Iraq's
Civil War Turns More Violent
By Joshua Frank
11 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
It was just last month when President
Bush assured the world that the situation in Iraq was dramatically improving.
Sectarian tensions were going to relax as a result of Zarqawi's overly
publicized death. As Bush put it bluntly, the death of Zarqawi served
as "an opportunity for Iraq's new government to turn the tide in
this struggle." But it's becoming painfully evident that Zarqawi,
like Saddam's illusive WMDs, was just another creation of the US propaganda
machine.
There were other times the
White House attempted to paint the chaos in Iraq in a positive light.
Remember when US armed forces annihilated Saddam's wretched sons Oday
and Qusay? Or how about when they captured Saddam and promised things
were starting to look up? At best these token events only served as
minor diversions for most of the US media, not unlike the alleged thwarting
of a terrorist attack on the Holland Tunnel in New York did late last
week.
Over the weekend, Sunni and
Shi'ite militias were said to be responsible for the deaths of more
than 60 Iraqi civilians while injuring dozens more. Just another tranquil
weekend in the streets of Baghdad. Rarely do we hear reports of what's
going on outside the Green Zone, where the ethnically driven civil war
is believed to even worse.
On June 6, shortly before
Zarqawi's death, the infamous blogger behind "Baghdad Burning"
reported; "There's an ethnic cleansing in progress and it's impossible
to deny. People are being killed according to their ID card ... We hear
about Shia being killed in the 'Sunni triangle' and corpses of Sunnis
named 'Omar' (a Sunni name) arriving by the dozen at the Baghdad morgue.
I never thought I'd actually miss the car bombs. At least a car bomb
is indiscriminate. It doesn't seek you out because you're Sunni or Shia."
Unfortunately, political
opposition to the war is weak here in the United States. Washington
supports an ongoing occupation, if it can even be called such a thing
these days. Dissent is all but dead in DC, where candidates so-often
flex their foreign policy muscle in fear that they'll be looked at as
soft on terror.
But how could anyone reasonably
argue that things were worse with Saddam at the helm? Iraq under US
control is far more violent and malicious. Not that the US has any sort
of legitimate control over the large country. In fact, the US is now
just one of many armed militias in Iraq, truly unable to contain the
exponentially increasing sectarian warfare. Every reservation critics
of the war put on the table before the invasion is now coming true.
Iraq is unwinnable, and the bloodshed is only being exacerbated by the
presence of US military.
No matter how many troops
the US and its allies shovel at the ever-growing sectarian flames, the
fighting is sure to spread. The US military is only fueling the fire.
And if there were ever a reason why the troops should be brought home
immediately, this would be it.
Joshua Frank is the author
of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits http://www.BrickBurner.org