So much we must teach Iraqis

Hundreds of jubilant Iraqis mobbed a convoy of U.S. Marines on Wednesday, cheering, dancing and waving as American troops swept toward central Baghdad through slums and leafy suburbs from the east. Crowds threw flowers at the Marines as they drove past the Martyrs' Monument, just three kilometres east of the central Jumhuriya Bridge over the Tigris River. -- Reuters, April 9

There are so many things we will have to teach the people of Iraq. They must know why we opposed this war, why we could not go to war. It was for their sake, yes -- did we not march in our millions, to show how much we cared? -- but there were so many other reasons, good reasons, that they must be made to understand. We must teach them, these Iraqis, who now dance in the streets and throw flowers at their invaders.

We must teach them, first, that they do not exist. How many times have we written of the hubris of the Americans, who were so foolish as to think they would actually be welcomed by the Iraqi people? Did Newsweek not this very week mock Dick Cheney for having said they would be "greeted as liberators," calling it "an arrogant blunder for the ages"? Did not The Nation's Eric Alterman wonder if Paul Wolfowitz is "really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis would welcome us as 'their hoped-for liberators' ?"

They cannot say we did not warn them. They should have listened to us. For we are always right. Or at least, we are never wrong.

Women waved from balconies, girls threw flower petals at young Marines leaning across gun turrets. One woman held her baby aloft. Tank crews picked the flowers from the tops of their fighting machines, smelt them and grinned.

When the war first began to bog down in a Vietnam-like quagmire, we told them why this was. It was not only because the Americans -- fools! -- had not brought sufficient numbers of troops with them, owing to Don Rumsfeld's unproven "theories" of high-tech modern warfare, though we told them that as well.

It was because the Iraqi people, yes the whole Iraqi nation, had risen up against the invaders. They had no great love for Saddam Hussein, we knew that -- "a terrible man and so on," in Jean Chrétien's devastating indictment -- but the sight of all those American troops, too few as they may have been, had inspired in them a surge of Iraqi nationalism. As Eric Margolis, the noted foreign affairs expert, was not the first to point out, "Iraqis, very clearly, do not want to be 'liberated'... To the contrary, the U.S.-British invasion appears to have ignited genuine national resistance among 17 million Arab Iraqis, just as the 1941 German invasion of the USSR rallied Russians and Ukrainians behind Stalin's hated regime."

And so it was no surprise to us when, as predicted, Baghdad became a Stalingrad, a charnel house, a graveyard for the Americans in their thousands, through months of senseless slaughter.

The little town of Kumayt gave the Marines a warm welcome, crowding around individual men, tugging on sleeves, tapping shoulders, shouting in Arabic. "They think I'm Santa Claus," said Major Daniel Geisenhof, surrounded by a couple of dozen men and boys offering him sunflower seeds.

"U.S. soldiers help the Iraqi people," one man said in English. "Iraq people support Mr. Bush because Mr. Bush loves the Iraqi people." -- New York Times, April 8

We saw it all. At every turn, we pointed out how it could all go horribly wrong -- no, how it must inevitably end in disaster. And so we were not at all surprised when, just as we had predicted, oil fields across Iraq were blown up by the hundred, when Saddam launched missiles at Tel Aviv, when Israel responded in kind, when the Iranian and Turkish armies poured over the border, and the whole Middle East was set ablaze. The hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who died in the ensuing carnage, the millions of refugees who showed up at camps in Turkey and Jordan -- we are not to blame. Not in our name, we had chanted. Not in our name.

"I'm 49, but I never lived a single day. Only now will I start living," said Yussuf Abed Kazim, a mosque preacher, as he bashed the statue's pedestal with a sledgehammer, knocking off tile and concrete. "That Saddam Hussein is a murderer and a criminal." -- The Associated Press, April 9.

Yes, we knew of Saddam's crimes. But these had to be put in context. This, too, we must teach the Iraqis. How could we condemn Saddam, after all, when everyone knows it was the Americans who had armed him? Why, look, here are the figures, from Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the leading authority on the subject. From 1973 to 1990, the Americans sold fully $5-million worth of weapons to the Iraqi regime. $5-million! True, that was less than one-thousandth as much as the Chinese, who sold them $5.5-billion. And it was barely one two-thousandth as much as the French, at $9.2-billion. And it was one six-thousandth as much as the Russians, at $31.8-billion. But still.

One man, in his late 50s, tore down a picture of Saddam wearing his trademark military beret and sunglasses.

In a mark of the dramatic changes that were sweeping the city, he took off his shoe and used it to beat the image of the dictator's face -- an act considered to be a great insult in the Arab world.

"This is the criminal, this is the infidel," he said. "This is the destiny of every traitor.... He killed millions of us. Oh people, this is freedom." -- Daily Telegraph, April 9

And whatever Saddam's crimes, they could not justify this war. That is what we have been trying to say all along. That is what we must now explain to the Iraqi people. Surely they will understand: This war was illegal. It was against international law, which clearly states that before you can use military force, you must pass a resolution with the consent of two-thirds of the Security Council and all five permanent members -- including China, France and Russia. Or to be exact, you must do so 18 times.

Around 150 children spilled out of the jail after the gates were opened as a U.S. military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment.

"The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath Party," he alleged. "Some of these kids had been in there for five years." -- Agence France- Presse, April 8

Besides, it wasn't as if we weren't doing anything. We were. We supported, as we said over and over, a very robust inspections regime. Let us say that again: a very robust inspections regime. True, it wasn't the jails they were inspecting. But that was not the point.

The point is, the inspections were working. Or at least, they would have worked, given enough time. It had only been 12 years, after all. What was the rush?

The euphoria nearly spilled over into a riot. Children pulled at the marines, jumped on their trucks, wanting to shake their hands, touch their cheeks. A single chicken hung in the butcher's window and still the residents wanted to give the Americans something, anything. Cigarette? Money?

"You are owed a favour from the Iraqis," said Ibrahim Shouqyk, a clean and remarkably well-dressed man, considering the abject poverty here. "We dedicate our loyalty to the Americans and the British. We are friends." -- New York Times, April 8

We must explain to the Iraqi people how important, how necessary it was to stop this war. Maybe it doesn't look that way to them, not yet. But, in time, they will understand. Saddam was not the problem. The Americans are the problem.

Iraq was a test case. We had to take a stand. The international community had to draw a line in the sand, to say this aggression will not prevail. For if we appeased this Bush and the cabal of neocons, Likudniks -- oh hell, let's just say it, Jews -- in his administration, where would it end? Which other country would it liberate? Sorry, "liberate."

So, yes, that meant leaving Saddam in power. And yes, it meant leaving the sanctions in place, at least until all this war talk blew over. That is the price of being principled.

English-speaking Iraqis came up to reporters to express their own delight. Among them was Saad Ahmed, a 54-year-old retired English teacher. "We have been waiting for you for a long time," he said. "We are now happier than you.

"You are victorious as far as the war is concerned, but we are victorious in life. We have been living, not as human beings, for more than 30 years." -- Daily Telegraph, April 8

Only do not accuse us of not caring about the ordinary Iraqi citizen. We cared so much we sent our very best troops into battle, our elite Fisks and the feared Republican Pilgers. Did they not describe, with pornographic relish, every oozing orifice on every civilian wounded or dead? Had they been allowed into the torture chambers of the Iraqi secret police, had they been present on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, had they been in Kuwait for the occupation, no doubt they would have done the same for Saddam's numberless victims. And still blamed them on the Americans.

Lance Corporl Brian Cole, 20, of Kansas City, Kan., was bowled over by the 7-year-old girl who handed him a Christmas card with this painstakingly written text: "Thank you for liberate us. And thank you for help us. You are a great army." -- The Associated Press, April 5

We take no pleasure in having been proved right about this conflict, at every single point: right about the massive uprisings in the Arab world that would lead to instability across the region, right about the stretched supply lines and the vulnerability to Iraqi irregulars, right about the "humanitarian disaster" that would leave hundreds of thousands of Iraqis without water and electricity for a full news cycle.

And, as we look forward, we can predict, with utter certainty, further disasters to come, a complete cockup at every turn, just as we have done at each previous stage.

Today it will be the lawlessness, the looting and anarchy and -- oh, damn, it's already starting to subside. Fine, but tomorrow it will be the impossibility of holding the country together, given the deep fissures that divide Iraq's major ethnic groups. Then it will be the supreme folly of appointing an interim government that can have no legitimacy without the participation of the United Nations. After that has been in place for a while, it will be the bungling of the democratic elections we denied would ever take place. Some day, we will get around to proving that it was all about oil.

In the giddy spirit of the day, nothing could quite top the wish list bellowed out by one man in the throng of people greeting American troops from the 101st Airborne Division who marched into town today.

What, the man was asked, did he hope to see now that the Baath Party had been driven from power in his town? What would the Americans bring?

"Democracy," the man said, his voice rising to lift each word to greater prominence. "Whiskey. And sexy!"

The king and queen of the free ride

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A true masterpiece of raging sarcasm!

They had no great love for Saddam Hussein, we knew that--"a terrible man and so on,' in Jean Chretien's devastating indictment...

This is in a nutshell what is wrong w/liberal media & politicians, the Arab world & anti-war protestors when you listen to them describe Saddam Hussein. They'll say something to the effect of: "Oh, believe me, we know there is no love lost for Saddam by the Iraqi people or the rest of the Arab world. But..."

That's it? You'll pour over Arab quote after Arab quote; liberal media article after liberal media article; Democrap quote after democrap quote...and that is their collective moral apprehension of Saddam? "No love lost." "A terrible man and so on." That's like saying Hitler was guilty of committing sins.

You see, for too many Arabs and too many liberals, they just can't get too revved up over crimes against humanity because too much moral revulsion=creeping absolutism. And absolute standards are just oo much to bear for their absolute relativism. Hence, we hear such "devasting indictments" such as Dictator A is a wee bit terrible and we certainly understand why Iraqis were not hugging Saddam statues.

Boy, no wonder these ringing indictments brought Saddam to the point of cringing all thru the 90s. I'm sure this "Boy Dictators will be boy dictators" worldview yielded much positive reform in Saddam's "puppet government."

(And don't get me started on the false premise that a "puppet government" is something new in Iraq)

We saw it all. At every turn, we pointed out how it could all go horribly wrong--no, how it must inevitably end in disaster. And so we were not at all surprised when, just as we had predicted, oil fields across Iraq were blown up by the hundred, when Saddam launched missiles at Tel Aviv, when Israel responded in kind, when the Iranian and Turkish armies poured over the border, and the whole Middle East was set ablaze. The hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who died in the ensuing carnage, the millions of refugees who showed up at camps in Turkey and Jordan--we are not to blame. Not in our name, we had chanted. Not in our name.

I ask you: Doesn't all of the anti-war protest speeches now remind you of Y2K mongerers? And only the "Christian" right has its false prophets?

Not in our name, we had chanted. Not in our name.

Neither can the liberation/freedom of Iraqis be chanted in the liberal name.

Yes, indeed: We, the campus-left, the lifetime adolescents who can never shed our Berkeley or Boulder wardrobe, have a lot to re-educate these Iraqis about the realities of political, philosophical and spiritual bondage...

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