Death Takes no Holiday in Iraq

Death takes no holiday in Iraq
Robert Scheer - Creators Syndicate

12.02.03 - First the president, and then Hillary Rodham Clinton, popped in
to spend Thanksgiving with the troops at Baghdad airport -- competing,
apparently, in the Olympics of photo ops.

What's the point? To prove that almost half a year after that last big
"Mission Accomplished" photo op on the aircraft carrier, U.S. leaders can
land in "liberated Iraq" without getting shot?

Unfortunately, the level of stealth and security provided to these
showboating politicians can't be replicated for the young men and women we
and our allies have sent to this adventure: 104 coalition soldiers were
killed in Iraq in November, up from 43 in October and more than were slain
during the war's heaviest fighting in April.

In the days after the president's quickie holiday visit, seven Spanish
agents, two Japanese diplomats, a Colombian contractor and two South Korean
electricians were murdered and three more GIs were killed.

The administration, however, insists everything is, has been and will be
just fine, thank you very much. On Saturday, a U.S. spokesperson stated that
attacks on Americans were down. The very next day witnessed the fiercest
attack on American convoys since the so-called end of major hostilities.

No Americans were killed this time, and the military claimed that all 54
Iraqis killed were Baathist militants. Journalists entering the
battle-scarred town of Samarra on Monday found a much more complex picture,
however, reporting that the use of random and overwhelming firepower killed
a number of innocent civilians in addition to a much smaller number of
Saddam Hussein's fedayeen loyalists than was originally reported by the
military.

In any event, the anger and alienation felt by our onetime allies, the
Sunnis, have reached a perhaps unprecedented height.

Those in Iraq opposing the U.S.-led occupation were described as "thugs and
assassins" and "terrorists" by the president during his two-hour cameo at
the U.S. garrison. This simplistic portrayal of the Iraqi opposition to the
occupation, however, ignores the nationalist and religious impulses that
have riven the region for centuries.

Ronald Reagan and the president's father relied on these same demon Sunni
Baathists as a bulwark against Shiite Iran and Iraq's own Shiite majority.
Now we point to the Shiites of southern Iraq as the most acquiescent to our
occupation, but that will last only as long as the United States keeps
favoring them over the Sunnis.

This is an inherently unstable situation, and White House policymakers are
well aware of it -- which is why they have shown such extreme reluctance to
transfer power to the Iraqi people.

The fact is, odds are very high that a fair national election in Iraq would
lead to a Shiite takeover and a variant of the Iranian nationalist theocracy
that's been in place since the mullahs overthrew the shah, a U.S.-supported
dictator.

An Iraqi theocracy, of course, would little resemble the secular democracy
promised by the neoconservatives who engineered this neocolonialist venture.

Having failed to find weapons of mass destruction or any of the other
justifications for his preemptive war, President Bush is desperate to
discover something even more elusive; a representative government in Iraq
that will not embarrass or threaten U.S. interests. It won't happen.

Instead, the U.S. will sink deeper into this quagmire, alienating larger
sections of the Iraqi population through ever more heavy-handed military
responses to the guerrillas' effective hit-and-run tactics.

But don't for a moment accept the logic of the administration's apologists
that there is no responsible alternative. There is: Turn this mess back over
to the U.N. Security Council -- which was doing a constructive job of
disarming and feeding Iraq before its role was abruptly ended by Bush's
preemptive invasion.

Under U.N. leadership, it would be possible to marshal a truly international
force, including U.S. troops, instead of the current token presence of
allies.

The U.N.'s blue helmets have done it before in equally tough situations, and
they would certainly be treated with far less suspicion by the Iraqi people
than an occupying army and administration run by the world's sole
superpower.

Of course, U.N. intervention would require the president to abandon his
macho unilateralism and move to embrace his father's model of a new,
multinational world order: a world of shared responsibility for keeping the
peace, in which the hubris of no single nation is allowed to dominate.

Staying the course, Bush's inherited mantra, might strike a militant
patriotic chord, but his last photo op will not be the promised one of
cheering crowds welcoming our president. Instead, get ready for seen-before
footage of enraged mobs chasing our helicopters out, or of Iraqi
demonstrators being gunned down by frightened American 18-year-olds.

Like the swaggering, self-righteous Crusaders of old, we presume to be the
savior of the souls of heathens while inevitably destroying our own.

(c) 2003 Creators Syndicate


URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=16085





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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of
Iraq."
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,