Reply #6: Joshua Holland: Bush Won't Let Go Of His Failed Iraq Project [View All]

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Bush Won't Let Go of His Failed Iraq Project

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted September 14, 2007.

Bush's Oval Office address on Iraq culminates a week of brazen propaganda from the White House and Pentagon, with no sign that the president has learned anything from his failure.

Let's cut through the debate about the troop surge and violence in Iraq and all the rest, and get to the heart of the fraud perpetrated this week on the American people. That was the almost universal assertion -- almost universally unquestioned by the commercial media -- that U.S. interests in Iraq are (A) compatible with Iraq's interests, and (B) that U.S. policy makers' primary concern -- at least now that we're there -- is to stabilize the war-torn country and assure that it doesn't become a "safe haven" for al Qaeda or a puppet state controlled by Iran.

It was a Big Lie that was repeated during every minute of testimony by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker and echoed in every statement made by a Republican or a Democrat and at least implied in every analysis in the traditional media.

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If that were true, the United States could play a significant role in bringing about a modicum of stability to Iraq, and it could help do so relatively quickly. After all, poll after poll shows that a significant majority of Iraqis -- like a majority of Iraqi lawmakers -- want their country to develop into a nonsectarian state free of Iranian interference. Iraqis, historically one of the most secular polities in the Middle East, almost universally despise the insurgent group called al Qaeda in Iraq -- the little support that the group enjoys is based entirely on its resistance to the U.S. occupation -- and favor a strong central government free of ethnic and sectarian voting blocs.

The opportunity to make that vision a reality has repeatedly presented itself. Iraqi nationalist groups have reached out to occupation authorities in the hope of negotiating a peace, only to be rebuffed by American officials. The United States could live up to its lofty rhetoric and embrace the aspirations of the Iraqi people if Washington chose to go that way.

But it hasn't and it won't, because Iraqi interests are diametrically opposite of American interests in the region -- that's the dirty secret the commercial media won't admit and the reason that the American project there was doomed from the beginning; no amount of surging troops or jingoistic speeches on the floor of the Senate will ever make a difference as long as we're trying to impose on Iraq a government they don't want.

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