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Among the letters I receive
about Iraq a few are clearly written by demented people. Their
paranoid style is easily recognizable. They use capital letters
to distinguish the forces of darkness and the forces of light
in Iraq. They have a simple-minded, conspiratorial explanation
for the war. They are ignorant of well-substantiated facts about
Iraq and the Middle East. They are openly contemptuous of critics
who do not share their crystal-clear vision of events.
I was astonished, reading your
speech on the Middle East delivered to the Los Angeles World
Affairs Council on August 1, to find all the traits of those
insane letter writers. There is even the same mad person's obsessive
capitalization. In the complex crises in the Middle East and
beyond you say you see primarily 'a struggle between what I will
call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam.' Your
vision is an apocalyptic one. You see 'an elemental struggle
about values' and it turns out that the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq 'were not just about changing regimes but changing
value systems. The banner was not actually "regime change"
it was "values change."'
Some of this is syrupy guff
much along the lines that Private Eye's fictional Tony
Blair, the Vicar of St Albans, often utters. But if taken seriously
it means that the US and Britain intervened in Afghanistan and
Iraq to interfere with the Muslim religion and to support those
Muslims who agree with Tony Blair's interpretation of their
faith. In other words the claim by the Islamic fighters in Iraq
is that their religion is under attack by new crusaders from
the west is, by your admission, entirely correct. A further deeply
disturbing aspect of your speech is its ignorance. Sometimes
this is even admitted. In years before 9/11 you say "We
had barely heard of the Taliban." But the Taliban, backed
by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, had been taking control of Afghanistan
for years. Surely you had more than barely heard of them.
As with so many paranoid single
cause-explanations of the world your speech shows blindness
to other, often fundamental, developments. In Iraq this means
not only that the US and British governments have no idea what
is going on but, because they can never admit error, they are
unable to devise new policies to replace those that have failed.
This has been the pattern of the last three years since the
fall of Saddam Hussein. For instance you
say that it is Muslim religious extremism alone which causes
violence in the region and their actions have nothing to do
with the US occupation. But all the evidence is to the contrary.
A poll by the Ministry of Defence last year showed that 82 per
cent of Iraqis want US and British forces to withdraw from the
country.
I have been visiting Iraq since
1978 and have been spending half my time in the country since
the fall of Saddam Hussein. It was evident from the summer of
2003 that the five million string Sunni community supported
armed resistance. Whenever I went to where an American soldier
had been killed or wounded local people were dancing with joy.
It was this which gave strength to extreme Islamic groups. They
had a friendly environment in which to operate. Al Qaeda had
no base in Iraq before 2003; its few adherents' only base was
in the Kurdish mountains beyond the control of Baghdad. It was
entirely the doing of George Bush and yourself that they have
now established themselves in Iraq and grow stronger by the
day. Instead you suggest that the real problem is that 'Syria
allowed Al-Qaeda operatives to cross the border.'
Reactionary Islam does not
fear elections because it wins them. The victors in the last
election in Iraq in December 2005 were the Shia and Sunni religious
parties among the Arabs and the Kurdish parties. The main secular
group under Iyad Allawi, despite strong support from the US and
Britain, did poorly at the polls. Traditional Islam is growing
stronger in Sunni Iraq because it has shown that it can fight
the foreign invader in a way that secular nationalists, like
Saddam Hussein, demonstrably failed. Among the Shia it is the
followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the nationalist cleric, who won
30 seats in the Iraqi parliament. The political success stories
in Iraq are of those who combine Islam, nationalism and an ability
to fight. The US, with Britain trotting along behind, may soon
find it embroiled in a war with the 15-16 million strong Shia
community in Iraq as well as with the Sunni.
Your speech is essentially
a 'neo-con' view of Iraq. It is frighteningly unaware of reality
on the ground. Your own departing ambassador William Patey wrote
in a memo to you leaked last week that a civil war was more
likely than a democracy. Some 3,000 civilians were killed in
June. Gen John Abizaid, the top US commander in the Middle East,
told a Senate Committee on Thursday that "I believe that
the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it,
in Baghdad in particular, and that it not stopped, it is possible
that Iraq could move towards civil war."
In the eyes of most Iraqis
the civil war started six months ago if not before. There are
now two wars going on in Iraq: one is between Shia and Sunni
and the second between insurgents and occupiers. Iraq is splitting
apart. The country may survive as a geographical expression
but not more. Twice in the last century British prime ministers
claimed they had discovered the source of all evil in the Middle
East. Lloyd George wanted to fight Ataturk and Turkey in 1922
and lost office immediately. Anthony Eden went to war to overthrow
Nasser in 1956 with equally grim consequences for himself. Your
intervention in Iraq has been even more disastrous from the
British point of view.
I only hope al Qaeda, Hezbollah
or Hamas do not translate your speech into Arabic since every
paranoid paragraph confirms their claim that they are battling
a western crusade against Islam.
Patrick Cockburn writes for the Independent
of London and CounterPunch. He is the author of the Broken
Boy.
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