The ongoing hand-wringing in Congress by the newly empowered Democrats over what to do about the war in Iraq speaks volumes about the level of concern (or lack thereof) these “representatives of the people” have toward the men and women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces of the United States of America. The inability to reach consensus concerning the level of funding required or how to exercise effective oversight of the war, both constitutionally mandated responsibilities, is more a reflection of congressional cowardice and impotence than a byproduct of any heartfelt introspection over troop welfare and national security.
The issues that prompt the congressional collective to behave in such an egregious manner have more to do with a reflexive tendency to avoid any controversy that might disrupt the status quo ante regarding representative-constituent relations (i.e., re-election) than with any intellectual debate about doing the right thing. This sickening trend is bipartisan in nature, but of particular shame to the Democrats, who obtained their majority from an electorate that expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of the war in Iraq through their votes, demanding that something be done.
Sadly, Congress’ smoke-and-mirrors approach to the Iraq war creates the impression of much activity while generating no result. Even more sadly, the majority of Americans are falling for the act, either by continuing their past trend of political disengagement or by thinking that the gesticulation and pontification taking place in Washington, D.C., actually translate into useful work. The fact is, most Americans are ill-placed intellectually, either through genuine ignorance, a lack of curiosity or a combination of both, to judge for themselves the efficacy of congressional behavior when it comes to Iraq. Congress claims to be searching for a solution to Iraq, and many Americans simply accept that this is this case.
The fact is one cannot begin to search for a solution to a problem that has yet to be accurately defined. We speak of “surges,” “stability” and “funding” as if these terms come close to addressing the real problems faced in Iraq. There is widespread recognition among members of Congress and the American people that there is civil unrest in Iraq today, with Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence tearing that country apart, but the depth of analysis rarely goes beyond that obvious statement of fact. Americans might be able to nod their heads knowingly if one utters the words Sunni, Shiite and Kurd, but very few could take the conversation much further down the path of genuine comprehension regarding the interrelationships among these three groups. And yet we, the people, are expected to be able to hold to account those whom we elected to represent us in higher office, those making the decisions regarding the war in Iraq. How can the ignorant accomplish this task? And ignorance is not something uniquely attached to the American public. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, the newly appointed chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, infamously failed a pop quiz in which journalist Jeff Stein asked him to differentiate between Sunni and Shiite. Reyes has become the poster boy for congressional stupidity, but in truth he is not alone. Very few of his colleagues could pass the test, truth be told.
The task of holding Congress to account is a daunting one, and can be accomplished only if the citizenry that forms the respective constituencies of our ignorant congressional representatives are themselves able to operate at an intellectual capacity above that of those they are holding to account. So rather than issue “pop quizzes” to our elected representatives, I’ve designed one for us, the people. If the reader can fully answer the question raised, then he or she qualifies as one capable of pointing an accusatory finger at Congress as its members dither over what to do in Iraq. If the reader fails the quiz, then there should be an honest appraisal of the reality that we are in way over our heads regarding this war, and that it is irresponsible for anyone to make sweeping judgments about the ramifications of policy courses of action yet to be agreed upon. Claiming to be able to divine a solution to a problem improperly defined is not only ignorant but dangerously delusional.
So here is the quiz: Explain the relationship between the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Baghdad as they impact the coexistence of Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni populations.
Most respondents who have a basic understanding of Iraq will answer that Karbala is a city of significance to Iraq’s Shiite population. Baghdad is Iraq’s capital, with a mixed Sunni and Shiite population. If that is your answer, you fail.
Karbala is a holy city for the Shiites. Its status as such is based on the fact that Hussein, a grandson of the prophet Muhammad and son of Ali, the fourth caliph, was killed outside Karbala in a battle between Hussein’s followers and forces loyal to Yazid, son of Muawiyah, the fifth caliph. The two sides were fighting over the line of succession when it came to leading the Muslim faithful after the death of Muhammad in the year 632. Abu Bakr, a close colleague of Muhammad but not a member of Muhammad’s biological family, was elected as the first caliph after the prophet’s death, an act that many Muslims believed broke faith with a necessity for the successor of Muhammad to be from his family. Abu Bakr’s death brought about a quick succession of caliphs, all of whom met untimely deaths and none of whom were from the family line of Muhammad.
When Ali was elected as the fourth caliph, many Muslims believed that for the first time since the death of Muhammad the caliphate had been restored to one properly authorized in the eyes of God to lead the Muslim faith. In fact, upon Ali’s accession as caliph, one of his first acts was to seek to restore the Muslim faith to its puritanical origins, which Ali believed had been departed from by the merchant families closely allied with the third caliph, Othman. Ali’s efforts were bitterly resisted by merchant families in Damascus, which refused to recognize Ali as the caliph. The head of the Damascus rebels, Muawiyah, fought a bitter conflict with Ali, which weakened the caliphate and paved the way for Ali’s assassination.
Upon Ali’s death, the caliphate was transferred to his elder son, Hassan, but when this succession was challenged by Muawiyah, Hassan relented, transferring the caliphate to Muawiyah with the caveat that once Muawiyah died, the caliphate would be returned to the lineage of the prophet Muhammad. When Muawiyah died, the caliphate passed to his son, Yazid. This succession was challenged by Hussein, Hassan’s brother and Ali’s younger son, who believed that the succession, as dictated by Hassan when he abdicated, should have gone to someone within the direct line of the prophet Muhammad, namely Hussein. Yazid’s treacherous attack on Hussein and his followers, occurring as it did during prayer time, set the stage for the split in the Muslim faith between the Shiat Ali (Shia, or followers of Ali) and the Ahl-i Sunnah (Sunni, or the people who follow in the custom of the prophet Muhammad). Both Shiite and Sunni view one another as deviants from the pure form of Islam as taught by Muhammad, and as such functioning as apostates deserving death.
If you answered the quiz on Karbala in the above fashion, you would still be wrong. The split between Sunni and Shiite goes beyond simple hatred for one another. Not only did the religion split, but so too did the methodology of governance as well as the interrelationship between religion and politics.
There was a final chance at achieving unity within the Muslim world. In the year 750, at the battle of Zab in Egypt, nearly the entire aristocracy formed from the lineage of Muawiyah was annihilated when the Damascus-based caliphate clashed with predominantly Shiite rebels. Jaffar, a Shiite spiritual leader and the great-grandson of Hussein, was supposed to be elevated to the caliphate, thereby uniting the Muslim world, but was instead murdered by Al-Mansur, who established the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. This final treachery created a permanent split between the Shiites and those who became known as Sunnis.
The Shiite faithful embraced rule by imams, infallible leaders who provide guidance over spiritual and political affairs. According to the majority of Shiites, there are 12 imams, originating with Ali. The 12th imam, also named Muhammad, is believed by many Shiites to be the Mahdi, or savior, who went into hiding at God’s command and will return at the end of days to bring salvation to the faithful. With the passing of the 12th imam, matters of spiritual and political concerns were dealt with by religious scholars, or the ulema. These scholars are products of religious academies, known as “hawza.” In Iraq, the city of Najaf is home to the most important hawza, the Hawza Ilmiya. Each hawza produces religious scholars, or “marjas,” who interpret religion and provide guidance over social matters to those who rally around their particular teachings.
The Najaf Hawza currently has four marjas, or grand ayatollahs, each of whom reigns supreme when it comes to matters of religion or state. The faithful look to their hawza for guidance in all they do, and the sermons given by the various marjas take on a significance little understood by those who aren’t born and bred into that society. To speak of creating a unified Iraqi state without factoring in the reality of the hawza and its competing marjas is tantamount to claiming one will seek to fly without factoring in the realities of lift and gravity.
So if you answered the question concerning the city of Karbala with anything remotely resembling an insight into not only the schism that exists between the Sunni and the Shiite but also how the development of the practice of the Shiite faith has led to an absolute insinuation of religious dogma into every aspect of social and political life in a manner that operates independently of any so-called central state authority, you would get a passing grade, enabling you to move on to the next city covered by the pop quiz: Baghdad.
It is not only the Shiites who are bound by religious ties seemingly indecipherable to the West. From the chaos that was created with the Islamic schism came a very fluid situation in the development of Sunni Islamic dogma, with the Sunnis embracing a notion of consensus among the historical Muslim community, a line of thinking that led to the creation of four so-called legal schools of Islamic thought (the Maliki, the Hannafi, the Hanbali and the Shafi’i). These schools produced Islamic scholars who in turn competed for a constituency of followers. While in theory Sunni scholars preached adherence to the customs of the prophet Muhammad, in practice the Sunni schools became intertwined in the affairs of state and business. This deviation from the pure practice of faith led to the growth of “mystic societies” known as Sufism. Sufi brotherhoods sprang up throughout the Muslim world, each preaching its own mystical path toward achieving personal growth through the teachings of the prophet Muhammad.
The Abbasid caliphate, which oversaw this period of religious “softening,” in which the pure practice of Islam gave way to a more secular tolerance of the baser concerns of man, was centered in Baghdad. It was the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 that signaled not only the end of the Abbasid caliph’s rule but the certification in the eyes of some Sunni faithful that Abbasid’s ruin was brought about by the lack of pure faith in Islam by those professing to be Muslim. One of the basic tenants of the Sunni faith was the notion of community consensus, or “taqlid.” Taqlid was actively practiced by three of the four “legal” schools of Sunni thought. The sole exception was the school of the Hanbali, which followed a stricter interpretation of the faith. A Hanbali religious jurist, Ibn Taymiya, rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion. He held not only that the Mongols were an enemy of Islam but that the Shiite Islamic state that emerged in Persia after the Mongol conquest was likewise anathema.
More important, Ibn Taymiya broke ranks with the rest of the Sunni community, especially those who practiced Sufism, declaring all to be an affront to God. Ibn Taymiya rejected the notion of community consensus represented in the taqlid and instead professed that a true Muslim state could exist only where the political leader governed as a partner with the religious leader, and was subordinated to the religious through strict adherence to the “sharia,” or religious law. The Muslim jurists, or “ulema,” held total sway over society, to the extent that even matters pertaining to war were reserved for the religious leader, or imam, who was the only person authorized to declare a jihad.
During the Abbysid caliph, the term jihad had taken on the connotation of inner struggle. This interpretation gained wide acceptance with the spread of the Sufi brotherhoods, which were all about inner discovery. Ibn Taymiya rejected this notion of jihad, instead proclaiming that true jihad involved a relentless struggle against the enemies of Islam. For a while his teachings were popular, especially when they were being used to encourage the forces of Sunni Islam confronting the infidel Mongol invaders. However, his strict interpretation of Hanbali tenets were rejected even by other Hanbali religious scholars, and Ibn Taymiya himself was branded a heretic.
The teachings of Ibn Taymiya continued to be taught in certain Hanbali circles, including those operating in the holy city of Medina. It was here, in the 18th century, that a Arab Bedouin from the Nejd desert, in what is today Saudi Arabia, named Muhammed al-Wahhab emerged to create a movement that not only embraced the teachings of Ibn Taymiya but took them even further, preaching a virulent form of Islam that claimed to seek to bring the faithful back to the religion as practiced by the prophet Muhammad himself. Wahhab’s movement, known as the Call to Unity, reflected his strict interpretation of Islam as set forth in his book Kitab al-Tawhid, or the Book of Unity.
At first Wahhab was rejected by the Sunni scholars, and he was hounded and finally forced to take refuge in the tiny village of Dariya. There Wahhab befriended the local governor, Muhammed Ibn Saud, initiating what was to become a partnership in which the Saud family took on the role of emir, or political leader, while Wahhab became imam, or religious leader. The team of Bedouin warrior and Islamic fanatic soon led to what would become known as the Wahhabi conquest, bringing much of what is now present-day Saudi Arabia under their strict religious rule. In 1802 a Wahhabi army attacked Karbala and sacked the sacred Shiite shrine to Hussein. In 1803 the Wahhabis sacked Mecca, laying waste to the most holy sites in the Islamic world, including the Great Mosque. In 1804 the Wahhabis captured Medina, looted the tomb of the prophet Muhammad and shut off the hajj, or pilgrimage, to all non-Wahhabis. The rise of the Wahhabi empire was seen as a threat to all Islam, and soon a massive counterattack was mounted by the caliphate in Egypt. By 1818 the Wahhabis had been destroyed in battle, and everyone professing Wahhabism was treated as an apostate and butchered. The head of the Saud tribe was captured and beheaded, along with many of his fellow tribesmen.
Deep in the Arab deserts, a small number of Saudi tribesmen, strict adherents to Wahhabism, survived the Egyptian onslaught and began the struggle to regain their lost power. By 1924 the Wahhabis once again controlled Mecca and Medina, and by 1932 a new nation, Saudi Arabia, emerged from the Arabian deserts, governed by the house of Saud and with religious affairs totally in the hands of the Wahhabis.
To the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia there were two great sources of religious heretics: the Shiites, who ruled in Iran and represented a majority population in several Arab nations, including Iraq, and worse still, the Sunni Arabs, who rejected the true path as represented by the teachings of Wahhab. The puritanical form of Islam pushed by the Wahhabis was difficult to export, however, until the oil crisis of 1973, after which the Saudi government was able to fund the printing of Wahhabi literature and training of Wahhabi missionaries. In Iraq, there was some attraction to the puritanical teachings of Wahhabism among the Bedouin of the western deserts. However, with the rise to power of Saddam Hussein, Wahhabism and those who proselytized in its name were treated as enemies of the state. Wahhabism was still practiced in the shadows of Sunni mosques throughout Iraq, but anyone caught doing so was immediately arrested and put to death.
Wahhabi concerns over the weakening of the Muslim world by those who practiced anything other than pure Islam were certified in the minds of the faithful when, in April 2003, American soldiers captured Baghdad in what many Wahhabis viewed as a repeat of the sack of the city at the hands of the Mongols in 1258. Adding insult to injury, the role of Iraq’s Shiites in aiding and abetting the American conquest was seen as proof positive that the only salvation for the faithful could come at the hands of a pure form of the Islamic faith, that of Wahhabism. As the American liberation dragged on into the American occupation, and the level of violence between the Shiites and Sunnis grew, the call of jihad as promulgated by the Wahhabis gained increasing credence among the tribes of western Iraq.
The longer the Americans remain in Iraq, the more violence the Americans bring down on Iraq, and the more the Americans are seen as facilitating the persecution of the Sunnis by the Shiites, the more legitimate the call of the Wahhabi fanatics become. While American strategists may speak of the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq, this is misrecognition of what is really happening. Rather than foreigners arriving and spreading Wahhabism in Iraq, the virulent sect of Islamic fundamentalism is spreading on its own volition, assisted by the incompetence and brutality of an American occupation completely ignorant of the reality of the land and people it occupies. This is the true significance of Baghdad, and any answer not reflecting this will be graded as failing.
A pop quiz, consisting of one question in two parts. Most readers might complain that it is not realistic to expect mainstream America to possess the knowledge necessary to achieve the level of comprehension required to pass this quiz. I agree. However, since the mission of the United States in Iraq has shifted from disarming Saddam to installing democracy to creating stability, I think it only fair that the American people be asked about those elements that are most relevant to the issue, namely the Shiite and Sunni faithful and how they interact with one another.
It is sadly misguided to believe that surging an additional 20,000 U.S. troops into Baghdad and western Iraq will even come close to redressing the issues raised in this article. And if you concur that the reality of Iraq is far too complicated to be understood by the average American, yet alone cured by the dispatch of additional troops, then we have a collective responsibility to ask what the hell we are doing in that country to begin with. If this doesn’t represent a clarion call for bringing our men and women home, nothing does.
Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, including “Iraq Confidential” (Nation Books, 2005) and “Target Iran” (Nation Books, 2006)
Thank you Mr. Ritter for the short history lesson. But it isn’t this that I want to address nor the very noticible ingnorance of far too many US citizens. What I find incredibly stupid on the part of people in the USA is the fact that they believe this war is for anything other than control of the oil in the Middle East. To any thinking person, this should be obvious. In fact, as I’m sure you know, many US presidents have stated this fact. Even Jimmy Carter saw this as an imperative for the USA.
Until we find a true leader who is a visionary as well, we will continue to let our dependence on oil destroy our country along with the planet.
I could continue about pipelines across Afganistan and the passage of laws regarding new oil contracts in Iraq - to be shared equally among the people, of course. But I don’t think I need to waste your time with that.
Georgie had all this explained to him four years ago and he understood every bit of it, right? Right?
Control of Oil isn’t the reason, it’s only a means. I’ve just started reading ‘American Fascists’ by Chris Hedges. For the REAL reason behind the invasion of Iraq read this book. Most of us focus on money and politics as reasons for neocon behavior. Not the case.
Dear Scott,
Thank you for your indepth explanation of the Sunnis and Shias. I’ll keep it for further study later. When I asked my Iraqi friend about the difference between the two sects, she simply shrugged. It was of no account to her; she is a Sunni and proud of the modern Iraq that the US has managed to so completely to destroy with two wars and years of sanctions. What bothers me most is making offensive war at the expense of world standing. I’m no longer proud of my country; we are blatently in your face bullies. Capitalism has succeeded - the rich get richer, the poor poorer, and CEOs of giant corporations are bound by stockholders to make profits no matter what the cost to humanity. There is no morality here, just the bottom line. We poison our kids with food, make them unhealthy and fat, empty their minds with constant marketing at every turn, and keep them occupied with getting the next toy instead of understanding the world. People who think are made fun of, ignored, or as one man recently remarked about the proposed Department of Peace, concerned with becoming a country of “wusses.” I don’t need to know the difference between Sunnis and Shias any more than I need to know the difference between Catholic fundamentalism and protestant fundamentalism, or between any protestants sects. War is wrong, bombing civilians is wrong and all religions preach this. My hope is now in the Green party and the Green movement. If we dry up the market for oil to save the planet, we might just save it from war mongers. If we work and shop locally, we might just dry up the market for giant corporations. I’m watching the rise of indigenous movements and wishing them well. As they protect resource rights for themselves, they make good the argument for all of us to go local.
Congress: forget them for the present. Watch the video: “Why we Fight” to understand how compromised they are by virtue of the military industrial complex; rooted now in every state. Bill Moyers recent speech at Occidental College provides a hopeful framework for thought, incorporating regligious principals common to all religions. Howard Zinn recently stated (permit me to paraphrase) “It’s not the big things, it’s the little things that people do that count.” - that produce a movement. Thank you for your great writing, Scott. Yours has been a voice of reason since this horror began.
I always learn things of great interest when I read your letters Mr. Ritter. Thank You, again.
For so long Americans have been telling each other that we were somehow “better” than other people on the planet - some kind of arrogance “earned” by the fact that we simply were born within the boundaries of the nation-state torn from the wretched hands of a King George in the 18th century. Once we learn that every generation earns its own freedom through blood sweat and tears (AND self-education, because God knows our public education system is hobbled) we will easily throw off the dark depressing glasses of consumerist society, and put another King George in his place.
Dear Scott Ritter,
You first entered my consciousness as the forthright weapons inspector who was not afraid to speak his mind. Then I learned to respect you as the sincere and fearless advocate for truth and decency in dealing with America’s rape of Iraq.
Now I discover the scholar in you. Thank you for the insightful lecture on the history of the splitting of the Islamic faith. (I find the parallels to the evolution of the Christian church amazing.) Only a few sentences into your presentation of the religious background of the situation in Iraq I got a pencil and a sheet of paper and prepared a diagram of the early events. It took a bit of effort but now I have a much better understanding of the intractability of the situation in Iraq. But, judging by the foregoing comments, don’t expect many people to follow you there. Still, keep up the good work. People like you have already made and keep making a difference - the rest of us need you.
Well let me say that i too find the historical framework interesting, and valuable, and re-inforcing of other work i’ve read, specifically Karen Amrstrong - but none of this is necessary to know that the war is, was and will be wrong. A proper understanding of the splits within islam valuable for many reasons, learning for its own sake prime among them - but the war is a crime and its prosecutors must be prosecuted.
I believe that mr ritter’s point is in fact the same.
I saw a cartoon that I think dramatizes our governments relationship with Iraq. The cartoon had 2 pictures. One had a kid reading a “how to swim” book before taking a dive and the other picture with a kid not reading the book and then struggling to stay afloat.
If many intelligence analyst who were very familiar with the historical and religious complexities in Iraq issued warnings about the invasion and occupation of Iraq were silenced by the administration but later proven right, then obviously members of Congress and especially the president should possess the same knowledge necessary to know what the hell is going on over there in order to stay afloat.
(Yeah, right. Thats a good one.)
To Americans the difference between Sunni and Shia isn’t as important as the difference between Britney and Anna Nicole. If you’re looking for an explanation as to why there’s so little effort devoted to winding down the war, I think that provides it.
“The task of holding Congress to account is a daunting one, and can be accomplished only if the citizenry that forms the respective constituencies of our ignorant congressional representatives are themselves able to operate at an intellectual capacity above that of those they are holding to account.”
How can we expect a majority of citizens to ‘operate at an intellectual capacity above that of those they are holding to account’ if they themselves have not been taught how to think critically?
Our public educational system has been failing us for decades in this area of learning. With the continued push for free market globalization ultimately deciding job availability and limited choices for future generations, our intellectual capacity to think critically about every day affairs will degenerate even further; for as education moves its focus toward job preparation and away from the arts, history, culture, philosophy and other areas that promote critical thinking, society will be generating human robots, not thinkers.
In short, we are moving closer to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”: A totalitarian state run by corporate-controled political bosses who manage a population of slaves, too ignorant to recognize their entrapment.
Thanks Scott. Knew that Wahhabism was important but didn’t know the details.
How ’bout an addendum detailing how Bin Laden relates to all of this and America’s role in fostering al quida?
I really appreciated the information about Iraq, but it’s over 4 years late! When American voters put a man in the highest office in the land (twice!) who can’t even string two intellegent sentences together, says he doesn’t watch the polls or the news (translate: doesn’t care what Americans think), and doesn’t read (let alone have ANY knowledge of history), they should have had a clue that there was a problem with any decision this dolt would make.
American voters do not need to be educated about all the details that need to be considered by our “representatives” when making decisions. We must insist that ALL decisions must be informed by experts in the relative areas of expertise needed. All you have to do as a citizen is look at who this president has surrounded himself with to realize that not once in the past 6 years has this happened. “Heck of a job” Brownie ring any bells? How about that hack Alberto Gonzales “torture is ok, and the Geneva Conventions are quaint and outdated, Habeous Corpus is not explicitly protected by the Constitution, and… ” on and on and on…..Then look at who gets fired, forced to resign, or silenced. Any dissenting four star generals come to mind?
So my question to Scott Ritter, and all the other informed experts on Iraq, is why weren’t you blowing the intellectual whistle on the folly of the invasion of Iraq before it happened? People around the world were in the streets demonstrating against the invasion of Iraq. They didn’t have to know the history of Iraq to know that a “preemptive” war was wrong, immoral, and a travesty. What were the experts doing to inform those flag waving wingnuts that had been persuaded by the lies of this administration in the build up to this unconscionable war? As an “uninformed” citizen, I refuse to take sole responsibility for this war on the basis that I didn’t know the history of Iraq. The experts must take much of the “blame” for the continuance of this unwinnable war. They are still not informing members of Congress on the front pages of the major media outlets as to why this war can never be “won”, should stop being funded, with the result that our troops are brought home.
The comments here, and by and large throughout CommonDreams, are thoughtful, reflect folks who want to educate themselves about current issues, as accurate as can be, and beside the point. Please read American Fascists by Chris Hedges. Politics and corporatists are only means to an end.
I’m sure it’s difficult for moderate Christians to believe that their own religion is the force behind what we’re seeing. In some way it probably makes them feel guilty for being part of the problem, and so they blind themselves to that possibility.
Liberals too probably think these whackos, the Pat Robertsons and Falwells and Dobsons, are too silly and laughable to be doing THAT much damage.
And so the driving force behind what we’re seeing is disregarded. Read American Fascists. Tell me I’m wrong. For these people and the millions they represent, the ‘End justify the Means’. America is their weapon.
The exposition on the internals of the Sunni/Shia/Kurd bones of contention was interesting for those with such an interest. It is/was sufficient to know that those three factions were held under strict control by Saddam Hussein and if we were to get rid of him we ought to have a foolproof way to keep them together, if together they wanted to be. Not only did we not have a foolproof solution for post-Saddam Iraq, we didn’t even have a foolproof way to protect our nations from the fools now running it.
You can tell a lot about a nation by the leaders it selects. Sadly, based on our selections of the past few years, there isn’t a helluva lot good that can be said about the USA. We’ve got some things of our own brewing that will easily exceed the Sunni/Shia readings on the hostility scale. Since more than 80% of the wealth resides with 20% of our population, and globalization is removing the ladder that allows ascendancy into the middle class, it’s hard to see how we avoid an inevitable citizen eruption. Paraphrasing Woody Guthrie, “This land is OUR land, it ain’t just your land.” Global warming isn’t the only thing that’ll warm up the planet.
To the Rebel Farmer: actually, Scott Ritter HAS been blowing the whistle since before the attack on Iraq, starting with a speaking tour organized by a small peace organization in Western Mass before he made it into the mainstream media.
That said, it’s been very hard to be heard in the corporate news explaining such facts back then. Very hard.
But don’t expect well informed leaders to come up with better decisions, that is not what drives their actions. Ask yourself what does.
OK, so religion is violence-inspiring bullshit. Gotcha.
I don’t need a Ph.D. in Sky God Nonsense to be opposed to a bullshit war that has already torn my family apart, now do I?
The USA supports tolerance of all kinds of religion. Why should we allow tolerance for radicals?
Anyone who wants to wear religious grunge and disrupt life in a free society should not be allowed.
Let them return to the oppresive society they support.
We allow too much bs-freedom of religious sects, unmonitored illegals on welfare, useless government.
Yet if you do not pay a $3.00 tax and you were born here you go to jail.
Scott’s got his religious history down; he’s forgotten the practicalities of the division of the country by the British (and Americans) so that, as with Africa, the nations comprise mutually distasteful elements in an attempt to make sure there is no unity and thus keep themselves in control. Iraq and Iran did not exist prior to this empire-building, colonial move. Taking history and dividing it up into little bits and pieces and using the little bits and pieces to explicate the whole of the situation misses the point about as much as Bush misses the point with regard to humanism. Let us not forget Lawrence an his fury over the division of the spoils of war, that is peoples and geographical country in a blatant promise-breaking. The answer to Ritter’s question regarding Baghdad and Karbala might better be: they belong to two different countries. Force two hated communities/countries together and you can be there will be no unity and, therefore, no threat to hegemony…for awhile. Divide and conquor. Then all hell breaks out. And everyone loses because of the colonizer-oppressor-empire builders’ inability to see beyond the ends of their green greed- dripping noses. A greater truth lies in this long essay, though: religion divides and dyshumanizes and creates hell.
evelyna, the USA supports many radical groups and the should because one of the founding principles of this nation is that we have to allow even the most despicable speech and people the right to be who they are.
It’ seems to me you have lived a fairly protected lifeor else you wouldn’t be able to make such comments about having $3.00 to become a US citizen. Unless I’ve completely misunderstood you, you have no idea how most of the world is forced to live.
I suggest you travel to Zimbabwe for a couple of weeks, or maybe Lebanon. I live in Vietnam and it’s amazing how resourceful these people you look down on are.
Tragically, the level of ignorance in the American People is not going to be improved by this brilliant article any time soon, even if every historical fact was rammed down their individual throats. The eye-popping density of this material aside, Americans choose to live in a world of mythology and immediate self-gratification. The conundrums of logic and common sense that permeate Ritter’s analysis will give the average American at best a bad headache, and at worst a case of civic denial. Congress and the White House, to varying degrees, depend upon a distracted, ignorant and malleable populace to conduct “foreign policy”, even if it means the continuous slaughter of our own troops and Iraqi citizens. In the movie classic “Judgment at Nuremburg” back in the early ’60’s, Spencer Tracy’s character of the lead tribunal judge states in his summation that the world, in its repudiation of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, should let it be known its belief “in the value of a single human being”. Perhaps that ethos may have been true then, but brother, it’s no longer true. When you look around at the world today, wholesale destruction of human beings on a genocidal scale is the name of the game. How far we fallen.
Mr. Ritter. Thanks for a well tuned lesson in the same frank and knowledgeable style we admired about your weapons work. I would have failed your test by way of a more shallow view derived from slighter, though almost adequate, research effort. One of the great joys in this world is to meet people who know their stuff. The joy is declining in the face of an administration that actually discredits knowledge and a generation of young peole hampered by text books, at every level, that teach preconceived world views instead of knowledge. Thanks again, and more power to you. Dave Forth
Ah, yes, a long, sad story it is, Mr. Ritter. And the saddest part is that all of it that has transpired since the passing of Muhammad is deviance and innovation on the part of people with small minds, small hearts and ambitious agenda. The whole structure of organized Islam is contrary to one of the injunctions of the teachings as given by the Prophet Muhammad: there shall be no intercessors between a person of faith and Allah. And it is this, of course, that the Sufis tried to remedy, by making the individuals mystical connection to, and path toward, Allah primary. Of course, many of those who attempted to become Sufis also succumbed to the temptations of personal agenda and innovation so they too lost their ways and dragged others with them into the confines of religion organized under the guise of mysticism.
It has often been said and written that the Wahabbis hijacked Islam. Though that is true, it is also true, as your historical account illustrates, that Islam has been hijacked ever since it passed from the hands of the Prophet Muhammad into the hands of ambitious people who don’t realize that Islam, submission to Allah, means not submitting to one’s own ego. (This has actually been the fate of all organized religions.)
When Ibn Taymiya proclaimed that true jihad involved a relentless struggle against the enemies of Islam, he was quite right about that. The problem was that the definition of the enemies of Islam was refocused on outside forces, real and imagined, who were believed to be trying to destroy Islam. Left to thrive and rule were the real enemies of Islam, the “nafs ammarah”: the small ego, the commanding self, the petty passions, cravings, desires and fears of humans gone astray and lost in confusion. In fact, it is these real enemies of Islam that are recruited and encourage to follow their passions in the supposed defense of Islam.
Then, as someone else has already mentioned, there is the whole political history of the area - all that has been done TO the tribes of this whole area - TO, rather than FOR, because it has all been done and is being done FOR others who want their oil.
Again, as has already been mentioned, it’s interesting and helpful but far from necessary for Americans to know even a tiny part of what you have presented, Mr. Ritter, in order to know that to have started this war in the first place, and to be continuing it as we are, let alone expanding it at all, is all terribly wrong and unjustifiable. It only takes an intelligent human being with an understanding and compassionate heart to know and feel that this war is all wrong. Unfortunately, we have G.W. Bush, the Decider, who is “a war president” who said “I have war on my mind” which means he is incapable of seeking and seeing peaceful solutions to problems.
Those of us who are intelligent and who have understanding and compassionate hearts owe it to ourselves, to our country, to the world and especially to the people of Iraq and the surrounding countries to show that we are aware, to show that we care, to show that we are sorry, by impeaching Bush and Cheney. Impeachment needs to be put on the table and acted on immediately to not allow this travesty to continue any longer. We have no other choice other than silent complicity.
Thank you Janten March for bringing this discussion to a new level. Scott Ritter is in my inner circle of writers, having landed there with his very first warning about stopping the weapons inspections before the war. I appreciate how much I learned from this article, also having thought I was fairly well informed. I have read many thoughtful responses to this article, and this last one truly identifies the problem. Whatever we do on the outside reflects what’s going on on the inside. So yes, George W. Bush needs to be impeached, but also needs our compassion for his inner suffering against which he is insulating himself. Even though he is destroying many people to achieve that.
We need a President like Dennis Kucinich, an unlikely event, since the majority of Americans don’t really want change on the level that change is needed. But it’s true that silence is complicity, we must not be silent. After 3 assassinations and Kent State, I spent 20 years being silent, thinking “What for?”, but no more. So far, we’re still a somewhat free country where I’m not forced into silence.
Meanwhile I am heartsick at what we are doing to other people, and not just the Iraqis, whose country we have destroyed, and I am very ashamed to be an American. We have gone completely against the writings of our founding fathers. It didn’t and doesn’t have to be this way.
Thank you Mr. Ritter for very informative piece. And thank you for having the courage and convection to continue to speak out against the war as you did before the invasion. You are one of voices of truth in a
Den of liars and profiteers.
You were among many experts that were trying before this all started to bring truth to American people but for the most part, were ignored.
The American mainstream media are nothing more than a crude propaganda aparatus similar to the state media in the Soviet Union. If they were real journalists they would have called attention of the American masses to the reality of the Iraq war: We went in there to control the oil, set up a puppet government, and establish permanent bases. We are building the largest embassy complex in the world there, and the American elites–both Repug and Demorat–have no intention of abandoning their neo-imperial project there. All this talk of withdrawing troops is smoke and mirrors to try to disarm a growing peoples’ movement here which ultimately would threaten to toss out the entire corrupt American elite class which has brought the country to the edge of ruin.
Bull hockey!–”The issues that prompt the congressional collective to behave in such an egregious manner have more to do with a reflexive tendency to avoid any controversy that might disrupt the status quo ante regarding representative-constituent relations (i.e., re-election) than with any intellectual debate about doing the right thing. This sickening trend is bipartisan in nature, but of particular shame to the Democrats, who obtained their majority from an electorate that expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of the war in Iraq through their votes, demanding that something be done.”– Mr. Ritter
Bull Hockey, I say! That is exactly what your president (small p) is doing in not listening to the constituents — us! He thinks he’s doing the right thing — but for whom? Bull Hockey!
You’re welcome, kathyodat March.
I’m really just Janten and March is the month!
It’s great that you are “heartsick at what we are doing to other people” because it shows you have a heart, a heart with the capacity to care and love even “them” - those people who can seem so different from us. That is a wonderful and beautiful quality that’s essential for our peace and our survival. For people such as yourself, “they” are human - brothers and sisters with whom we share this world, this life, most of our genetic code and so much more. Way too often, far too many have dehumanized “them” which makes it all too easy to ignore or harm or kill “them” for any reason or no reason at all.
But please don’t be “very ashamed to be an American.” The United States of America stands for high ideals for its citizens as well as for everyone else. That is something to be proud of. What we have to be ashamed about is how far we fall short of those ideals and, especially, how far our current president falls short of our country’s high ideals. President misrepresents our country’s ideals because he is lost and confused and unfit to be our guiding representative. Because of that, he should have never been elected to office once, let alone twice, and because of that, he should be impeached, tried, convicted and removed from office, along with Cheney and the rest of his accomplices as quickly as possible. If we don’t try our best to remove Bush and Cheney from office as soon as possible, then we need to feel deeply and truly ashamed of ourselves. But never of our high ideals, the high ideals of our country, even when we fall short of them.
Would you all like to show Congress what you think about their timidity in face of brutish and deadly arrogance? There is one good way.
You may have thought you “voted” your opinion in November, but it fell on deaf ears. Oh, it shifted the power equation somewhat, but that funny dance for the campaign $$$s seems funny because we don’t get to hear the tune, we just see the resulting motions.
There is a way to “Vote” again — right now, this time unequivocally so they GET the message:
Register GREEN!
Say to them: I now stand with Those who say Stop the War Now!
Say to them: My new Party has called for Impeachment of Bush and Cheney since 2003
Say to them: I have joined with others who want to save our nation, its Constitution, our lives and dignity NOW!
Say to them: Even as the war got worse, you silenced antiwar voices in 2004 and 2006. My new Party says out loud “Stop the War; End the Occupation; Close the Bases; Try the War Profiteers; Impeachment, NOT Appeasement! Maybe you will listen now!
Switch2Green.org talks about this Movement and give the both logic and the means to send this Congress a message they’ll remember.
It’s time for the Spirit of 1776, not the Spin of 2008!
It’s not that they weren’t listening to us in 2006, it’s just that they haven’t heard or communicated with the people who support them in decades. So they don’t speak for us. Their tepid reponse to George’s outrageous lawlessness, is positively ENABLING.
America is in danger for her life; Congress pretends it’s got a cold.
We aren’t looking at “Bad policy”, or “poor management” — not even poor judgment. What we are witnessing, startled and dumbfounded, is the incredible collateral damage of thugs installing their policies by force. Thugs who say: “Reality? Hah! Raality is in my gun/bomb/missle.” Thugs who don’t plan for contingencies because those things doesn’t matter to them. Witness Katrina. These preventive wars are the plans for Phase I of the Project for the New American Century: Control the region and all the energy flow.
America has been hijacked by scum who care little for its people, and who know or care little about the concepts of democracy, society, the common good, facts or reality.
We cannot afford to treat these sociopaths with kid gloves. We must show them that the adults who DO believe in the common good, in laws, and yes, in peace, are on to them, and are taking charge.
Besides being perhaps the most tactically sound and effective ways to wake this Congress up about the war, there are added benefits from registering with the Green Party. It’s a party with people like yourselves who think and care about the future of our land and the planet, that believe in universal health care, public education, women’s rights (including passage of ERA), the right of labor to organize and to strike, fair trade practices, and a real living wage.
Say out loud: I am a GREEN now!
Get 80,000, 100,000 to make the switch now, and just watch what happens.
They’ll only listen if they think they have to.
As a registered Independent-former-Democrat-appalled-with-their-cowardice, I nonetheless am watching the action in Washington with great interest.
The Occupation of Iraq is a mighty machine with a massive infrastructure. Taking this misbegotten catastrophe on directly guarantees an ugly, protracted battle with bodies strewn all about the landscape. Removing Mr Bush and/or Mr Cheney from office will not magically turn the ship of state, and it’s beginning to look to me like the Democratic leadership is interested in this larger goal.
By funding The Surge fully while stipulating controls and expressing the sentiment of the Congress, the bill working its way through committee right now is a brilliant maneuver in a complex set of strategies, compared elsewhere and I believe convincingly as a chess game. The Congress has now removed from the Republican armamentarium forever the charge that “you supported it to.” From this point forward the Occupation becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican corporatocracy. All while the American citizenry grows more weary and more aware of the true nature of the Occupation.
The responsibility of the opposition to the current regime is to continue to keep as much pressure as possible on the elected leadership, all the while realizing that these things happen most effectively in stages and steps.
It is by no means an accident, in the meantime, that the core team of the regime is being slowly, systematically dismantled by congressional hearings.
As a true skeptic, even I am willing to watch and learn. If current trends continue, I believe the Democratic strategy will be successful at revealing the Republican Party as presently constituted to be the largest criminal conspiracy in history.
That doesn’t mean I’m ready to reregister as a Democrat. It just means that for now they appear to be working from a carefully thought-out, precise strategy to return some semblance of free choice to our election process. And for that I salute them.
Ritter’s Militaristic Silliness
“speaks volumes about the level of concern (or lack thereof) these “representatives of the people” have toward the men and women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces of the United States of America.”
Let’s clear out the BS. America has a mercenary army, composed of people who opted for military financial benefits, taking a calculated risk that there would be no call to action. Like Fireman, they assumed that the risk would be reasonable, given modern equipment and fire safety standards in cities or towns. They also reasoned that if there were a conflict as in Yugoslavia, or Gulf I, etc. That vastly superior US forces would simply bomb some third world country from 30000 feet, killing only “enemy” collateral civilians or enemy soldiers.
Well, Devil Bush, called in their Faustian bargain. They’re being duped, and cheated and killed, and maimed.
Americans don’t care about these mercenaries, unless they are family members. If there were a draft, things would be quite different. And that’s the difference between Iraq and Vietnam.
But, let’s stop using these shopworn phrases such as “men and women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces.”
That is bullpucky. They are employees, who have abusive contracts tendered by the taxpayers and the US government.
They are there because of the underlying economic inequalities built into the American system. They are there because of corporate abuse. They are honoring no one, especially not themselves. They are being dishonored, and they have dishonored themselves by participating in a system that has no conscience.
Incidentally, Scott Ritter is a career military man. Career military people have a conflict of interest in democratic societies.
What America needs to do, is to reinstate the draft. It needs to have a militia, that serves perpetually, with reduced yearly training by age group.
Command personnel need to be made up of civilian as well as permanent staff. Permanent staff needs to be more subject ot public scrutiny, to scrutiny by legilature and public voting.
The Presidency needs to be downsized in this respect.
The public needs to see military preparedness as a Res Publicae, and it needs to take over much of the authority in this area.
The Presidency should be seen as an administrative function, for added efficience, not as a concentration of military, police, or secret police power.
This has to stop!
!!!!!!!!!!!! EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION !!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t think Bush has any intention of vetoing the Supplemental funding bill if it ever gets to his desk. One of the benchmarks he has to certify turns Iraq’s oil over to the major American and British oil companies is buried in this Supplemental!
Please read Richard Beham’s “George Bush’s Land Mine” just posted here on Common Dreams. Excerpt:
“The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.
Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.
If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.
The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.
It is why we went to war.”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ACT NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have to contact every member in the Congress that is on the panel to reconcile the House and Senate version of the Supplemental funding bill that just passed both houses of Congress. This “benchmark” has to be stripped out of this bill before it goes to Shrub’s desk!
GO! GO! GO!!!
P.S. I’m going to go on over to Move On and see what the can do.
Thanks.
I couldn’t get much past “… most Americans are ill-placed intellectually…” And I must say, whoever wrote “idiot” in the title is at least forthright.
So, now each and every one of us is to judge for ourselves the efficacy of congressional behavior on each issue? Really? And disinterest makes us ill-placed intellectually: idiots? Hmmm… Let’s just say “misguided.”
You may be right, though; most of us were misguided, but not by the criteria you set out. That’s reserved for those who voted for Bush in ‘04. Certainly those who voted against him are not. Even those who voted for him in ‘00 aren’t necessarily.
And by ‘06 we’d regained our collective bearing, to the point of now forcing impeachment back on the table, in spite of congressional pontification.
Thanks Scott, for having the conviction to speak your mind in the face of such deceit. May we all show such courage.
I support Mike Gravel for President. I believe he will not only end the war, but redirect US foreign policy to a more peaceful one.
Mr. Ritter,
Thank you for your faithful service. Thank you for the lesson in “Who’s-Who” in Iraq and its neighborhood. Please continue to write and teach. We need many more good men who will stand up for the truth if we are to rid our nation of the lice currently at its head.
Regards, Spike Baldwin
Thanks for your kind words, Janten (I’m really Kathy Jones, not Kathy March). jEven though I didn’t vote for these people, and would vote for a lower standard of living to redistribute wealth globally, the fact that I live in this country makes me complicit. I considered emigrating (they don’t spank kids in Sweden), but deserting America when things are dark doesn’t feel right. I’d hate to see no one left here but Cheyneys and right wing whackos and most of the world’s military hardware.
Thank you Mr Ritter for the very detailed analysis of the history of the Shi’ite and Sunni split. Unfortunately educated analysis is not the kind of thing the media is interested in nowadays. I do have one concern with the article however and that is that the article may lead some readers to believe the Shi’ite / Sunni conflict is intractable and unsolvable, therefore lending support to the concept of dividing Iraq along sectarian lines.
Although the Shi’a are regularly portrayed in the west as the losers of the great schism and the Islamic has been dominated by Sunni regimes, this is not entirely true. The Fatimids of the Magrib (North Africa) and later Egypt were Shi’a, as were the Safavids of Persia. In no case has
the Islamic world has never divided itself along specifically sectarian lines. Generally it is not sectarianism that is the cause of Shi’a and Sunni conflict, but the polarizing effect of politics. For example, the long running conflict between the Ottoman (Sunni Turkish) and Safavid (Shi’a Persian) Empires was largely a political battle between powerful neighbouring empires. Both empires had mixed Shi’a and Sunni populations who generally coexisted peacefully. However, both sides exploited the sectarian issue to cause disturbances in each others territory. The Safavids particularly exploited the predominantely Shi’a nomadic Turkomans of central and eastern Anatolia by calling on their loyalty to the Shi’a community. At its core however, the Turkomans revolted against the Sunni Ottomans not because they were Sunni, but because the Turcomans objected to the increasing taxation forced upon and their exclusion from positions of power in the Ottoman hierarchy (which was dominated by ex-Christian converts from eastern Europe).
One of the characteristics of Shi’ism is its general acceptance of the status quo. The disappearance of the 12th imam (for Twelver Shi’ites - there are other combinations) created a millenarian myth that meant the end of the Shi’a challenge to the Sunni ulema. Like the Christians waiting for the return of Jesus and the New Jerusalem, the Shi’a placed their political ambitions on hold to await the return of the Mahdi. Shi’ism therefore became an ideology of patient protest against Sunni corruption, of waiting. The Shi’a of southern Iraq adopted Shi’ism not because they have an ethnic affinity with their Persian neighbours across the Tigris, but as a protest against the Ottoman Sunni domination. They have however, always remained loyal to the Ottoman or Iraqi states (not necessarily loyal to Saddam Hussein however, but that is a different matter). During the long and terrible Iran-Iraq War neither side was able to enlist the loyalty of each others sectarian minorities. The Iraqi Shi’a remained loyal to Iraq. The Arab Sunnis of Iran remained loyal to Iran. Only the Kurds rebelled against the authority of both sides (the Kurds are neither Arabs nor Persians and they fought against both sides).
The current sectarian strife has its origins in political oppression and revenge. With the downfall of the primarily Sunni Ba’athists, many oppressed Shi’a took revenge on members of the old regime through murder and expulsion from neighbourhoods. This resulted in tit for tat responses from Sunni dominated militias. This has since spiralled out of control with the US and its Iraqi puppet government sponsoring death squads and sectarian terror as a means of distracting the political process and maintaining a sense of crisis. Why does the Iraqi government support such disorder? Because it knows it has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people and the moment the US forces leave the country there will be a popular revolution and they will be overthrown, probably facing the same fate as the Hashemite royal family in the 56 revolution. The only solution to the sectarian violence is to remove its facilitiators - the forces of occupation.
IT’S THE FAR RIGHT, NOT THE WAHABIS.
Scott Ritter has my respect. He’s intelligent, logical and appears to do his homework throughly.
I have two minor reservations on “Calling Out Idiot America”. Congress is not acting in “cowardly” fashion. It is attempting a long overdue pullback to Bush’s war of aggression. In that regard, it is acting in accordance with the wishes of the American public who are fed up.
The second point is identifying the true roots of our current middle east dilemma. And is the militarism of our own far right.
Opposing George W. Bush and the far right is no easy task. They are masters of propaganda and have successfully cloaked every aggressive move behind a smoke screen of false patriotism or national security paranoia. Cheney routinely bellows accusations against the Democrats, accusing them of promoting Al Qaida’s agenda. What this clever distortion masks is the simple fact that the majority of combatants arrayed against us in Iraq are the Iraqis themselves.
But the specious pronouncements of the right are so well-constructed, they’re not easy to refute on the spot. Consequently, a lot of people get suckered.
Football great Jim Brown once made the following remark which is relevant to this day. “America is not everything it pretends to be”. Indeed, there is much about the America that is disturbing. In particular, the militarist element which evolved into what today is called the far right. Let us look at their handiwork.
We live in a country where police are routinely brutal and largely unaccountable for their actions. A criminal justice system exists where both prosecutors and law enforcement value conviction above the even-handed and impartial administration of the law. We live in a country where black men are convicted of capital crimes they did not committ, and when DNA evidence is introduced proving innocence, the state often fights tooth and nail to uphold the rotten verdict, regardless. We value financial success over ethics. We absolutely worship military and police muscle as sacred cows above reproach.
This pattern of thinking is no accident and arrives as a consequence of the steady drumbeat of propaganda produced by the American right. “Patriotism, Devout Christianity and blind devotion to those in power” have gradually turned a large part of the country fascist. As Samuel Clemens once said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. Like religion, it can be used to justify any outrage. Religion is yet another subterfuge behind which those with wolfish natures hide their true designs. How dare anyone criticize George Bush?! He’s a devout Christian! His role model is Jesus! (Gee, I didn’t realize Jesus preached torture and war by lies.)
The far right has made itself nearly unassailable using these covers. But the war in Iraq has begun to reveal what they’re all about. At the heart are corporate elitists, the oil companies in particular, who have the mainstream Republican party as their political front men. The religious extremists have been a welcome addition and consequently, they have made further inroads into the public education system, further threatening traditional independent thinking with the restraints of religious conformity.
As an example of how morally destitute the far right is, when the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib broke, the extremists loudly proclaimed that anything short of loss of a major organ was not really torture. Ridiculous. So I could strap one of these turkeys into a chair, chop off his ears, fingers, feet and private parts, and he wouldn’t consider himself being tortured? Well, that’s what they’d have us believe.
The far right has been a nightmare in our foreign policy for a long time, ever since the Eisenhower administration began in 1953. Yes, it was good old mild-mannered Ike who turned the CIA loose on Iran, overthrew its democratically-elected government and replaced it with the reign of the Shah with all his torture and oppression. And who benefitted? British oil interests who stood to lose their holdings. The right wing repeated the exercise in Guatamala the very next year, again ousting a moderate socialist ruler and replacing him with a brutish military junta. The same year, 1954, saw the far right propping up Ngo Diem in Vietnam, another dictator whose policies so enraged the populace, they swelled the ranks of the Viet Cong.
But why should overwhelming public sentiment against Diem mean anything to the commercial interests of the American far right? Diem is a dictator? So what?Vietnam had oil. What else mattered? Doubt the assertion? Check the 2003 prospectus for Conoco Phillips.
Now mind you, selling U.S. involvement in SE Asia was no easy task. But the Pentagon brass did all it could, working on both Kennedy and his VP, Lyndon Johnson. The basic lie, otherwise known as “the domino theory”, asserted that if Vietnam fell, we’d be pushed back to the California coast. What a load of bull. Kennedy didn’t buy it, but unfortunately Johnson did. Well, guess who got assassinated and guess who succeeded as president?
Unfortunately for the far right, the Vietnam fiasco exploded in their faces. Following the fall of Saigon in 1975, the nation began to soberly reflect on its past and question what it had done. Then came Ronald Reagan and a truckload of white paint. The whitewash was on. Feeling bad was out. Don’t worry, be happy was in. The CIA proceeded to go on a rampage in Central America. It was Vietnam all over again in a different locale. Search and destroy, napalming, oppression and torture came back in style. We intervened in a civil war in El Salvador and kept it going, maintaining a brutal regime that should have been destroyed. In similar fashion, Reagan attacked the popular government in Nicaragua using the CIA-trained remnants of Nicaragua’s previous dictator, Somoza. Somoza was a killer and trained at our own military academy at West Point. But he was a willing U.S. pawn until his downfall. Reagan tried to write off Ortega as a nutcase and unpopular with his people. Another right wing lie, but the American people bought it. By the way, Ortega was just elected president.
With George W. Bush, the imperialist pattern continues. Iraq has oil. Afghanistan is geographically crucial as the place to construct a gas pipeline. Central Asia has become a region of overwhelming interest given its energy resources. During the 1990s, U.S. oil company, Unocal, had no qualms about doing business with the Taliban (which ruled Afghanistan) if it meant obtaining lease rights for the proposed pipeline. But the attack on Khobar towers resulted in President Clinton imposing a freeze on a regime regarded as too Al Qaida-friendly.
And so things stood still until September 11, 2001. Immediately afterwards, Afghanistan was invaded and plans were underway to do so with Iran.
We now know there are highly suspect irregularities associated with 9-11, not the least of which were a number of Israeli agents arrested on the day in question. That, and the subsequent release of these prisoners at the urging of the Attorney General, despite protests from investigators. The weapons of mass destruction charge has been proven false. Hussein’s alliance with Al Qaida has proven false. Meanwhile, U.S. troops are sacrificed every day so that Bush and Cheney can save face, hoping by some miracle they can pull a rabbit out of a hat.
For all the complexity of what has gone wrong with America, the fundamental answer is simple. The far right. It is motivated by profit and nothing else. It matters not that Chinese assistance to Vietnam caused our defeat. China is essential to Wal Mart. Iraq is essential to Exxon Mobile. And no matter the cost in human life and suffering, the people who run these outfits are very slick at subverting our culture, our military, the GOP and have essentially converted much of what we used to know as America to unknowing cogs of their money-making machines.
Understand this and you’ll have no need of an Islamic history lesson. We are in iraq because of America’s corporate elite, not some Wahabi imam.
Sincerely,
Bob Holden
This explains why Bush Jr., who surely could not have become president without a thoroughgoing knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture, would wish to depose the Sunnis and invest the Shiites with power in Iraq. The principle of family succession is something he intimately understands and no doubt supports. On the other hand, the Sunnis seem to favor the practical concerns of politics and business and the acquisition of money so near to the hearts of the Bush dynasty. These questions must agonize our president as he surges forth to lay these ancient squabbles to rest.
I assure you our president does not agonize over these questions. Incurious George wouldn’t even look at New Orleans drowning on the news. His staff had to make a DVD and coerce him to watch it. He hasn’t exactly spent his life acquiring knowledge. If he hadn’t met Karl Rove (who was working for his father’s campaign) he would still be selling real estate or losing other people’s money in subsidized business ventures.
He delegates all this knowledge stuff to people who supposedly have some, but unfortunately, their knowledge is limited to what the oil barons tell them and what neocon founder Leo Strauss wrote. He met Condoleeza Rice when Cheney brought her in to coach him on foreign affairs, of which he knew nothing, except the geographical location of Mexico.
Try reading Bush on the Couch. Since the death of his little sister, he appears to have well insulated himself from the feeling of agony. One successful method is to inflict as much agony on others as possible. He’s good at that.
Bob Holden is right in saying:
But just how long has that been going on with not challenge?? Decades. The name Duopoly for our two ‘party’ one-party system is not far off, although many take great umbrage when you rub their noses in it.
When “potatoe-head” Quayle as V.P. for Bush-1 headed the Council on Competitiveness (or whatever the name was) THAT was the time already to scream bloody murder about the road it was paving to corporate globalization. Where was the alliance of Democrats with labor to head off NAFTA?
Oh, come on, we are here where we are today because of the intent of one party and the enabling of the other. NO ONE of the major parties is minding the peoples’ shop.
One reason Dems should be working overtime to get us out of this mess and not dallying on the way to 2008 — which is THEIR watershed event — is that THEY put us in harm’s way. This they did by neither WARNING us nor PREPARING us to defend ourselves while salvo after salvo on our rights, Constitution and morality was fired.
There may be good-hearted people there, but they are led around by the nose by those corporatist Dem controllers who feed from the same trough as the right-wing.
Harsh words? Well, the reality created by the right along with those enablers is considerably harsher.
If the Dems’ current tepid “challenge” to Bush’s war authority gets shot down at the Supreme Court, who ya’ gonna blame? Who let Alito and Roberts slither in without a challenge? Who can honestly say they couldn’t see this scenario coming?
Very sadly, the Democrats’ role is to gather the energies of the outraged, and muffle it. It gives the liberal/left some space to moan, and then tells them, “Shhhh…we’ve got serious business to do.” Yeah? Whose business? Not ours, clearly. You don’t wait 4 decades to suddenly announce that working folks got a problem…and that, by the way, our Constitution, airwaves, trade policies, education, wages and healthcare don’t, well, really work as they should.
So now that “Idiot America” has invested so heavily in keeping the 2-party system in charge with no challenge to the logic nor to the LACK or representation it has caused, we are left with very few ideas of how to dig ourselves OUT of this hole.
Iraq, in particular, should be seen more as a symptom than as the event. The Bush War is ON America. Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly Iran are collateral damage on the way to World Resource Control.
Bolton, Negroponte, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Abrams, and oh so many others have been ramping up for this for at least three decades. Have you EVER heard a word — or a peep — out of the Democrats’ maw about this?
Eisenhower was probably the last public figure to warn of the growing military-industrial complex, which along the way from board rooms into the cabinet meetings, gathered control of nearly all the media.
Why is this nation unprepared — mis-prepared — for this moment that is upon us? One reason is: We’ve been brain-washed into believing that somehow this 2-party could contain the spectrum of thought and action necessary to maintain a democracy.
Our industrial base was moved from the North to the South, then transitioned further south to Mexico and now to Asia. Did you vote on a bill about this?? Our healthcare costs skyrocketing with less coverage, and for many NO coverage. Did you vote for this?
WE are stuck with the Congress we’ve got, but if you want to see them ACT differently while they’re in office, then WE have to ACT DIFFERENTLY.
The vast majority of this nation wants to SAVE our integrity and Constitution, wants to rid ourselves of this war and this democracy-hating, war-obsessed Bush Crony Team — and expects THIS Congress to do it — before it is too late!
Their excuses are just that — they’ve been giving excuses for decades.
Dems will change their tune only when they suddenly realize they can’t count eternal support of those they take for granted.
Switch to the Green Party. Ally YOUR voice with the Party which says: “We want out of Iraq NOW” and which calls for the Impeachment of the biggest criminal operation in office this nation has ever seen.
A big registration change CAN make a difference. The country deserves no less.
Good on you, alank! It won’t take too long for the public to be fed up with both parties.
Scott Ritter has only told part of the story. It is true that Saddam Hussein played no part in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq is a distraction and diversion from shining the light on the financiers of the terrorist attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001 (who are free to finance and kill again, after all no harm has fallen on them, why should they stop???).
Who are the financiers of the terrorist attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001?
FOR ALL WHO DESIRE WISDOM, click and paste the following link (notice the date of the report written before the invasion of Iraq), then read about the seven financiers: http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document-un122002.pdf
Looking at world problems from the historical perspective only, seems to keep us busy with bandaid cures for terminal illness. I think it’s time we try something that has never been tried before: looking at things from the ecological perspective. From this scientific perspective instead of the dominating religious and economic one.
If we looked at ourselves as we are, animals in a big wildlife preserve, things would be much easier to understand and fix.
Too often religious superstition and voodoo economics dominate real science causing much pain, suffering and death worldwide. Together they are responsible for most of our self inflicted wounds such as human overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental pollution, species extinction, extreme wealth concentration, extreme power centralization, wars, plagues, famine, crime and so on.
How bad do things have to get before progressives realize that working within the corporate duopoly is a waste of our time, our wealth and our lives? That being led by religious zealots has caused more death and destruction than anything else?
As AlanK says, check out the Green Party. A decentralized grassroots party that can never be owned by Big Money corporations, banks, oligarchs or dominated by religious factions. A party that addresses our problems ecologically (from the Greek “study of the household”) before acting economically (”the running of the household”).
Turn up the People’s Pressure.
A massive tactical change to the Green Party can cause an immediate effect we can barely imagine — certainly one the duopoly never counted on.
Progressives can gain some leverage for a change.
Let them know: “Yes, there IS a place to go, and one that stands for things I actually believe in. Now you can’t claim you don’t know what people want! Start acting accordingly!”
Getting change is the overriding reason to make the change NOW — and getting others to do the same. Numbers count.
Once you do, check out more about the party, your input will be heard there.
There’s a site, “Switch2Green.org”, that talks more about this idea.
The re-birth of Democracy must start now, as it is under attack.
OK. Great job on history. Everybody in the State Dept. ought to know it by heart.
What about the rest of us? We are not going to get people to pay attention to this unless it if reduced to three paragraphs or less, and they understand what is in it for them (their country, children, etc)
Maybe if all the press knew it by heart and used details of it all the time we’d get somewhere.
However, if we do as the Russians are claiming and bomb Iran this month, then I think we are lost. And I, for one, don’t know how to stop us. We are confronted by an Administration with nothing left to lose, not one ounce of historical knowledge, or good sense, or moral repsonsisbility. How do we communicat when they are actually unable to listen?
Good for you Mr. Sheen! i always liked your movies and it seems you are a great man sticking to your principles. the repugnicans could learn a lot from him.
the majority of americans are too busy trying keep afloat financially. between work, kids, and a home to run, there isn’t a whole of time left in each day. this is why we elect people to represent us in government affairs. unfortunately, those elected people are focused on corporate interests and re-election.
when will the madness end? it is going to get alot darker before then. i believe it will begin when our economy collapses and people see how f’d we are. once our citizens take to violence just to get by each day it will start. will our national guard and military have the guts to turn their guns on american citizens? stay tuned. but, alas, the revolution will not be televised.
-mc
Money-power neocons get away with murder time after time and Democrats can’t even get away with a lousy blowjob.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice
accurate history, yet I question the logic of the end statement, it appears to be conjecture that conveniently states the current in-fighting is a biproduct of history, and unavoidable.
shikejian wrote:
“Taking history and dividing it up into little bits and pieces and using the little bits and pieces to explicate the whole of the situation misses the point about as much as Bush misses the point with regard to humanism.”
“Divide and conquor”
Exactly. There was an article on one of the UK main news websites about having caught “intelligence officers” dressed as Arabs with a car loaded with explosives… kind of gets you thinking.
these articles, tend to be ‘managed’ very quickly.
einstein wrote:
“Incidentally, Scott Ritter is a career military man. Career military people have a conflict of interest in democratic societies.”
I’d tend to agree. There is such an incredible amount of psychological and propaganda systems at work against our domestic populations. More so now, than at any time in history. The complexity and sophistication and just enormity of the operations, are mind-boggling.
edladysmith wrote:
“… most Americans are ill-placed intellectually…”
Up until recently, thymerasol a ‘mercury’ compound was put into vaccines for no real justified reason. ‘Mercury’ is very neuro-toxic. Most have been taken out now, the leftovers were ’shipped to 3rd world countries, and China. Iit might account for why Americans are considered the idiots of the world. Which is not an opinion I hold. I think they’re victims.
These vaccines, coupled with people thinking ‘fluorides’ are good for their teeth and health, has created a generation of people whom have lower IQ than the average would allow. That, and the general state of the food in the US.
a number of American people are writing about George’s stupidity, thus deflecting from this title. As if GWB personifies ‘Idiot America’. search youtube for older videos of GWB speaking as governor. He seems smart enough then.. how much of what we think we know, is managed information?
Truth wrote:
“It is true that Saddam Hussein played no part in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
What of the terror attack on Iraq that has claimed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives? If Hitler had such an effective propaganda ministry/industry, he would’ve won that war.
ezeflyer wrote:
“Looking at world problems from the historical perspective only, seems to keep us busy with bandaid cures for terminal illness.”
I couldn’t agree more
It is refreshing to see that so many people are awake and alive. I realized several years ago I had to find main topics that concern all of us. I found mine: Net neutrality; campaign finance reform; flat tax on all corps; eliminate private military; alternative energy.
The only way to change this disgusting excuse for a democracy is to slam our US reps; State reps; and local reps with one letter a week; one email per week and one phone call per week…..for each issue. Always and forever……without fail. Get your letters published in the local newspaper; print out letters your friends and family can just sign and mail. Make it easy for others to speak out by helping….become an activist.
I can only speak as a veteran, USMC, during the last three years of the Vietnam “war of liberation”, and “if we don’t fight them there, we’ll fight them here”—–and the “party never ends”—-just the names change.
I took only one exception to the article. In the first paragraph “the men and women who honor us all by serving in the US Armed Forces”.
These men and women, all volunteers, are
“citizen soldiers/sailors/marines/airmen/and coast guard. The “Regular Members” considered “professional” are classified slightly differently by International Military Law, than the “Reserve Members” and the “National Guard Members”. They ALL have a choice as well as the legal obligation to refuse orders to join a formation of other members in the illegal invasion of another country.
Under International Military Law, the invasion of Iraq—under the pretense of WMB’s in their possession— was illegal since Iraq had never attacked the US (or any of the other “coaliton of the willing members”)
Only when the members of these military organizations decide for themselvs whether they wish to participate in a criminal endeavor, or not to participate, will they find any peace. This was a lesson I learned from my own very honorable service to my country. I WAS A FOOL TO DO IT.
The US has not been attacked by a foreign entity since 1812. Pearl Harbor was simply a territory, and on “9/11″ the US was attacked by an “organization” not another nation. If we are attacked by a foreign nation and I am still alive you will hear of legendary stories of the enemy being killed and slaughterd by the thousands—-I will be one of those defenders—–but they need to come here first.
Solid exposition Scott, thank you. Unfortunately the so-called history most US citizens get is in 20-word or less sound bites, too many of which come from what I call the limbaughdimized among us, individuals and broadcasts alike. I remember a “Jay-Walking” segment where he asked participants to name a single Supreme Court justice. The overwhelming response was Judge Wapner; the respondents were mostly college students! I thought that answer bad enough, but worse yet the fact that the respondents who gave that answer thought Wapner’s made-for-TV idiocy was the Supreme Court! We Americans so far removed from the historical significance of anything it is beyond futile to expect the level of thought you suggest to be applicable, however critical it is to the outcome. Is Howard Zinn’s “A Peoples’ History of the US” required reading in any high school? It’d be a start.
Thanks to the people of common dreams for the thoughtful conversation, and thanks to Mr. Ritter for his detailed account of Iraqi history.
I was relatively ignorant of many of the facts. I am going to keep this marked to refer back to. One thing I did assume however was that Iraq was the perfect stage for a divide and conquer grab for resources and political control. You can’t tell me that this administration didn’t know that. They had their analysis. They simply did not care about the loss of life that would incur and believed they could do damage control, misinforming the American public regarding Iraq.
I think most Americans don’t understand the background facts, but they do understand that something is very wrong with this war and something has gone wrong with our government, both Republican and Democratic.
But what is the best way to change the situation at home? When those you voted in turn out to be a lying, do-nothing, blander-talking version of the same policy as the Bush administration… I write letters and make phone calls. Should we storm the Senate? Register Green? Run for office?
I agree with mc1212 above that Americans are swamped with trying to afford food, shelter and healthcare for themselves and their families. I think part of the problem is Americans are actually subjugated to this economy that is largely out of their control. And they are also disempowered by their dependence on mainstream media.
This country functions as a complex and diffuse kind of feudal society. There are the workers and the owners. There are the mega-wealthy who build multiple homes — they are the CEOs of insurance firms, healthcare, finance, energy, etc. They own the corporations that own all the things everyone needs in order to have a decent life. They are also the government. They make the law to suit themselves.
And then on the same side there is advertising and big media (more or less the same thing). They keep pumping garbage about “experts” and “officials” and “high technology” and etc, etc, to mystify everything as much as possible, so they appear the only voice of authority over people’s consciousnesses. All their lives people take this in through TV, newspapers, ads, etc, and are conditioned to this kind of attitude.
Also in response to edladysmith’s comment: The mainstream American attitude is to blame oneself. However, can one blame oneself if those elected into power under false pretenses have lied and failed to legally fulfill their obligations under the constitution?
Should one blame oneself for being stressed, sickened, exhausted or chronically depressed by living in a situation that is stressful, sickening, exhausting? Only if one has brought this situation on themselves. But contrary to the popular myth that in America “people can have life exactly they way they want as long as they work hard”, in reality most people do not bring the biggest, most pressing adverse conditions upon themselves.
We shouldn’t blame ourselves, but we should hold accountable those who have failed us, and fix the situation!
So, if we’ve stolen their oil, where is it? Or maybe it’s you that is incredibly stupid?
Thank you, Mr. Ritter, for the history lesson regarding Iraq. I am one of the idiots, I suppose, because I flunked the quiz, and am glad to have the opportunity to learn something about the history of Muslim religious divisions and wars. I wish our mainstream journalists would write more in-depth articles about the histories and political environments of foreign countries, but especially about countries with which the U.S. is heavily involved. I suppose I could learn about the history of Islam and its impact on the present through my own research, but it would require a lot more time and energy than I have at present. I am sick about the mess our country has made of Iraq, and have always believed that the invasion would have a disasterous outcome. However, I have never been able to articulate precisely why I felt it would be so, except to say that I know very little about Islam and Iraq, and that most of my fellow citizens know very little as well. It always seems a bad idea to bluster confidently into something that one knows little about. Sadly, I am now learning what our citizenry and government should have known before our atrocious act of hubris. I do wish that our country took as much pride in aquiring knowledge and wisdom as it does in athletics and in winning at all costs.
That was a good history lesson about Iraq, but I think people in the US should start by learning the lessons their own history can teach them. I just finished reading “Overthrow” by Stephen Kinzer. It is list of our government’s military bullying over the past 110 years. The book focused on regime change operations… interventions that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments — in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Afghanistan, and … Iraq. Just look at a list of US interventions… to protect America’s interests is always mentioned. Isn’t it plain? The primary interest is world domination. As long as we remain ignorant of our own history nothing will change.
Truth said:
Who are the financiers of the terrorist attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001?
FOR ALL WHO DESIRE WISDOM, click and paste the following link www.nationalreview.com/document/document-un122002.pdf
The truth is, the American military defends the Saudis and the Saudis buy America’s debt. If the Saudi STOP buying America’s debt, America will crash. But America controls Saudi Intell. SA was originally set up with Aramco under Allen Dulles and the OSS, and Dulles’ Nazi friends. SA was America’s CONDUIT FOR FUNDING AL-QAEDA to “punch the Soviet underbelly”.
However, Brisard’s study has been mistakenly described as a United Nations report. While he submitted the study to the UN, the UN didn’t request it. [Money Laundering Alert, 10/2003] It is also reported that a National Security Council task force recommends that the US demand that Saudi Arabia crack down on al-Qaeda’s financiers within 90 days of receiving evidence of misdeeds and if they do not, the US should take unilateral action to bring the suspects to justice. However, the US government denies this report and calls Saudi Arabia a “good partner in the war on terrorism.”
Press Secretary Ari Fleischer says: “I think the fact that many of the hijackers came from that nation [Saudi Arabia] cannot and should not be read as an indictment of the country.” [Radio Free Europe, 11/27/2002]
(WE OWN THEM! A Saudi man I met was dismayed that I was against US hegemony. He LIKES American hegemony over SA, because SA does not have it’s own military, it uses America’s puppet soldiers.)
Quote: “…The fact is one cannot begin to search for a solution to a problem that has yet to be accurately defined….”
Perhaps the problem really is IN THE USA - or, at least, in the minds of Americans. Its not only their perceptions of the world, both naive and distorted, but their own history.
The US is still fighting its own CIVIL WAR but just in other peoples countries! Its an idealogical struggle which they have never mastered -as it exists in a supposed duality within their own unhappy and selfish minds.
Then there is the comedy video: Americans are NOT stupid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1b0xfdYGjk
Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Seems applicable here (and yes, in lots of other places, too)Further, the obvious comparisons between the various extremes of various religions should be clear. And the difficulty of replacing Saddam could only have been overlooked by American-egoist-patriots. But the absence of any discussion/projection/analysis of the likely future political situation in Iraq past the Bush administration’s offered “chicken-little” scenario is too telling. That the West has made enemies is not news. And neither is the conclusion that they’re not gonna be gone if and when under any circumstance we fall-back in Iraq. So, what might we do to make more friends there and attempt to mollify our enemies - short of the inevitable Marshall Plan for Iraq?
I am not an idiot. I just have a few words for you. I think rather than giving you a few paragraphs on why you are wrong - and why you haven’t truly thought the issues out - why you have just sided with the evil empire (Republican Scum) - I will just give you a few words to think about. GO FUCK YOURSELF. GO DO US ALL A FAVOR AND FUCK YOURSELF IN THE ASS WITH A GIANT STRAP ON DILDO.
>Congress claims to be searching for a solution to Iraq
Here is a solution:
* The centre of it all resides in shifting from military solutions to political and humanitarian solutions.
* U.S and its allies must admit that military attacks have only resulted in more violence, death, hate and destruction and not peace.
* U.S gives Iraqis a timetable for leaving Iraq within 365 days. This is what the majority of Iraqis have been asking for years and nowadays it’s even what the majority of what people in the U.S. want too.
* Until then any foreign troops are under the United Nations General Assembly rule, they represent the UN.
* Accepting Indonesia’s offer of sending Indonesian, Malyaisan/Asian troops for peace operation mission in Iraq.
* Start a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, get help from South Africa in this issue.
* New democratic elections in 12 months.
* Iraqis rule Iraq
* Iraqis are offered the jobs in their country. Stop importing workforces from aboard when million of Iraqis are unemployed and all they want is to work. Start reconstruction!
* Political militias are forbidden.
* Foreign militias/mercenaries/private armies must leave Iraq immediately.
* When the above is put in action then the real Iraqi resistance must stop its military attacks on occupation troops and its allies. They are now on their way out of Iraq.
* Put together the original Iraqi army. It will work as a good control mechanism on the streets in Iraq. This army is the one that protected Iraq in the war against Iran. This will increase the chance to more people working together with them. This will increase the stability in the Iraq cities and clarify who still does not understand that violence against Iraqis is unacceptable.
* Under UNs Compensation Commission the US and its allies become liable under international law to pay compensation for losses and damages resulting from U.S invasion and occupation of Iraq.
* Foreign troops must be accountable under Iraqi law. The immunity that Bremer gave them is not active any longer.
* Iraq becomes a member of the ICC. Until a system is set up in Iraq this is also where Iraqis who have commited crimes against thier own Iraqi people will be put on trial.
* All contracts and laws that have come up since the invasion must be stopped; it will be the next government to in full transparency to review them.
* All “foreign advisers” that have been appointed by the occupation are to leave Iraq immediately.
* All U.S. and other foreign military bases that have been built shall all be closed in 365 days. Thereafter it shall be open for Iraqis to move into. Iraqis who lost their home in this war.
* Parties must be based on political ideologies. Not race, not religion, not which foreign country that supports you.
* The current parties that have had political or economical support from a foreign country are allowed to participate in the elections coming up in 8-12 years. This will allow “free parties” to develop and “non free parties” to come back clean!
* Since the elections are in 12 months, then the first 6 months are for parties to formulate their political programs. Then we have 5 months for these political programs to be available to the Iraqi people and let the debate start! Month 12 there is election.
* Independent election monitors from the UN or even better from Amnesty International.
* Starting up peaceful dialogues with neighbouring countries to work on the longer perspective for peace in the area.
* Opening Amnesty International offices in every city and village in Iraq. Opening offices for well established international peace organisations in every city in Iraq. Letting these hold seminars, training sessions, and workshops on topics of human rights, solving conflicts thru non violence and working on the empowerment of civil society groups th