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US
civilian administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer |
The
hate mail said it all: “Iraqis are an ungrateful lot, our boys
are dying to give freedom and now you kill people at the UN…
your (sic) all animals.”
Throughout
the US, dozens of editorials and cartoonists are screaming
racial slurs and epithets at Iraqis and Muslims. One cartoon
went so far as to say that the Qur’an, Islam’s Holy
Scripture, had no mention of the notion of gratitude, but was
abundant in references to death, jihad, war, etc. (The Qur’an
is replete with chapters on tolerance, gratitude, humbleness,
charity, and compassion – but that’s a lesson for another
day).
In
the wake of the tragic attack on the United Nations compound in
Baghdad, which killed 23, including the UN’s point man on
humanitarian relief, and injured dozens, the US media is
abashedly trying to spin the story to blame Iraqis for the
disastrous pit their country has become.
Take
The Buffalo News, for example: A syndicated column from The
Washington Post Writers Group published in The Buffalo News
said, “the Iraqi people need to step up and take more
responsibility for security. By allowing a terrorist resistance
to take hold, they are blowing their chance at becoming a
prosperous, free nation that could lead the Arab world.
Understandably, the Iraqis are disappointed that America has
botched things in the initial months of occupation. But the only
people who can truly safeguard Iraq’s infrastructure - its
pipelines, water supply, power stations - are Iraqis
themselves.”
It
is unfortunate that The Buffalo News quickly helped its readers
forget that it was the US administration in Iraq that dissolved
the Iraqi army, a security force that could have deployed in
Iraqi cities and brought stability and order. Instead, former
Iraqi soldiers, poor and disgruntled, unable to feed their
families or retain any sense of dignity, now shrug their
shoulders. They feel betrayed by the US; and now, US media
blames them for incompetence.
Ten
million Iraqis are unemployed. That is 40 per cent of the Iraqi
population. Can you imagine how grateful America’s working
class would be if 40 per cent of them were unemployed?
The
North Eastern US suffered a massive power outage for three days
and everyone was whining and wheezing. Iraqis laughed. Welcome
to our hell, they said. Could you imagine living in 130 degree
weather for the whole summer? Try it, and then see how grateful
you are. Iraqis still, after four months of “liberation,”
have no electricity, no adequately clean water. Imagine the
Bronx with no showers.
The
day after the attack on UN HQ, US civilian administrator in Iraq
Paul Bremer told the Associated Press “these people
[terrorists] are not content with having killed thousands of
people. They just want to keep killing and killing. But they
won’t have their way.” Such a statement is designed to
mislead the US public. On the one hand, he links the phrase
“thousands of people” with the tragic attacks on the Twin
Towers and Virginia. On the other hand, by making such a
statement in Iraq, he is fundamentally claiming that the people
who attacked the UN HQ are one and the same the people who
perpetrated September 11th. This in fact validates the Bush
administration’s invasion of Iraq, which is already a quagmire
and plagued by so much bungling and mismanagement that the US is
quietly returning to its heated arch-villain – the UN – to
save it in Iraq.
Let’s
not forget that to this date there remains no evidence
whatsoever, not even circumstantial evidence, linking Saddam’s
Baathist regime with Al-Qaeda or the September 11th attacks.
Bremer
might as well have been talking about his trigger-happy
troops who have butchered entire families because they were
nervous, the hot sun was making them dehydrated or they wanted
some shooting practice.
Oh,
sure, Iraqis were liberated from a despot who beat and tortured
them during interrogation, gassed and killed them. Problem is,
Iraqis are still being beaten and tortured during interrogation.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have detailed
accounts of prisoners who were beaten and humiliated, tortured
and left in squalid conditions by coalition troops. Hardly the
act of a benevolent liberator.
And
what of the women of Iraq? Perhaps, they are ungrateful for the
liberation the US forces have brought them, along with the
alarming rise in rape, honour killings, kidnappings, beatings,
and murder.
The
Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq recently sent out a
plea to international organizations saying, “Women are being
shot dead because of their professions… Raped women are being
killed by their own families to clear the ‘shame’ being
brought to their families’ ‘honour’ due to the act of
rape.”
Yes,
what an ungrateful lot because they can’t leave their homes
anymore. Because they are living under a new tyranny called
lawlessness. Yes, how pugnacious of them.
And
the children dying of malnutrition, which the UN reports is back
to mid-1990s levels. “Nevertheless, it shows that 7.7 percent
of children under age five are suffering from acute
malnutrition, compared to last year’s figure of four
percent,” said a UNICEF report in May. Curse them for not
being grateful.
The
Globe and Mail pointed to 12 years of US-sponsored UN sanctions
as having debilitated the public health system in Iraq. “three
of Iraq’s top paediatricians said that although no statistics
are available, they believe the rate of child mortality –
among the highest in the world during the past 12 years – has
risen even higher since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell and the
United States took over governing the country,” reported The
Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon in late June.
Truly,
the Iraqis should be grateful for the sanctions of yesteryear
and the lawlessness of tomorrow.
Thank
God for illuminated columnists like USA Today’s Richard E.
Rubenstein who calls for US troops to withdraw from Iraq. His
rationale is that the US is seen as a liberator when it leaves
Iraq for the Iraqis; now it is seen as an occupier. While the
White House plays the blame game and shifts the burden of
responsibility onto someone else by blaming Saudi Arabia, Syria
and Iran (didn’t these countries warn against an invasion in
the first place?) for the turmoil in Iraq, Rubenstein goes
straight to the core of the dilemma:
“It
makes no difference that some of the resistance forces are
Islamic extremists from other Arab countries. Foreign occupation
attracts these militants to Iraq, just as it alienates the
Iraqis who suffered most under Saddam Hussein’s rule.”
He
concludes by reminding Americans of their wars of liberation:
“Of all people, the heirs of 1776 should understand the
difference between a foreign occupation and national
liberation.”
No,
many predicted the cataclysm that is Iraq today. Writing in the
International Herald Tribune, William Pfaff says, “This
outcome was foreseen. It was dismissed in Washington because of
the radicalism of the neoconservative project, taken up by
President George W. Bush with seemingly little or no grasp of
its sources, objectives or assumptions.”
So
the next time a hungry, unemployed Iraqi, who has to pass
through coalition checkpoints in his own country, passes by the
Ministry of Oil, he will be grateful that it remains the only
building that was undamaged in the war, the only building that
was not looted. The only building functioning perfectly in
Baghdad.
I
wonder what the new hate mail will say…
Firas
Al-Atraqchi
is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in
Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of
experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and
the telecom industry. You can reach him at firas6544@rogers.com
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