- "Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our
little ones for us...
-
- You may find them in this corner or the other, a little
hand poking out, pointing out at you...
-
- Come and search for them in the rubble of your "surgical"
air raids, you may find a little leg or a little head...pleading for your
attention.
-
- Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging
morsels of food...
-
- Come and see, come..." "Flying Kites"
Layla Anwar
-
-
- The US Military has won every battle it has fought in
Iraq, but it has lost the war. Wars are won politically, not militarily.
Bush doesn't understand this. He still clings to the belief that a political
settlement can be imposed through force. But he is mistaken. The use of
overwhelming force has only spread the violence and added to the political
instability. Now Iraq is ungovernable. Was that the objective? Miles of
concrete blast-walls snake through Baghdad to separate the warring parties;
the country is fragmented into a hundred smaller pieces each ruled by local
militia commanders. These are the signs of failure not success. That's
why the American people no longer support the occupation. They're just
being practical; they know Bush's plan won't work. As Nir Rosen says, "Iraq
has become Somalia".
-
- The administration still supports Iraqi President Nouri
al Maliki, but al-Maliki is a meaningless figurehead who will have no effect
on the country's future. He has no popular base of support and controls
nothing beyond the walls of the Green Zone. The al-Maliki government is
merely an Arab facade designed to convince the American people that political
progress is being made, but there is no progress. Its a sham. The future
is in the hands of the men with guns; they're the ones who have divided
Iraq into locally-controlled fiefdoms and they are the one's who will ultimately
decide who will rule the state. At present, the fighting between the factions
is being described as "sectarian warfare", but the term is intentionally
misleading. The fighting is political in nature; the various militias are
competing with each other to see who will fill the vacuum left by the removal
of Saddam. It's a power struggle. The media likes to portray the conflict
as a clash between half-crazed Arabs--"dead-enders and terrorists"---who
relish the idea killing their countrymen, but that's just a way of demonizing
the enemy. In truth, the violence is entirely rational; it is the inevitable
reaction to the dissolution of the state and the occupation by foreign
troops. Many military experts predicted that there would be outbreaks of
fighting after the initial invasion, but their warnings were shrugged off
by clueless politicians and the cheerleading media. Now the violence has
flared up again in Basra and Baghdad, and there is no end in sight. Only
one thing seems certain, Iraq's future will not be decided at the ballot
box. Bush has made sure of that.
-
- The US military does not rule Iraq nor does it have the
power to control events on the ground. It's just one of many militias vieing
for power in a state that is ruled by warlords. After the army conducts
combat operations, it is forced to retreat to its camps and bases. This
point needs to be emphasized in order to understand that there is no real
future for the occupation. The US simply does not have the manpower to
hold territory or to establish security. In fact, the presence of American
troops incites violence because they are seen as forces of occupation,
not liberators. Survey's show that the vast majority of the Iraqi people
want US troops to leave. The military has destroyed too much of the country
and slaughtered too many people to expect that these attitudes will change
anytime soon. Iraqi poet and blogger Layla Anwar sums up the feelings of
many of the war's victims in a recent post on her web site <http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2008/04/9th-of-april-fall-of-america.html>"An
Arab Women's Blues":
-
- "At the gates of Babylon the Great, you are still
struggling, fighting away, chasing this or the other, detaining, bombing
from above, filling up morgues, hospitals, graveyards and embassies and
borders with quesesfor exit-visas.
-
- Not one Iraqi wishes your presence. Not one Iraqi accepts
your occupation.
-
- Got news for you Motherfuckers, you will never control
Iraq, not in six years, not in ten years, not in 20 years....You have brought
upon yourself the hate and the curse of all Iraqis, Arabs and the rest
of the world...now face your agony." (Layla Anwar; "An Arab Women's
Blues: Reflections in a sealed bottle")
-
-
- Is Bush hoping to change the mind of Layla or the millions
of other Iraqis who have lost loved ones or been forced into exile or seen
their country and culture crushed beneath the bootheel of foreign occupation?
The hearts and minds campaign is lost. The US will never be welcome in
Iraq.
-
- According to a survey in the British Medical Journal
"Lancet" more than a million Iraqis have been killed in the war.
Another four million have been either internally-displaced or have fled
the country. But the figures tell us nothing about the magnitude of the
disaster that Bush has caused by attacking Iraq. The invasion is the greatest
human catastrophe in the Middle East since the Nakba in 1948. Living standards
have declined precipitously in every area---infant mortality, clean water,
food-security, medical supplies, education, electrical power, employment
etc. Even oil production is still below pre-war levels. The invasion is
the most comprehensive policy failure since Vietnam; everything has gone
wrong. The heart of the Arab world has descended into chaos. The suffering
is incalculable.
-
- The main problem is the occupation; it is the primary
catalyst for violence and an obstacle to political settlement. As long
as the occupation persists, so will the fighting. The claims that the so-called
surge has changed the political landscape are greatly exaggerated. Retired
Lt. General William Odom commented on this point in an interview on the
Jim Lerher News Hour:
-
- "The surge has sustained military instability and
achieved nothing in political consolidation....Things are much worse now.
And I don't see them getting any better. This was foreseeable a year and
a half ago. And to continue to put the cozy veneer of comfortable half-truths
on this is to deceive the American public and to make them think it is
not the charade it is.....When you say that the Lebanization of Iraq is
taking place, yes, but not because of Iran, but because the U.S. went in
and made this kind of fragmentation possible. And it has occurred over
the last five years....The al-Maliki government is worse off now...The
notion that there;'s some kind of progress is absurd. The al-Maliki government
uses its Ministry of Interior like a death squad militia. So to call Sadr
an extremist and Maliki a good guy just overlooks the reality that there
are no good guys." (Jim Lerher News Hour)
-
-
- The war in Iraq was lost before the first shot was fired.
The conflict never had the support of the American people and Iraq never
posed a threat to US national security. The whole pretext for the war was
based on lies; it was a coup orchestrated by elites and the media to carry
out a far-right agenda. Now the mission has failed, but no one wants to
admit their mistakes by withdrawing; so the butchery continues without
pause.
-
- How Will It End?
-
- The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy
that is unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute
a war that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily.
But fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than
it was when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and
militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to deteriorate
until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that's unlikely to happen
until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic conditions
in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure on the
dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the banking
system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are falling,
and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession. The
US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be
at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United
States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.
-
- The Iraq War signals the end of US interventionism for
at least a generation; maybe longer. The ideological foundation for the
war (preemption/regime change) has been exposed as a baseless justification
for unprovoked aggression. Someone will have to be held accountable. There
will have to be international tribunals to determine who is responsible
in the deaths of over one million Iraqis.
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