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No
sooner had the War Party declared victory in Iraq and started
looking
impatiently around for their next victim, when their supposed
easy conquest began to fall
apart at the seams. The laptop field marshals and the
Chickenhawk Brigade barely had time to pound out their demand
that the peaceniks repent before it dawned on them that they
might be the ones called to do a little recanting.
The
first unmistakable indication that something wasn't quite
right in "liberated" Iraq was when a large number
of Shi'a Muslims – Arabic
television claims 20,000, Western media reported 5,000
– showed up in Nassiriya, chanting "No
to America, No to Saddam!" This happened on the same
day that the newly appointed administrative viceroy, retired
General Jay Garner, had called a meeting to start piecing
together an Iraqi front for the U.S. military occupation.
Most organized groupings boycotted
the Pentagon-sponsored pow-wow. Not
even neocon stooge Ahmed Chalabi attended, for fear of
being seen for what he is – Jay Garner's bought
and paid for butt boy.
Gee,
what happened to all those cheering, grateful Iraqis who were
going to rise up and make an invasion practically superfluous?
They're rising up, alright – against us!
A
line in the sand, so to speak, was crossed when, the next
day, U.S. troops fired directly into a crowd of demonstrators
in the northern city of Mosul, killing
at least 10. As the unrest continues, the casualties are
mounting
by the
hour. The majority Arab population of the city rose up
against the prospect of having Mashaan Juburi – a former
commander of Saddam Hussein's personal bodyguards – ensconced
by the occupation forces as regional overlord. His Excellency,
Lord Juburi, also led the Iraqi military units that crushed
a 1991 uprising
in the predominantly Shi'a southern portion of the country.
Yes,
it was the same rebellion that the U.S. encouraged, and then
abandoned at the last minute. Worse than the Bay
of Pigs. Thousands were slaughtered, most of them civilians,
and a good number of the armed rebels fled to Iran, where
they were housed and trained by the Iranians. Today, now that
the Ba'athist monolith has been shattered at the top ,the
Teheran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI) is by far the largest cohesive political-military
formation in the country.
Now,
they're back….
Making
a clear bid for power on Wednesday morning, the son of SCIRI's
ayatollah-in-chief, Abdelaziz
Hakim, made a grand entry into in the southern Iraqi city
of Kut to the cheers of thousands. Meanwhile, back in Teheran,
the Ayatollah
Muhammad Baqr-al-Hakin, the aspiring Iraqi Khomeini, announced
that his followers and supporters should gather in Karbala
for the anniversary of Imam Hussein's death, in 680 A.D.,
that sundered the Shi'a from the Sunni and began an endless
factional blood feud.
That
should be some wing-ding.
The
other major Islamic party in Iraq is the Da'wa
group, which has several thousand men under arms and was responsible
for almost killing Saddam's son, Uday, and was viciously repressed
under the Ba'athist regime. They are supposed to be the moderates,
but their espousal of an Islamic republic ruled by clerics
hardly fits the announced U.S. intention to make Iraq into
a model of democracy in the region. Hassan al-Jabri, a member
of Da'wa's political office, is cited
by the Financial Times as declaring that they'd had
quite enough of enforced secularism under the Ba'athists,
thank you:
"Under
Saddam Hussein we experienced the purest form of secularism
and we do not want to see it again."
The
Times goes on to note that "such views, if substantiated
by the leaders in Baghdad, put Da'wa at variance with the
US vision for Iraq under which religious leaders would remain
outside politics." Yeah, boys, tell
it to Pat Robertson, why don't you?
Our
deluded neocons, still drunk with their Pyrrhic "victory,"
are already fixated on their next conquest, and for a look
at the next few items on their itinerary, take a look at what
Michael "creative
destruction is our middle name" Ledeen has in the
works. Writing in the (UK) Spectator, Ledeen
announces that the Coalition of the Conquerors is just
warming up. Iraq was only a practice run, and the war, far
from being over, has barely begun. He promises us "a
long war," one spreading to "many countries"
– as many as can be framed and convicted of "supporting
the terrorists." Al Qaeda is no longer even mentioned.
Now it's Hizbollah we're supposed to be after, and Syria,
which have always been the main bulwark of armed resistance
to Israel.
Up
until the invasion of Iraq, Hizbollah foreswore attacks on
U.S. targets: their quarrel, they said, was with Israel alone.
Yet the conquest of Iraq has merged Israeli and American interests
so that they're indistinguishable: it won't be long before
their methods are lined up. General
Jay Garner no doubt picked up a few occupation do's and
don'ts when he took
a trip to Israel sponsored by the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). I guess
that's why he praised Israel's increasingly brutal treatment
of the Palestinians as showing "restraint."
JINSA,
which Ledeen used to head up, is the closest thing we have
in the U.S. to an outpost of the Israeli Defense Force. So
kneejerk is their unconditional support for Israel, that this
purportedly American organization openly declares that "Israel
Has the Right to Sell Radar Planes to China." Perhaps
a few of the boys in the Pentagon might be slightly perturbed
by that. But not enough to nix JINSA's network within the
U.S. military: JINSA not only sponsors visits to Israel by
top U.S. military officials, it also conducts seminars for
up-and-coming officers in all branches of the armed services.
JINSA also believes Israel has the right to expect a steady
stream of U.S. taxpayers' dollars to build a regional military
machine equal if not superior to the American presence – and
fully
outfitted with weapons of mass destruction.
Clearly
following Ariel
Sharon's agenda of spreading the war to take on Israel's
enemies in Iran and Syria, Ledeen accuses both of being "engaged
in a desperate terrorist campaign against coalition forces
in Iraq."
The
proof? In the case of the latter, Ledeen cites the first interview
with Syrian President Bashar Assad in recent memory:
"Assad
incautiously told an interviewer that just because Iraq was
conquered did not mean that the coalition had won. He said
that the enemies of Britain and the United States would have
to be patient, just as they were in Lebanon in the 1980s and
1990s, driving the United States and Israel out of the country
by means of terrorist attacks."
In
his
interview with Al Safir, a newspaper published
in Lebanon, Assad uttered nothing even remotely resembling
what would amount to a public death wish. The Syrian President
merely stated what is obvious to every expert on the region
outside the JINSA-American
Likudnik orbit:
"No
doubt that the U.S. is a super-power capable of conquering
a relatively small country, but is it able to control it?
The U.S. and Britain are incapable of controlling all of Iraq."
As
the Shi'a of Mosul,
Nassiriya,
and Basra
all rise up in protest, shouting that old familiar refrain
of "Yankee Go Home!", can anyone honestly blame
it on the secular Syrians, who, like Saddam, ruthlessly
suppressed Muslim fundamentalist uprisings with Assyrian
ferocity? Assad's prediction that Iraq will become another
Lebanon is happening, but this is hardly due to the Syrian
President: a
few night goggles don't make a revolution.
In
view of Iran's growing sphere of influence in Iraq, it seems
rather disingenuous to destroy the Sunni minority government
run by the Ba'ath Party and then deny any responsibility for
the Shi'ite-y outcome. The U.S. has made a gift of Iraq to
Teheran, reigniting the religious passions that overthrew
the U.S.-backed Shah
Reza Pahlavi of Iran and propelled Khomeini to power.
As
Oliver
North's liaison to the Israelis in negotiating the "Contra-gate"
arms-for-hostages deal with Teheran, Ledeen has always
had a special interest in all things Iranian. It turns out
he is represented by the
same booking agency that sponsors talks by the current
Pahlavi pretender to
the Persian throne, and has boosted the exiled "Shah"
to replace the Islamic regime once the tanks get rolling.
One can only wonder if that overwhelming wave of nostalgia
for the Pahlavi dynasty Ledeen anticipates will include a
popular demand for the return of the dreaded SAVAK
secret police. This is the sort of "democratic revolution"
Ledeen says he wants to "unleash" on Iran, and the
entire region.
So,
whatever happened to those cheering crowds hailing their "liberators"
in the streets of Iraqi cities, so often compared to the French
cheering the Allies as they marched through the streets of
Paris? Go ask Michael Ledeen. I'm sure he has a ready explanation
for the fickle nature of our phantom victory.
In
light of the unfolding disaster, it is fair to ask: what could
possibly be the motive behind such an obviously crazed strategy?
The end result can only be the destruction of the region,
with the U.S. military cutting a huge swath of devastation
through the heart of the Middle East, effectively leveling
those Arab states that still resist Israel's will to expand.
This is the "creative
destruction" Ledeen celebrated in his book, The
Terror Masters, and in many articles and venues. Think
of it as the Middle Eastern equivalent of the infamous "Morgenthau
Plan" – which sought to reduce Germany, after World
War II, to a
completely de-industrialized pastoral society that could
never again mount a military effort of any kind, doomed to
subsist in a permanent Third World stasis. FDR forced Churchill
to agree to it, threatening
to withhold much-needed U.S. aid to the Brits if he didn't,
but lucky for the Germans the vindictive old cripple died
before he could fully implement his mad revenge. The draconian
plan was nixed by Truman.
If
Ledeen and his coterie have their way, the Muslim and Arab
peoples of the Middle East will have no such luck.
–
Justin Raimondo
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