http://musliminsuffer.wordpress.com/
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Americans Coward are trying to wash their hand with Iraqis Blood:
"We Cannot Save the Iraqis from Themselves": Bipartisan Blaming of the
Iraqi People
Gary Leupp, www.dissidentvoice.org
December 4, 2006
A recent
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801499_pf.html>Washington
Post<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801499_pf.html>
piece by Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright declares, "From troops on the
ground to members of Congress, Americans increasingly blame the continuing
violence and destruction in Iraq on the people most affected by it: the
Iraqis." The authors depict a November 15 meeting of the Senate Armed
Services Committee "a festival of bipartisan Iraqi-bashing," quoting the
following senators:
Carl Levin (D-Michigan, next chairman of the committee: "We should put the
responsibility for Iraq's future squarely where it belongs -- on the
Iraqis. We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves."
Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina): "People in South Carolina come up to me
in increasing numbers and suggest that no matter what we do in Iraq, the
Iraqis are incapable of solving their own problems through the political
process and will resort to violence, and we need to get the hell out of there."
Evan Bayh (D-Indiana): "We all want them to succeed. We all want them to be
able to stabilize their country with the assistance that we've provided
them. [But] too often they seem unable or unwilling to do that."
The authors add that members of the House Armed Services Committee joined
the chorus later on November 15. "If the Iraqis are determined and decide
to destroy themselves and their country, I don't know how in the world
we're going to stop them," declared Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.).
Now if this isn't a case of blaming the victim I don't know what is. Iraq
was not in a state of civil war in March 2003 when the U.S. invaded it,
insisting to a skeptical world and a gullible domestic audience that
Baghdad threatened New York with nuclear weapons and that Saddam Hussein
was a close associate of al-Qaeda. The country was bleeding from cruel
sanctions imposed by the UN at US insistence, and humiliated by incessant
US bombing attacks. Even so, relations between Shiites and Sunnis were
peaceable enough; Christians went about their lives without fear of attack;
women could go to and from their jobs or schools with their heads
uncovered; academics did not need to fear assassination. The state was
highly repressive (as is not unusual with the 200 plus states on this
planet); but the ruling Baathist party was committed to secularism, and
hostile to Islamic (especially Shiite) fundamentalism. Saddam kept a tight
lid on the Pandora's Box of possible sectarian conflict, but the US
invasion lifted the lid. First came the inevitable nationalistic resistance
to invasion, mounted by a mix of secular and religious forces in the "Sunni
Triangle" as well as militant Shiites in the south. The former opted for
armed struggle, the latter (for the most part) initially for peaceful
protest although Shiite patience with the occupation soon wore thin. Unable
to defeat the insurgency or restore order, the occupiers looked on (perhaps
in dismay) as power at the street level fell into the hands of militias
inclined towards sectarian strife.
The project to subjugate Iraq, and to convert it into a compliant US
client-state, has failed. There is no "Mission Accomplished" but rather a
hellish mix of anti-occupation resistance (the "insurgency") and civil war.
These were predictable ramifications of the decision to invade, a decision
which has never been objectively examined by the mainstream press to say
nothing of the Congress supposedly representing the American people. Many
war critics are expecting that the newly empowered Democrats are going to
investigate the prewar manufacture of pro-war "intelligence" manufactured
by Douglas Feith's Lie Factory (the "Office of Special Plans" in the
Defense Department), and to thus clarify -- to any still confused -- the
fact that the chaos in today's Iraq is the fruit of an illegal, immoral
invasion rejected by the Iraqi people. They're hoping that that historical
information will provide the basis for an expeditious pull-out. After all,
if the invasion was a crime based on lies, how can one support the
continuance of the criminality?
The Democrats do apparently aim to conduct some investigations that could
drag Feith's ass over the coals. And maybe the embarrassing exposures will
so weaken the warmongering administration that it will be obliged to cut
and run and avoid further wars of aggression in the next couple years. But
notice how the war that began with racism looks as though it will end with
racism too. Bipartisan racism. The Bush administration, with Democratic
Party support, responded to a terrorist attack by Saudi nationals by
targeting Iraq. The implicit logic was: Saudi Arabian nationals had
attacked the US; both Saudis and Iraqis are Arabs; Arabs live in a region
serving as a breeding-ground for Islamist terrorism; and so Iraqis deserve
to have their country invaded (liberated) by American forces.
"Go massive. Sweep it all. Things related and not," wrote Donald Rumsfeld
the day after the 9-11 attacks. Translation: "Let's use this opportunity to
conquer all of Southwest Asia -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and beyond.
Countries very different from one another, countries unrelated to
al-Qaeda." But how do you do that in a democracy? You sow confusion, of
course, and fear. You exploit that reliable old standby: American racism.
You notice that polls right after the attacks show that an amazingly high
percentage of Americans would favor placing Muslims (who can of course be
of any ethnicity but who tend to be of non-European background and thus
fairly easily be singled out as "other") in detention camps. You work with
that, and get the people to back an Iraq attack as an action of
self-defense versus the whole Muslim world. You have your fascist columnist
attack-dogs on the pages of the Weekly Standard, National Review and Wall
Street Journal bark that, "We've coddled these people too long." You say
you'll make no distinction between terrorists and countries that sponsor
them, knowing that will set up Iran and Syria for attack, because they have
ties to Hizbollah, Hamas and other groups deemed "terrorist" by the State
Department even if they had no connection to al-Qaeda. You proclaim to the
world "You're either for us or against us," posturing as God's anointed
versus the forces of Evil rampant in the world, especially the Muslim
Middle East. You know that you could attack Oman or Yemen or Jordan or
Malaysia for that matter with scarcely a whimper of protest from the
political establishment. Such was the wonderful promising aftermath of
9-11, when the neocons seize their moment.
Any activist involved in the movement to protest the invasion of Iraq in
2002 met with the indignant charge, "They attacked us!" On more than one
occasion during antiwar vigils I heard passing motorists bellow, "Nuke 'em
all!" All of them. Who's the "them"? Arabs? Muslims? Those bigot-warriors
would probably be hard-pressed to explain the difference. It was an "us vs.
them" thing, the "good vs. evil" crusade declared by a president enjoying
90% popularity. It was a thoroughly racist thing, a clever appeal subtly
encouraged by the neocon-led administration to ignorance and bigotry.
Now we're back there again, even as the timid war-critics in Congress,
critics not by anti-imperialist inclination but by political opportunism,
articulate their reasons for advocating a graduated withdrawal. In essence,
this is what Democrat and Republican alike are now saying. "We tried to
help these people. We overthrew their dictator. But what in response have
they given to us? A complete lack of appreciation! We handed them
democracy, and they responded by fighting us because of some weird Islamic
fixation on violence. And they started fighting among themselves, Shiites
and Sunnis. Looks like those problems -- their problems -- go way, way
back. We didn't start them and they're none of our business. If the
government of Iraq can't get the situation under control, we'll just have
to say, 'We tried, but you folks screwed up, so sorry we're going to leave.'"
That actually looks like the argument that will be deployed to explain the
coming ignominious departure of US troops from Iraq. It's understandable,
of course. How can the US political establishment admit that the war was
based on lies and on the exploitation of traditional American racism? How
can the new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shift from "asking questions" about
what she still terms "intelligence shortcomings" to actively exposing
deliberate disinformation designed to play on anti-Arab prejudices? A huge
groundswell of antiwar organizing might just force the Democrats to really
call the administration to task over its crimes. If not, I expect, the US
will withdraw from Iraq, forced out principally by the efforts of the
invaded people. The US might retain some unwelcome bases and some lucrative
corporate contracts, the minimal spoils of war. But even if it does, its
political elite will disparage the Iraqi people for their ingratitude. The
people, who have lost hundreds of thousands of lives in violence since the
US invasion, will be blamed -- to the invaders' home audience -- for the
invader's departure.
They were just too Muslim, too Arab, and too different to accept our
shock-and-awe kindness. We couldn't, as Sen. Levin says, "save them from
themselves." We couldn't, as Sen. Bayh says, "stabilize their country with
the assistance that we've provided them." If such Democrats have their way,
the US will indeed withdraw from Iraq -- partially at least, leaving tens
of thousands of troops in a dozen bases. It will leave without apology,
with contempt for the people, blaming the victims.
There is another possible scenario. It involves exposure of official
criminality, impeachment of top officials, complete withdrawal and support
for a regional conference to help end the Iraqi civil war. Only a mass
movement could force the Democrats into pursuing such a course. It might
also involve an official apology, cooperation with an international war
crimes tribunal, and payment of reparations. But being imperialist means
never having to say you're sorry, so the country would have to change
fundamentally for real justice to be done. Once upon a time there was a
revolution in Russia, after which the new regime exposed the duplicity of
the toppled Czar's government and set the country's foreign policy on an
entirely new course. But that only occurred after the Russian people became
so fed up with an immoral war, and with the liberal politicians who
supported it, that they stormed the citadels of power. That's what it took
to withdraw Russia from World War I.
The US system works the way it's supposed to. One party's out, the other
one is in, as a result of an electoral process shaped by corporate campaign
funds and corporate press reporting and commentary. It's what Marxists call
bourgeois democracy. It's a real form of democracy, but so was Athenian
democracy conditioned by slavery. Both have their limits. The best this
system can do is wind down a criminal war with a sullen unapologetic
all-too-gradual retreat leaving a nation in ruins. Surely the American
people can do better.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative
Religion, at Tufts University and author of numerous works on Japanese
history. He can be reached at:
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
source:
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28754&hd=&size=1&l=e
===
-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
_______________________________________________
is-lam mailing list
[email protected]
http://milis.isnet.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/is-lam
