The platitude given by those who would keep the occupation force in Iraq for one minute longer is that "we broke it, so we have to fix it." The more accurate analogy would be: "We raped this country, and we have no business forcing ourselves on it anymore."
An Iraqi optimist, a former opponent to Saddam, writes in the Guardian today that the foreign invaders may yet fail in their real mission, which has all along been to destroy Iraq, and end up uniting the people after all - against them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2037969,00.htmlComment
In Iraq, public anger is at last translating into unityFor four years, Britain and the US have aimed to encourage sectarianism, but ultimately they will fail to divide the country Sami Ramadani
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian
(...)
Four years after declaring "mission accomplished",
the US government is sending more combat troops to add to the bloodbath - all in an effort to impose its imperial will on the Iraqi people, and in the process plunging its own country into its deepest political-moral crisis since Vietnam. Under heavier pressures, Blair, the master of tactical subterfuge, is redeploying Britain's forces within Iraq and Afghanistan, under the guise of withdrawal. He has long known that British bases in Basra and the south were defenceless against attacks by the Sadr movement and others.
Bush, on the other hand, is escalating Iraq's conflict and threatening to launch a new war, this time against Iran. It is hard not to presume that what he means by an exit strategy is to install a client regime in Baghdad, backed by US bases. The Iraqi people will not accept this, and the west should be alerted to the fact that US policy objectives will only lead to wider regional conflicts, rather than to full withdrawal.
(...)
Meanwhile, the destruction of Iraq continues apace and its people are subjected to levels of sustained violence unknown in their history.
Overwhelmingly, the violence is a direct or indirect product of the occupation, and the bulk of sectarian violence is widely known in Iraq to be linked to the parties favoured by Washington. For example, forces in control of the various ministries, including the interior ministry, clash regularly.
It is not difficult to see how this violence is linked to the occupation, for it has spawned a multitude of violence-makers: 150,000 occupation forces; 50,000 and rising contracted foreign "mercenaries"; 150,000 Iraqi Facilities Protection forces, paid by the Iraqi regime, controlled by the occupation and engaged in death-squad activities, according to the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki; 400,000 US-trained army and police forces; six US-controlled secret Iraqi militias; and hundreds of private kidnap gangs. Pitted against some or all of these are tens of thousands of militias and resistance forces of various political hues. In total there are about 2 million actively organised armed men in the country. There are about 3,000 attacks on occupation forces every month, while tens of thousands of Iraqis languish in prison, where torture is widespread and trials considered an unnecessary formality.
(...)
Similarly, the proposed corporate occupation of Iraq, disguised as a legal document to tie the country to the oil companies for decades to come, has reminded the population of one of the main reasons for the US-led invasion. It has also reminded them what a self-respecting, sovereign Iraq looked like in 1961, when the government nationalised Iraq's lands for future oil production.
In an opinion poll released by the BBC yesterday, 86% of people are opposed to the division of Iraq. This and other polls also show majority support for armed resistance to the occupation. Four years into this terrible adventure, both the US and Britain must realise that it is time to pack up and leave.· Sami Ramadani was a political exile from Saddam's regime and is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.
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