🚀 go-pugleaf

janix@women-at-work.org (ex) wrote in message news:<5947eb58.0404131110.652b21aa@posting.google.com>...
> "Tim Murphy" <info@cinox.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:<c5f3f1$nis$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>...
> > 10.4.2004
> > http://www.gush-shalom.org/
> > 
> > Bitter Rice (2) Or: The March of Folly
> > 
>  Uri Avnery about Iraq - a year after.
> > 
> > The following passage may look familiar:
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> > "On the fourth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I crossed
> > the border at a lonely spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which
> > had already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private
> > car, accompanied by a woman photographer. We passed a dozen
> > Shiite villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We
> > extracted ourselves only with difficulty from hundreds of villagers,
> > each one insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous
> > days, they had showered the Israeli soldiers with rice.
> > 
> > "A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite
> > direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing
> > bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.
> > 
> > "What had happened? The Shiites had received the Israeli soldiers
> > as liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as
> > occupiers, they started to kill them.
> > 
> > "When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon the Shiites were a down-
> > trodden, powerless community, held in contempt by all the others.
> > After a year of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and
> > military power. The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the
> > Arab world that has beaten the mighty Israeli army."
> > 
> > End of passage. I wrote it in an article called "Bitter Rice",
> > which appeared on March 22, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq,
> > and which started with the words: "Beware of the Shiites. The troubles
> > of the occupation will start after the fighting is over"
> > 
> > Barbara Tuchman died too soon. Otherwise she could add a
> > chapter about this war to her book "The March of Folly".
> > 
> > It should be remembered that Tuchman was very strict in the
> > choice of her examples. It was not enough that a government acted
> > foolishly. In order to gain a place in her book, two additional
> > conditions had to be met: that the results of the folly could be
> > foreseen, and that there was indeed someone who warned in advance of
> > these results.
> > 
> > (For example: the British king George III lost America because of a
> > number of foolish acts. This could have been foreseen, and, indeed, the
> > British politician and author Edmund Burke warned of them at the time.)
> > 
> > What is happening now in Iraq was completely predictable. It is an
> > exact repeat of all that happened to us in Lebanon. Otto von Bismarck
> > once remarked: "A fool learns from his experience. A wise person
> > learns from the experience of others." If so, how to define President
> > George W. Bush, who is not even able to learn from his own
> > experience?
> > 
> > If I have already quoted myself, I may as well do it again. On
> > February 8, 2003, in an article entitled "The Smell of War", I wrote:
> > "This is not a war about terrorism. This is not a war about weapons of
> > mass destruction. This is not a war about democracy in Iraq. This is a
> > war about something elseThere is a strong smell of oil in the air."
> > 
> > At the time, this sounded like defamation. Today it is already
> > clear beyond doubt that the American invasion had nothing to do with
> > either the "war on terrorism", nor with weapons of mass destruction, nor
> > with the crimes of Saddam Hussein or with democracy. This has been
> > proven and documented beyond all doubt, most recently by the
> > testimony of Richard Clarke, who has been Bush's man in charge of
> > the "war against terrorism". From the moment Bush entered the White
> > House, he and his handlers pursued one aim in the Middle East: to
> > occupy Iraq.
> > 
> > The Bushes are oilmen. Among the big-money people who helped
> > to put the two Bushes, Sr. and Jr., into the White House, oilmen
> > played a leading role. They have decided that the American Empire
> > needs to get its hands on the vast oil reserves of Iraq and to establish
> > a permanent military base in the middle of the oil region, between the
> > oil of the Caspian Sea and the oil of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.
> > 
> > The neo-con fanatics, most of whom are right-wing Zionists, added
> > to this another objective: to eliminate the Iraqi threat to Israel,
> > before freeing Israel of the Syrian and Iranian threats. But this was a
> > secondary aim. It would not have succeeded in dominating American
> > policy without the decisive impact of Dick Cheney and the other Bush
> > handlers, who wanted to establish direct American military control over
> > most of the earth's oil.
> > 
> > This aim has been achieved. Iraq was conquered. 135 thousand US
> > soldiers uphold the occupation regime, with the addition of a few troops
> > of the satellite countries, such as Poland, the Ukraine, the UK, El-
> > Salvador and Italy. A small (and not very intelligent) official named
> > "L. Paul Bremer 3rd", no less, has become Governor of the new colony,
> > and he intends to "hand over sovereignty" to an Iraqi government he
> > himself has appointed.
> > 
> > That is to say, sovereignty over garbage collection and hospitals,
> > but definitely not over the really important functions, which will be
> > firmly in the hands of American "advisors". For this purpose, the
> > biggest US Embassy in the world is being built in Baghdad: over 3000
> > officials, who will control every aspect of government in the country.
> > 
> > That reminds one of the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain in France.
> > The Iraqis themselves will be reminded of the British colonial power
> > structure in their country, which operated through an Arab "king".
> > 
> > As far as the Americans are concerned, this could last forever. Not
> > for a year, not for two years, but for decades, like the Israeli
> > occupation of the Palestinian areas. But, unlike the Israelis, they call
> > this "nation building" and "establishing the first democracy in the Arab
> > world".
> > 
> > George Orwell would have enjoyed it.
> > A minor factor was overlooked: the Iraqi people. But one really
> > cannot think about everything, can one?
> > When the armed resistance started, the Americans comforted
> > themselves with talk about "remnants of the Saddam regime", or
> > "terrorists", perhaps foreign agents of Osama Bin-Laden. More than
> > any other colonial regime, the Americans find it difficult to accept the
> > most simple fact in the world: that an occupied people will arise
> > against its occupier. And really, what have the Iraqis to complain
> > about, after the idealistic Americans, out of the kindness of their
> > hearts, liberated them from the evil Saddam?
> > 
> > Now the Americans are considering whether to bring in more
> > troops. The politicians ask the generals: how many more soldiers do
> > you need in order to control Iraq? And the generals ponder in all
> > earnest: 10 thousand more? 20 thousand more? If there had been one
> > serious person among them, he would have answered: "Even 500
> > thousand will not be enough. When a whole people rises, foreign
> > soldiers are helpless."
> > 
> > The Americans were ready for the Sunnis to be dissatisfied. They
> > had been ruling the Iraqi state since it was founded by the British
> > after the first World War, and were going to lose their supremacy. But
> > the Shiites? After all, in the "democracy" that the Americans were about
> > to establish, the Shiites could expect a major share in power. But the
> > Shiites do not want to receive "power" in a country that stays
> > occupied.
> > 
> > Even before the war, we warned (don't worry, I am not going to
> > quote myself a third time!) that it was well-nigh impossible to maintain
> > a state of three mutually hostile peoples: the Sunnis, the Shiites and
> > the Kurds. That is still true today. But perhaps a miracle is happening
> > now: Shiites and Sunnis are fighting together against the occupation.
> > Who knows, the common struggle may just, and for the first time,
> > forge a real Iraqi nation and prevent a bloody civil war along the road.
> > Let us hope so.
> > 
> > Now the Americans are caught in a trap of their own making. Even
> > if they wanted to leave Iraq (which they certainly do not!), they would
> > be unable to do so. As the Hebrew saying goes, they can neither
> > swallow it nor spit it out.
> > 
> > There is really nothing they can do. They will sink ever deeper
> > into the quagmire, kill and be killed, destroy and be destroyed, with
> > ever growing brutality, in a kind of a new desert Vietnam. In the hourly
> > news on Al Jazeera, it is already difficult to distinguish between our
> > soldiers in Ramallah and the American soldiers in Falluja. What is
> > happening to us will happen to them, only on a larger scale.
> > 
> > How will this similarity influence Bush and his people? They might
> > say: One quagmire is enough. Let's get out of one of them. Let us
> > compel Sharon to make, at long last, an agreement with the
> > Palestinians, instead of babbling about "unilateral disengagement",
> > which will probably never happen anyhow.
> > 
> > But Bush and the Bushites could also say: If we are so much alike,
> > let us embrace Sharon even more closely. Such a reaction would find
> > its well-earned place in "March of Folly 2".
> > 
> > That might be even a good thing, allowing these two gentlemen the
> > pleasure of leaving the stage together.
> > 
> > -----------