We may have fought for the wrong reasons, but there is more good than bad

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1056138,00.html

(Free after 50 years of tyranny)We may have fought for the wrong reasons, but there is more good than bad in post-Saddam Iraq

Julie Flint Sunday October 5, 2003The Observer

Half a century ago, in a blistering denunciation of the Korean war, the British war correspondent Reginald Thompson wrote: 'It was clear that there was something profoundly disturbing about this campaign and something profoundly disturbing about its commander-in-chief.' Thompson's words could equally well apply to the US-led campaign in Iraq and its commander-in-chief: George W. Bush, head of a cabal that seeks to install a client regime in Iraq as a first step to bringing the region under American-Israeli control.
As last week's report by the Iraqi Survey Group makes clear, the stated rationale for the Anglo-American war - destruction of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - was at best exaggerated and at worst plain wrong. There was a case for deposing Saddam, the Pol Pot of the Arab world, but it was not the case made by George Bush and Tony Blair. They could have pleaded Saddam's past use of WMD against his own people; the present threat, from his security services, to every Iraqi man, woman and child; the future threat from WMD, and biological weapons in particular, for, as the ISG report also makes clear, Saddam was concealing work on two BW agents and conducting new research into two others. But they didn't. Their unilateral war may make Iraq more safe, but the wider world less so. Disturbing, indeed.

But there is something disturbing, too, about the way that post-war Iraq has been portrayed. Visceral distrust of Bush/Blair has created a disregard both for fact and for the victims of Saddam. Arab commentators have had no shame in urging Iraqis, exhausted by three wars and more than a decade of sanctions, to launch a new war 'of liberation' against their liberators. Western commentators have luxuriated in the setbacks of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), as if wishing failure upon it - and by extension, the Iraqi people. Disaster has been prophesied, self-servingly, at every turn: the war would be long (it wasn't, and most Iraqis had no direct experience of it); tens of thousands would die in the battle for Baghdad (they didn't); there would be a fully-fledged humanitarian disaster (there wasn't). Now, we are told, Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war. Not those I know. Not yet. Nor those polled in Baghdad last month by Gallup: 62 per cent thought getting rid of Saddam was worth the suffering they've endured; 67 per cent thought their lives will be better five years from now.

From the very beginning, the anti-war lobby has refused to listen to those Iraqis who supported war over continued tyranny. Banners saying 'Freedom for Iraq' were confiscated at anti-war rallies and photographs of Halabja, where Saddam gassed 5,000 Kurdish civilians, were seized. No voice was given to people such as Freshta Raper, who lost 21 relatives in Halabja and wanted to ask: 'How many of you have asked an Iraqi mother how she felt when forced to watch her son being executed? How many know that these mothers had to applaud as their sons died? What is more moral: freeing an oppressed, brutalised people from a vicious tyrant or allowing millions to continue suffering indefinitely?' <snip>

Western reporters detail, quite properly, the misdeeds, the crimes even, of the occupying forces. But this is only part of the story. 'The behaviour of US occupation troops has indeed at times been unacceptable, but on many more occasions it has been innocuous,' says Mustafa Alrawi, managing editor of English-language weekly Iraq Today. One line being peddled today is that there is growing popular support for a war of resistance against the CPA and Iraqis working with it. The number of violent deaths is unacceptable - among Americans and Iraqis alike - but this doesn't mean that there is a popular Iraqi resistance. Iraq is not Vietnam. At the root of the current instability are the very people most Iraqis reject - the remnants of Saddam's Baath party, and extremists flooding in from neighbouring countries in hope of establishing religious rule. They, not the liberators/occupiers, are the real threat to peace in Iraq and stability in the wider region today.

fall back position once the media gets tired of kissing Bush's ass and hiding the fact that we were lied to in the build up to the war (a lying that may well be so obvious as to be a crime).

However there is no point, in my opinion, to act like Iraq is not better off without Saddam.

The irony is that the United States is not better off - or safer from terrorists - because of the fall of Saddam - and indeed in most if not all ways we are worse off.

Those folks are getting a lot of good news!

Oh yeah, everything is better than it used to be.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3156048.stm

A drugs epidemic and accompanying crime wave is sweeping Baghdad.
A boom in supply of hallucinogenic tablets has been coupled with the release of tens of thousands of criminals from prison before the US-led invasion to create a huge problem for the fledgling Iraqi police force.

As well as the tablets, drugs like Valium and sleeping pills - in common use in Iraqi jails - are being used. The euphoria and lack of fear provided by the drugs, the police say, is giving desperate criminals the courage to carry out more crimes.

"The release of those prisoners was a crime - a crime against me, against all Iraqis," Omar Zahed, the leader of the Iraq police's anti-drugs squad, told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"There has been a big increase in crime, and the released prisoners have started involving other people as well.

and Iraqis aren't remotely free.

As mentioned many times war is great if you profit.

Those that profited - Halliburton; Kellog, Brown and Root; Newbridge Associates - all tied to the BFEE one way or another.

Those that did not profit - American soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi citizens, Al-Jazeera, etc.

Like many articles, speeches, and pontificating this latest blabbering is after the fact moralizing and rationalization.

The facts still are, wrong war, wrong time - illegal to boot!

I'm going to ask them, "So, if * had come to you and said, 'Are you willing to spend 160billion dollars this year to depose a murderous dictator?' would you have said yes? If he came to you tomorrow and said 'I found another dictator, can I have another 160bil?' would you say yes to that?"

This was not billed as a war of liberation until it was clear there was no other justification. Any talk of how Iraqis are better off without Saddam is beside the point.

We are less safe now - as the article says - and much poorer.

The Iraq good is nice - but that is not what was sold to us.

Now let's hear that argument again.

If we were liberators, why are we still there? Isn't Iraq liberated yet? What's left to do? When we liberated France in World War II or Kuwait in the Gulf War, did we have to occupy them indefinitely? No. Once the oppressors were thrown out, there was little left to do. The people could rebuild on their own, with aid as needed.

Saddam Hussein is out. Why are we still in Iraq? The sad truth is that we are "liberating" Iraq from its own people. We don't want them to erect an Islamic state and we don't want them to elect another Saddam. And we want to decide how and to whom and for how much they sell their oil. And we want to force them to be pro-western and pro-U.S. And we don't trust them to do any of these things on their own.

Of course there is a popular Iraqi resistance. Guerilla warfare doesn't work without massive silent assistance from the local population. Granted, the resistance has a lot of help now, since Bush challenged the Islamic world to "Bring 'em on!" But the nucleus of the supposed "terrorists" is simply Iraqi resistance.

As for polls, what the hell would you say to an obvious American when Americans with missiles, tanks and guns are occupying your country? "No sir, I hate America, please shoot me now!" The amazing thing is that such a high percentage are willing to openly buck the quislings.

And the Kurds and many of the Shiites really did hate Saddam and really are glad he's gone. When you think about Halabja, remember that the Kurds were in armed rebellion against the government at that time, like the Chechens and Chiapans and Palestinians. Saddam didn't gas them for the fun of it - he was putting down a rebellion. Not to say that he wasn't a brutal dictator, but the world is full of those. And most of the people in any given one of those other dictatorships are NOT pining for the U.S. to come in, kill thousands of them, wreck their infrastructure, and "liberate" them.

Wait and see. Whatever follows Saddam, whether it's Saddam II, an ayatollah, clans and warlords a la Afghanistan, or a U.S.-imposed dictator like the Shah of Iran, it won't be a significant improvement. Certainly nothing worth trashing national sovereignty and internation law over.