Some articles gathered from here and there, comments follow.
Of course it behooves the military to claim they are battling “foreign fighters,” because as in Fallujah and elsewhere, it doesn’t look good in the press to admit that they are fighting Iraqis who are fighting for their independence from the occupiers of their country. Even the marines in Fallujah admitted they had killed a grand total of 35 foreign fighters there. That kind of debunks the myth of a foreign terrorist group taking over the city and terrorizing the citizens.
Another similarity between Qaim and Fallujah is that now there is a humanitarian crisis in Qaim from the fighting. There are 1,300 displaced families (approximately 80,000 people) from Qaim and the hospital there was destroyed amidst fighting on 8 May between resistance fighters and locals. On the 9th there was no electricity or water in Qaim and the surrounding areas and schools were closed. On the 11th US warplanes continued to bomb Obeidy and other nearby locations.
All of the aforementioned statistics were provided to me by a friend who is here working with the Italian Consortium of Solidarity, an Italian NGO based in Amman which provides humanitarian aid and has set up an emergency working group for al-Qaim and has contacts on the ground there. She also reports that people there need shelter, food, water and medical care.
The loss of life continues unabated… in the last week at least 37 US soldiers have been killed, while at least 450 Iraqis have died amidst a huge surge of ongoing attacks since 28 April, when the Iraqi government was officially announced.
Abdul-Khaliq al-Raqwi, the director of communications for the Iraqi Government in al-Qaim, confirmed to Al-Jazeera that 2 US helicopters were shot down in Qusaybah this past Wednesday. The military denied this, even though witnesses on the ground confirmed the report as well.
Another interesting incident which occurred the beginning of the month was when two F-18 Hornet jets crashed in Iraq. The military claimed there was no indication of hostile fire, yet they crashed in different locations. On the day of their crash, Baghdad airport was closed to commercial air traffic for three days with no reason given by authorities. link
There is no doubt that the US has failed to win the war. Much of Iraq is a bloody no man’s land. The army has not been able to secure the short highway to the airport, though it is the most important road in the country, linking the US civil headquarters in the Green Zone with its military HQ at Camp Victory.
Ironically, the extent of US failure to control Iraq is masked by the fact that it is too dangerous for the foreign media to venture out of central Baghdad. Some have retreated to the supposed safety of the Green Zone. Mr Bush can claim that no news is good news, though in fact the precise opposite is true.
Embedded journalism fosters false optimism. It means reporters are only present where American troops are active, though US forces seldom venture into much of Iraq. Embedded correspondents bravely covered the storming of Fallujah by US marines last November and rightly portrayed it as a US military success. But the outside world remained largely unaware, because no reporters were present with US forces, that at the same moment an insurgent offensive had captured most of Mosul, a city five times larger than Fallujah…
the US has not quashed the insurgents whom for two years American military spokesmen have portrayed as a hunted remnant of Saddam Hussein’s regime assisted by foreign fighters.
The failure was in part political. Immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein polls showed that Iraqis were evenly divided on whether they had been liberated or occupied. Eighteen months later the great majority both of Sunni and Shia said they had been occupied, and they did not like it. Every time I visited a spot where an American soldier had been killed or a US vehicle destroyed there were crowds of young men and children screaming their delight. “I am a poor man but I am going home to cook a chicken to celebrate,” said one man as he stood by the spot marked with the blood of an American soldier who had just been shot to death…
From the start, there was something dysfunctional about the American armed forces. They could not adapt themselves to Iraq. Their massive firepower meant they won any set-piece battle, but it also meant that they accidentally killed so many Iraqi civilians that they were the recruiting sergeants of the resistance. The army denied counting Iraqi civilian dead, which might be helpful in dealing with American public opinion. But Iraqis knew how many of their people were dying…link
The Telegraph has learnt that the warning was issued last month in response to a series of incidents that led to the deaths of Iraqi civilians, mainly at checkpoints, after soldiers opened fire in the mistaken belief that they were being attacked by suicide bombers.
According to senior British officers, US military operations are typified by “force protection” – the protection of troops at all costs – that allows American troops to open fire, using whatever means available, if they believe that their lives are under threat.
By contrast, the British military has a graduated response to a threat and its rules of engagement are based on the principle of minimum force. Troops also have to justify their actions in post-operation reports that are reviewed by the Royal Military Police, and any discrepancy can lead to charges including murder.
A British officer said that some of the tactics employed by American forces would not be approved by British commanders.
The officer said: “US troops have the attitude of shoot first and ask questions later. They simply won’t take any risk.
“It has been explained to US commanders that we made mistakes in Northern Ireland, namely Bloody Sunday, and paid the price.
“I explained that their tactics were alienating the civil population and could lengthen the insurgency by a decade. Unfortunately, when we ex-plained our rules of engagement which are based around the principle of minimum force, the US troops just laughed.” link
But this is not only about Abu Ghraib. There are clear and proven connections now between the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the cruelty at the American’s Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay…
A vast quantity of evidence has now been built up on the system which the Americans have created for mistreating and torturing prisoners. I have interviewed a Palestinian who gave me compelling evidence of anal rape with wooden poles at Bagram – by Americans, not by Afghans.
Many of the stories now coming out of Guantanamo – the sexual humiliation of Muslim prisoners, their shackling to seats in which they defecate and urinate, the use of pornography to make Muslim prisoners feel impure, the female interrogators who wear little clothing (or, in one case, pretended to smear menstrual blood on a prisoner’s face) – are increasingly proved true. Iraqis whom I have questioned at great length over many hours, speak with candor of terrifying beatings from military and civilian interrogators, not just in Abu Ghraib but in US bases elsewhere in Iraq.
At the American camp outside Fallujah, prisoners are beaten with full plastic water bottles which break, cutting the skin. At Abu Ghraib, prison dogs have been used to frighten and to bite prisoners.
How did this culture of filth start in America’s “war on terror”? The institutionalized injustice which we have witnessed across the world, the vile American “renditions” in which prisoners are freighted to countries where they can be roasted, electrified or, in Uzbekistan, cooked alive in fat? As Bob Herbert wrote in The New York Times, what seemed mind-boggling when the first pictures emerged from Abu Ghraib is now routine, typical of the abuse that has “permeated the Bush administration’s operations”…
The trail of prisons that now lies across Iraq is a shameful symbol not only of our cruelty but of our failure to create the circumstances in which a new Iraq might take shape. You may hold elections and create a government, but when this military sickness is allowed to spread, the whole purpose of democracy is overturned. The “new” Iraq will learn from these interrogation centers how they should treat prisoners and, inevitably, the “new” Iraqis will take over Abu Ghraib and return it to the status it had under Saddam and the whole purpose of the invasion (or at least the official version) will be lost.
With an insurgency growing ever more vicious and uncontrollable, the emptiness of Mr Bush’s silly boast is plain. The real mission, it seems, was to institutionalize the cruelty of Western armies, staining us forever with the depravity of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Bagram – not to mention the secret prisons which even the Red Cross cannot visit and wherein who knows what vileness is conducted. What, I wonder, is our next “mission”? link
What I found intriguing is that two of these articles are from mainstream western press, British, to be exact, the USA’s most loyal follower in its crusade.
No strangers to either colonization or imperialism, the authors speak in the accepted propaganda terms that should resonate with American audiences, they do not question the divine right of the US to seize Iraq. They point out that it is doing a very poor job of it.
And this critique is coming from a culture with quite a bit of experience in the practice. Yet they still don’t get it.
Traditional European-style colonization proved unsustainable. And its successor, traditional client state backed with World Bank/IMF crapola is rapidly following that same path.
The new model, disaster capitalism combined with BTK governance, does not show indications of longer-term success.
It is, as Washington likes to say of the Iraqi people’s attempts to drive the invaders from their land, “desperate.”
For once, Washington is right. The Iraqi people, the Afghan people, many people around the world are getting pretty desperate to rid themselves of the dead-ender remnants of fools who just won’t give up the notion that 15% of the population can own the other 85% for perpetuity.
Europe’s best hope of a future now depends largely on immigrants from the very lands they once brutalized. That’s a demographic shift that does not make for a perfect colonial partner.
And the Americas are being reclaimed by the sons and daughters of the indigenous population. Not a very bright outlook for imperialism enthusiasts there either.
It is easy to poke fun at the American “centrists” who go earnestly on about how everything would be so much better if their beloved “troops” would simply build hospitals for all the people they are busy maiming, and schools for any kids who happen to have any brain function left after their “interrogation.” Oh yes, and have the maiming and killing done by “troops” from other countries. Muslim ones! Yeah, that’s the ticket! And the companies that get the big contracts should be owned by Democrats! And more Europeans. The US is just stealing oil from Europe. It should share more of the war loot with them because they are our allies.
But they should not be made fun of, any more than the equally earnest Englishmen with their well-meant suggestions on the proper way to colonize what their great hero, Winston Churchill called “uncivilised tribes.”
Churchill was just a product of his culture, you know. And so are the friendly advice giving English, and so are the American centrists. And so is Lynndie England, and General Boykin, and Paul Wolfowitz, and the whole wacky fun-loving crew. Just products of their culture.
Money can’t buy everything, and some things cannot be taught.
All Churchill’s fancy education failed to teach him that if anyone on the planet can be referred to as an uncivilized tribe, that distinction would be more aptly and accurately bestowed on his own proud Anglo-Saxon-Celtic heritage, as opposed to lands that had written language before baby Moses ever splashed around the bullrushes.
Such information may have been in one of his history books. Maybe he was just out with a cold that day. Let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt.
The Majority World has tried to give some very polite hints that colonization is over. In all its forms and new names and improved packaging and frames and presentations.
Sahib is invited to go home now. Sahib is strongly urged to go home now. Sahib will be provided with all the help he needs to go home now.
