Force dropped poison gas on
Sulaimaniya, a Kurdish village in Iraq. In 1919, Winston Churchill had
already approved of using such weapons of mass destruction against
resisting Kurds and Afghans.
"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas,"
Churchill had. "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against
uncivilized tribes. It is not necessary to use the most deadly gasses;
gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread
lively terror." (quoted in Noam Chomsky's World Orders Old and New,
1994).
US leaders also availed themselves of the new European arrangement to
collect for their entrance into World War I. They got almost one
quarter of Iraqi oil. Indeed, Iraq got none of its oil until its 1958
revolution against colonial power.
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/dec2003-daily/30-12-2003/world/w14.htm