Iraq War
20 Mar 2008
Iraq Five Years On
On the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Antony Loewenstein asks: would we do it again?
Five years after the start of the Iraq war, a clear majority of Iraqis want American troops to leave. The results of the latest ORB/Channel 4 study are disturbing. The human cost of the conflict is starkly revealed: “A quarter of those surveyed said they had lost a family member to murder. In Baghdad, that figure rose to nearly half (45 per cent). Some 81 per cent had suffered power cuts and 43 per cent had experienced drinking water shortages. In the last month, more than a quarter (28 per cent) had been short of food.”I’ve been writing about the war since 2003 and watched the slow descent of the country into ethnic cleansing and chaos. The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn (arguably the finest Western reporter on the war), writes this week that “five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.” The White House Press Secretary still praises President Bush’s brilliant Iraq strategy.
Iraq is a war that has redefined the ways in which we view armed conflict. The suicide bomber, used in previous battles from Sri Lanka to Lebanon, has become a ferocious force of unimaginable terror. Robert Fisk recently concluded that there has been at least 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers in Iraq since 2003 and these explosions — immobilised predominantly, though not solely, by men — have killed around 16,000 people. “One of George Bush’s more insidious legacies in Iraq”, Fisks laments, “thus remains its most mysterious: the marriage of nationalism and spiritual ferocity, the birth of an unprecedentedly huge army of Muslims inspired by the idea of death.”
Although support for the war in America is at its highest point since 2006 — a slim majority now believe the “US will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals” — this is predominantly due to the corporate media’s slavish praise of the “surge”, an injection of more American troops to “pacify” the country, especially Baghdad. Jonathan Steele, Guardian columnist and author of the book, Defeat: Why They Lost Iraq, acknowledges that casualties have been reduced since the “surge” but recently told Democracy Now! that this was for different reasons to those given by the war hawks and their media courtiers:
“It’s actually become harder to kill people. What do I mean by that? It’s just that the mixed neighbourhoods of Baghdad, you know, where Sunni and Shia used to live side-by-side without even worrying or caring or even knowing what sect their neighbour was, they’ve all broken down, because if you’re a minority Shia living in a Sunni area, you’ve now moved out, and vice versa. And so, you’ve got a kind of sectarian relocation that’s gone on. And, of course, that makes it harder if — for these sort of death squads to come in, because they’re now going to areas where people feel much better protected, because they’ve got their own people all around them and they’ve got their local sort of vigilante groups protecting them.”
Steele concludes that the war was “lost when they decided to have this open-ended occupation of the country without giving any date for withdrawal.” Even today, none of the major American presidential candidates are advocating full troop withdrawal. Predictably, even so-called “anti-war” Democrats are still refusing to seriously refute Bush’s talking points.
The mainstream media, with some notable exceptions, has remained complicit in these deceptions, refusing to ask the tough questions of politicians and generals. At least the Independent on Sunday’s editorial this week, on the fifth anniversary, rebuked journalists for not “asking much more searching questions about what would happen after the invasion”. The high rate of Iraqi civilian casualties remains largely absent from media coverage. The fact that over one million people have probably been killed since 2003 has been all but erased from the public record.
Returned American soldiers are starting to recount their harrowing tales of collective punishment in the war zone. The aim is to enlighten the world about their actions — while endorsed by the US army, they were a major contributing factor to the raging insurgency. One soldier, Hart Viges, joined the army one day after September 11, 2001, but now says that his mission in Iraq was flawed from the beginning. “We never went on the right raid where we got the right house, much less the right person — not once,” he said. He goes on:
“We were driving in Baghdad one day and found a dead body on the side of the road. We pulled over to secure the area and my friends jumped off and started taking pictures with it, smiling. They asked me if I wanted to join them and I said no, but not because it was unethical, but because it wasn’t my kill. Because you shouldn’t take trophies with those you didn’t kill. I wasn’t upset this man was dead, but just that they shouldn’t be taking credit for something they didn’t do. But that’s war.”
Other soldiers have recounted war crimes committed on a daily basis in the war zone. Despite evidence that implicates the military in the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, authorities are notoriously lax in offering compensation.
As a journalist, I regularly ask myself if the mainstream media has learned any lessons since 2003. Sadly, I don’t believe so (and even Britain’s Ministry of Defence is now trying to force teachers to transmit to students a sanitised history of the war.) The same journalists who endorsed, encouraged and transmitted false intelligence and hubris would do so again. They are the war enablers, desperate to ingratiate themselves with those in power, grovelling before authority (Here Salon’s Glenn Greenwald explains the real “role of the American press”.)
The Iraq war has primarily been a disaster for the Iraqi people and a success for the defence industry. Until there is a full reckoning of the last five years, we are destined to relive history again with the next “essential” conflict.
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I am surprised that there are no comments yet on this article. Australia might be pulling out of Iraq but it will not go away. It is reminiscent of the last Vietnam protest in Melbourne’s City Square in 1975. It was poorly attended and the calls for a negotiated end had become meaningless. The debacle of April 30 that year makes good television as the last helicopter is pushed from the aircraft carrier. However, it seems that US leaders like Bush and McCain have learned nothing from that sorry history. How long before we are suckered into another "immoral and unwinnable war" as Arthur Caldwell called it?
Kevin Rennie
http://laborview.blogspot.com/
War reveals mankind’s true nature. It allows unprincipled people to make lots of money and it allow violent people to kill others in large numbers. It allows politicians to big-time themselves at parades and it allow religious types to engage in lots of theo-babble and mock sympathy.
War reveals man’s essential ugliness and barbarity! It is a mirror.
The war upon the people of Iraq, perpetrated by the USA and their vassals is an abomination. In lending our name, (and our armed forces) to this enormity we have heaped odium upon ourselves in the eyes of all reasonable people. The only way that we can cleanse ourselves of this crime is to charge (and convict) those reponsible (Howard, Downer, Nelson, Hill, Costello et al) for our participation in the supreme war crime - that of launching aggressive war, and to offer reparation to the people of Iraq for the grievous injuries that we have done them.
It is a truism in Australian politics that the US alliance is an essential element of our national security. Well, if alliance with the United States of Genocide is essential to our security, I’d rather be insecure.
Hear, hear, Bill. We have been conned by the U.S. and sycophantic Australian politicians for far too long. We must become independent again!
www.dangerouscreation.com
The BROWN TONGUE DISEASE so prevalent in our pollies of all persuasions with the United States of Bloody America is not going to be cured any time soon.
Rudd may well be sucking up to China, for economical purposes, but he has also stated his obeisance to the Bush Regime. He has had his instructions from the Mad Emperor without any Clothes, and is not likely to move too far from the prone position.
The back-flip on the fighter aircraft says one Hell of a lot about just how far we can deviate from ‘correct form’ without being severely smacked on the wrist. Rudd and Fitzgibbon were TOLD! Even the stated reason, being able to integrate with American forces when required by the USA, was very revealing.
And that business of the dead in Iraq, with all the major Media sucking up to the War Mongers, continuing to give precedence to a ridiculously small figure like 89,000 Iraqi dead postulated by the Iraqi Body Count, when the true figure is more likely to to be the more than 1 million dead in the latest independent study, just shows how manipulated we are all the time.
And now, the tame media is working hard with the Bushies to convince the American public that ‘the surge’ is making things better for Iraqis, heading into an election with McCain a war booster. Seems to be working also. Except that I am more inclined to believe an Iraqi on Radio National this arvo. who says that people are just getting used to being blown up, and are trying to live something like normal lives. Clean up the mess, mop up the blood, take the live victims to hospitals, the dead to morgues and get back out there on the streets. Seems that humans can adapt to just about anything. What a wonderful way to live, George W. How about you try it!
Dazza.
The Murdoch press is again effusive in its support of the Iraq invasion with today’s article by the apostate, Christopher Hitchens. Iraq has been destroyed as a single ( if cobbled together) country and is now split into at least 3 regions, Sunni, Shiite and Kurds.There are 3 million refugees with 1 million displaced inside Iraq and 2 million in countries like Jordan and Syria. As the price of our invasion we need to spend millions if not billions on reconstructing that devastated country. Clean water, electricity,
hospitals with staff, drugs and equipment, schools,agriculture etc. I can hear the screams across Australia if we imposed an Iraq reconstruction tax. Not in our back yard, so not our problem. How easy to shrug off moral responsibility.
Cherry, they should put a tax on all the politicians who supported Howard and all Australian companies including media outlets that made money directly or indirectly from the Iraq war.
That should raise quite a bit, pay a few bills.
www.dangerouscreation.com
Hang on a sec.
Are’nt we forgetting a few achievements of the action in Iraq?
1. It got rid of that butcher Saddam, his bloodthirsty family and the influence of that (blood) Baath party.
2 The WMD’s that never existed but are now secreted away in Iran with what is left of Saddam’s airforce.
3. The holding of the Al Quaida , and other Jihadist terorists from around the M.E. in the sights of U.S. operatives, in Afghanistan and Iraq,
4. That no repetition of 911 style attacks have occurred again on U.S. soil.
5. The achievement of a 3 State solution without any single sovereign state emerging seems to be on par for that part of the world.
The withdrawal of the U.S and whatever is left of the C.O.W. will have little bearing on what happens over there now.
Remember Nixon, "We’ll be out by Xmas"… Well they were, but they opened up shop in Cambodia.
Keep your eye on Iran Syria and Lebanon.
Demos and Moratoria have there place in legitimate citizen protest,
but Vietnam was all about US interests in SEA(TO) and a puppet govt. in Saigon.
The public outrage here was centered around the conscription of 20 year old male Ausies who were’nt allowed to Vote, but were old enough to be forced by the ("All the way with LBJ") Lib govt to fight for their country and then be abused on their return for going over there by our fickle Ausie public.
Revilo, I’d definitely take writing a History of the World off your list of things to do this Easter!
But you could think about writing a work of fiction. Happy Easter!
No David, Revilo is right, and by his logic the next country to receive the wrath of the COW should be Israel because then we can achieve the same accomplishments which Revilo touts as favourable aspects of the Iraq conflict being:-
1- Get rid of those butchers orchestrating the "Gazan Shoah" and who have butchered and ethnically cleansed entire regions of the middle east;
2- The WMDs which Israel says "don’t exist" could be secreted away or destroyed;
3- The expansion of Islamic, and, more specifically Palestinian "terrorist" organisations would lose their raison d’etre and the world would be a far safer place without all the "Militant Muslim Fanatics" in the middle east;
4- The popularly accepted reason for 911 "they (whose freedom we have destroyed) hate us for our freedoms" would disappear and therefore the fear of a repetition of that attack would also disappear, as would the motivation to spend huge resources preventing further attacks;
5- The achievement of a one-state solution in Israel which is not a "Jewish state" or an "Islamic State" or a "white state" or a "black state" but a democratic state in which all the ethnic people of Palestine/Israel could participate as equals and on equal terms.
Revilo’s is a well thought out argument which must apply to Israel as easily as it applies to Iraq.
Well said Revilo, and for some really interesting comments from yet another (Ashkenazi) tribesman of ours Revilo you may want to reference Joaquim Martilo over here:-
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/03/ushmm-national-thought-control.html#li…
and I refer you specifically to his take on Iraq posted on March 20th.
George Vickers
George, your logic is perfect. Great comment!
There is only one flaw. Israel (and America) are not bound by the Conventions and Laws which govern other nations. They are a law unto themselves. Hint: they believe strongly that ‘might is right’. Cheers.
www.dangerouscreation.com
George, what a pleasant surprise to see another Australian mention Joachim Martillo (note the spelling George, and I hope I am referring to the same person as you are). Perhaps not all Australians are drowning victims of Murdoch’s p*ss poor Islamophobic and pro-zionist press after all!
Anthony Loewenstien reminds me a lot of Joachim who is a remarkable software engineer and who made a huge contribution to keeping the internet free and safe from the greedy control of corporations and government.
But Martillo will never be celebrated in public because he is also an anti-zionist and it is because of his views as an anti-zionist that he is, naturally, targeted by the "Zio-Mafia". The only surprise is that his career has not been destroyed by them yet.
I wonder whether we could convince Joachim to make a contribution to NM so that Anthony’s voice does not sound so lonely?
This is his blog:-
http://www.blogger.com/profile/00121944171459090792
I also read your reference to Alain Soral in Jose Borgino’s article but since I read very little French the website you quoted only gave me a hint of what Soral is all about, but what little I could discern from it has made me very curious, especially the item about how Nazi-style Zionist thugs, in punk drag, attacked a store, assaulted various customers and Soral with baseball bats during a book signing event and even though the entire crime was recorded on numerous cameras the police have been mysteriously unable to name even one suspect!
Seems our tribe has annexed France too!
Wikipedia, with it’s top heavy Mossad involvement, is always suspect for anything Zionist and/or Israeli so I am hoping you might have something in English for me to reference about Alain Soral other than zio-wiki.
Thanks George
Sorry R, can’t find much English reference material on Soral so I’m afraid you’ll have to brush up on your French.
Soral is well known in France, and, actually, throughout continental Europe, but he is curiously never mentioned in any of the English speaking nations. Hmmm I do wonder why?
You would do well to go to the trouble of translating the material from the various French sites if you want the benefit of his views, and it would be well worth your trouble to do so.
George Vickers