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CounterPunch
September
30, 2002
Iraq and the
Vision of the Velociraptors
The Bleeding Edge of Islam
by
KURT NIMMO
As Dubya prepares to invade Iraq -- regardless
of what large segments of humanity may think or say about the
wisdom of such a reckless adventure -- individual members of
the administration are beginning to communicate their vision
of post-war Iraq to those of us who will have to live with the
consequences.
On September 22, Condolezza Rice, US
national security adviser, told The Financial Times the US will
be "completely devoted" to rebuilding Iraq as a democratic
state -- that is after the already demolished state is bombed
again, ostensibly to either kill, capture, or simply demoralize
Saddam Hussein, and punish the Iraqi people for allowing themselves
to be held captive by a totalitarian ruler who has fallen out
of favor with his masters. Rice said the "march of freedom
in the Muslim world" does not "stop at the edge of
Islam." The "values of freedom, democracy and free
enterprise" will stride uninterrupted through Bahrain, Qatar,
and Jordan. People will celebrate, particularly the CEOs of massive
multinational corporations.
Meanwhile, the neocon chicken hawk --
or, as The Economist calls him, the "velociraptor"
-- Paul Wolfowitz, Dubya's deputy secretary of defense and a
former political science professor, does not believe, as he told
The New York Times on September 22, "it's unreasonable to
think that Iraq, properly managed... could turn out to be, I
hesitate to say it, the first Arab democracy... even if it makes
it only Romanian style, that's still such an advance over anywhere
else in the Arab world."
Fractious Romanian style coalition politics
aside, what the Dubya administration -- most recently via the
ruminations of Wolfowitz and Rice -- are shooting for is nothing
short of a neocon rendition of "democracy." This democracy
will be prefabricated in right-wing think tanks, externally and
militarily imposed, and "properly managed" by western
experts who know what is best for primitive, uncivilized Arabs.
It will contain a westernized brand of "freedom," in
other words "free enterprise" ("free," that
is, for multinational corporations). In the absence of Saddam,
possibly General Nizar al-Khazraji -- the field commander responsible
for gassing 5,000 Kurds -- may be acceptable as the "democratic"
figurehead in post-Saddam Iraq. Or maybe Brigadier-General Najib
al-Salihi -- instrumental in the invasion of Kuwait more than
a decade go -- will suffice as a puppet for the long suffering
Iraqi people. Another potential candidate is the embezzler Ahmad
al-Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress. The US has
actively groomed such men since 1990.
In Iran, CIA imposed "democracy"
served well the interests of multinational oil corporations and
defense contractors -- that is, up until 1979 when a popular
revolution ejected the US stooge Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Iranians,
unlike many Americans, remember their recent history well. Iranians
recall how Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the popular and democratically
elected prime minister, was deposed by the CIA in 1953 for the
unpardonable sin of suggesting Iran's oil belonged to Iranians,
not British Petroleum. After Mossadegh was forcibly removed from
office, the Shah went about "modernizing" Iran, a legacy
that included the creation of a CIA-trained SAVAK, a brutal secret
police force that had the dubious honor of attaining the worst
human rights record in the world, according to Amnesty International
in 1976. "The radical fundamentalist regime that rules Iran
today," observes Mark Zapezauer, "could never have
found popular support without the CIA's 1953 coup and the repression
that followed." In other words, the "democracy"
forced on Iran by the US government and the CIA eventually nurtured
the sort of radical Islamic political movements now vehemently
opposed by Dubya and the neocons. Never mind that when radical
Muslims served Washington's purpose -- as in the case of the
Mujahideen in Afghanistan -- they were supported (and subsequently
abandoned).
The Arabs of Iraq, as well as the Persians
of Iran, have the US and the CIA to thank for the brutal dictatorships
they have suffered under for decades. As Andrew and Patrick Cockburn
have shown (Out of the Ashes, The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein,
Verso, 2000), the CIA was instrumental in overthrowing the Iraqi
regime of Abd al-Karim Qassim in 1963 and installing the Baath
Party, a secular Arab nationalist political party that included
a young member named Saddam Hussein. "We came to power on
a CIA train," Ali Saleh Sa'adi, Baath Party secretary general,
has admitted. Even though the Iraqi people were fond of Qassim,
this did not stop the Baathists from executing him and showing
his body on Iraqi television and in the newspapers. Following
the coup, the CIA gave the Baath a laundry list of communists
and others it wanted assassinated. Years later, the administration
of Reagan, with the help of William Casey and the CIA, "personally
spearheaded the effort to insure that Iraq had sufficient military
weapons, ammunition and vehicles to avoid losing the Iran-Iraq
war," according to former NSC staffer Howard Teicher. Reagan
wanted to play Iraq and Iran off each other by stoking the flames
of war, a geopolitical chess game that resulted in the death
of 600,000 Iranians and 400,000 Iraqis.
Condi Rice seems to think Jordan is a
"democracy," at least partially. The writer Rami Khouri,
who likely finds his definition of democracy in common dictionaries
like most people, would probably beg to differ with Rice. "What
Jordan is in reality is a somewhat disguised police state run
by the monarchy, the army, and the vast intelligence apparatus,"
writes Khouri. "This 'Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan' uses
a variety of sophisticated tactics to co-opt, neutralize, and
repress all serious opposition -- political or intellectual."
Rice may wish to consult with Leith Shubeilath regarding the
current state of political freedom in Jordan. Shubeilath, an
engineer by trade, was thrown in a Jordanian prison for making
the mistake of demanding political reforms. "This absolute
rule we have is like the gods on Mount Olympus," Shubeilath
told Robert Fisk, "they may differ among themselves about
who takes what but they dominate the people and no one has the
right to question them." According to Amnesty International,
hundreds of people are routinely arrested in Jordan for political
reasons. The security and prison services often hold dissidents
incommunicado and tortures them. The State Security Court --
a military court of the sort that would likely warm the cockles
of John Ashcroft's heart -- prosecutes political prisoners without
bothering to provide safeguards for fair trials.
It would seem the only major bone the
Dubya neocons have to pick with Qatar and Bahrain is their lack
of support for the invasion of Iraq. Qatar, of course, hosts
al-Jazeera, which the Bushites don't appreciate, mostly because
the news broadcaster tells Arab viewers things they would never
hear on CNN, but also because al-Jazeera has the temerity to
run bin Laden interviews without censoring them, as American
media corporations did after a sharp dressing down by Condi Rice
last year. No doubt Washington is concerned about Arabs making
up their own minds on Middle Eastern issues without the input
of the official US propaganda services, CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc.
Back in October, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with the
Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and asked him
to "restrain" al-Jazeera. So angry is the Dubya regime
over the freedom of press expressed by al-Jazeera that it not
only dropped a 500-pound bomb on its Kabul studio last November,
but is also holding one of its employees -- a Sudanese cameraman
captured in Afghanistan -- at the US Navy concentration camp
at Guantanamo. Anyway, once Qatar is fully "democratized"
in the way Rice, Wolfowitz, and other Dubya neocons deem appropriate,
al-Jazeera will be either yanked off the air or reduced to running
re-runs of Disney's "Aladdin" and "Kazaam."
As for Bahrain, the diminutive oil nation
is indisputably the least democratic Arab nation on Condi's list,
primarily because lately it has arrived at its own conclusions
without asking Washington for permission -- and also because
Bahrain is organizing an anti-war coalition, of sorts. Prime
Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Sulman al-Khalifa is asking other
Arab and Muslim states to firmly reject Dubya's Iraq attack.
"There is a strong intention to strike and occupy Iraq,
and a clear Arab and Muslim stance is required," the Bahrain
Tribune daily quoted the Sheikh as recently saying. This is a
problem because Bahrain is "home" to the US Navy Fifth
Fleet. If the prime minister of Bahrain insists on peace and
sanity -- and setting off fire alarms about the Iraq attack seriously
harming "the whole region" -- Condi and Bush may soon
consider Bahrain only marginally less troublesome than Iraq.
The problem with the Arab world, to quote
Defense Secretary Rummy, is they -- and, indeed, much of the
rest of the world -- think in "pre-9/11 terms," which
is to say most people find Dubya's mad rush to war in search
of empire scary and homicidal. The Dubya military regime may
attempt to smash through the "edge of Islam" with Boeing
B-2 Stealth bombers and one million dollar per unit AGM-86B Boeing
cruise missiles, but in the process they will likely initiate
a form of social upheaval unknown in the Arab world (with the
distinct exception of Palestine).
Neocons consistently misread history
-- when they bother to read it all -- and believe military power
is an invincible and indomitable force. "The Arab street
has fallen silent," the neocon Charles Krauthammer wrote
in The Washington Post late last year, "because the United
States astonished the street with one of history's great shows
of arms." Statements such as Krauthammer's not only reveal
deeply seated racism, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the
human spirit and history. People struggling to free themselves
from oppression may be "astonished" by the murderous
capability of laser guided GBU-28 bunker buster bombs, but such
terrible munitions do not diminish the desire to resist. In fact,
as the Vietnamese adequately demonstrated more than a quarter
of a century ago, it serves to redouble their determination to
fight on and eventually prevail against terrible odds -- and
terrible machinery.
"Far from being the terrorists of
the world, the Islamic peoples have been its victims, principally
the victims of US fundamentalism, whose power, in all its forms
-- military, strategic, and economic -- is the greatest source
of terrorism on Earth," John Pilger wrote in Hidden Agendas.
"People are neither still nor stupid. They see their independence
compromised, their resources and land and the lives of their
children taken away, and their accusing fingers increasingly
point north: to the great enclaves of plunder and privilege.
Inevitably, terror breeds terror and more fanaticism. But how
patient the oppressed have been. Their distant voices of rage
are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalized places
have at last come home."
Kurt Nimmo
is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. He can be reached at: nimmo@zianet.com
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September
21 / 22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
An Entire
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of Thieves
Tom Gorman
The Press & Sabra
and Shatila
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By the Hand
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From Above:
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The Ann Coulter Test
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Doing as the
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The Bush Victory
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Peter Lee
Why Bush
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20 Questions
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Cheney's
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The Rape
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War with
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Ralph Nader
How Congress
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Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
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Rep. Cynthia
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Goodbye
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Jeffrey St.
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Cancerous
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Born Under a Bad Sky
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Smoking
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