.
The
idealistic acceptance of well-presented manipulation of truth
The US military occupation of Iraq has nothing – nothing whatever
– to do with combating Al-Qaeda and international terrorism. The
deaths of occupation troops have not made anyone safer, never mind
American children and grandchildren
Brian Cloughley
Last Sunday (27/07/03) US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz
appeared on television networks to peddle the Bush administration’s
new line about why it invaded Iraq. It is now asserted by every
Washington mouthpiece, loudly and persistently, that Bush went to war on
Iraq to combat terrorism.
The strident and terrifying pronouncements by Cheney, Rice, Bush, Powell
and Rumsfeld about vast quantities of Iraqi nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons, and ballistic missiles to deliver them, are now, well,
perhaps not quite as accurate as they were when they were made. I’m
waiting for someone to regale us with the wonderful phrase of the Nixon
years, when another president told the American people lie after lie
after lie. It was: “This is the operative statement. The others are
inoperative.”
A massive number of Americans – most of them ordinary people like you
and me – believe sincerely that the former Iraqi government committed
the atrocities in September 2001 when 3000 people were killed in New
York and Washington by (mainly) Saudi Arabian terrorists. There is no
evidence that Iraq was in the slightest way connected with these
horrific attacks, yet US soldiers in Iraq told reporters that the war
was “payback time for 9/11”. They still display slogans to that
effect on their helmets. They believe it because they were encouraged to
do so by an effective propaganda campaign initiated in the White House.
It is on this idealistic acceptance of well-presented manipulation of
truth, combined with the fervent and genuine patriotism of average
American citizens, that slime like Wolfowitz are capitalising. Mind you,
perhaps Wolfowitz actually does believe what he is saying. If so, he is
an even worse case of dementia than hitherto I had thought possible.
The killing of US soldiers in Iraq, announced Wolfowitz, “is a
sacrifice that is going to make our children and our grandchildren
safer, because the battle to win the peace in Iraq now is the central
battle in the war on terrorism.” It would be difficult to identify a
more specious piece of nauseating tripe uttered by a Washington figure
in recent years.
This was a contemptible bid to manipulate the patriotic hearts and minds
of the American people who stand on the verge of questioning the lies
they have been told for so long. The US military occupation of Iraq has
nothing – nothing whatever – to do with combating Al-Qaeda and
international terrorism. The deaths of occupation troops have not made
anyone safer, never mind American children and grandchildren – the
children and grandchildren that these dead youngsters will never have.
Some of the older soldiers who have been killed – those over the age
of 20 or so – had fathered children. But they will never be seen again
by their sons and daughters.
Soldiers are dying, Wolfowitz, you latter-day McNamara, because Iraq was
invaded, and because Iraqis object to humiliation by occupation forces.
It is as simple as that. Every time there is an incident of houses being
burst into by US troops in the dead of night, and terrified, innocent
residents being hooded and handcuffed, there is enormous reaction
against America throughout the country. Every time the women of a
household are subjected to indignity there is revulsion everywhere in
Iraq. (And far beyond, of course, throughout the Islamic world – and
elsewhere.)
Washington continues to claim that attacks on US troops are caused only
by anti-American extremists. Well, they may be extremists, and,
obviously, they are anti-American. But let us reflect for a moment on
the feelings of a young Iraqi man whose country has been invaded.
Whether or not he was a member of the Ba’ath party, whether or not he
was in the army, he is an Iraqi citizen. As we keep being told by such
as Wolfowitz, Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, one should be proud of one’s
nation. Just so.
And although these young men most probably loathe Saddam Hussein, they
are still Iraqis, born and bred, and proud of their heritage. Wolfowitz
and the rest of the Bush extremists cannot understand that an ordinary
Iraqi could and can be proud to the extent that he actually objects to
invasion and occupation of his country and can be furious about the
bombing and gross mistreatment of peaceful citizens. It is vital that
this sort of person be brought on side, but every random killing by the
apparently unaccountable and out-of-control ‘Task Force 20’ drives
them further away.
I have a September 1945 edition of the Illustrated London News in which
there are photographs of US soldiers in a German vault examining the
records of eight million members of the Nazi Party. (A tenth of the
population of Germany (including Sudetenland and Austria) joined the
party between 1933 and 1945.) Naturally the occupation forces did not
instantly alienate and condemn eight million people to poverty by
forbidding them to continue in government appointments. The Allies had
more common sense than that. It was obvious that by far the majority had
joined the Party because their livelihoods depended on it. So during the
occupation most former Party members were employed to re-establish
democracy and restore the economy, in which endeavours they assisted
most effectively.
Just as in Nazi Germany it was beneficial to be a Nazi, in Ba’athist
Iraq it was economically advantageous to join the Ba’ath. But the US
viceroy sacked every Ba’ath official and disbanded the army, thereby
setting back the administration and security of the country by about a
decade, and, of more importance, creating a large group of suddenly poor
and thus instantly disaffected young and middle-aged Iraqis who hate
America. This was the single most stupid action taken by the occupying
power. In the main it is these young Iraqis, with access to weapons, and
with despair and hatred in their hearts, who are ambushing and killing
occupation troops.
A Reuters’ despatch records that “Lt Gl Ricardo Sanchez, whose
troops usually blame the attacks on diehard Saddam loyalists, said the
sophistication of the raids had increased over the last 30 days. “This
is what I would call a terrorist magnet where America, being present
here in Iraq, creates a target of opportunity if you will,” Sanchez
[said].”
A terrorist magnet? What does he mean? Apparently what he thinks he
means – or what he has been told to say by the Pentagon – is “The
key that we must not lose sight of is that we must win this battle here
in Iraq. Otherwise America will find itself taking on these terrorists
at home.” Selling the contrived message about terrorism just as
brazenly as Wolfowitz, he declared, “We have to understand that we
have a multiple-faceted conflict going on here in Iraq. We’ve got
terrorist activity, we’ve got former regime leadership, we have
criminals, and we have some hired assassins that are attacking our
soldiers on a daily basis.”
“Hired assassins?” Who are they? Who hires them? There is no public
evidence that any such element is operating in Iraq. As for “terrorist
activity,” the recently-appointed C-in-C Central Command, Gen James
Abizaid, has said that the war in Iraq is “now a classical
guerrilla-type campaign”. Whom do we believe? General Sanchez, who is
following the line of the Vietnam draft-dodger defense academic
Wolfowitz, or General Abizaid?
Where is the link between guerrilla strikes and the warning by Wolfowitz
that if the US does not “win” in Iraq, it will “find itself taking
on these terrorists at home?” His contention is contradictory and
confusing, to put it mildly.
But in the classic propaganda ploy, intended to convince the American
public that the deaths of US soldiers are necessary, the threat has to
be presented as personal. Just as Bush and Rice tried to frighten the
American people (and largely succeeded) by making emotional and dramatic
declarations that there would be “mushroom clouds” from Iraqi
nuclear weapons, so the false Iraq-to-terrorism link is intended to make
their flesh creep.
In striving to sell the new rationale for occupying Iraq as the
“central battle” in a valiant anti-terrorist campaign, Wolfowitz
declared that the attacks on the USS Cole at Aden in 2000 and the US
army barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 were the fault of Iraq because
“Americans killed in these attacks were in the region as part of
efforts to contain Iraq.” This bizarre allegation is the product of an
overtaxed mind. No doubt there are terrorists plotting hideous mayhem in
and against America. But Wolfowitz’s claims that the deaths of US
soldiers in Iraq are “a sacrifice... you’d have to expect” to free
America of the threat of terrorism is unbelievable bunkum. Is this your
operative statement, Wolfowitz? Or perhaps your personal sacrifice?
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