Yep,
you did it, George—mission impossible accomplished. Unbelievably, four
years of a bungled occupation have managed to make Saddam Hussein’s
tyranny look good in comparison with “liberated Iraq.”
At least, that is the view of the Iraqi weightlifter made famous
through a video of him taking a sledgehammer to Saddam Hussein’s
statue. “I really regret bringing down the statue,” Kadhim al-Jubouri
said on British television this week. “The Americans are worse than the
dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”
That’s the judgment of a man who spent nine years in Hussein’s
jails, and, unfortunately, it is one shared by a majority of his
countrymen, according to an authoritative poll sponsored jointly by
ABC, BBC and USA Today: Only 38 percent of Iraqis believe that the
country is better off today than under Hussein, while nearly four out
of five oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq.
Even more disturbing is that 51 percent of Iraqis think it is OK to
attack coalition troops—triple the number that thought that way in a
2004 survey. Square that with our president’s assurances, offered
since the first month of this unnecessary adventure, that the
insurgency represents a small handful of terrorists. While most of the
antipathy is registered among Sunnis, 94 percent of whom favor attacks
on coalition forces, and by only 7 percent of Kurds, a surprising 35
percent of Shiites endorse that sort of violence.
Given the number of Kurds and Shiites who originally welcomed the
invasion, it is also startling that 53 percent of all Iraqis polled
agreed that “from today’s perspective, and all things considered,” it
was “wrong that U.S.-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in spring 2003.”
The poll, part of a series conducted each of the past three years at
great risk to 150 pollsters, reveals a sharp rise in anti-American
feeling and disapproval of the 2003 invasion.
When Bush didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction or ties
between Saddam and 9/11, the fallback justification for the taking of
tens of thousands of lives and the expenditure of over $400 billion in
American taxpayer money was that Iraq would become a model for the
democratic, free-market way of life. Many assumed the richest, most
powerful and most technologically competent country in the world could
improve life for Iraqis compared with that afforded by a vicious
dictator hemmed in by international boycotts. But it didn’t happen.
What Bush has managed to do is to place the United States in a
no-win position as the most likely target for failed Iraqi
expectations, which he did so much to raise. He is asking Iraqis to
take his word for it that the invasion was not post-9/11 posturing or a
grab for oil or a blow undertaken on behalf of Israel, yet he has
nothing tangible to show as proof of his sincerity.
Almost four in five of those Iraqis polled called the availability
of jobs “bad,” 88 percent had the same negative judgment of the supply
of electricity, and 69 percent said the same about the availability of
clean water and medical care. In this nation, gifted with the world’s
second-largest oil reserves, 88 percent termed the availability of fuel
for cooking and driving as quite bad.
Of course, the coffers of a handful of American mercenary,
construction and energy corporations have swelled, despite this lack of
credible achievement. More than $20 billion in “reconstruction”
contracts were given to Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company,
Halliburton, alone.
The easy answer provided by Bush apologists for this dismal
performance is to place blame on the insurgency. That, however, is not
the verdict of the Iraqi people. Asked to judge how the United States
and other coalition forces have carried out their responsibilities in
Iraq, 76 percent say they have done “a bad job.” And while a modest
majority don’t want the Americans to leave “immediately,” they don’t
see the increase in the U.S. troop numbers, defended stoutly by Bush on
Monday, as helpful. Truly, this is a lose-lose situation.
Asked the source of violence that had occurred near the polled
individual’s neighborhood, the largest group, more than 44 percent,
cited “unnecessary violence against citizens by U.S. or coalition
forces,” while four out of 10 said they blame the coalition forces or
Bush for “the most for the violence that is occurring in the
country”—and only 18 percent cited “al-Qaida and foreign jihads.” So
much for Bush’s claim that U.S. troops are needed in Iraq to protect
its citizens from foreign terrorists.
Surprisingly, while 82 percent lacked confidence in coalition
troops, two-thirds of those polled expressed confidence in their own
army and police forces—yet more indication that Iraqis could do a
better job of policing themselves than we can. Our continued presence
there, ostensibly in the name of fixing the place, will only continue
to exacerbate anti-U.S. sentiment among the people we claim to be
saving.
E-mail Robert Scheer at Rscheer@truthdig.com
Copyright © 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C.
###
