Aftermath

If you watch CNN and other US news sources you only get a small taste of the anarchy thayt has descended on Baghdad and other "Coalition" controlled areas. If you watch European TV, like the BBC, or Canadaian TV you get a whole other perspective.

Today I was watching a British correspondent describing Baghdad for the CBC. His opening statement was "The honeymoon is over if there was ever a wedding". He went on to talk about the jubilation in the streets yesterday as the statue was torn down (and lets be honest here there were only a couple of hundred people in the streets there out of a population of 5 million or so, not exactly representative. As one journalist mentioned at the time, but not mentioned on CNN, there were almost as many journalists and cameras there as tyhere were iraqis) and then compared it to today, a very short 24 hours later. Today he said it is fear and anger that is ruling Baghdad's streets. Looting is totally out of control and anarchy has descended upon Baghdad. People are afraid to go into the streets for fear of being shot by

1. Americans
2. Iraqi soldiers
3. rioting, looting Iraqis

Shelley astutely points out that it is far too early for those who supported this war from the start to begin celebrating and certainly too early to expect any kind of mea culpa from those who opposed it. This was the easy part and the part no one doubted could be accomplished. No one who opposed the war is sorry to see Saddam and his party gone, but that was never the point.

As Shelley points out:

If we were concerned about the people of Iraq, we would have brought the different Iraqi leaders together before the war and reached agreement about an interim goverment. We would have stablized each region as we pushed through, rather than enter, blast, kill Iraqi soldiers, and move on. Because we did not stablize the areas we moved through, we left hungry, thirsty people in our wake who are now being victimized by thieves and murders. We left aid workers unable to enter areas because fighting still continues.

We have Ahmed Chalabi, the erstwhile leader in exile of the Iraqi oppposition trying to do an end run around the US and solidify a powr base for himself in Iran with or without the US' blessing. No big surprise there, it's been obviuos for some time that the US has not been totally upfront with the opposition forces and consequently they have become suspicious of what the US is intending their role to be in post-war Iraq.

THen here is the case of the two muslim religious leaders murdered today outside a mosque

bq.Abdul Majid al-Khoei returned to Iraq from exile in London only last week.

He was one of two Muslim leaders hacked to death outside the Ali Mosque, one of the holiest sites for Shia Muslims.

The other was cleric Haider Kelidar, whom according to Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera, had worked for Saddam Hussein's ministry of religious affairs.

Mr Khoei, 41, was among those expected to have taken part in a London-proposed conference on the future of Iraq after the war

Why were they not protected? Is it open season on anyone who had any connection to tha Ba'ath party now - can any Iraqi murder another and say it was revenge for the years of abuse? . Hell, in this case one of them was a Ba'athist hte other was a supporter of the US and the invasion. It's just killing for the sake of killing. That's anarchy

Yeah yeah the right wingers will whine that it's a war zone and the troops are too busy fighting to police the public as well. Well that won't do. As shelley pointed out they should have proceeded much slower and secured each are thoroughly as hey went along, slowly drawing a noose around Bagdhad with all the territory outside completely controlled, with relief services being provided in those areas. After all what was the rush? The Iraqi forces were already as prepared as they could get, long before the first US, er coalition, troops crossed the border. Taking longer wouldn't have made the taking of Bagdhad any more dangerous or lengthy. What it would have done is ensured that Saddam couldn't escape from Bagdhad like it appears he has along with a significant number of his Republican Guard, and it would have ensured the humanitarian care in the captured regions that the civilians there so surely deserve.

Well we all know that they couldn't do that. It would have taken a lot more troops and that uppity Colin Powell would have got his way in the planning by getting enough troops to do the job properly and Rummy wouldn't have had the opportunity to pklay Lawrence of Arabia and plot his own campaign. It was nothing short ofrevolting to watch the talking heads yesterday, especially on CNN, take swipes at those who said Rummy's plan was a bad one. THey all went on about how it worked becayuse can't you see we just took Baghdad with very few casualties. For crying out loud, given the lack of modern weapons and the dissarray in the Iraqi Command and Control, a troop of boy scouts with pea shooters could have defeated them (excuse my artistic license but you get the point). No one, at least no one in their right mind, ever doubted that the US could beat such an inferior force and do it rather quickly. The Iraqi army never stood a chance. That's never been disputed. It is however that very fact that made it possible and morally imperative that they look asfter the areas that they have conquered before they move on to more. Needless to say moral imperatives terra icognito for the current administration.

As the remmnants of the Saddam regime get cleaned up the real challenges will begin. Is the US going to copy the Brits and just turn the areas over to tribal leaders (oh that would be a good thing to do woulsdn't it - they were all working for Saddam - that's how they stayed alive - and democracy is certainly not in their lexicon). Are they going to let the UN determine how Iraq shapes itself into democracy? Or are they just going to rul;e as an imperialistic power as PNAC and NSSUSA documentation strongly suggests is the plan?

We already see Rummy lining Syria up for the next war and I for one think it quite likely. Syria and Lebanon have both been thorns in Israel's side since the state was formed. The prime movers and shakers in the neocons, who after all are the ones dictating foreign policy in Washington these days, all have very strong ties to Israel. I think it is just about a given that the US will take on Syria and Iran in order to remove state interference with the Likud's treatment of the Palestinians., opening the way for Sgaron and his ilk to pursue an even greater campaign of genocide in the West Bank and to finally get his and the other extreme Likud members wish of expelling all the Palestinians from their current terrirtories and push them into Syria which by then the US will control.

Has anyone noticed how many Palestinians have been killed since the start of Gulf War II? It's been quite a few and they were, from what I've seen, mostly unprovoked killings - heard of any Palestinian suicide bombers lately? The war has been a good cover for Sharon , the Butcher of Qibya and many other palestiniasn towns and villages, to continue implementing his own final solution to the Palestinian question.

Posted by The Dynamic Driveler at April 10, 2003 06:43 PM