Bush and his cronies have begun to complain about the emergence of sectarian rule in Iraq. You have to wonder, just what did they expect to happen in Iraq after we removed the controlling authority with our invasion? Is Bush still stuck on the notion that there is going to emerge some sort of democracy in Iraq which will bend to our will?
The U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, threatened today to withhold money which would go to the Iraqi security forces if the new authority there fails to somehow unite all of the disparate factions into a centralized mush of U.S. compliant stooges.
Bush has been using the training of the Iraqi forces as justification for our continued occupation. But they were divided into militias from the start. The Sunni's immediately labeled them death squads because of the reprisals up to, throughout, and after the election which were unleashed on those in their population and elsewhere in Iraq who were actively opposed to the elections and the new authority. The U.S. backed reprisals were staged mostly in the Sunni communities. Now, months after the discovery of several secret prisons in Iraq where there was torture and abuse of detainees by Iraqi forces aligned with the new central authority, the Bush administration seems to finally be drawing the line. Are they really?
Aside from their threat of withholding money, their calls for an end to the sectarianism is toothless, and puzzling, considering that all of our efforts to date were directed to dividing the factions and supporting and rewarding whichever faction yielded to our consolidation of power, and punishing those who resisted our imperialism with raids, bombings, assassinations, and the manipulation of Iraqi's resources and revenue.
"The fundamental problem in Iraq is one of sectarianism and ethnic conflict," Khalilzad said at a
news conference Feb.19 . . . This polarization along ethnic and sectarian lines affects every aspect of what's going on. The various communities need to come together in a national compact and that can be achieved first through the establishment of a national unity government," he said.
Wonderful. After a couple of elections held already there, which were widely celebrated throughout the republican administration and by every conservative member of Congress as an affirmation of democratic principles, there appears to be no intention by these cheerleaders to actually afford Iraq any of the independence and self-determination which is supposed to be inherent in a democracy. Republicans believe in elections, but they ignore the rest of democracy's tenets. Achieving public office in America is seen as an entitlement to become a member of that two-percent confederacy which routinely divides the product of our sacrifices for the benefit and furtherance of their petty empire of power and influence. Royalty does as royalty pleases.
The problem the Bush administration has with the newly elected officers who make up the governing body of the new authority is primarily with the Kurd's and the Sunni's insistence on protecting and defending the interests of their part of Iraq and the folks who live there. The two groups are forced to compete for these against the overwhelming Shiite majority which gained the most seats in the electoral process which the U.S. sponsored and facilitated with the presence of our military forces.
Bush knew the political table was tilted toward the Shiites when he called for the electoral process to begin. In fact, he was bound to hold the elections when he did because of his public crowing during the U.S. presidential campaign about how he was spreading democracy in Iraq with his invasion. The Shiite clerics, who have excellent control over their many followers, got them to the polls in numbers that couldn't, or wouldn't be matched by the other sects. It was no secret that Shiites would end up benefiting the most from elections, which, for the Bush administration's shallow, rhetorical purposes represented democracy.
Now, faced with a new Iraqi authority, whose 'elected' leadership has openly aligned with countries and their elements that our government actively opposes, like Iran and Syria, the Bush administration is earnestly trying to undermine the very authority they facilitated with thousands of lives and billions of dollars. With their demands and threats to the new Iraqi regime, they are either making a case to cut and run (hard to imagine they would leave without hawking it as some sort of victory), or they are making a renewed argument to stay longer under the pretext of protecting the new authority from itself.
It's amazing that the Bush regime is just now learning of the militias that they have supported and encouraged, with our troops often muckraking right alongside of them. US Maj Gen Joseph Peterson, who is in charge of training the Iraqi police, told the
Chicago Tribune on Feb. 16 that US forces had had found the first evidence of death squads within the interior ministry. The rest of the world knew about the death squads for months, and, so did the Bush regime. The squads were doing our dirty work, stifling the resistance, keeping the rabble down. They still do Bush's bidding, despite the public protests.
What I think is the real motivation behind all of the administration noise about the sectarian violence and division is a desire to highlight and isolate the segments of the new authority which may be so aligned with Bush's nemesis, Iran, that their alliance amounts to Iraq government collusion with a future enemy combatant. It must have occurred to someone in the White House that the ascendance of a Shiite majority in Iraq undermines the decades of coddling we gave to Saddam to keep the Iranians from gaining influence in the region. Bush's invasion and occupation helped the very elements our government tried for decades to eliminate realize positions of power in Iraq that they couldn't have dreamed of winning from the battlefield.
The prospect of Bush's fledgling plutocracy in bed with a spoke of his 'axis of evil' has his regime scrambling to do a bit of sectioning-off of their own of Iraq's elected leadership. It's no surprise to find the Bush regime - who accommodated their own ascendance to office in the U.S elections with voting machine rigging, voter intimidation, ballot manipulation, denial of access, and resistance to scrutiny - feeling free and obliged to meddle with their purchased junta until they get the result they want. Forget the Iraqi people, they're preoccupied with getting the type of democracy they conquered for, the autocratic rule they practice in our own government.
The Iraqi leadership should make a visit to Saddam's jail cell before Bush has him executed and ask him about his regime's experience as a puppet of the U.S. government. He couldn't govern a country which was aligned against him so he resorted to torture and intimidation with his military. This new regime in Iraq, backed by our military, has had similar problems in uniting the country around their new central authority. They too, have resorted to torture and intimidation.
If Bush wants to stop funding his junta, then he should do that. He's already pulled the plug on reconstruction. Very few in Iraq frighten at the prospect of our withdrawal as Bush pretends, save those whose existence and influence is reliant on our continued protection. The democracy that Bush brought to Iraq is nothing but a lottery with a dwindling jackpot - a trillion to one shot at a democratic nation emerging from a foreign invasion and occupation. Now they want us to help them set up a new shell game next door in Iran, while they strip the old town bare, leaving their corruption to fester and rot. New justifications for more militarism will arise from the inevitable backlash in both countries.
Chaos is the breeding ground for Bush's imperialism. Militarism is the primary source of Bush's imperious reign at home, and his regime marches on with seeming invincibility, without any obstacle of democracy impeding his tyrant's reign.
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