Reshuffling the cards in Iraq
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By Ghali Hassan
05/10/06 "IICH"
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The recent installing of a puppet government in Iraq under U.S. Occupation shows that America's messianic mission of "spreading democracy" is flawed. The fraudulent electoral "law" imposed by the Occupation, and the U.S. addiction to violence to protect its imperialist and corporate interests at the expense of the Iraqi population provide compelling evidence against the U.S. imperialist agenda in Iraq.
Contrary to the myth played and promoted by the Western so-called "Left" and "Right" and the corprorate media that the "US failed [in Iraq] because of poor planning" and "incompetence," the U.S. planned the war and the occupation (military and economic) of Iraq months before the illegal invasion took place. The U.S. failed in Iraq for the following reasons: 1) the U.S. is serving its own imperialists and corporate interests in Iraq, not the interests of the Iraqi people. The overwhelming evidence shows that since the invasion, the Bush administration and their cronies have benefited immensely from looting Iraq's wealth; 2) the U.S. aim was to destroy Iraq; 3) the anti-imperialist, anti-Occupation consciousness of the Iraqi people; and 4) the undeterred Resistance of the Iraqi people to the U.S. imperialist agenda.
Three months after the 1991 U.S. war on Iraq, which devastated the country's infrastructure and killed hundreds of thousand of innocent Iraqi civilians, the government of Saddam Hussein was able to restore basic services and provided the population with food, water and electricity. Iraq was a very safe and united nation. This was achieved despite the illegal interference of the U.S. and Britain in Iraq's affairs and the criminal genocidal sanctions imposed by the UN and enforced by the U.S. and Britain.
Three years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is a destroyed country under a fascist Occupation. Iraqis have no water, no electricity, no jobs (unemployment at 70 percent), and lack basic health care services. Iraqis, at all levels, are far worse off than before the invasion and Occupation. There are no security and no human rights. Hundreds of thousand of Iraqis, mostly women and children, have been killed by U.S. forces. Iraqis continue to be arrested without charge, tortured, and abused by U.S. forces and their trained militias and death squads.
Long before the invasion, the U.S. and Britain trained, armed and financed expatriate Iraqi criminal elements in the U.S., Britain and Iran. Once they entered Iraq on the back of U.S. tanks, the expatriates and their minders embarked on a criminal process of "de-Baathification," which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba'ath Party, as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. "De-Baathification" is simply a murderous tool for inciting violence and destroying Iraqi society. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed in cold blood by the U.S.-trained and armed militias, and others have simply disappeared. None of these daily mass murders of innocent civilians were committed under the previous regime of Saddam Hussein.
The label of "Sunnis" and "Shiites" is a U.S. creation to provide a smokescreen and divert people's attention from the crimes of the Occupation. The relationships between the armed militias and the Occupation can only be described as symbiotic relationships. It is a campaign of terror financed and implemented with the full force of the U.S. and its agents.
If one examines those expatriates who the U.S. piggybacked to Iraq and placed them in higher positions to serve its imperialist-Zionist agenda; one will have great difficulty in finding anyone with anti-Occupation, nationalist views. The U.S. administration continues to reshuffle the expatriates like cards. In other words, they are recycled for the same purpose. From the first day they arrived in Iraq, they settled with the occupying forces completely isolated -- in the fortified "Green Zone" -- from the Iraqi population. They have one thing in common with the Bush administration: looting Iraq's wealth and destroying Iraq's unity. It is consistent with the U.S. effort to colonise Iraq and create a dependent subordinate Iraq.
During the 2005 U.S.-staged Iraqi elections, there were no candidates or political parties with political ideologies, just religious and ethnic slates brought into Iraq with the invading forces. In addition to the illegitimacy of the elections -- conducted under foreign military Occupation -- the U.S.-imposed electoral "law" or the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) denies Iraqis their rights to "one person-one vote." The TAL is designed to serve U.S. interests and to limit the power of the newly "elected" assembly. TAL gives the Kurds effective veto power, and hence creates stalemate, as seen lately. In addition, the U.S.-drafted constitution was there to cement and legitimise these various ethnic and sectarian divisions. One wonders why Britain and the U.S. do not have the same "democratic" system at home.
The Bush administration needs this propaganda of "turning point(s)" to show the world that its imperialist policy remains on course -- something positive out of Iraq -- and that is "spreading democracy." The reality is that the U.S. spreading hate and violence. What the U.S. brought to Iraq is not "democracy," but bloodshed, gross abuses of human rights and a culture of corruption unheard of in Iraq. The country is continues to be occupied militarily by more than 200,000 U.S. forces and their mercenaries and economically by U.S. corporations.
At the same time, the U.S. administration continues its unwillingness to allow Iraqis (under Occupation) to govern themselves through the democratic process, which shows that the Bush administration's aim is to rule Iraq behind a group of criminals capable only of subjecting the Iraqi population to daily terror. After three years of Occupation-generated violence and looting, Iraqis have given up on the U.S. version of democracy. It is now called America's democracy of looting Iraq. In a word, the U.S.-imposed government is just a thin veil to shield the Occupation.
In his chronicle of America's past criminal attacks against defenceless nations, Stephen Kinzer sees the parallels between the U.S. invasion of the Philippines and U.S. invasion of Iraq were identical. In Overthrow (Times Books, 2006), Kinzer writes: "Early in the twenty-first century, ten decades after the United States invaded the Philippines and a few years after it invaded Iraq, those two countries were among the most volatile and unstable in all of Asia." Both nations remain poor, exploited and undemocratic. Indeed, the Bush administration is in the process of ruling Iraq based on the Philippines model.
Anyone familiar with the U.S. legacy in the Philippines has no difficulty in identifying the criminal role played by the U.S. administration in terrorising the civilian population of the Philippines, since it was invaded by U.S. forces more than a hundred years ago. The Occupation of Iraq is reminiscent to that of the Philippines. Like the Occupation of Iraq, the occupation of the Philippines was defended as a war for "civilization" and "freedom." U.S. forces treated the civilian population with brutality. They used brute force, including the burning of entire villages, tortured and abused of prisoners and detainees.
After decades of military occupation, the U.S. continues to have massive military basing rights and military agreements with the Filipino government. Today, the U.S. rules the Philippines behind a façade of a de-facto civilian-military alliance -- re-shuffling the same oligarchs -- since "independence" from the U.S.
Under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos (1972-1986), the civilian population of the Philippines was terrorised by state-sponsored terrorists. The terror campaign of the military and death squads in the Philippines has all the hallmarks of the current terror campaign in Iraq. Furthermore, the Philippines continue to lag behind in economic development. Poverty and unemployment are ranked amongst the highest in the world. The common slogan in the Philippines to day is: "Better to die working in Iraq, than to stay home and watch your family starve." Will the Iraqi people accept the Philippines' model? Not likely.
The U.S. administration has become so obsessed with war and violence that it has increased the danger for all life on the planet. The U.S. use of democracy as a tool to serve its imperialist and corporate interests has increased the perils of both poverty and violence by creating and supporting an elitist system of corruption and greed. It fosters and rewards criminals and criminal behaviour.
Unless the U.S. is forced to withdraw from Iraq immediately, no re-shuffling of the same cards will change the situation on the ground in Iraq. The only remaining option for people around the world is to provide moral support for the Iraqi people
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be contacted on: G.Hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au.
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