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TechnoratiThis is a revised version of the essay that originally appeared on 3/10/08.
You've got to hand it to the Quakers. They never quit. They are steadfast in their devotion to peace. And they continue to seek ways of informing Americans about the Iraq War, even when that war has become passé in the media and a largely avoided topic in the presidential debates.
Recently, in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, the Friends set up a "Speak for Peace Tour" and invited Raed Jarrar to provide an Iraqi perspective. I met him during his five-cities tour of Michigan.
Raed is a native of Baghdad who had just completed studies in architecture when his neighborhood was bombed by the Americans in April 2003. "Surgical warfare" was supposed to target only the "bad guys" and not civilians, but Raed found his neighbors were being killed and fleeing from their homes.
His purpose in life instantly changed. He decided to document civilian injuries and deaths during the first four months of the invasion. He recruited and organized 200 volunteers to conduct a survey by going door to door in cities and villages to find out who was hurt or killed.
"We gave names and faces for the Iraqi casualties," said Raed. Also included in the survey were notes about the way each person was killed, the place and the monthly income of the dependents."
Raed married an American and has lived in the U.S. for several years now. He works as a political analyst and consultant for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and has testified before Congress about conditions in Iraq. His blog, "In the Middle,"discusses U.S. foreign policy, the political scene and the media's portrayal of Iraq and Iraqis. His commentary is blistering but hey, how would most of us feel if we lost our whole way of life?
During his visit to Kalamazoo where 150 people showed up, he was congenial, articulate and very pointed in letting us know what was happening in Iraq and what the U.S. should do.
"There is only one U.S. foreign policy for Iraq and that is one based on military interventionism," he said. "Whether it is humanitarian aid or killing off the 'bad guys', the attitude remains that the United States must stay in Iraq."
Raed said that the U.S. government's justifications for intervention in Iraq have shifted but the motivation is the same: to control the Middle East and its oil resources.
For example, one of the reasons given in the 1990s to justify bombing and sanctioning Iraq was to save the habitat for certain birds living in the marshes that Saddam Hussein was drying up. Other reasons included saving the Kurds from genocide. Then it was to save the world from weapons of mass destruction. Now it is to prevent civil war between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites.
Military intervention in Iraq was not George W. Bush's idea alone. His father and Bill Clinton were both itching to get into Iraq. And while Americans are stuck debating whether military intervention should be multilateral or unilateral, Raed was adamant that the U.S. never had any business being in Iraq in the first place.
"U.S. taxpayers should think about fixing the problems here before going outside to police and rescue the world," he said referring to the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina, joblessness, poverty, and now the housing crisis. Actually, Raed put his money where his mouth is and went to New Orleans to volunteer in its reconstruction.
Five years of war in Iraq have resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1 million Iraqis (based on the July 2006 Lancet report that counted 600,000 Iraqi deaths).
"Americans need to realize that the violence in Iraq is the result of 18 years of illegal foreign intervention," said Raed.
The solution of what to do about Iraq stymies most Americans. Both Democrats and Republicans maintain that it is imprudent to withdraw troops from Iraq but they come at it from different perspectives, said Raed.
The so-called "right" in Washington, D.C. believes that the terrorists will win and that the U.S. should stay in Iraq to defeat them. The so-called "left" wants the troops to stay because they believe that the ancient hatred between the Sunnis and Shi'ites will destroy the country so the Iraqis need to be rescued from civil war and the country should be partitioned.
While the "hawks" are openly speaking about leaving troops indefinitely, the "doves" want to start withdrawing the troops soon. What the majority of Americans don't know is that the peaceful D.C. "doves" make three exceptions that would maintain up to 75,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq. These exceptions include training the Iraqi military forces, maintaining counter-terrorism operations and protecting the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Military trainers in Iraq are viewed as negatively as those at the School of the Americas who train Latin American officers and soldiers on strategy and tactics, including torture.
"Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish governmental and non-governmental militias that are being trained and protected by the U.S. are the major reasons why 4.5 million Iraqis have been kicked out of their homes during the last five years," said Raed. "These militias are committing systematic ethnic and sectarian cleansing to create a new environment in Iraq where partitioning the country is possible."
Secondly, counter-terrorism tactics have created more terrorism. Prior to the 2003 invasion there was no Al Qaeda and no regional and international intervention in Iraq. There were no extremists blowing themselves up either, said Raed.
Thirdly, the U.S. embassy, which is as big as the Vatican, does not welcome Iraqi diplomats or legislative representatives. In fact, they are harassed and humiliated whenever they attempt to visit.
"The embassy is a base for long-term political intervention," said Raed. The U.S. has been taking the side of the minority separatists (comprised of Sunnis, Shi'ites, Kurds, Christians, seculars) against the majority nationalists (also comprised of Sunnis, Shi'ites, Kurds, Christians, seculars). This Iraqi-Iraqi conflict is not religious or sectarian. It is political and economic.
"A U.S. withdrawal will not unleash a pending religious civil war. It will open up a space for political reconciliation to start," said Raed.
During the 2005 Iraqi election, which the Bush administration hailed as a "watershed moment in the story of freedom" and a victory in the war on terror, the American people didn't quite catch what was going on with all those voters' purple fingers, said Raed.
The Iraqis voted for a majority of nationalists to be their legislative representatives. (They do not vote for their executive branch.) Their candidates, who won a majority, were against privatization of the oil industry, against partitioning Iraq into ethno-sectarian confederations and they wanted the U.S. to leave the country.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi leadership turned out to be the five separatist parties that lost the elections and who were supportive of the Bush administration and helped plan its intervention in Iraq. And no wonder. The entire process was manipulated by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
So what should Americans think about Iraq?
"What three-quarters of the Iraqis want is a complete U.S. withdrawal," said Raed. "No mercenaries. No permanent bases. No interference. Only complete withdrawal is the first step toward stabilizing Iraq. After that, we can start healing the wounds of this occupation."
Olga Bonfiglio teaches a peacemaking class at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is the author of Heroes of a Different Stripe: How One Town Responded to the War in Iraq and writes on the subjects of social justice and religion. Her website is www.OlgaBonfiglio.com. Contact her at olgabonfiglio@yahoo.com
33 Comments so far
Show Alljehosepha,
This is going nowhere so I'll grant you the last word. I stand by my reasoning and knowledge of past and current events. So this is my fault. Okay, jehosepha, I plead nolo contendere. Happy?
Hey all, below is my intended, edited post which I screwed up and went over the editing limit. Bear with if you dare.
I appreciate all of comments concerning the comparison between the US and Nazi Germany. It seems the consensus here is that the numbers of innocents killed in both conflicts are comparably large therefore the US's and Nazi Germany's level of culpability in the nature of their war crimes is similar. I still must beg to differ. While the US has committed many clear and gross violations of int. law, human rights, and war crimes in its illegal war of aggression against Iraq, the US has not approached, by any critical examination of the facts, the actions and intentions of Nazi Germany in WWII.
Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler considered itself to be the master race and therefore rightful lords and rulers of the world. They subsequently set out with unimaginable cruelty and callousness to systematically and deliberately attempt to completely exterminate another people on a massive industrial scale. They started the largest war in history, a war of aggression, in which they set the standards for war crimes, war crimes which were of a nature (for example - just one example) that hundreds of thousands civilians - women, children and the elderly - were taken out of their homes in town after town across Europe and executed en mass in cold blood for alleged collaboration with partisans.
The US for its part generally seeks to maintain and achieve an uncontested postition of economic and military dominance in the world for its own national interest. Realpolitik on steroids.If it can accomplish this with compliant democratic regimes, ruthless dictators, or military intervention, no matter. This position is not completely hegemonic however. Some US leaders and polices have believe it or not encouraged and aided good things to happen in the world since WWII. Consider the Univeral Declaration of Human Rights as just one example.
In Iraq, the US has been motivated by a hegemonic goal to control the ME and its oil. Since Gulf War I, the US has been attempting to remove Saddam Hussein from power and establish a regime that furthers these efforts. This began with the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, a flagrant war crime for which the US has never been held to account, followed by crushing sanctions the purpose of which was to coerce the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam. No surprise it didn't work, but arrogant US leader after leader seems to keep thinking that such things will. These sanctions resulted in an even more gross war crime, the deaths of up to a 500,000 Iraqis, mostly children. However I think it is an important difference (with Nazi Germany) to consider that the direct and immediate purpose of the sanctions was not to kill Iraqis, although I am sure they were aware many would die and coldly figured it was the cost of doing business. While incomprehensibly reprehensible, I have trouble equating this with the systematic and deliberate exterminate of an entire people.
The illegal and throughly misguided war of aggression on Iraq has been conducted with a heavy hand resulting in high collateral damage and other practices such as free fire zones which unneccessarily kill noncombatants, which if not a war crime should be. Incidents of atrocities by American troops have occurred but this is unavoidable in war. Some troops were held accountable and punished. Are these atrocities more widespread than commonly reported? I don't know but I haven't heard credible reports of such types of serious war crimes being regularly committed by US troops. Are they been heavy handed and arrogant resulting in at times unnecessarily high collateral damage? Sure. Is the torture that has been committed reprehensible and even worse now that we know that the US pres unapologetically embraces torture? Absolutely. War crimes have been committed by American troops in the ME but it is not comparable by any meaningful measure to those committed by Nazi Germany. American forces have not been conducted this war using "tactics" such as mass summary executions of civilians with the intention to ferret out insurgents. This was a common and widespread practice with all branches of German ground forces.
While I know some of you will say that a killing, is a killing, is a killing; I believe considering the intention is very important. Be it by cold-blooded execution, or by excessive collateral damage, or killing in defense of yourself or a loved one, there is a difference.
A thought experiment: Consider these two hypothetical murder scenarios and ask yourself if you believe both are the same. First a mafioso who kills a innocent man execution style for being in the wrong place, wrong time. Then a psycopathic serial killer who horribly tortures his victim for days until he dies. Are both murders equally henious? Is the mafioso the same as the serial killer?
Now, on another note, if you want to talk about other conflicts the US has engaged it, I do think some demonstrate some disturbing similarities with Nazi style tatics - but still not on the scale of Nazi Germany. Namely the Vietnam War and through proxies in many other Cold War conflicts.
I'm done.
peaceman, this is all your fault:)
peace
I appreciate all of comments concerning the comparison between the US and Nazi Germany. It seems the consensus is that the numbers of innocents killed in both conflicts are comparably large therefore the US's and Nazi Germany's level of culpability in war crimes is similar. I must still beg to differ. While the US has committed clear and gross war crimes in its illegal war of aggression against Iraq: violations of int. law and norms, and violations of human rights. No one seems to want to look beyond the numbers to see the other, most crucial differences.
To name a few.
Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler believed itself to be the master race and set out to systematically, deliberately, with unimaginable cruelty and callousness, exterminate another people. They started the largest war in history, a war of aggression, in which set the standards for war crimes, war crimes of the nature that hundreds of civilians, women, children and the elderly were taken out of their homes in town after town across Europe and executed en mass to for alleged collaboration with partisan in town after town across Europe.
The US's goal in Iraq since the Gulf War I has been to remove Saddam Hussein from power and establish a regime that furthers its efforts to maintain hegemonic control over the ME for the oil. Beginning with the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, a flagrant war crime for which the US has never been held to account, followed by crushing sanctions the purpose of which was to coerce the Iraqi people to over through Saddam. Didn't work. It resulted in another, even more gross war crime. The immediate intention of the sanctions was not to kill Iraqis, although I am sure they were aware some would die and coldly figured it was the cost of doing business.
The illegal and throughly misguided war of aggression on Iraq has been conducted with a heavy hand resulting in high collateral damage and with other standard practices such as free fire zones killing innocents, which if not a war crime should be. Incidents of atrocities by American troops have occurred but that would happen with in any war. Is it more widespread than commonly reported? I don't know and I haven't heard a lot of credible reports of serious war crimes regularly being committed by US troops. Are they been heavy handed and arrogant? Sure. Is the torture that has been committed reprehensible and even worse now that we know that the US pres unapologetically embraces torture? have been committed by American troops but it is not comparable to It not been conducted with mass summary executions of civilians with the intention to ferret out insurgents most certainly would have been standard procedure for the Nazis.
While some may say a death is a death, I believe there is a big difference between an innocent killed by a stray bullet intended for a combatant and one killed kneeling on the ground attempting to undermine the insurgency.
ijdavis,
I haven't heard of that book before, but I'll check it out.
Don't quote me on the magazine article's author's name, but I think it was Paul Fussell (again I'm not sure) who wrote either in 'Harper's' or 'The Atlantic Monthly' in early 1995 about the total control of all the media in Germany by the Nazis. As you know, they had to terrorize their own citizens first before the roundup began.
About a year and a half ago, I went to a rally for Lt. Watada and met his father and stepmom and complimented them for raising an honorable man. I told Mr. Watada, " in my opinion, your son is the Audi Murphy of the officer corps in the 21st century and I salute him for doing the right thing."
Thank you for your kind words, ijdavis.
John Pilger made another great documentary, called 'The War on Democracy' . I just watched it. Fantastic. You can see it on the internet. Time to go to sleep.
PAX
Peaceman.. I agree with all you say. A personal recommendation if you are interested in WWII history.
"Bodyguard of Lies" by Anthony Cave Brown.
This book more than any other I have read taught me that there were some few in Germany who are fully entitled to my respect and admiration. Whether the same could be said of as many Americans 50 years from now I cannot say. Lt. Watada to my mind seems the best candidate to respect and admire for the courageous and legally correct stand he has taken. A second candidate who I would name for the courageous stands he has taken (as some cost to his political fortunes) would be Ron Paul.
gde,
I'm glad somebody understands what I tried to say. One correction though. The USSR lost the most people in WW11 and also defeated the German Army. The next biggest loss of life was China ( between 10-12 million) by the Japanese imperialists. Third was Germany (between 5-7 million), Poland (about 3 million). The United States, fighting on two fronts lost about 450,000 or so. (less than in our Civil War, 1861-65)
ijdavis,
The Regular Army of German soldiers were honorable compared to the SS troops. Even the British and French admired them on the field of battle. The SS troops were the warped sadists who commited the atrocities and were the fanatics of the Third Reich. I knew an old Germany man who fought on the Russian Front and was captured by the Red Army. He said that in spite of the millions of Soviet people we killed, the Russians treated us POW's decently under war time conditions, but the captured SS soldiers were tortured or killed because of the atrocities they commited. Also, Baron Guy De Rothschild passed away last year at 90. Reading his obituary in the newspaper, he was captured by the Nazis and treated as an officer and released after the war. It wasn't the gas chamber for everybody. As I have said before and always will, one execution was one to many. The Nazis didn't have that right, the Japanese didn't have that right, and we in the United States don't have that right either.
I hope johosepha reads these last few posts.
Peace, Harmony, and Understanding to EVERYBODY on this planet
What a fine article Olga. Thank you.
Raed has the only real solution to this Iraq quagmire, but the American populace drugged by consumerism and feeling enpowered by habitually attacking weaker nations does not want to face this truth. With the upcoming elections, perhaps a new Congress will realize this fact. Lets hope the resignation of Admiral Fallon doesn't signal the resumption of more U.S. jingoism.
peaceman: You are so correct, in multiple posts. Thank you, because I don't have to write it myself.
jehosepha: You are correct if you mean to say that the magnitude of killing by the US in the ME is less than that committed by Nazi Germany. As best I can tell, WW2 killed something like 70M, with the major killers being USSR, Deutchland, US, Nippon. US responsibility in ME: 1991-2002 Iraq ~1M, 2003-now ~1M, plus help in instigating Iraq-Iran war, ~1M. Very roughly, so far US is about 1/10 as bad as the Nazis. On the other hand, this is not over.
In the nuclear age, with so many participants (US,UK) with nukes, plus those with "interests" (Israel, Pakistan) also having nukes, the net result of US action may still end up as the elimination of all human life.
I think that the Nazi's respected international law. They did not feel entitled to invade and bomb Switzerland in a hunt for those who made it across that border, as the US feels entitled to do in Pakistan. They respected things like diplomatic privilege. They did not attack (that I've heard of) the embassies of other countries. While they may well have practiced torture, they did not openly attempt to excuse it as the US is currently doing. The Nazi's treated foreign prisoners of war with at least some courtesy, honoured the Geneva conventions, passing on care packages from the Red Cross, etc. I don't remember the Nazi's having a pecadillo
for sodomising boys, and otherwise sexually abusing prisoners in their care.
The interesting thing about the debate about whether George Bush's America stands on par with Nazi Germany, is that it is possible to even have such a debate. No one in 2000 would have ever imagined that such a debate would be possible, let alone be a credible one to be exploring.
This surely indicates how low US stock has sunk around the world. Torture one man, and accept that the price is 350 million Americans, being equated with that horror ever afterwards. Repudiate the Geneva conventions, and accept that the price is a nation perceived as behaving as a consequence worse than Nazi Germany. Ignore international borders, and accept that the price is being viewed as rogue nation having no respect for international law.
Personally I think that the price for the way the US chooses to behave is unacceptably high, but obviously George Bush begs to differ.
It is hard to win hearts and minds when one is up to one neck in slim, and daily sinking further into it. Who I wonder is going to save America from itself. For America is dealing mortal wound after mortal wound not to its enemies, but to itself, in all it does.
It should be taken as a given that the primary objective of terror is to cause the government one employs it against to over react, and as a consequence legitimise in the eyes of the world the notion of "good" terrorist, "worthy" cause fighting against "evil" and "oppressive" empire.
Ergo the first page of a counter terrorism manual aught to stress the importance of holding the high ground in response to terrorism, and emphasis that one serves the terrorists cause when ever one instead seeks to defend the indefensible as a justified response to terrorism.
jehosepha,
I have done research on WW11 and Nazi Germany. For your information, I have always said, publicly and privately that one execution of a person because of race, ethnicicty, religion, political affiliation and so on is one too many.
I'm not condoning what the Nazis did, but at least they were up front about it, contrary to the deception of the American government. By the way, there was an article on Nazi Germany last month about an "uprising of Gentile women" who were married to Jewish men who were "detained" awaiting transfer to either a work camp or execution camp. These 2000 women rallied in front of the Gestapo headquarters for a week and would not leave while they were surrounded by troops with machine guns. The brave and loving wives were adamant and in the end, the commander released the men. When I read that, I thought, this could be a Spielberg movie about the Germans we don't see in our WW11 movies. I know, it was the exception rather than the rule, but it also should be known that many German people opposing the Nazis were also executed, totured, imprisioned as well. What they did to the Russians and Poles surpassed what they did to the Jews in sheer numbers. You don't hear the Russians whining do you?
I've talked to old-timers who lived under Nazi occupation in a few European countries and they had different feelings than what the Hollywood versions portray.
You have the right to your opinion and I respect it. I go through this with my Jewish friends all the time and listen to their excuses why so many Jewish politicians and media types have enabled the Bush/Cheney regime to make this country the "Fourth Reich." And then they talk about the 6 million...it never ends.
Peace and Harmony and Understanding to you.
peaceman,
I empathize with your outrage at the atrocities and gross violations of human rights committed by the US on the Iraqi people since Gulf War I. But still, nothing that you have mentioned, by any stretch of the imagination, comes near the massive scale of deliberate and calculated atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. At every meaningful level, there just is no comparison. You really should do some studying on Nazi Germany and WWII before you make such knee-jerk comparisons.
jehosepha,
Why is this absurd? We are killing Iraqi men, women, children and babies since the first gulf war, including the sanctions on medical supplies during the Clinton years. It is estimated that a half a million children and infants died because of it and our war-mongering Secretary of State, Ms Albright when asked about it didn't feel to bad.
Godwin's Law?
And let's not forget about torturing Iraqis, the sexual sadistic perversions in Abu Gahrib, and lord knows how many other facilities we run. The "extraordinary rendition" programs of kidnaping people and flying them to other countries to be tortured. Breaking into Iraqi households, raping women and murdering people for the fun of it. Shooting motorists as perceived "terrorists" in their country by we, the invaders and occupiers. Bombing sorties everyday killing civillian folks. Leveling the city of Falujah after the 2004 stolen election. Is this totaly absurd?
Not to mention cutting off utilities, contaminated drinking water, the ban on labor unions, and depleted uranium all over the country from our weapons, to mention a few more things we've inflicted on the Iraqis.
Two wrongs never add up to one right in any arithmetic, jehosepha. Godwin's Law? I beg to differ.
peaceman,
"we've equaled the level of atrocities commited by the Germans in WW2"
What? Please, this is totally absurd. Looks like Godwin's Law is in effect.
iowairish and elmeztisogordo,
I second your replies to the Professor.
COMarc, Good post!
ijdavis,
The Green Party of America has spoken up against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. We have campaigns ongoing wheras the Democratic Party speaks from both sides of their mouths. They've given the Republican criminals everything they want.
The German Green Party was wrong in supporting the bombing of Serbia and it upset me as well. For that matter, we've equaled the level of atrocities commited by the Germans in WW2 as they were trying to stabilize Europe and bring peace and prosperity to the continent while secretly rounding up "detainees" who were sent to various facilities for room and board slave labor and/or execution.
Please reconsider your feellings toward the Greens.
obonfig:
Sometimes the bravest words in the English language are "I stand corrected".
Thank you for that, Olga.
The Green Party might have a platform of being opposed to war, but in the one case I can think of where the Green Party had the power to demonstate a willingness to adhere to its principals and vote against supporting an illegal war it voted instead to participate in that war. That was the German Green Party, and their war of choice was nicely times so that the bombs began dropping on Belgrade the same day that Nazi bombs began dropping on Belgrade in WWII. An anniversary present of sorts.
Why should I support the Green Party, when I know them to be a party that demonstrated an ability to forget all their principals the minute they achieved the power necessary to defend these self same principals. The legal dictum is false in one thing, false in all things.
The problem with the left (as demonstrated by the German Green Party) is that they are too easily swayed by their feelings.. and feelings are the most easily manipulated of things. Give me people who I can trust to call illegal wars of aggression wrong, over people who will say illegal wars of aggression are wrong when discussing them abstractly, while easily being convinced that they are instead humanitarian interventions when actually asked to decide on the merits of engaging in illegal wars of aggression.
One dreams of returning to the days when the Iraqi army served the entire country. "In Saddam's time, nobody knew what is Sunni and what is Shiite," he says.
The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers.
Actually, Sunnis were the majority in Iraq over the Shia. The demographics were skewed in terms of mixing geographic nomenclature, ie: Kurds, with that of religious affiliation. To add to the confusion, under Saddam, Shia-Sunni marriages were very common (same as in Western countries where a Catholic marries a Protestant) so that religious identification was not a standard. It was not unusual to have a Sunni father and Shia mother, or vice versa, before the US intervened illegally. So, how would one define oneself in this situation? Saddam, as brutal a dictator as he was, headed a secular society that, in general, was not obsessed with religious labelling. This was an offshoot of the Western need to neatly pigeon-hole people. The idea of who was demographically at advantage or disadvantage was also a product of the US illegal invasion.
I have not a specific link to this information because I read it on a non-Western website last year, but I am sure a non-ideologically linked website (ie: not a Euro-Western one) would be able to verify this.
Would someone tell Obama about this? He's planning on keeping us in Iraq and expanding the foolish war in Afghanistan (this will be his "Iraq").
" MeAlsoToo_ARealist March 10th, 2008 6:07 pm
...
The author needs ... more History…our Civil War was almost-Totally instigated/controlled by outside-agencies (primarily British 'banking-interests' — who came out-of-closet in 1871)."
I DISAGREE, FOR PROBABLY most USA'ns and many other people never learned or read of the MeAlsoToo's revisionary history. It sounds like the sort of history that falls in the revisionist category anyway, and many USA'ns know little of U.S. history in any terms whatsoever.
They learn so little from history that they keep repeating extremely bad mistakes, and many plan to do badly again this November, when they'll vote for Obama or Billary, or McCain, or anyone else, but not a good candidate.
Anyway, I also hadn't yet heard or read of the U.S. history MeAlsoToo refers to, and saying something that unusual about U.S. history, or any important topic, should be accompanied with links or minimally references to some supporting resources. Maybe it's totally made up history on MeAlsoToo's part, too.
And Ms Bonfiglio's article is GOOD; and it is good to read the words of a former native of Baghdad.
Good article, and I appreciate it much in the way Leaperz posted, above.
I didn't get put off at all about 'Left' being used when it purportedly shouldn't have, but the 'left' hasn't been uniform, either; and 'left' and 'right' are stupid for political references, anyway. There're some of the 'left' against the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, etc., and who know that neither Obama nor Clinton provide any real hope for the next U.S. presidency and therefore won't support either of them; but there are also many who claim to be 'left' while being very biased, etc., inconsistent, say.
The only thing that particularly caught my attention in the article was the misstatement that Shi'ite Iraqis are the minority there, but as soon as a reader mentioned this error, the author posted a correction or clarification. And that's something everyone but the first reader who posted about the mistake DID NOT SEE; because they jump in and post without reading just a few or so posts placed by others, first. The latter are just more dumb pontificators.
The idea that a US military force is necessary for several years (Obama, Clinton) or for 100 years (McCain) to prevent civil war is deeply and obviously illogical. It's the same as saying the US needs to stay there and keep killing them so they won't kill each other. But when you try to trap the debate in marginalia (12 month vs 18 month withdrawal, leaving 30 or 40,000 behind, etc.) this is what you get: massive and brutal big picture illogic. And denial. That is of course, why the US debate, such as it is, focuses on the marginalia. Because to look at the big picture we would have to look without our rose-tinted Raybans at that horrifying image, right there in the mirror. Those little yellow ribbon stickers are like talismans, warding off a roiling storm cloud of terrible dark truth that we just cannot stand to know about ourselves.
Obviously the Iraqis want to welcome their occupiers with open arms.
BAGHDAD: Five American soldiers on foot patrol in an upscale shopping district in central Baghdad were killed Monday when a man walked up to them and exploded the vest he was wearing, according to American military officials.
This sentence is wrong:
(The U.S. has taken the side of the minority Shi'ites.)
Shi'ites are in the majority in Iraq.
"The only difference between these civil wars is that no foreign government interfered in the American struggle."
The author needs less 'peacemaking-studies' and more History...our Civil War was almost-Totally instigated/controlled by outside-agencies (primarily British 'banking-interests' -- who came out-of-closet in 1871).
These same Interests are also responsible for everything in Iraq for those 90-years discussed...(and Iran/Israel/the US, etc.).
[Don't they teach History at Kalamazoo -- or do they just read cereal-boxes?]
She should Click My Name...!
What all the critics seem to be objecting to in this article is the way that the author, Ms. Bonfiglio, characterized the "Left." If they were reading carefully, it would have been readily apparent she was reporting on how Raed Jarrad viewed the current political situation in the U.S. In the game of factual oneupmanship, everyone seems happy to kill the messenger along with the message. This entire article is depicting the view of Baghdad native and people are chipping it apart for not properly characterizing the groups in Iraq. Perhaps this is part of the problem: Americans who think they know Iraq better than the Iraqis do...
The distinction between the American "Right" and "Left" could easily be lost on the typical Iraqi. Whether we're dropping 500-pound bombs on neighborhoods for the next hundred years or only until the situation stabilizes (however long that will be), it's pretty obvious that the bombs are going to keep falling and the deaths will keep mounting. Outside of a few whispers in the wilderness coming from Kucinich and Nader, anything that could honestly be called the Left is pretty much absent from the American political stage. You can't blame Jarrad for not recognizing what isn't there.
>> "(The U.S. has taken the side of the minority Shi'ites.)"
>This essential statement is factually wrong at least twice.
Not disagreeing, it does kill credibility that the writer really knows what's going on in Iraq. I think where she went astray is that Shiites are a minority - globally.
> The shallow, incorrect reporting in this piece is an example of the low level of discussion
> that any serious subject in the US faces. It's truly depressing.
Naw, what's depressing is that that reporting is probably deeper and closer to the truth then anything that ever gets to Bush/Cheney.
I echo tj's comments. This article needs a competent* editor. The main point is 100% correct, but when supporting facts are garbled, it gives the neocon supporters an opportunity to use articles like these as an example of how muddied progressive thinking is.
*I originally thought the adjective competent was not needed, but then I thought of newspaper editors.
PS The Quaker who was fired for signing an edited loyalty oath with the CalStateU East Bay has been reinstated, without having to knuckle under. It's nice to see Jerry Brown is still around, as imperfect as he is.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-loyaltyoath8mar08,1,280788.story
obonfig: Thanks for responding to COMarc's comment - most authors who get their articles posted on this site don't bother.
Any response to tj's good comments above?
"(The U.S. has taken the side of the minority Shi'ites.)"
This essential statement is factually wrong at least twice.
First, Shia peoples (there are many sects and many people of mixed families) are the majority in Iraq.
Second, the US has currently hired tens of thousands of Sunnis, many displaced from the former Baathist dictatorship of Sadaam Hussein, as paramilitaries and death squads for the fantastic wage of about $10/day.
A college teacher should get these basic facts straight. They have been broadly-published and well-documented.
The purchased Sunni loyalty is extremely temporary, while Sunnis militias continually raid Shia (and formerly integrated) towns and neighborhoods and slaughter people w/ impunity.
Meanwhile, the largest Shia force -- the Mahdi Army -- under control of the Shia cleric Muqtua al Sadr largely continues to honor a cease fire with the US. As the joint US-Sunni raids increase, the cease-fire will become totally impossible.
So in the near future, the up-armed Sunnis will turn on their paymasters and the Mahdi Army will join them in throwing the US out of Iraq before they (most likely) go after each other.
And as COMarc points out, a liberal nun should not be making observations about what any left position is or should be.
Most leftists generally agree that Iraq, like all nations, has a fundamemntal right to establish its own government w/o foreign control or interference, and a right to control its own national resources, defenses and territory.
The shallow, incorrect reporting in this piece is an example of the low level of discussion that any serious subject in the US faces. It's truly depressing.
Clarification on my article.
Raed used the term, "Left" in his speech He also identified Joe Biden as taking this position, which I left out of the article. Sorry I generalized Biden's position to the "Left" and thanks to COMarc for pointing it out.
"The Left believes that the ancient hatred between the Sunnis and Shi'ites will destroy the country so the Iraqis need to be rescued from civil war and the country should be partitioned."
I wish she hadn't called this group 'the Left'. 'The left' in this country opposed the war from the beginning and has consistently tried to organize getting the US out as soon as possible.
What she should have said was 'the Democrats'. This is more the position of people like Joe Biden. These people are so far away from 'the Left' that you'd need the Hubble space telescope to see 'the Left' from where they are.
So, what she should be saying is that the Democrats, representing the right in their debates with the far, far, crazy, fascist right believes that "the ancient hatred between the Sunnis and Shi'ites will destroy the country so the Iraqis need to be rescued from civil war and the country should be partitioned."
The Left believes no such thing.
This is why we need a strong Green Party campaign this year. To remind even our friends and allies that the Democrats are not the left and not even close to the left.