Dignity and Prosperity

Since we decided to invade and conquer Iraq in 2003, the United States (with its ally, Britain) appears to have embraced a new and unfortunately deadly version of the Keystone Cops – we really don’t seem to able to get anything right. We invaded Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction; they didn’t. Listening to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (who was the financial power in government back in 2003) justify that effort, after the fact with an entirely different explanation of why invasion was a good thing, is simply chilling. There is an underlying assumption, here and in the U.K., that governments just don’t make mistakes… you just have to explain your error better.

On March 5^th, Brown declared that the Iraq invasion was “the right decision for the right reasons” and even added that “everything that [then-Prime Minister Tony] Blair did during this period, he did properly.” Calling Saddam Hussein’s Iraq a “persistent serial violator” of multiple U.N. resolutions, he noted that: “We cannot have an international community that works if either we have terrorists breaking the rules, or in this case aggressor states that refuse to obey the laws of the international community.” He blasted the Bush administration’s methodology, however, saying that: “I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-conservative proposition: that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight liberty or democracy could be conjured up.” The British press had a field day with this absurd justification for the war, and even members of his own party were taken aback.

As the recent Iraqi elections reflect, the “nation” we “liberated” doesn’t seem to be a nation at all. It very much seems fractured along the ethnic and religious lines that have never really got along, an animosity that was “contained” under the Hussein Sunni minority regime by ultra-violent repression. The Shiites – the clear majority (and acting that way) – even fielded a candidate who has been accused of leading Shiite death squads against Sunni minorities after the creation of the new government (created under the aegis of American conquest)… even as many Sunni leaders, having served in Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, have been prohibited from even running. We’re back to separatist Kurds in the North, minority Sunnis (many of who see terrorist attacks on Shiite facilities as their only means of fighting back) in the southwest, and the overwhelming Shiite majority everywhere else.

Iraq has most certainly become a government of Shiites, for Shiites and by Shiites. There’s even talk, once again, that this three-way animosity which is festering into an ugly and rather open wound, may require U.S. forces to extend their stay to avert a bloodbath based on the failure of the “democracy” that the United States shoved at the Iraqi people… clearly a failed constitution, failed leadership and a failed system to protect the minority – who want to be in separate nations anyway – from the tyranny of Shiite oppression. Iran – the center of Shiite power – is grinning from ear to ear at our unbelievable stupidity. At this juncture, the United States has neither the money nor the will to restructure this failed nation, and perhaps, it isn’t even our role to continue to experiment with Iraqi politics; we did such a horrible job the first time around.

Meanwhile, back at the farm… er… the super-corrupt opium farm we refer to as “Afghanistan,” American forces are busy rooting out Taliban strongholds – okay, we know that lots of these extremists have just slid over the border to safe haven in Taliban-friendly Pakistan (despite assertions to the contrary) to wait until we leave to return – and replacing the repressive Taliban governments with solid, competent indigenous leadership. Folks like the new civilian leader of recently “liberated” Marja (in the border province of Helmand), Abdul Zahir, who stated, in a Los Angeles Times interview (reported on March 6^th): “The Taliban did nothing for Marja; we will bring back dignity and prosperity.” Do you think that Mr. Zahir served time in a German prison for stabbing his son should have been taken into consideration before he got the job? We’re good… hey… like the Keystone Cops!

I’m Peter Dekom, and that we just don’t get how badly we have failed still astounds me!