Forgetting Iraq

[nosmokes]

this was published 7 september, so it is a few weeks old but it is a good read. we really have no business being there under these circumstances, absolutely none.
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original

Forgetting Iraq

Zaid Al-Ali* embarks on a different course in life after a visit to his native Iraq
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It was just as people around the world started believing that the situation was improving, and just as they had started shifting their attention to other matters that I travelled to Iraq -- my parents' native country -- for only the second time in my life. Despite everything that I had heard from Iraqi and American governmental officials about the situation there, despite all that I read about the changes that the country has gone through since last year, I was not prepared for what I saw. Information provided by government should always be treated with caution, particularly when the information it provides relates to its own performance and to the consequences of its actions. But in the case of Iraq, the situation has now become totally out of hand: life in Baghdad bears no relationship to the declarations that government officials have been making, nor with the images that we see on our television screens, and that is something that I was only able to truly appreciate after visiting the country myself.
~snip~
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A HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN DECAY: One of my reasons in going to Iraq was to try to determine how services such as public healthcare have been faring since the war, and I was very happy to learn that I have relatives that work in public hospitals in Baghdad and who were willing to show me around. A few days after my arrival, I visited Baghdad Teaching Hospital, a public hospital in Baghdad, with one of my uncles. It took us much longer than expected to get there because a bridge that we needed to cross had been cordoned off by American soldiers. My uncle spent the journey telling me of the damage caused by the war to Iraq's infrastructure, and told me of the things that he saw with his own eyes during that time. He described how, immediately after the end of the war, American soldiers broke into his hospital's car park and stole a large number of vehicles belonging to the hospital's staff in order to sell them in the market. The soldiers were not able to move one of the cars so they tore off the roof in order to steal all its contents. My uncle later showed me what was left of that vehicle: a charred carcass gutted of all its interiors, wheels and accessories -- and with no roof. He also recalled seeing American soldiers break down the doors of government buildings and inviting Iraqis to enter and loot the contents. A number of Americans and other foreigners seem to have made off with a great deal of Iraq's wealth, although some were caught in the act.
~snip~
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SECURITY, CORRUPTION AND LIVING STANDARDS: The question on everyone's lips after the war last year was whether the arrival of the American army was a good or a bad development for Iraq. From my observations and those of others, many families, even those that had prospered during the Saddam Hussein years, were split down the middle, with some arguing vehemently that there could not be anything worse than Saddam, while others could not stand the thought of foreign occupation. As far as I was able to tell, this schism has for the most part subsided, and not because everyone is now satisfied that they are better off with the Americans in charge. The shift in public opinion against the occupation probably has several causes, but judging from the conversations that I have had, nothing irritates Iraqis more, nothing has served to prove to them that the occupation is not designed to serve their interests or improve their living standards than the constant failures in the electricity supply, the incessant problems relating to corruption, as well as the failure to establish security and the rule of law. Iraqis cannot accept that the continuing problems in relation to these issues are unavoidable, and from that starting point inevitably reach the conclusion that the Bush administration is secretly plotting to keep Iraqis in a position of poverty and insecurity.
~snip~
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THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION: There is in fact a much more serious and deep-rooted problem that threatens Iraq's long-term future. For a certain amount of time, starting perhaps in the 1950s and continuing until the first half of the 1980s, there was a surge in the educational output and potential in Iraq. The country had some of the Arab world's best facilities for higher education, and attracted students from many parts of the world as a result. A great number of Iraqis completed their postgraduate education in Western European and North American universities. Many Iraqis of this "worldly" generation are well educated, politically and socially sophisticated, and bi- or trilingual. They are well travelled, and many even joined different political parties for ideological reasons. They are, however, over 45 years old, and are usually much older. The situation is very different for the average Iraqi born after 1965. He has lived the greater part of his life with the wars and political oppression that were imposed on him, and with the most comprehensive economic sanctions programme ever created. During Saddam's 24 years as president, political debate was forbidden. This was even the case within the Baath Party itself, which saw its attempts to instruct its membership in the ways of socialism and freedom from colonial oppression replaced by constant praise for Saddam as soon as he seized the presidency in 1979. It is no secret that, in the long run, a country cannot hope to survive without the free exchange of political ideas. This was something that Saddam, who seemed much more concerned with his image and life-style than anything else, either did not appreciate or did not care about. This, combined with the impoverishment suffered by the country through the war with Iran during the 1980s, the devastation caused by the international community's onslaught in 1991 as well as the latter's slow death policy imposed through international sanctions, has created a "lost" generation of uneducated Iraqis who are, on the whole, unaware of the ways of the modern world. The Herculean effort made by the worldly generation that lifted Iraq out of poverty and ignorance has therefore been undone in extremely painful and tragic circumstances.
~snip~

much, much more at the original
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[whistle]

1. So has this been George W Bush's plan for a free Iraq?

[Demeter]

2. Looks Just Like His Plan for USA

Two Mordors staring across the river at each other.