[Mb-civic] Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq and latest "riverbend" post

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Here are 2 different but both mind-expanding takes on the current Iraq 
unfolding disaster (which we american taxpayers are funding...)  (the second 
article by "riverbend", young iraqi woman blogger living in Baghdad)


http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts05282005.html

 From Cakewalk to Bloodbath:

Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

What are we to make of the news reports that Baghdad is to be encircled
and divided into smaller and smaller sections by 40,000 Iraqi and 10,000
US troops backed by US air power and armor in order to conduct house to
house searches throughout the city to destroy combatants?

Is this generous notice of a massive offensive a ploy to encourage 
insurgents to leave the city in advance, thus securing a few days 
respite from bombings?

Is the offensive a desperate attempt by the Bush regime and the Iraqi
government to achieve a victory in hopes of reviving their flagging
support?

Or is it an act of revenge?

The insurgency has eroded American support for Bush's war. A majority of
Americans now believe Bush's invasion of Iraq was a mistake and that
Bush's war is not worth the cost. The insurgency has proved the new Iraqi
government to be impotent both as a unifying agent and source of order.

US frustration with a few hundred insurgents in Fallujah resulted in the
destruction of two-thirds of the former city of 300,000 and in the deaths
of many civilians. Are we now going to witness Baghdad reduced to rubble?

Considering reports that 80% of Sunnis support the insurgency passively if
not actively, it looks as if extermination of Sunnis will be required if
the US is to achieve "victory" in Iraq.

If this Baghdad offensive is launched, it will result in an escalation of
US war crimes and outrage against the US and the new Iraqi "government."

Obviously, the Americans are unwilling to take the casualties of house to
house searches. That job falls to the Iraqi troops who are being set
against their own people.

If insurgents remain and fight, US air power will be used to pulverize the
buildings and "collateral damage" will be high.

If insurgents leave and cause mayhem elsewhere, large numbers of 
innocent Iraqis will be detained as suspected insurgents. After all, you
can't conduct such a large operation without results.

As most households have guns, which are required for protection as there
is no law and order, "males of military age" will be detained from these
armed households as suspected insurgents.

The detentions of thousands more Iraqis will result in more torture and
abuses.

Consequently, the ranks of the active insurgency will grow.

Neocon court historians of empire, such as Niall Ferguson, claim that the
US cannot withdraw from Iraq because the result would be a civil war and
bloodbath.

However, a bloodbath is what has been going on since the ill-fated 
"cakewalk" invasion.

Moreover, the planned Baghdad Offensive is itself the beginning of a civil
war. The 50,000 troops represent a Shi'ite government. These troops will
be hunting Sunnis. There is no better way to start a civil war.

As George W. Bush has made clear many times, he is incapable of 
admitting a mistake. The inability to admit a mistake makes rational
behavior impossible. In place of thought, the Bush administration relies
on coercion and violence.

Nevertheless, Congress does not have to be a doormat for a war criminal.
It can put a halt to Bush's madness.

The solution is not to reduce Iraq to rubble. The US can end the 
bloodshed by exiting Iraq.

A solution is for Iraq to organize as a republic of three largely 
autonomous states or provinces-Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurd-- along the 
lines of the original American republic. The politicians within each
province will be too busy fighting one another for power to become
militarily involved with those in other provinces.

The problem is that Bush wants "victory," not a workable solution, and he
is prepared to pay any price for victory. The neocons, who are in effect
Israeli agents, want to spread their war against Islam to Syria and Iran.
For neocons, this is a single-minded pursuit. Their commitment to war is
not shaken by reality or rationality.

The Bush administration has proven beyond all doubt that it is 
duplicitous and has delusions that are immune to reality. America's 
reputation is being destroyed. We are becoming the premier war criminal
nation of the 21st century. We are all complicit.

How much more evil will we tolerate?

[Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of
California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.]

------

RiverBend/Baghdad Burning - May 29, 2005
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

"Shia Leaders..."

In Baghdad there's talk of the latest "Operation Lightning". It hasn't yet
been implemented in our area but we've been hearing about it. So far all
we've seen are a few additional checkpoints and a disappearing mobile
network. Baghdad is actually split into two large regions- Karkh (west
Baghdad) and Rasafa (east Baghdad) with the Tigris River separating them.
Karkh, according to this plan, is going to be split into 15 smaller areas
or sub-districts and Rasafa into 7 sub-districts. There are also going to
be 675 checkpoints and all of the entrances to Baghdad are going to be
guarded.

We are a little puzzled why Karkh should be split into 15 sub-districts
and Rasafa only seven. Karkh is actually smaller in area than Rasafa and
less populated. On the other hand, Karkh contains the Green Zone- so that
could be a reason. People are also anxious about the 675 check points.
It's difficult enough right now getting around Baghdad, more check points
are going to make things trickier. The plan includes 40,000 Iraqi security
forces and that is making people a little bit uneasy. Iraqi National Guard
are not pleasant or upstanding citizens- to have thousands of them
scattered about Baghdad stopping cars and possibly harassing civilians is
worrying. We're also very worried about the possibility of raids on homes.

Someone (thank you N.C.) emailed me Thomas L. Friedman's article in the
New York Times 10 days ago about Quran desecration titled "Outrage and
Silence".

In the article he talks about how people in the Muslim world went out and
demonstrated against Quran desecration but are silent about the deaths of
hundreds of Iraqis in the last few weeks due to bombings and suicide
attacks.

In one paragraph he says,

"Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real
Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march
anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued
by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass
murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many
of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi
Arabia."

First of all- it's not only Kurds or Shia who are dying due to car 
bombs. When a car detonates in the middle of a soug or near a mosque, it
does not seek out only Shia or Kurdish people amongst the multitude. Bombs
do not discriminate between the young and the old, male and female or
ethnicities and religious sects- no matter what your government tells you
about how smart they are. Furthermore, they are going off everywhere- not
just in Shia or Kurdish provinces. They seem to be everywhere lately.

One thing I found particularly amusing about the article- and 
outrageous all at once-was in the following paragraph:

"Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a 
Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think
about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being
installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic
Muslims, and they are indifferent to their brutalization."

Now, it is always amusing to see a Jewish American journalist speak in the
name of Sunni Arabs. When Sunni Arabs, at this point, hesitate to speak in
a representative way about other Sunni Arabs, it is nice to know Thomas L.
Friedman feels he can sum up the feelings of the "Sunni Arab world" in so
many words. His arrogance is exceptional.

It is outrageous because for many people, this isn't about Sunnis and Shia
or Arabs and Kurds. It's about an occupation and about people feeling that
they do not have real representation. We have a government that needs to
hide behind kilometers of barbed wire and meters and meters of concrete-
and it's not because they are Shia or Kurdish or Sunni Arab- it's because
they blatantly supported, and continue to support, an occupation that has
led to death and chaos.

The paragraph is contemptible because the idea of a "Shia leader" is not
an utterly foreign one to Iraqis or other Arabs, no matter how novel
Friedman tries to make it seem. How dare he compare it to having a black
governor in Alabama in the 1920s? In 1958, after the July 14 Revolution
which ended the Iraqi monarchy, the head of the Iraqi Sovereignty Council
(which was equivalent to the position of president) was Mohammed Najib
Al-Rubayi- a Shia from Kut. From 1958 - 1963, Abdul Karim Qassim, a Shia
also from Kut in the south, was the Prime Minister of Iraq (i.e. the same
position Jaffari is filling now). After Abdul Karim Qassim, in 1963, came
yet another Shia by the namministerji Talib as prime minster. Even during
the last regime, there were two Shia prime ministers filling the position
for several years- Sadoun Humadi and Mohammed Al-Zubaidi.

In other words, Sunni Arabs are not horrified at having a Shia leader
(though we are very worried about the current Puppets' pro-Iran
tendencies). Friedman seems to conveniently forget that while the New
Iraq's president was a polygamous Arab Sunni -- Ghazi Al-Yawir -- the
attacks were just as violent. Were it simply a matter of Sunnis vs. Shia
or Arabs vs. Kurds, then Sunni Arabs would have turned out in droves to
elect "Al Baqara al dhahika" ("the cow that laughs" or La Vache Qui Rit-
it's an Iraqi joke) as Al-Yawir is known amongst Iraqis.

This sentence,

"Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and they are
indifferent to their brutalization."

...Is just stupid. Friedman is referring to Sunni extremists without
actually saying that. But he doesn't add that some Shia extremists also
feel the same way about Sunnis. I'm sure in the "Christian World" there
are certain Catholics who feel that way about Protestants, etc. Iraqis
have intermarried and mixed as Sunnis and Shia for centuries. Many of the
larger Iraqi tribes are a complex and intricate weave of Sunnis and Shia.
We don’t sit around pointing fingers at each other and trying to prove who
is a Muslim and who isn't and who deserves compassion and who deserves
brutalization.

Friedman says,

"If the Arab world, its media and its spiritual leaders, came out and
forcefully and repeatedly condemned those who mount these suicide attacks,
and if credible Sunnis are given their fair share in the Iraqi government,
I am certain a lot of this suicide bombing would stop."

The Arab world's spiritual and media leaders have their hands tied 
right now. Friedman better hope Islamic spiritual leaders don't get 
involved in this mess because the first thing they'd have to do is 
remind the Islamic world that according to the Quran, the Islamic world
may not be under the guardianship or command of non-Muslims- and that
wouldn't reflect nicely on an American occupation of Iraq.

Friedman wonders why thousands upon thousands protested against the 
desecration of the Quran and why they do not demonstrate against 
terrorism in Iraq. The civilian bombings in Iraq are being done by 
certain extremists, fanatics or militias. What happened in Guantanamo with
the Quran and what happens in places like Abu Ghraib is being done
systematically by an army- an army that is fighting a war- a war being
funded by the American people. That is what makes it outrageous to the
Muslim world.

In other words, what happens in Iraq is terrorism, while what happens to
Iraqis and Afghanis and people of other nationalities under American or
British custody is simply "counter-insurgency" and "policy". It makes me
nauseous to think of how outraged the whole world was when those American
POW were shown on Iraqi television at the beginning of the war- clean,
safe and respectfully spoken to. Even we were upset with the incident and
wondered why they had to be paraded in front of the world like that. We
actually had the decency to feel sorry for them.

Friedman focuses on the Sunni Arab world in his article but he fails to
mention that the biggest demonstrations were not in the Arab world- they
happened in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also fails to mention
that in Iraq, the largest demonstration against the desecration of the
Quran was actually organized, and attended, by Shia.

Luckily for Iraqis, and in spite of Thomas Friedman, the majority of
Sunnis and Shia just want to live in peace as Muslims- not as Sunnis and
Shia.

---
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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