Bush and Blair have lit a fire which could consume them

[IndianaGreen]

Where are they now, the cheerleaders for war on Iraq?

They are calling for more troops, that's where they are!

Bush and Blair have lit a fire which could consume them

The Iraqi uprising will drive home the forgotten lessons of empire

Seumas Milne
Thursday April 8, 2004
The Guardian

Where are they now, the cheerleaders for war on Iraq? Where are the US Republican hawks who predicted the Anglo-American invasion would be a "cakewalk", greeted by cheering Iraqis? Or the liberal apologists, who hailed a "new dawn" for freedom and democracy in the Arab world as US marines swathed Baghdad in the stars and stripes a year ago? Some, like the Sun newspaper - which yesterday claimed Iraqis recognise that occupation is in their "own long-term good" and are not in "bloody revolt" at all - appear to be in an advanced state of denial.

Others, to judge by the performance of the neocon writer William Shawcross and Blairite MP Ann Clwyd, have been reduced to a state of stuttering incoherence by the scale of bloodshed and suffering they have helped unleash. Clwyd, who regularly visits Iraq as the prime minister's "human rights envoy", struggled to acknowledge in an interview on Monday that bombing raids by US F16s and Apache helicopter gunships on Iraqi cities risked causing civilian deaths, not merely injuries. The following day, 16 children were reportedly killed in Falluja when US warplanes rocketed their homes. And yesterday, in what may well be the most inflammatory act of slaughter yet, a US helicopter killed dozens of Iraqis in a missile assault on a Falluja mosque.

The attack on a mosque during afternoon prayers will, without doubt, swell the ranks of what has become a nationwide uprising against the US-led occupation. By launching a crackdown against the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - and, in an eloquent display of what it means by freedom in occupied Iraq, closing his newspaper - the US has finally triggered the long-predicted revolt across the Shia south and ended the isolation of the resistance in the so-called Sunni triangle. Bush, Blair and Bremer have lit a fire in Iraq which may yet consume them all. The evidence of the past few days is that the uprising has spread far beyond the ranks of Sadr's militia. And far from unleashing the civil war US and British pundits and politicians have warned about, Sunni and Shia guerrillas have been fighting side by side in Baghdad against the occupation forces.

This revolt shows every sign of turning into Iraq's own intifada, and towns like Falluja and Ramadi - centres of resistance from the first days of occupation - are now getting the treatment Israel has meted out to Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus and Rafah over the past couple of years. As resistance groups have moved from simply attacking US and other occupation troops to attempts to hold territory, US efforts to destroy them - as an American general vowed to do yesterday - have become increasingly brutal. Across Iraq, US soldiers and their European allies are now killing Iraqis in their hundreds on the streets of their own cities in an explosive revival of the Middle East's imperial legacy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1188142,00.html

[Capt_Nemo]

1. Ann Clwyd that complained so much about Saddam's mass graves

should now go dig the mass graves for the victims of US "pacification".

She and the "cruise missile left" are absolutely despicable, the lowest of the low. I despise them even more then the neo-cons.

[T_i_B]

2. Heard Ann Clwyd on the radio the other day

And she seemed to be in complete and utter denial of the situation in Iraq, yapping about her lovley visit to the marshes with Iraqi ministers whilst trying the crisis, what crisis line of debate when questioned on the worsening violence over there. She really is of no use whatsoever, save as Tony's little mouthpiece.

As to the article, I actually disagree. Withdrawal of the troops is not a guarantee of stopping the violence as the Iraqi's may start turning on each other in the power vacum that would inevitably arise in that situation and if anything civil war would be even more likely.

Of course that is not to deny that Iraq is deteriorating rapidly, this is something that should worry all of us, but the people trying to run in Iraq really do need appear in need of a change of approach. Getting the UN may be the only way to achieve this but there ya go.

[phantom power]

3. we're damned if we stay and damned if we leave

That, to me, is the ultimate crime of this war. Bush and company sold this war as an easy, low-cost solution to a over-hyped problem. They explicitly ignored every expert who warned otherwise, and now here we are. Every option forward is bleak. If we stay, we'll continue to take casualties, and be forced to impose martial law, in an unending cycle of repression and resistance. If we leave, there will be war amongst the three factions in Iraq, and if there is an ultimate winner, it will most likely establish a fundmanentalist theocracy.