Iraq
Does Exist
By Ghali Hassan
15 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
history of trying to obfuscate the truth and distort the image of Iraq
has always been the aim of the U.S. aggression against the people of
Iraq. There is the added factor now of new breed of ‘journalists’
and ‘bloggers’ ever on the lookout for a story that will
tell Westerners all they need to know about Iraq, its problems, dangers,
and prospects. Despite all of this, Iraq remains a nation of proud people
struggling to liberate themselves from a murderous colonial Occupation.
In a recent interview ("Iraq
Doesn't Exist Anymore") with the self-described ‘leftists’
blogger Mick Whitney, Nir Rosen made untruthful and unsubstantiated
statements regarding the situation on the ground in Iraq and the Occupation
of that country by U.S. forces and their collaborators.
Let’s start with the
fact. Nir Rosen is an Israeli-American (‘dual loyalty’)
citizen of Iranian descent. Before he was recruited for the war on Iraq,
Rosen once wrote; “I had dreamed of joining Israel's elite special
forces” to murder defenceless Palestinians and Arabs. Like many
of the new breed of journalists who have been drafted into service,
Rosen was an embedded ‘reporter’ with U.S. Armoured Cavalry
Regiment in western Iraq. Embedded journalism is the antithesis of independent
journalism. In embedded journalism, journalists have to serve power
and cover-up war crimes. With his "Middle Eastern appearance",
Rosen is the perfect face of U.S. imperialism.
Rosen publishes in many of
the U.S. mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, Times
Magazine and the Boston Review. However, if Rosen articles about the
Middle East, Iraq in particular, had any shred of truth in them, they
wouldn’t appear in the New York times, Times Magazine or the Boston
Review. Because if Rosen deviates from what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘doctrinal
framework’ or the line of serving power, he wouldn’t get
his rubbish published there.
In the interview Rosen told
Whitney: “The main reason that things have gone so horribly wrong
in Iraq is there was no plan for anything; good or bad. The looting
was not ‘deliberate’ American policy. It was simply incompetence.
The destruction of Iraq's cultural icons was incompetence, also - as
well as stupidity, ignorance and criminal neglect. I don't believe that
there was really any deliberate malice in the American policy; regardless
of the malice with which it may have been implemented by the troops
on the ground. The destruction of much of Iraq was the result of Islamic
and sectarian militias-both Sunni and Shiite-seeking to wipe out hated
symbols. The Americans didn't know enough about Iraq to intentionally
execute such a plan even if it did exist. And, I don't think it did”.
So Rosen and Whitney want
us to believe that, the illegal invasion of Iraq was not planned and
the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and Police in order to create
chaos and insecurity was not deliberate. The mass murder of innocent
Iraqi civilians and the destruction of Iraq, including Iraq's cultural
heritage was simply “incompetence”, according to Nir Rosen.
Anyone who has paid serious
attention to the aggression against the Iraqi people knows that Rosen
is patently dishonest and lack moral principles when he touts the situation
there was the result of “incompetence” and the destruction
of much of Iraq was the result of the militias. The aggression was not
a deliberate “malice” according to Rosen; it just happened.
According to Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg
Trial in 1945 wrote: “Any resort to war — any kind of war
— is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably
is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction
of property”. Imagine Rosen describing the aggression in Jackson’s
term.
The interview was simply
a rehashing of Rosen’s crude simplification that fills a need
felt by many pro-Occupation fascists to have it confirmed for them that
what happen in Iraq was “unintentional”. Our mission was
to “spread democracy” and “freedom” because
we jus have too much o them in the West. It is just something gone wrong
in Iraq and we had no control over it. Once again we are misled by a
typical example of the Western man led by moral principles to promote
‘good’.
Repeating the same rubbish
he has been perfecting, Rosen told Whitney: "The violence in Iraq
was not senseless or crazy, it was logical and teleological. Shiite
militias were trying to remove Sunnis from Baghdad and other parts of
the country, while Sunni militias were trying to remove Shiites, Kurds
and Christians from their areas. This has been a great success. So you
have millions of refugees and millions more internally displaced, not
to mention hundreds of thousands dead. There are just less people to
kill". Of course, Whitney did not challenge Rosen during the interview,
and the interview is posted on all Zionist and pro-Occupation websites.
Whitney and Rosen know very
well that before the U.S. illegal aggression against Iraq, Iraqis were
living in harmony regardless of religious or ethnic backgrounds. No
racist journalist should deny the fact that before the aggression, Iraq
was a safe country for every one, including Westerners like Whitney,
Rosen and their ilk. Baghdad is a city of one million Kurds. The “great
success” of terrorising Iraqis is happening under the radar screen
of the Occupation. Indeed, sectarianism is brought by the invasion and
subsequent Occupation, like the Cholera epidemic. It is encouraged and
nurtured because it is a vital instrument of the Occupation.
Different militia and extremist
groups are working as paid death squads for the Occupation. Iraqis have
publicly denounced the violence as without distinction (between ‘Sunnis’
and ‘Shiites’) carried out by criminal gang and death squads
on the U.S. pay roll. To increase the violence and justify the ongoing
Occupation, the U.S. began inciting one faction against the other. Of
course, every thing is ‘masterminded’ by the phantom of
“al-Qaeda”. [1]
The current division and
political violence is an imperialist-Zionist ploy designed to destroy
Iraq as a nation. The destruction of Iraq (physically, culturally and
militarily) has been the ideological dream of the Israeli leaders and
their Zionist supporters in the U.S., the pro-Israel Jewish Lobby. The
recent U.S. Senate vote to partition Iraq along ethnic/religious lines
is the beginning of an old scheme for the Middle East. This imperialist-Zionist
scheme is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who are loudly
demanding the end to the murderous Occupation.
Rosen failed to admit that
Iraqis fought an eight-year war against Iran defended their country
with pride regardless of religious affiliation. Iraqis do not see themselves
in terms of ‘Shiites’ or ‘Sunnis’. Iraqis identify
themselves as Muslim-Arab and see themselves as Iraqis first. They showed
this loyalty during the Iran-Iraq war. According to U.S. military findings,
when the Iraqi government “initiated a total call-up of available
manpower in 1986, the response was good. No draft riots occurred; young
men-even college students—reported without incident. The fact
that the public answered the call tells us that Iraqis support their
government ... Eighty-five percent of the army belongs to the sect of
Shiism”. [2]
The needless killing of more
than 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, appeared
to have escaped Rosen’s reporting. In fact since 1990, the U.S.
and Britain declared outright intent to use disproportionate force,
mortally targeting Iraqis as a national group. Some 1.5 million Iraqis
died, including 500,000 infants, as a result of the 13-years U.S.-UK
enforced UN sanctions.
Countless U.S. soldiers are
publicly condemning their criminal actions in Iraq. Writing in the Vermont’s
Rutland Herald, Matt Howard, a U.S. Marine, reflects on his participation
in the deliberate and unprovoked war of aggression against the Iraqi
people: “We did not go to war with the country of Iraq; we went
to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed
women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were
the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath
of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.”
In Rosen’s view, the
total destruction of urban centres such as Fallujah, Tel Afar, Samarra,
Al-Qaim, Haditha, Tikrit, and Ramadi, among other cities and towns by
indiscriminate bombing is not considered war crimes perpetuated with
intent to terrorise and pacify the entire Iraqi population.
It is important to remember
that from the outset of the Occupation, the U.S. Administration embarked
on dividing Iraqis into religious and ethnic groups and hence planted
the first seed for disunity and violence. The U.S.-imposed “Iraqi
Governing Council” was the best example of a colonial-imposed
puppet government formed along ethnic and sectarian lines. The puppet
government is simply an extension of the Occupation. It is voids of
anything resembling a democracy. It has no political control whatsoever
beyond the ‘Green Zone’ where it is protected by the Occupation.
Its main function is to provide a façade and legitimise the Occupation.
The recent “agreement” to extend the Occupation in flagrant
violation of Iraqi sovereignty is a case in point.
Back in August 2007, Nir
Rosen told Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow news: “It’s too late
for anything good to happen in Iraq, unfortunately. If the Americans
stay, we’ll see a continuation of this civil war, of ethnic cleansing,
until all of Iraq is sort of ethnically—or sectarian, homogenous
zones, which is basically what’s already happened. If the Americans
leave, then you’ll see greater intervention of Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Syria, supporting their own militias in Iraq and being drawn into battle.
But no matter what, Iraq doesn’t exist anymore”. Not as
simple as that, Mr. Rosen.
And what proof is offered
for this Zionist propaganda? None. In fact all the evidence pointed
to a premeditated and deliberate U.S.-Zionist plan to destroy Iraq as
a nation and replace it with a collection of dependent fiefdoms. It
is true, if the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of a
U.S.-perpetuated violence and ethnic cleansing. But this is not what
Rosen meant. Rosen failed to acknowledge that the withdrawal of U.S.
troops from Iraq is supported by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis
and will remove the primary cause of the violence.
Where all these militias
and criminals came from? Who trained them, armed them and finance them?
Whitney didn’t ask. Nowhere in the interviews and scattered articles
does Rosen tell us that the militias were the creation of the Occupation
and that the violence is the only pretext left to justify the ongoing
Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each other” before
the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by Western
media and remains a mystery to most Westerners.
Furthermore, Whitney did
not challenge Rosen how the Americans managed to protect the Iraqi Oil
Ministry while at the same time turn blind eye to the looting and burning
of Iraq’s most important buildings and Iraq’s cultural heritage.
If the looting was not "deliberate" American policy, there
must be a selective “incompetence”. Reports after reports
showed clearly that the looting was pre-organised policy to strip Iraq
of its Muslim-Arab identity and history. It is important to remember
that at the time of looting and destruction, the British journalist
Robert Fisk was in Baghdad and witnessed a systematic and deliberate
attempt to destroy Iraq as a nation.
Again, Whitney failed to
ask Rosen how the Americans were able to build the largest C.I.A. station
(“U.S. Embassy”) in the world, “the size of Vatican
City, with the population of a small town, its own defence force, self-contained
power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent
future”, while most Iraqis left without food, drinking water and
electricity. Why Iraq’s healthcare services, including major hospitals
and medical centres, and Iraq’s education system including, schools
and university remained destroyed and dysfunctional, while Americans
are busy building military bases, described by many as “bustling
American towns, replete with Burger King, Pizza Hut, shops, traffic
regulations and young bikers clogging the roads”? In fact, like
most people, many Americans now openly admit that there is a plan to
occupy Iraq permanently and loot Iraq of its natural resources.
Finally, Like in Vietnam,
the Americans offer the Iraqi people a choice: either you submit to
a murderous colonial Occupation or we break you. The Iraqi people refused
to submit and the Americans failed to break them.
U.S. policy in Iraq is not
simply “incompetence”; it is “an essential component
of U.S. policy [since 1990], constituting premeditated genocide against
the people of Iraq”, writes Ian Douglas, a professor of Political
Sciences and a member of the organising committee of the Brussels Tribunal.
Furthermore, the U.S. failed in its imperialist strategy in Iraq not
because of “incompetence”, but because “the Iraqi
Resistance prevents Iraqi oil from reinforcing the occupation or paying
for America’s global war of aggression”, added Douglas.
[3].
One question that Mike Whitney
didn't ask Rosen which may clarify Rosen's perspective is, why thousands
of Iraqi scientists, professors, intellectuals and other professionals
have been murdered in cold blood? Why at least 40 per cent of the educated
and experienced Iraqi professionals have been threatened and forced
to leave the country? The aim is to destroy Iraq’s independence
by liquidating Iraq’s human resources.
There is no doubt that the
premeditated aggression and murderous Occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces
and their collaborators have succeeded in destroying the physical state
of Iraq and terrorising the Iraqi population. “But, of course,
the spirit of the Iraqi people is indestructible. They cannot be broken.
They will resist, drive out all intruders, and they will recover. The
people of Iraq will overcome the catastrophes of recent years”,
writes Denis Halliday, former UN assistant secretary-general and one
of the very few honourable voices in the West to publicly condemn the
deliberate genocide in Iraq.
Iraq does exist. We should
never forget the fact that there is an Iraqi nation and nationalism
represented by legitimate National Iraqi Resistance. The U.S. government
and its collaborators may have succeeded in killing many innocent Iraqis
and removed a sovereign government but the U.S. failed and will not
success in its attempt to destroy the Iraqi nation and the Iraq people’s
will to resist the Occupation.
Today more than ever there
is a need for honest and independent journalists who can stand up and
against the active complicity of the mainstream media and in support
of the people of Iraq struggle for freedom and independence. Nir Rosen
is just another propaganda agent who has shown to be part of a murderous
colonial Occupation.
Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
Endnotes:
[1] Hassan, Ghali, Iraq:
Occupation and Sectarianism; Varea, Carlos, Iraq: Sectarian Violence
in Iraq and the New War in the Middle East; Wolf, Max, For Iraq, the
‘Salvador Option’ becomes Reality.
[2] Marine Corps Historical
Publication - FMFRP 3-203, Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War, December
10, 1990 Chemical Weapons.
[3] Douglas, Ian, Notes on
genocide in Iraq. [PDF]. This document should be read by any concerned
citizen.
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