Tag Archives: Iraq

Political Rants

Bodies count.

Though you probably didn’t hear about it on the evening news or NPR, the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (of which Physicians for Social Responsibility is a member) released a report on casualties of the so-called “war on terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The toll is conservatively estimated at 1.3 million in total, with 1 million in Iraq killed as a result of our 2003 invasion. Anyone familiar with the figures breezily tossed around by the last two administrations might be surprised by this total. (I recall W. Bush casually offering 30,000, as if guessing the number of marbles in a jar.) Actually, the number is roughly in line with what the Iraq Study Group estimated in 2005-06.

This is what hegemony looks likeNo matter – this wasn’t worthy of comment, except on Democracy Now! That’s not surprising. We can’t acknowledge the magnitude of our own crimes, only those of our official enemies. Assad is an execrable mass murderer, right? Sure he is. But has he killed as many as we have over the past fifteen years? Not nearly. How about ISIS? Killer crackheads, to be sure. But pikers next to us. Absolute freaking amateurs. We have a long tradition of outdoing those we criticize. No one denounced the Russians for their invasion of Afghanistan more than we did; and yet here we are, 14 years into our own Afghan war, no end in sight. Noble mission vs. international crime. Curiously, the former has a higher body count.

This is nothing new. We’ve just passed the fiftieth anniversary of our invasion of South Vietnam – the arrival of the first contingent of combat units in the country. If they think about it at all, most Americans generally think the number of dead in the Vietnam war as being in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps – maybe 300,000. Given that millions were killed, millions more gravely wounded, this is akin to holocaust denial. Kind of sickening. It’s estimated that about 40,000 Vietnamese have died since the war due to unexploded ordinance alone – see this recent article in the Nation.

Unless we come to terms with this as a people, we will be condemned to repeat it. We already have, and we will again. But we don’t have to. It’s up to us.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Enemy factory.

There was some reporting by Patrick Cockburn this week about ISIS and the planned campaign against the group in Mosul, which is slated to begin in April. Cockburn says that the World Food Program is putting resources in place to handle a mass exodus of Sunni residents from the city, perhaps as many as a million. This is expected because the main fighting force that would retake the city will likely consist of Shia militia. Sunnis are terrified of these forces – much more so than they fear ISIS – hence they will take their chances on the highway rather than on the wrong end of the knife.

The latest mad dog by-product of bad policy.So, once again, we are on the verge of creating another catastrophe in Iraq, the predictable consequences of which will be a further radicalization of the Sunni community, just as our 2003 invasion gave rise to Al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor of ISIS. Same story, over and over again, and we somehow expect a different ending. Our imperial foreign policy is an enemy manufacturing machine, as the past sixty years have amply demonstrated. Quite an efficient system; one generation is caught up with fighting the jihadists spawned by the one that preceded it.

We could start at any point since World War II. Our sponsored coup in Iran in 1953 ushered in the Shah who was replaced a generation later by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we are constantly threatening with war. The CIA had some relationship with Saddam Hussein as early as the late 1950s, when he attempted to assassinate then-Iraqi leader Colonel Qasim, and later we bankrolled and supported his eight-year war against Iran. (Later, of course, the love affair soured.) Our support for jihadists in the Afghan war of the 1980s gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which are now our principle enemies. And of course, ISIS is Al Qaeda in Iraq 2.0. The gestation period seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

If we renew this war and kill thousands and thousands more, who can we expect to be fighting five, ten, fifteen years from now?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

On “death cults”.

The president gave a speech this week about what labels to use in the prosecution of our now 14 year old war on terror. Apparently prompted by the usual bating about his supposed flaccidness in attacking radical Muslims, Obama attempted to frame the discussion in a way similar to though a bit more nuanced than George W. Bush – we’re fighting terrorists who seek the legitimacy of a major religion while violating its central tenets. We need the cooperation of Muslims, not their enmity. They’re not religious leaders; they’re terrorists.

More intimidating than a beheading.Okay, that’s all good. But as the president lists all of the horrors Islamic extremists have unleashed onto the world, there’s one question that begs to be asked: is ISIS responsible for more death than we are? How many Muslims have we dispatched over the last 15 years? Sure, ISIS is a bunch of crackheads, thugs, and killers. But they are bush league next to us. As all of these war-fevered pundits and Congresspeople run around fulminating over the “death cult” that is ISIS, do they give even a passing thought to our own 70 year history of threatening the entire planet with nuclear destruction? That’s not a “death cult”?

Finally, it’s patently obvious what ISIS is doing. They are trying to goad us into doing something really stupid and self-destructive. They saw what happened to the United States when we were stupid enough to let our government drive us into an invasion of Iraq. It killed thousands of us, wounded tens of thousands, and drove the American global enterprise to the brink of collapse. It built up a level of hatred of the United States around the world that was way beyond anything that preceded it. Best of all (from their perspective), it created the scorched landscape from which rose Al Qaeda in Iraq, the immediate predecessor of ISIS. How would American “boots on the ground” not be good news for ISIS?

Recent polls show the propaganda campaign is working – something like 57% of Americans think we should send troops into the fight against ISIS. A couple of things: we’re already there in the thousands. Second …. Would any of these folks send their own kids … or go themselves?

Doubt it.

Luv u,

jp