BLAGAROON

IRAQ: SADDSACK TOPPED: BUCKFUSH SURGES: WHO GAINS?

Certainly not the Iraqi people who continue to suffer horrendous sectarian violence alongside attacks and killings by the brutalised Anglo-American occupation forces. The hanging of the former dictator, which was supposed to be a propaganda victory for the Washington Warlords, backfired when it was turned into an abhorrent “snuff movie” on the internet by intransigent sectarian partisans within the Iraqi puppet regime which hides out in the so-called “Green Zone” in Baghdad pretending to be the government of Iraq. Civilised people all over the world were shocked by the gangster like “lynching” of Hussein after a mock show-trial which was supposed to be the start of “justice” in the so-called “new democracy” in occupied Iraq. The real gain for the Washington Warlords was the removal of the principal witness to their long-time collusion with the Iraqi dictatorship going back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s. This has particular significance for Bumsfeld, recently sacked as Secretary of Defence by Buckfush and who has been charged with war crimes in a case being proposed for prosecution in Germany this year. Bumsfeld’s murky dealings in supplying the Iraqi dictatorship with chemical supplies will come under scrutiny but, conveniently, the main witness is now disposed of.

The intervention in Iraq is such a disaster for world peace and especially for the Iraqi people who once again find themselves being ordered about, shot and killed by foreign armies reckless of their lives and property and ignorant of their history and culture. The idea that American proconsuls can now impose “democracy” on Iraq is laughable considering the recent history of that country and the part played by the USA in events there. The odious dictator Saddsack Hussein was a hireling of the CIA who was used to squash attempts to establish genuine independence for Iraq after the fall of the British imposed Hashemite monarchy in 1958. The Revolution of July, 1958, led by progressive army General Abdul Karim Qassem which deposed the Hashemite monarchy, rapidly introduced social, economic and political reforms long demanded by the Iraqi people but suppressed by the British and their stooges in Baghdad. Within a month, freedom of the press had been established with 40 newspapers being published which had been closed by the pro-British regime. A sweeping land reform which sidelined the British established local landlord system and distributed land to thousands of dispossessed peasants was implemented. Women’s rights, freedom for political parties and trade unions, new social services and labour law reform were all codified in a new Constitution which also recognised freedom of religion and equality of citizenship for all the ethnic groups in Iraq including the Kurds. The Iraqis didn’t need any tutoring from either the USA or Britain in how to organise their own democracy, but their efforts were cruelly squashed by the bloody hands of imperialism within a few years and Hussein was their chief agent in the conspiracy against Democratic Iraq.

The immediate antagonism of the British and Americans to this revolution in oil-rich Iraq led to an American invasion of Lebanon and a British invasion of Jordan in order to prevent sympathetic revolutions breaking out in these countries as well. An attempt to assassinate Qassem was mounted in 1959 by the CIA, with Saddam Hussein as the principal hit-man, which failed and Hussein was smuggled out to Cairo where he continued plotting with Baathist exiles there. In 1961, Qassem, having failed to gain any concessions from the British Petroleum Company for a larger share of oil revenues to go to Iraq, nationalised the entirety of undeveloped oil bearing lands for the State and set up the Iraq Petroleum Company to develop these independently of the British and American oil companies. Fearful of their assets being taken by further nationalisation, the British and Americans stepped up their organisation of opposition to Qassem’s government by colluding with the Baath Party and their leading thug Saddam Hussein and a successful coup took place in 1963. Qassem was murdered and reforms stopped.

The Baathists pursued a bloody purge against their opponents similar to what occurred in Indonesia in 1975. Thousands of political activists and trade unionists were murdered and thousands more imprisoned. The 1963 coup brought in a succession of military officers from the Al Sadr and Al Bakr families until Hussein organised a complete takeover for himself in 1979. He was continuously supplied with British and American arms and materials and political support and was given the nudge to go ahead with his brutal war against Iran in 1980. US and British support continued until 1991 when he invaded Kuwait, apparently under the impression from James Baker that the USA would not intervene. It’s a bit of a mystery also why, in 1967 and again in 1973 that the Iraqi military failed to come to the aid of their fellow Arabs when they were fighting Israel in those years despite the usual ferocious rhetoric from Radio Baghdad. If the West was worried about democracy in Iraq why did they undermine it in the 1960’s and then wait until 2003 before “discovering” that their agent Saddsack Hussein was a brutal dictator?

Democracy

The truth is, it never was a question of democracy in the Middle East as far as the colonialists were concerned. The piecemeal dismemberment of the failing Ottoman Empire, with France seizing the Maghreb (Algeria & Morocco), and Britain; Egypt and Sudan in the late 19th Century; followed, in the wake of the imperialist World War 1, by Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Saudi Arabia, was pure colonialism. Britain and France both aligned themselves with the most reactionary elements in these territories. The French separated Lebanon from Syria and set up a puppet state there. Britain grabbed a slice of Syria too, the oil-rich area around the city of Mosul, which they had already surveyed before the French got there and added it to their new puppet state of Iraq made up of the former Turkish provinces of Mesopotamia and Basra. Britain also cut off oil-rich Kuwait from Basra and set up another puppet state there. At this time, the 1920’s, the full extent of Iraq’s oil resources were not yet explored.

The Arab countries never had a chance of instituting progressive regimes. It suited the colonialists very well that the oil resources were situated in land occupied by the most reactionary feudal tribal chieftains and they moved immediately to set up alliances with them. The British set up the Saudis in their kingdom and moved the Hashemites from Hejaz, on the Red Sea, to Jordan and Iraq where separate monarchies were set up there. After WW2, when the Arab states gained political independence, the colonialists continued to interfere in the internal affairs of these countries. The addition, in 1948, of a Zionist colony in Palestine antagonistic to Arab aspirations and which eventually became Israel, the principal surrogate of the USA in countering moves for genuine independence for the Arab countries, was a fatal and dire consequence of Western neo-colonial policy which is still the cause of conflict and seeming never-ending cycle of violence and hatred typical of the colonialist “divide and conquer” strategy. This conflict will continue as the Arabs will never accept a permanent Zionist state in their midst. The only solution for those Jewish people who want to live in peace with the Arabs is to accept a non-racial, secular and democratic Palestine where they can have equal citizenship and let the fanatics and others who want to be Americans go and live in the USA, where a lot of them were born anyway. There is certainly enough room for them in the under-populated Midwestern states which are advertising on the internet for immigrants.

Consequences

Denigrating the Arab countries generally as “failed states” and trying to justify the invasion of Iraq on a basis of paternalistic “bringing democracy” to these countries is sheer hypocrisy. The consequences of these neo colonial policies for the people of the USA is an intolerable burden of military expenditure, which is unsustainable in the longer term, despite the insatiable greed of the military-industrial complex, as warned against by President Eisenhower in his valedictory speech as he left office in 1960. The Buckfush regime has been shamelessly plundering the US Treasury on behalf of its Defence Industry cronies such as the Cheneyshite-linked Halliburton since it rigged its way into the White House in 2001.

The prevailing myth which seems to dominate politics in the USA; that their view of “freedom” and their view of “liberty” is the “correct” view and may therefore be imposed by force majeure as and when they like, is unacceptable to the other 6 billion people on the planet and the sooner US politicians and people generally realise that the better it will be for their relations with the rest of us. In a democracy the people elect the government and therefore each individual has a responsibility to hold the government to account for what it does, the more so if you are opposed to the party in power and want a change of policy.

One thing which is positive about Iraq is that it has ruined the strategy of the American Right for world domination after the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The careers of many of them have crashed in the flames and bloodshed of Iraq; Bumsfeld, Bremerprick, Eagleburgercrap, Wolfspit and the rest. It has not gone unnoticed in the Arab World that all of these have been longtime pro-Zionist figures on the American political scene. Condasleeza gets away with it because of her pseudo-intellectual posing but, the end is not far off for her too as her employer, Buckfush, stumbles and bumbles to the end of his term in the White House.

Relentless

Meanwhile, the relentless Iraqi Insurgency continues its deadly war of attrition against the occupying forces and their collaborators as the total of US military fatalities exceeds 3000, more than 60,000 maimed and wounded and appalling civilian losses of the Iraqi population estimated to be at least 650,000 from the activities of the occupying forces attempted “pacification” of the country. Buckfush is now trying to play a political game with the lives of his troops in Iraq. With any chance of a peaceful, dignified exit now gone he is manoeuvring to exit office but passing the blame for his failures on to the incoming presidency, likely a Democrat and more likely, Hilary Clinton.

By proposing funding for additional troops in Iraq, which the Democrats will vote down, he can then say he couldn’t finish the job because the mean ol’ Democrats wouldn’t vote him the money. Of course, the strategy depends on achieving some sort of pacification in Baghdad which is well-nigh impossible at this stage. In signs of increasing desperation, the Buckfush regime is deliberately increasing tension in the area by a completely unwarranted bombing of villages in Somalia under the cloak of “fighting terrorists” and Cheneyshite’s and Israeli sabre-rattling against Iran. The fact that this is occurring now is a sure sign of the weakness and desperation of the American Right in its war against the rest of the world but, it also makes it more prone to dangerous acts of provocation and aggression with untold consequences. This makes the world-wide Anti-War movement more important than ever and the need is urgent to increase the democratic pressure everywhere to counter the aggressive tendencies of the Washington War-lords.

This appalling war, accompanied by some of the most brutalised savagery ever seen in conflict, is entirely the creation of Buckfush and his insane neo-con cronies, Bumsfeld, Cheneyshite, Bremerprick, Condasleeza and the rest. They are the ones who should be held to account for its consequences along with their close partner-in arms Tony (Don’t Care) Blairschmuck.

The Peoples’ Princess?

Princess Tony, a pathetic figure, now ensnared in his own scandals and under investigation for cash-for-favours sleaze in handing out lordships and knighthoods, is in a state of deep denial over his responsibility for the chaos and mayhem of Iraq. Desperately trying to re-write recent history in the face of massive public odium he has more-or-less abandoned his premiership and left the running of the government to his Finance Minister and heir apparent, Gordon Brown. Unwilling to admit that the insane colonialist adventure alongside Buckfush and his neo-cons has created even more terrorism and instability in the world than was there previously, Blairschmuck continues to advocate so-called “War on Terror” which has to be the most incompetent, misdirected and misguided project in the history of conflict.

The worst effects of this war have been the massive civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and recently, Somalia, accompanied by serious assaults on democratic rights of citizens in Britain and the USA in the name of national security and the most brazen breaches of international law since Hitler’s Third Reich. Secret torture chambers; shuttling by air of illegally held-detainees to torture centres world-wide on the soil of despicable crony regimes who deny democracy to their own citizens; the outrageous torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; a US enclave occupied against the will of the Cuban people and government.

Blairschmuck absented himself from the House of Commons for the first substantial debate there since the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, showing once again his utter contempt for the democratic will and the suffering of the many families whose children he sent to die in Iraq. A moral reprobate, and a discredited politician like Blairschmuck is unfit to be head of any democratic country.

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