The lede in a New York Times editorial today.
Iraq is becoming a country that America should be ashamed to support, let alone occupy. The nation as a whole is sliding closer to open civil war. In its capital, thugs kidnap and torture innocent civilians with impunity, then murder them for their religious beliefs. The rights of women are evaporating. The head of the government is the ally of a radical anti-American cleric who leads a powerful private militia that is behind much of the sectarian terror.
First, one must ask, are there countries that America would be proud to occupy? (They are such good well-behaved little subjects). But the real problem with the editorial is its tone and mostly one-sided nature. While rightly condemning the fundamentalist aspect of the new Iraqi government and the nomination of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the editorial continues:
Unfortunately, after three years of policy blunders in Iraq, Washington may no longer have the political or military capital to prevail. That may be hard for Americans to understand, since it was the United States invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and helped the Shiite majority to power. Some 140,000 American troops remain in Iraq, more than 2,000 American servicemen and servicewomen have died there so far and hundreds of billions of American dollars have been spent.
Yet Shiite leaders have responded to Washington's pleas for inclusiveness with bristling hostility, personally vilifying Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and criticizing American military operations in the kind of harsh language previously heard only from Sunni leaders...
Despite there being innumerable "policy blunders," they are hardly the only cause of the further strengthening of fundamentalism and anti-Americanism. I'll go out on a limb and say that torturing innocent Iraqis, wiping out the infrastructure and killing thousands in the course of the occupation along with the very nature of occupation itself has, unsurprisingly, played into the hands of the reactionary and extremist elements. And if, in fact, this is hard for Americans to understand, then the media itself deserves a great deal of the responsibility (with, most certainly, the paper of record along with the Post leading the way in print journalism).
Really. The country is in the midst of civil war, three years later public services still aren't approaching pre-war levels, over a hundred thousand are dead, and thousands of families now are fleeing their homes, ALL of which have occurred as a DIRECT result of the invasion. And the NYTimes now feels it appropriate to note that it may be difficult for Americans to understand why the country is taking the path it is. (And how is it the least bit surprising that the Shi-ite fundamentalist elements in Iraq are not warming up to American style democracy and so-called Christian values (and never will)? Was this a theory that needed testing?)
In the end though, the Times does get one important point correct, though understates it.
It was chilling to read Edward Wong's interview with the Iraqi prime minister in The Times last week, during which Mr. Jaafari sat in the palace where he now makes his home, complained about the Americans and predicted that the sectarian militias that are currently terrorizing Iraqi civilians could be incorporated into the army and police. The stories about innocent homeowners and storekeepers who are dragged from their screaming families and killed by those same militias are heartbreaking, as is the thought that the United States, in its hubris, helped bring all this to pass.
only helped?
Finally, their optimistic conclusion I find very wanting.
It is conceivable that the situation can still be turned around."
Obviously they are far more imaginative thinkers than I am, because under the current administration in Washington I absolutely can not fathom the situation turning around.
To end this post I'm going to cite the words of General Anthony Zinni on October 10, 2002 (via Eric Alterman in a good article in The Nation)
"If we think there is a fast solution to changing the governance of Iraq then we don't understand history, the nature of the country, the divisions or the underneath suppressed passions that could rise up. God help us if we think this transition will occur easily."
The bunglers in Washington have absolutely no concept of the importance of history or the difficulty in establishing democracies and democratic institutions. For the NYTimes to try and conclude hopefully that the situation can be turned around with these fools in control is just plain naive.
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