From Independent Media Center of Philadelphia, a good editorial summarizing the bait and switch pulled by Bushco on the Iraq war, and how we shouldn't be suckered by the Iraq elections into thinking that the war was ever about "liberation" or other humanitarian goals.
Note to mods: author says the article is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint or rebroadcast. http://www.phillyimc.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/12/0154232&mode=thread Iraq Amnesia
By Catherine O'Harra Next month will mark the second anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Americans will undoubtedly be reliving, by way of 24-hour news channels and colorful, commemorative newspaper inserts, the coalition’s aerial “shock and awe” calling cards that lit up the night sky over Baghdad. We will be drawn back in to those first grueling days of desert battle, as narrated by breathless “embedded” U.S. reporters.
Based upon American main-stream media’s track record thus far, it is also likely that upcoming anniversary coverage will be glossy, optimistic and sanitized. Particularly scarce will be any mention on the networks of the actual REASON for America’s invasion of Iraq. Hoopla over the recent Iraq elections has become yet another layer of camouflage netting over the original justification for the U.S. attack on Iraq. Images of jubilant Iraqis waving purple fingers into every American living room are inducing a collective American amnesia about the Bush administration’s stated reason for war -- America’s self-defense.
The Iraq war was marketed as this country’s last resort to the immediate and direct threat posed by Saddam and his stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. These weapons, we were told, endangered Americans on their own soil. The threat was SO urgent, in fact, that pre-emptive measures were necessary. Iraq was a country bent on destroying America, and we did not have the luxury of waiting for another round of U.N. inspections. Nor did we have time to assemble a real coalition of nations that could jointly share the pain of resolving the Iraq problem, perhaps even without bloodshed. We especially could not wait to find a smoking gun in Saddam’s hands since, as Condoleeza Rice and others urged, it “could be a mushroom cloud.” Funny thing, though! It turns out there were no stockpiles of WMD. Despite extensive searches, Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay announced that no stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons can be found in Iraq. In late 2004, the U.S quietly called off any further hunt for Saddam’s WMD. How embarrassing to make a pre-emptive attack on a foreign country, only to find out shortly thereafter that the very basis for that attack was utterly wrong.
The Bush administration possesses the means and an obvious motive for expunging the failed WMD rationale from the national memory bank. And the truth of Bush’s original WMD rationale for war is fast becoming yet another battle casualty. Those Americans with functioning memories, however, can recall that the Iraq war effort was only tangentially “humanitarian.” As Bush envisioned it, a happy byproduct of a WMD-free Iraq would be Iraq’s new-found freedom from despotism and corruption. But bringing these benefits to Iraq was not Bush’s principal goal. Had it been, Americans might have reacted less impulsively to the call to war. Americans might also have been less susceptible to the ceaseless innuendo by the administration and its AM radio cohorts that Saddam masterminded 9/11.
If ending Saddam’s “tyranny” in Iraq was our primary motive for war, we might also have had a national dialogue concerning whether uprooting Saddam would, realistically, prove to be a net benefit for ordinary Iraqis. That dialogue could have considered the potential upside to Iraqis of “regime change” versus the very predictable downside effects of a political, economic and religious power vacuum in that country. The dialogue could likewise have considered the projected cost to Americans of such an adventure, and whether other countries in even more dire humanitarian need of intervention than Iraq should be the recipients of our military largesse.
Sadly, this debate never took place. If only it had! It has long been known that removing Saddam could potentially unleash decades of lawlessness, civil war, military occupation, domination or outright invasion by neighboring countries, religious violence, exposure to depleted uranium, unemployment, deprivation, fear and uncertainty.
Even from a purely humanitarian perspective, then, it could readily be foreseen that Iraq’s people might be far better off with Saddam left in place. G.W. Bush’s father drew precisely the same conclusion in 1991 at the end of Desert Storm, predicting that Saddam’s removal would bring about chaos and calamity for the entire region and would force an extended Iraq occupation.The Iraq war has now killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, as calculated by The Lancet medical journal. Americans have, in other words, caused the death of more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever did. We have destroyed several historic cities. Fallujah, formerly home to 300,000 people, has basically been flattened and the carcasses of the people who hadn't managed to flee that city were left to the wild dogs to eat. We have set the stage for a civil war in that country, and politically destabilized several of Iraq’s neighbors.
On the U.S. side, we have lost thousands of our troops to death and serious injury. Hundreds of American civilian contractors have also been killed and wounded. In addition to the human toll, the financial toll to this country is absolutely staggering. The price tag for the Iraq invasion, and our ongoing operations in Afghanistan, is closing in on $300 billion. Bush’s most recent request for another $80 billion, five days before the Iraqi elections, comes at a time when the war is already costing $5 billion per month.
The White House currently reports that at least 120,000 American troops will remain in Iraq through the end of 2005. It is likely, though, that the U.S. will have troops in Iraq well beyond 2005-- possibly decades. The insurgency shows no sign of retreating, and Donald Rumsfeld himself predicts that the U.S. is in for “a good, hard slog.” Many Americans do not realize that the U.S. is currently building 14 major U.S. military bases in Iraq, a $1.5 billion U.S. embassy in Baghdad, an extensive military communications network, and making other investments that seem to indicate a lengthy and, to many Iraqis, unwanted U.S. presence in that country.
Saddam was, of course, a brutal and corrupt dictator. He even gassed his own people (albeit 18 years ago and with U.S.-supplied ingredients). But Bush’s frequent allusions to “freedom” and “liberty” in his Inaugural and State of the Union Addresses cannot rewrite history.
Yes, we enabled an election to take place in Iraq. But at what cost to Iraq? At what cost to us? One thing is certain, though. Pre-emptive attack on Iraq was promoted as a vital move to assure America’s protection from Iraq’s WMDs. This historical fact must not be cast down the memory hole.
Catherine O’Harra is an attorney in Houston, Texas. coharra@velaw.com This article is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint or rebroadcast.
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