This has bothered me for sometime, especially when I hear this from otherwise progressive people like Al Franken and Ed Schultz.
They talk about Iraqis like hapless screw ups that we have to "threaten" with leaving if they don't get their act together, ignoring the fact that over 80% of Iraqis want us to leave and in one British Ministry of Defense poll, only 1% felt safer because we are there.
In reality, the Iraqi police and military are only ineffective to the degreee that they and the Iraqis perceive their job as protecting our interests not their own.
Likewise, we consider their elected government good or bad only to the degree that they bend to Bush's and therefore the oil companies will.
I can see why pols would engage in these kind of lies as a face-saving measure with voters here, but that kind of dishonesty won't do much to restore the rest of the world's confidence in us.
The New Washington ConsensusBlame the Victims in IraqBy SHARON SMITH
EXCERPT:As the
Washington Post reported, "a Nov. 15 meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee turned into a festival of bipartisan Iraqi-bashing":
"We should put the responsibility for Iraq's future squarely where it belongs -- on the Iraqis," argued Democratic Sen. Carl M. Levin, who will chair the committee in January. "We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves"
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) followed by noting: "People in South Carolina come up to me in increasing numbers and suggest that no matter what we do in Iraq, the Iraqis are incapable of solving their own problems through the political process and will resort to violence, and we need to get the hell out of there."
"We all want them to succeed," agreed Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) But, he added, "too often they seem unable or unwilling to do that."
Later the same day, members of the House Armed Services Committee took their turn. "If the Iraqis are determined and decide to destroy themselves and their country, I don't know how in the world we're going to stop them," said Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.).
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has also chimed in, quoted in the Congressional Quarterly: "We need to send a message to Iraqis that our patience is not unlimited." Likewise, presidential wannabe Sen. Barak Obama stated that there should be "o more coddling" of Iraqis. Presidential has-been John Kerry told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I believe you have to be tougher, set a date, be clear about the transition of authority, demand more from the Iraqis, leverage a change in their behavior and get our troops out of harm's way."
Within a few short weeks, the Washington "consensus" has rewritten the history of the U.S. invasion of Iraq-as if Iraqis invited the U.S. to invade their sovereign nation in 2003 and now have failed to live up to their end of the bargain. The mass civilian bloodshed at the hands of the U.S. military is apparently irrelevant in this equation. But ongoing Iraqi violence is presented as yet more evidence that Iraqis are "unwilling or unable" to govern themselves.
http://counterpunch.com/sharon12052006.html
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