The Avengers Or How We Got Duped Into Killing More Brown People
Another milestone in Iraq has come and gone. As of yesterday, America’s occupation in Iraq has officially eclipsed the length of time America spent in World War II.
No matter your personal view on the potential of terrorist tactics, we’re not at war to stop an advancing fascist or an existing genocide dead in its tracks (such as modern-day fascist Kim Jong-il of North Korea or the current genocide in Darfur).
There’s only one similarity between WWII and the occupation of Iraq; in both cases, it took an attack on US soil to rally and motivate the American public to back entering an armed conflict. Of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor directly emanated from the ongoing conflict of WWII, whereas the emotional ties between the events of 9/11 and the perception of Iraqi leadership remain simply that — emotional.
Iraq has never been an immediate threat to our nation; no weapons of mass destruction ever threatened our safety from afar. Could that situation have changed for the worse over time? Sure, but so could any number of scenarios in the world, which is exactly why the tactic of preventive war is considered state-sponsored terrorism in many people’s eyes.
Fact: The combined death toll from all major, classically defined terrorist activities over the past twenty years pales in comparison to the loss of life at the hands of the Nazi fascist state.
This administration twisted false stories of Iraq hunting for yellow cake in Niger into a narrative that fit our administration’s desire to go to war in Iraq and delivered this false case to Congress to justify an invasion.
In a post-9/11 America still freshly licking its wounds, we all should have known what would happen within our political arena:
Who Lied To Whom?: …”Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq.”…
When that cover was blown by, well, reality, our government simply began to whisper false ties to 9/11 to go after a client-state that refused to play nice anymore, all beginning with its 1991 invasion of Kuwait.
What we have “accomplished” in Iraq since the occupation began in 2003 is quite amazing, actually. A Shi’ite majority has now been voted into power — something that no US planner would have hoped for, but constitutes a perfect example of what democracy at the end of the barrel of a M-16 will get you.
Essentially, we’ve backed the formation of a government and a constitution that leans in the opposite direction from modernity and strengthened the potential for a collaborative, radical mid-east region, at the cost of more than 2 billion dollars per week, while losing close to 3,000 US patriots and killing at least 50,000 Iraqi civilians.
One can only imagine how that loss of life is going to be avenged.
Tags: 9 11, activism, America, bodycount, civilians, Colin Powell, Congress, Constitution, Darfur, Democratic Party, Donald Rumsfeld, genocide, George Bush, George Tenet, government, Holocaust, Iraq War, Kuwait, neoconservative, New World Order, Niger, politics, preventive war, Saddam Hussein, terrorism, WMD, WWII.
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Sean,
Just wanted to comment on your first paragraph here, because it brings up something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Yes we have now been in Iraq as long as we were engaged in the active military campaigns of WWII, but the thing we should keep in mind is that we had to maintain a massive military presence in Japan and Germany for years after the war ended. We never seem to talk about the occupation/Marshall Plan part of the WWII comparison and I think it’s important that we do.
Obviously there are huge differences between WWII and Iraq and I don’t want to get into those and end up with an 80-paragraph comment on your blog, but I think if we’re going to compare these two events as regards to a national time/resource commitment then we need to keep in mind that things for us didn’t end in 1945, they were just beginning. Heck I was born in Heidelberg, Germany in 1966 because my dad was in the Army and he was stationed there.
you’re right, jon… wwII created the necessity for US bases all throughout europe and such deployment guided our foreign and defense policies for decades.
one of the big differences between these two wars (one of many) is that an overseas military presence was the result of wwII; in iraq, it seems to be one of our primary goals.
[ repost on the new server :) ]
Sean: nice piece.
Jon: Good point. Indeed — after WWII, there was the Marshall-plan, to ‘rebuild the countries’. Basically, all affected countries in Europe were made politically and economically dependent, as opposed to how it was before WW II.
Basically, we’re still occupied, invaded.
There definitely are a lot of parallels — one could see this occupation in Iraq, to rebuild the country, as ‘the Marshall plan’. (Rebuild of course means, a power-grab.)
I have once also read that (I believe it was Chomsky), after WW II, in Italy, (and I believe France, too), the ‘allied’ installed the same fascist guy that was there during the war.
If you then realise that the 10.000 officers that *enforced* Saddam’s so-called supposed terror-regime, are now happily having a job in the new installed government, well…. if I hear stuff like that my draw drops to the floor and it all makes me wonder about the real motives behind WW II, seriously. Thinking about it, well, any war, really….
Toward the end of your writing you said, “Essentially, we’ve backed the formation of a government and a constitution that leans in the opposite direction from modernity.” You seem to imply that the new Shiite dominated government will be religious fundamentalists. Would you mind elaborating on this?
i’ll do my best to explain my words, kimberly.
the second basic principle of the iraqi constitution reads as:
whether a majority shiite government will serve as “religious fundamentalists,” per se, seems to be pretty much a crap shoot. if/when sharia law is completely implemented, a lot depends on how the the ruling party interprets it (see bangledesh as an example of a freer system).
so personally speaking, if the iraqis were to have crafted that constitution without our occupation, that’s one story.
back in reality, we’ve spent billions of dollars a month, sacrificed more than 3,000 american servicemen’s lives, ruined 20,000 more soldiers with lost limbs and PTSD and killed at least 100,000 iraqi citizens in the process, in order to have what is viewed by many within iraq as a prop government, running on a constitution that we would go to war over internally if it were our own.
but my thoughts on the matter really don’t amount to a hill of beans; read what iraqis are saying: