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06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:"Awakening" Into Nightmare: Seeding More Sectarian War in IraqTuesday, 16 September 2008The unprovoked invasion and military occupation was always about "unipolar dominance" of geopolitical affairs, strategic sway over the oil lands -- and the never-ending expansion of a militarist, authoritarian, war-profiteering regime at home.
As many people have noted, the drop in violence in Iraq from indescribably hellish to merely unbearably horrific was not due to the actual "surge" itself -- the much vaunted increase in troop levels ordered by George "W for Widowmaker" Bush -- but to a number of other factors. The Iranian-brokered stand-down of the Mahdi Army, for example. And the fact that the frenzy of "ethnic cleansing" before the surge had walled much of the country into separate enclaves, reducing the need for sectarian militias to conquer new territory. And the fact that four million Iraqis had fled their homes, and millions more stayed hunkered down to avoid being killed by the occupying forces and the various violent extremists that the American invasion had loosed upon the land. One of the chief reasons for the relative decrease in the slaughter engendered by the American invasion and occupation, of course, was the policy of buying off violent Sunni extremists and putting them on the American payroll. This tactic began well before the surge, and, in conjunction with the strategic withdrawal of the Mahdi Army, has proven effective in lowering the level of violence somewhat. The tactic is itself largely a matter of "ethnic cleansing," as America's new hired guns were given control over the dwindling Sunni enclaves. But from Andrew Jackson to David Petraeus, ethnic cleansing is the American way, so no one really cares about that. Kill 'em, pen 'em up, move 'em out on trails of tears, put 'em under the rule of local strongmen: that's just what you do with the lesser races, it's not even a matter of debate in polite society. But there is one other thing you can always do with the lesser breeds: abandon 'em when they no longer serve your purpose. And that's what the Americans are doing now with al-Sahwa, the "Sons of Iraq," the warriors of the Sunni "Awakening": turning them over to the tender mercies of the Shiite-dominated security organs of the American-installed Iraqi government. As of October 1, the Sunni militias who threw in their lot -- and their guns -- with the American occupiers that had previously fought will be cut loose from the U.S. payroll. Already, the Baghdad government is reneging on promises to take the "Awakening" gangs into the official military and security forces. What's more, they have begun arresting al-Sahwa members for their actions before they joined forces with Widowmaker Bush. The Guardian reports:
In other words, the "Sons of Iraq" were happy to welcome any force that would help them kill Americans. But when the Sunni ultra-extremists grouped loosely under the rubric al Qaeda tried to replicate the Americans and impose their own rule by force, the Iraqi tribesmen made a cynical pact with the foreign occupiers in order to take care of a local threat. Many if not most of these awakened sons would be happy to go back to killing Americans as soon as the spigot dries up. But that is not Washington's concern. The al-Sahwa movement has served its primary purpose, which was almost entirely aimed at American domestic politics, and not at the security of the conquered people of Iraq. The Bush Administration's main goal in the past two years has been to keep the war in Iraq going, buying time to create more and more deeply-rooted "facts on the ground" that will entrench a permanent American military presence -- and political domination -- in Iraq. But the howling spiral of violence in 2006 came very close to making the bipartisan foreign policy elite in Washington lose their collective nerve: hence the creation of the "Iraq Study Group," where the usual gang of Establishment heavyweights actually took a few tentative steps toward exploring a few tentative possibilities for maybe winding down the war. The Bush Faction would have none of that. The war must go on, the war must be intensified: Iraq is ours, damn it, and we're going to keep it! But they had to lower the political heat. The American establishment, the American media, and the American people, obviously didn't care about the war crime itself -- the brutal rape and destruction of an entire country in an unprovoked act of aggression. But they didn't like to see those death tolls rising in Iraq every day. It made everybody feel wiggly, put in a damper on the tailgate parties and what all. You even had crazy women like Cindy Sheehan running around the country, stirring people up about "needless death" and stuff. So they were willing to try anything to get those numbers down. Buy off the insurgents, give medals to guys who had been ripping out American guts the day before? Sure. Look the other way while your Baghdad protégés ran to Tehran for help? Yeah, why not? (It didn't mean you couldn't always "crush the ants" in Iran later on.) Strain your already overburdened soldiers to the breaking point with longer and longer deployments in a brutal -- and brutalizing -- criminal action? No prob, dude. They're just cannon fodder anyway: crackers, wetbacks, jigaboos, who the hell cares? And so the death tolls fell. Although, as we noted above, the "surge" plan that Bush adopted from a neo-con think tank had nothing to do with it. How do we know this? Because the "surge" had already been tried before, and failed miserably. As I noted back in early 2007:
Now the troop surge is ending, and as with "Lightning," its ineffectual effects are unraveling. Sectarian war will swiftly reignite if the Sunni "Sons" feel they are being shafted by the Shiite-led government. The factions that the Bush Administration has empowered in Iraq, pretending they are ordinary political parties in a nascent democracy, will stand revealed, once again, for what they really are: armed, violent, sectarian extremist groups battling ruthlessly for domination. But a rise in sectarian violence will not displease the Bush Faction now. In fact, it would be a nice, sharp lesson for the Baghdad government, which has posturing and foot-dragging on the agreement for continuing the American military presence in Iraq. It will teach the uppity al-Maliki how much he still needs American muscle to keep his own gang in clover. And of course, it will tie the hands of the next American president -- especially as both Obama and McCain agree that "facts on the ground" will determine when and if they withdraw "combat troops" from Iraq (although both plan on leaving an unspecified number of military forces in the conquered land, no matter what). In any case, it will take at least a few weeks after the October 1 cut-off for the tensions between al-Sahwa and the government to reach critical mass, so it will have no effect on the American election. Thus the "Sons" have served their purpose on the American payroll. They helped Bush sustain his war crime at the highest level to the end of his term. Now, cut loose, harassed and angry, they will help create the conditions that will lock in a vast American military presence in Iraq for years and years to come. That was the whole purpose of the invasion, after all. As Bush's "brain trust" at the Project for the New American Century" put it plainly back in September 2000:
It was never about Saddam Hussein, an ex-CIA asset who could have been bought off as easily as "the Sons of Iraq." It was never about terrorism, about 9/11, or about freedom and democracy.
It was never about Saddam Hussein, an ex-CIA asset who could have been bought off as easily as "the Sons of Iraq." It was never about terrorism, it was never about 9/11, it was never about freedom and democracy. It was always about dominance, "unipolar dominance" of geopolitical affairs, strategic sway over the oil lands -- and the never-ending expansion of a militarist, authoritarian, war-profiteering regime at home. That's what it's still about: today, tomorrow, and on and on into the darkening future. Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.This column is republished here with the permission of the author. Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on September 16, 2008. |
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