🚀 go-pugleaf

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NYTr] In anti-War Turnabout, Carl Levin Blames the Iraqis
Date: 17 Nov 2006 11:50:38 -0600
From: nytr
 
Electronic Iraq - Nov 17, 2006
http://electronicIraq.net/news/2641.shtml

Op-Ed:

Blaming the Victim

by Noah Merrill

The Democrats rode to power in the US Congress last week on a wave of
antiwar sentiment. While their will and capacity to meaningfully affect US
policy in Iraq remain under debate, the new strategy in Washington seems
clear: It's the Iraqis' fault.

On Tuesday, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), incoming chair of the Senate Armed
Services Committee; argued his case for phased redeployment of US troops
from Iraq. In a startling statement, he highlighted his belief that the US
must reconsider its goals in Iraq, because, "We can't save the Iraqis from
themselves." The problem, according to the Democratic leadership, is not
the occupation; it's the failure of Iraqis to make the US-imposed system
work.

It's become a respectable antiwar stance to claim that we've done all we
can for Iraqis, and that too many Americans have died in the process. It's
time now, say many Republicans and Democrats in one voice, for the Iraqi
military, the police force, the government in the Green Zone, and the
people in the streets, to "stand up"--a dangerous thing to do when roughly
100 people die on average every day in Baghdad alone in the deepening
violence that is aggravated by the US presence.

Blaming the victim goes a long way in the United States, because we don't
like failures. It's a safe bet that the continually rising poll numbers
opposing the war aren't an expression of collective outrage at the
suffering of the Iraqi people. Plain and simple, Americans don't like
losing, and so we find a scapegoat when things don't work the way we want
them to.

Because otherwise, we'd have to blame ourselves.

When the US supported the deaths of millions of Iraqis and their neighbors
in Saddam Hussein's war against Iran, we justified it in terms of national
interest and regional stability. When we prolonged the war by arming both
sides against each other, we explained it as weakening them both, and
keeping them distracted from other adventures. The near annihilation of a
generation of men was supposedly a thing of geopolitical pragmatism.

Madeleine Albright, a Democrat who presided over some of the worst of the
thirteen-year sanctions period, once famously remarked that the hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi children who died in Iraq under US-supported
sanctions--which lasted more than a decade--were "worth it" (though she
acknowledged simultaneously and in a somewhat hollow way that this was a
"difficult choice") for the containment of Saddam Hussein.

In 1991, when George H. W. Bush urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam
Hussein, implying US support, and then stood by while as Iraqis taking his
cue and rising up were massacred by their dictator, it was argued that it
wasn't our problem.

When we invaded Iraq in 2003, we justified it with the claim that we were
liberating Iraqis. For years, US leaders have consistently referred to the
cause of the current crisis of basic services as "Saddam's negligence" or
"decades of neglect," rather that the direct, causal impact of the
US-sponsored sanctions that brought a first-class system of infrastructure
to total collapse in just over a decade.

And now, when it's become clear that the continuing US presence has brought
nothing but chaos, suffering, and death, our leaders have returned to the
most basic justification: There's something wrong with Iraqis themselves.
We've gone from the destruction of a country by war, to the destruction of
its people and infrastructure by sanctions, to its continued destruction in
another far more devastating war. We've overseen further collapse and
disintegration under occupation. It's hard to imagine such a hideously
effective social dismemberment being any more comprehensive by deliberate
intention.

Of course it doesn't stop in Iraq, and it didn't start there. Empire is
built on the ruins of peoples whose stories, dreams, and potentials are
denied.

But those in the US opposed to the war in Iraq now face an opportunity: To
ensure that the US does not withdraw over the bodies of Iraqis while Iraq
burns, shaking our heads at the laziness and incompetence of Iraqis to
build a future, and washing our hands with the "recognition" that they just
couldn't make it happen.

"Out now" is not sufficient.

Yes, immediate withdrawal of all troops and bases from Iraq is an
unequivocal moral necessity. But so too is meaningful acknowledgement of
Iraqi suffering and significant restitution for damage done by the United
States of America to the People of Iraq in two wars, thirteen years of
immoral sanctions and an interminable occupation corrosive to Iraqi
dignity, life and society.

So too is a hitherto unparalleled effort to support Iraqis in a meaningful
national reconciliation process that allows for the recognition of the
grievances and interests of all parties, especially those opposing the US'
expressed interests, and builds a shared foundation for a unified Iraqi
future.

So too is the return of Iraqi control of their natural resources, which can
benefit the world, but must benefit Iraqis first.

And so too is a recognition that the sins of the United States in Iraq did
not begin with George W. Bush's invasion, that the wounds will endure when
we are gone, and that we have an obligation to help on terms that Iraqis
decide.

All of these are clear moral obligations, but making them happen will
require strategy, focus, and a longer-term vision than has previously
motivated efforts based in the United States to end the war in Iraq.
Withdrawal does not end work for a peaceful future for Iraq, it only begins
it.

Carl Levin and his colleagues in the new US Congressional leadership will
likely make changes in the way that the US dominates Iraq. Some troops may
be removed sooner rather than later, and redeployed within the region. And
over time they will likely remove the Iraq conflict from public view over
the ruin of Iraq and Iraqis, if Americans permit it.

The American public and the antiwar movement may be willing to ride to the
vaunted goal of troop withdrawal on the back of "We can't save the Iraqis
from themselves." To some, political expediency justifies the bad taste of
accepting this racist illusion.

But it won't bring Iraq a peaceful future. Only Iraqis can do that,
together. Our task is to admit our crimes and acknowledge the truth that
they already know--we can't save the Iraqis from ourselves.

[Noah Merrill is a Quaker minister and activist. From 2004-2006, he served
on the Middle East Task Force of the American Friends Service Committee
(AFSC). He lives in Vermont.]
       
                                *
================================================================
.NY Transfer News Collective    *    A Service of Blythe Systems
.          Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us         .
.339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012     http://www.blythe.org
.List Archives:   https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
.Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
================================================================