With Iraq in crisis, many corporate news accounts treat the US war there as if it was something that was done to us, and the ensuing chaos proof that the good intentions of a US superpower cannot overcome tribal grievances.
Michael Crowley‘s cover story for Time (6/19/14), “The End of Iraq,” might be the quintessential example. He writes:
The rapid march by ISIS from Syria into Iraq is only partly about the troubled land where the US lost almost 4,500 lives and spent nearly $1 trillion in increasingly vain hopes of establishing a stable, friendly democracy.
We tried to bring them a stable democracy, and look at what they’re doing.
Crowley’s statistic, of course, dismisses roughly 99 out of 100 human lives lost as a result of the invasion of Iraq. But he wants to say that this is not even just about Iraq, but about Islamic radicalism from Nigeria to Pakistan. To Crowley, Osama bin Laden’s “fundamentalist ideology–and its cold logic of murder in God’s name–arguably has broader reach than ever.” And so in Iraq, the story is less about the brutal US invasion and more about inevitable history, a place where
ancient hatreds are grinding the country to bits. Washington has reacted with shock–no one saw it coming–and the usual finger pointing, but today’s Washington is a place where history is measured in hourly news cycles and 140-character riffs. What’s happening in Iraq is the work of centuries, the latest chapter in the story of a religious schism between Sunni and Shi’ite that was already old news a thousand years ago.
Why feel too bad about a 10-year-old invasion if what’s really happening is “the work of centuries”? The notion of an intractable, tribal religious war is popular in the press, but it has been questioned; see Murtaza Hussain’s “The Myth of the 1,400-Year Sunni/Shia War” (Al Jazeera, 7/9/13), for instance. And it functions as a way of letting the US off the hook for unleashing it. As Crowley writes, “To Americans weary of the Middle East, the urge is strong to close our eyes and, as Sarah Palin once put it so coarsely, ‘let Allah sort it out.'”
To be clear, Crowley doesn’t agree with regional expert Palin:
As long as the global economy still runs on Middle Eastern oil, Sunni radicals plot terrorist attacks against the West and Iran’s leaders pursue nuclear technology, the US cannot turn its back.
Time’s view of the Middle East, a place where “hatred, greed and tribalism” overwhelm “the spirit of liberty.”
One might assume that “nuclear technology” is code for weapons; Iran says it has no interest in the bomb, and there is no evidence that they do. But Time knows otherwise, as Crowley later writes of “Shi’ite Iran’s march toward a nuclear weapon.”
The language about “turning its back” seems to want to let the US off the hook for starting the Iraq War–and give a green light for intervening in its next phase with a clear conscience. If you don’t think that line quite does it, Crowley also writes:
What Leon Trotsky supposedly said about war is also true of this war-torn region: Americans may not be interested in the Middle East. But the Middle East is interested in us.
Crowley is back to arguing that the region’s problems are due to a religious conflict the West simply cannot fathom, as he wonders: “But how could the secular West hope to understand cultures in which religion is government, scripture is law and the past defines the future?”
The piece closes by stating its premise quite clearly, with Time explaining:
On a deeper level, the blame belongs to history itself. At this ancient crossroads of the human drama, the US’s failure echoes earlier failures by the European powers, by the Ottoman pashas, by the Crusaders, by Alexander the Great. The civil war of Muslim against Muslim, brother against brother, plays out in the same region that gave us Cain vs. Abel. George W. Bush spoke of the spirit of liberty, and Obama often invokes the spirit of cooperation. Both speak to something powerful in the modern heart. But neither man–nor America itself–fully appreciated until now the continuing reign of much older spirits: hatred, greed and tribalism. Those spirits are loosed again, and the whole world will pay a price.
We offered them the spirits of cooperation and liberty and the modern heart, and this is the thanks we get. It’s almost as if some people don’t appreciate being invaded.
Thank you Mr. Hart. MSM reports on the over 4000 US soldiers killed in Iraq, but never mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead as a result of the invasion of that country.
When you hear the commander-in-chief of the U.S. empire talk about freedom and giving people “the opportunity to forge their own future,” here’s what that has meant for the people of Iraq:
Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, directly and indirectly (due to the destruction and disruption of the war, including to water and power systems, to healthcare and food production): 655,000 according to a 2006 Lancet study; 1 million according to a 2008 Opinion Research Business study; current estimate: 1.2 to 1.4 million.
Iraqis injured: 4.2 million.
Iraqis driven from their homes: 4.5 million.
A U.S.-installed reactionary Shi’ite fundamentalist government which launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate bombardments, and torture against Iraq’s Sunnis.
U.S-organized Shi’ite death squads linked to the Maliki government responsible for murdering thousands of Sunnis and unleashing widespread religious sectarianism and ethnic cleansing during the 2006-2008 civil war. Minorities were driven out of areas in which different ethnic and national groups had previously lived side by side.
That takes some chutzpah to list the empires that have subjugated and murdered untold numbers of “the heathen” as civilizers which failed in the quest to bring enlightment to their land.
But brazenness is as American as depleted uranium, isn’t it just?
Pile on the brown man’s burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestos
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don’t hesitate to shoot.
http://www.swans.com/library/art8/xxx074.html
Oh it’s not the invasion that nobody likes; we all loved the “British Invasion” (aka the Beetles). It’s the results after that get their goats, having to eat crappy american fast food, and watch all those Sit-com Reruns on flat screen TV’s; that would be enough to cause any place to revolt. Or would if they actually had decent water, food and medicine, and dependable electricty.
What always amazes me is the parroting of the well debunked notion that “nobody could have seen this coming”, while in the same breath and using the other side of their mouth, denigrate and marginalize the consideralbe number of voices who did just exactly that, saw it coming and said what was going to happen. It didn’t take any tactical genius to see it, which explains the utter failure of the Bush Admin, and the Current one, i.e. lack of Tactical Genius.
I’m sure Crowley had a hard time keeping a straight face while typing that nonsense about “the secular West”. As far as I can tell, if you’re not a bible-thumping loudmouth then you’re considered a Godless communist, and the Right (no longer necessary to redundantly label them the “Christian Right”) is constantly seeking to foist their particular views on the laws of the land.
Also, the “no one saw it coming” line is so absurdly disingenuous. Sunni vs. Shi’ite conflicts have been taking place from the beginning, and it’s not like those are the only groups in conflict in the region.
The bottom line is that the Middle East is much more complicated than we are willing to acknowledge, and “friendly democracy” isn’t coming there anytime soon. The US withdrawal from Iraq was always going to leave behind a power vacuum, no matter when it happened. Afghanistan is next.
shoirca Thanks so much for the link,I’d never seen the entire prose of this poem. So telling of ignorant and arrogant humans…here of whites mostly.
Nice exposure of truly wretched disinforming propaganda.
I’d like to pile on by pointing out the writer’s especial incompetence of including “Cain vs. Abel” as historical fact.
LOVE that last paragraph, Peter!
Here’s a question: “if what’s really happening is ‘the work of centuries’,” what makes the war hawks think the US has ANY chance of changing it???
Bill Maher said it best on his show a couple weeks ago. In the 16th Century, the Protestants and Catholics (i.e. two completing sects of the Christian religion) had it out, leaving much death and destruction in their wake. Today, the competing sects of Islam are having their 16th Century. And WE need to back off and let them have that.