Iraq Is Still the Issue, Part 1: Waiting for the Partition 

By Gabriele Zamparini

ccun.org, October 26, 2007

The brave boys and girls in Amerikan uniform did it again. This time, flying their fat asses on helicopters and fighter jets, they bombed the suburb east of Baghdad Madinat al-Thawra (City of the Revolution), now known as Madinat al-Sadr (Sadr City). You may see in this photo gallery women and children among the victims of such a heroic action. Support "our" troops!

A few weeks ago Scott Ritter wrote an interesting analysis on the priorities of the US anti-war movement, Iraq Will Have to Wait

(…) Of the two problems (the reality of Iraq, the potential of Iran), Iran is by far the more important. (…) The antiwar movement in America must make a strategic decision, and soon: Contain the war in Iraq, and stop a war from breaking out in Iran. The war in Iraq can be contained simply by letting war be war. There is no genuine good news coming out of Iraq. There won’t be as long as the United States is there. As callous as it sounds, let the war establish the news cycle, and let the reality of war serve to contain it. The surge has failed. Congress may not act decisively to bring the troops home, but it is highly unlikely that Congress will idly approve any massive expansion of an unpopular war that continues to fail so publicly. (…) The highest priority for the antiwar movement in America today must be the prevention of a war with Iran. (…) Sadly, there really is no alternative for the antiwar movement: Put opposition to the war in Iraq on the back burner and make preventing a war with Iran the No. 1 priority, at least until the national election cycle kicks in during the summer of 2008. (…)

Of course Iraq has been “waiting for” since 1991, when the first Anglo-American war of aggression against that country violated the Geneva Conventions and other international covenants all around (that means massive war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Iraq). Ritter certainly knows all this very well: at the time he was a Marine Corps intelligence officer and served as a ballistic missile advisor to Stormin' Norman, General Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of the so-called Coalition Forces in that war.

In Iraq Will Have to Wait, Scott Ritter writes, “The war in Iraq can be contained simply by letting war be war.” I don’t have any qualifications to write about war containments and other war strategies, let alone the Ritter’s qualifications above. But I wonder the meaning of the word “containment” for a war of aggression (the supreme international crime) that’s already resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million of human beings, 4.2 million refugees and the complete annihilation of that country. Ritter’s article is very long but nowhere I could find these data, I guess of some importance for any realistic analysis.

As Les Roberts and Gilbert Burnham wrote recently,

“How can military and civilian leadership comment intelligently about security trends in Iraq, or if any security policies are working, if they are not detecting most of the 5000+ violent deaths that occur per week? Can American plans for the future of Iraq be respected within Iraq if they do not openly address the toll that they imply?”

This should be kept in mind also by all those opposing the Amerikan war machine and it’s frankly very odd (to say the least) that one has to campaign continuously to try to make not just the state-corporate so-called media to inform about the real extent of the Iraqi carnage but also within the anti-war movement and the so-called “left” and it’s also very odd (to say the least) that in spite of the apocalypse unleashed upon the Iraqi people, just a very few voices dare to talk openly of genocide whereas the majority of commentators, analysts, journalists, intellectuals and even some peace activists and anti-war campaigners prefer the safer notions of “mistake”, “error”, “misjudgment”.

The British Oxford Research Group (ORG), “an independent non-governmental organisation and registered charity” whose executive director, John Sloboda, is also the co-founder of Iraq Body Count, recently published its 2007 International Security Report. The ORG’s press release reads [PDF LINK]:

After six years, the ‘war on terror’ has failed to achieve its aims and has, instead, played into the hands of al-Qaida. (…) Occupying Iraq has been a grievous mistake (…) report author, Professor Paul Rogers argues “it will still take at least 10 years to make up for the mistakes made since 9/11.” (…) Commenting on the launch of the report, Paul Rogers said “Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous mistakes of the past six years and recognise the need for new policies.” (…)

This is the same “criticism” coming from the liberal media, progressive think-tanks, and most of the Western intelligentsia whose “point of view” has become a classic in post-modern political discourse: it’s bad to us. [Even former Emperor Bloody Clinton called the Amerikan invasion of Iraq “a big mistake” while Emperor Bloody Bush said mistakes were made in planning for the Iraq invasion.] Invading and occupying defenseless countries, slaughtering millions of innocent people, raping, torturing, plundering… all this and more become “mistakes” in the sanitized language of our maîtres à penser.

Was it a misjudgment the invasion of Poland and the rest of Europe by the Nazi Germany? And the Holocaust, was it a mistake? Probably that was the point of view of some Nazi planners and intellectuals when they saw the first signs of defeat. Again, the “it’s bad to us” point of view.

The reality is, there has been no mistake. For the past seventeen years, Amerika has been wiping Iraq off the map. If repetition works for propaganda (and it does work indeed) maybe will it also work for the truth?

After the first war of aggression against Iraq in 1991 [between 142,000 and 206,000 Iraqi deaths directly attributable to that war], a thirteen-year long embargo [well over 1 million Iraqi deaths directly attributable to that UN-made (read, US & UK) genocide], the longest aerial bombardment in history [how many Iraqis were killed in those notorious, illegal No Fly Zones?], finally Amerika illegally invaded and illegally occupied Iraq in 2003.

“Clearly the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government is now considered unreachable”, stated recently Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy in Focus’ Middle East Editor, aka the Anti-War Left.

Was the original U.S. goal “establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government” in Iraq? Who can seriously doubt about that, after it’s been stated so many times by the Amerikan Emperor, the entire Amerikan imperial court, the British vassal, the United Nations’ puppets, the propaganda apparatus known as “the media” with its liberal intelligentsia, human rights groups and now echoed by influential segments of the so-called anti-war movement and the "left"? Clearly that was the “original U.S. goal” in Iraq, was it not? Of course, there have been a few mistakes. Errare humanum est…

Since the first Amerikan war of aggression in 1991 Iraq has been contaminated with radioactive weapons, that notorious depleted uranium cause of cancers and birth defects. Due to its long half-life (4.46 billion years) depleted uranium has transformed Iraq into a wasteland forever, a radioactive genocide. [Please find more information on Depleted Uranium on the Traprock Peace Center website]

After a thirteen year long genocidal embargo, the Amerikan humanitarianism unleashed Iraqi Freedom and the Anglo-Amerikan barbarian hordes have plundered, slaughtered, stolen, raped and tortured a defenseless country that had never attacked the United States, that did not have any weapons of mass destruction, that did not have any ties to al-Qaida, that had no connection to the September 11 attacks. Amerikan planners annihilated the secular Iraqi state and illegally captured, illegally trialed and illegally assassinated the legitimate president of Iraq and other members of the Iraqi Government. A horrifying show made even more grisly by the coarse laughs and silences among Western intellectuals, human rights groups and that disgraceful organization known as the United Nations.

“One can only rejoice at the capture of Saddam Hussein. Few people are more deserving of trial and punishment. U.S. forces deserve credit for arresting the deposed dictator so that his crimes can be presented and condemned in a court of law, rather than arranging to kill him in combat”, stated then Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, the powerful organization that had worked so hard to prepare the public mind to the inevitable invasion and occupation of Iraq and that’s been working even harder to rape international law with the abominable concept of the so-called humanitarian intervention (Amerikan humanitarianism, useless to say).

In Iraq, the barbarians played all their dirty games to foment ethnic divisions, starting with the notorious “political process”, a formidable Trojan Horse that forced the Iraqi People into a civil war. We all remember how those purple fingers were sold to the world as the milestone of Freedom and Democracy, Amerikan style. Far from being a failure, the main mission of this bloody project has been accomplished; Iraq as we knew it has gone, probably forever.

As with the oil reasons and the Zionist plans for the Middle East, none of the above may of course be discussed openly and the so-called "public discourse" [monopolized by that propaganda apparatus that goes under the innocent but misleading name, “the media”] must be dominated with WMD, "war on terror", Saddam's crimes, freedom, democracy and all the news that's fit to print for the sophisticated minds of our enlightened countries worshipping the goddess Hypocrisy. Re-writing history is the usual business of the victors, so one should not be surprised by all the sweet treats – used to keep the baby public at bay – keep falling from the Amerikan sky: the original goal was establishing democracy… the surge has failed… too many mistakes… and it will be like that, one magical Hollywood’s special effect after the other, till the partition of Iraq in the near future, under the aegis of the United Nations as soon as she-Clinton gets back into the White House.

But for Scott Ritter, Iraq Will Have to Wait and the anti-war movement must “put opposition to the war in Iraq on the back burner”. It comes to mind an article written by the excellent Felicity Arbuthnot in March 2006, Earth Calling Scott Ritter. A very good reading.

On the other hand, maybe Scott Ritter is right and the antiwar movement should indeed “put opposition to the war in Iraq on the back burner”. After all, that same anti-war movement has long ago put opposition to the war in Afghanistan “on the back burner” - the “just war” has always been a very “divisive issue”. It seems the Afghan resistance didn’t mind though and far from being waiting for Godot, it’s now winning a war of liberation of their country invaded and occupied by the Amerikan Empire upon lies and preposterous excuses. Of course the high price paid by the people of Afghanistan is all on our consciences. Can we put them “on the back burner” too?

Amerika has committed any imaginable and unimaginable crime and violated any possible law, human, natural or divine. As already Yugoslavia and then Afghanistan, Iraq has been just another “peace dividend” paid with interests to the collapse of the Berlin Wall; the end of history indeed, at least for the millions of people Amerika crashed under its violent boots on the march for planetary hegemony.

The disheartening thing is that too many people still believe (or pretend to believe) it’s just Bush and his abominable junta and things will get just fine when she-Clinton is crowned Amerikan empress next year. A few, more progressive voices are instead warning of the perils of fascism. It could happen here is the title of an essay published on the Monthly Review. An American friend, commenting on that article, wrote, “the authors' use of the subjunctive 'could' clearly needs to be revised -- because it already has happened here”. As a great American historian told me a few years ago, “compared to the American Empire, even the Roman Empire may be said to have been something in the nature of a tea party”.

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Don’t miss the second part of Iraq is still the issue, a quiz on the new Amerikan Frankestein, the New Iraq of puppet Maliki, the head of a sectarian gang of terrorists, mass murderers and war lords co-responsible for the Iraqi bloodbath - that puppet Maliki the anti-war movement was so excited to welcome in the United States in the summer 2006.