A Brief History of Iraq for Westerners
By David Swanson
Iraq was saved from ignorant subhuman barbarism by a gentlewoman named Gertrude
at the time that the civilized nations of the world were, in a quite
advanced and sophisticated manner, slaughtering their young men in a
project now called the First World War.
Because the Arabs were too backward to be allowed to govern
themselves, or even to contemplate creating a world war, and because
tribes and ethnicities and religions never really garner much loyalty or
support that can't be wiped away with a good cup of tea or a few clouds
of poison gas, and because the French were too dumb to know where the
oil was, it became necessary for the British to install an Iraqi leader
who wasn't Iraqi, through a democratic election with one candidate
running.
The great Winston Churchill explained the governance of Iraq and the
new civilizing technique of bombing civilians thusly: "I am strongly in
favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes." Others failed to
see the wisdom, and the Royal Air Force used non-chemical "terror
bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers, [and] delayed action bombs
(particularly lethal against children)" to police disobedient Iraqis.
Only by developing these techniques on Iraqis were the world's
civilizers prepared to use them on Nazis when the time came to level
German cities in the name of defeating Nazis, which of course also
places the rest of this paper beyond the reach of moral criticism.
Iraqis, from the formation of Iraq by Gertrude to this day, were
never quite able to create a democracy for the CIA to overthrow as in
neighboring Iran. But the idea that Iraqis have been violent or
resistant to control because of lack of representation misses the
central fact that people in the Middle East enjoy killing each other
over sectarian differences. Of course it's hard to find evidence of
significant sectarian fighting in Iraq prior to 2003 and some say
there wasn't any. There was violent looting of Jewish neighborhoods in
1941, but the British government keeps all information on that event
secret. There was bombing of synagogues in Baghdad in 1950-51 but that
turned out to have been done by Zionists trying to convince Jews to come
to Israel. And "until the 1970s nearly all Iraq's political
organisations were secular, attracting people from all religions and
none." But what was simmering just below the surface waiting to burst
out at the slightest scratching?
Think how little it took.
Supporting and arming a brutal dictator in Saddam Hussein and his
catastrophic war against Iran, then bombing Iraq and imposing the most
murderous sanctions in history, and then newly bombing Iraq and
occupying it for 8 years while arming and training death squads and
torturers and imposing sectarian segregation, creating 5 million
refugees, and killing a half-million to a million-and-a-half people,
while devastating the nation's infrastructure, and then imposing a
puppet government loyal to one sect and one neighboring nation. That,
plus arming the new government for vicious attacks on its own people,
while arming mad killers in neighboring Syria, some of whom want to
combine parts of Syria and Iraq: that was all it took, and
suddenly, out of nowhere, ignorant Arabs are killing each other, just
out of pure irrationality, just like in Palestine.
During the 8 years of U.S.-led occupation people mistook purely
irrational violence that had been bubbling under the surface for
centuries for resistance to the occupiers, and now some imagine that
part of the violence against the puppet government is motivated by
grievances against that government. But this misses the fundamental
truths here, which are:
1. Shock and Awe was meant to put people at ease and make them comfortable.
2. The plan to rid Iraq of weapons it was about to use against those
of us who matter was successful beyond the wildest expectations, working
retroactively by a decade.
3. Our great leaders, Bush and Cheney, meant well in giving Iraqis freedom even if they weren't ready for it.
4. The election of Maliki was even more legitimate than the election of Faisal.
5. When the Bush-Maliki treaty ended the U.S. military presence in
Iraq, that was thanks to President Obama who is way smarter than Bush
but couldn't get Iraq to let U.S. troops stay with immunity for crimes
-- crimes of course being necessary for policing, just ask Winnie.
6. When Iraq remained a disaster, that was President Obama's fault
for focusing too much on murdering people in Afghanistan and Pakistan
and Yemen, and never Iraq -- as if we just don't care about Iraq any
more.
7. The U.S. weapons being seized and used against the U.S. puppet
government in Iraq are no match for the vast stockpiles of weapons of
mass destruction that we can and must ship into Iraq now to be seized
and redirected later on down the road.
8. The few people getting rich from all of this misery mean well.
--
David Swanson wants you to declare peace at http://WorldBeyondWar.org His new book is War No More: The Case for Abolition. He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
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