Iraq: A Complete Fiasco

[unhappycamper]

A Complete Fiasco
La Presse, Canada
By Ghassan Hélou
Translated By Louis Standish
25 August 2010
Edited by Patricia Simoni

At dawn on Aug. 19, the fourth Stryker combat brigade completed its retreat from Iraqi territory and crossed the Kuwait border. It is, of course, a partial retreat. The United States will keep more than 50,000 GIs and several thousand contractors on the ground.

After more than seven years of devastating occupation, after having spent a trillion dollars and losing 4,415 soldiers, how can the departure of Americans be described? Military failure? Abandonment? Having invaded the country in 2003, did the Americans accomplish their mission? Which one? That of a new and democratic Iraq? A complete fiasco!

If, on the other hand, from the beginning their mission was to destroy Iraq and prevent it from putting itself together in the foreseeable future, everyone recognizes that Americans have won a clear victory. Torture, corruption, civil war — those are the findings of Robert Fisk in the British weekly, The Independent, after seven and a half years of American occupation of Iraq, now abandoned to its fate.

Since 2003, the tortured population has witnessed the systematic destruction of its institutions, the collapse of its society, the liquidation of the army and the dissolution of the administration. Corruption is widespread and has become the working system of government. The toppling of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein paved the way for the dictatorships of religious, tribal and ethnic leaders. From a secular state Iraq has become the breeding ground for religious sectarianism — clan, regional or partisan — resulting in fragmentation of the society into micro-feudalism and the awakening of centrifugal tendencies toward the fundamentalism and tribalism the Baath party had tried to curb, for the benefit of the citizenry.

Neither democracy nor development is in the cards. Only death is present. Everywhere. In the country, around the corner, at the market, at the mosque. Revenge, kidnapping and ransom have become the daily bread in a country where the only laws of the land are money and brute force.

[Swamp Rat]

1. k&r

[NuttyFluffers]

2. important! k&r.

i would draw parallels to what i'm thinking to how this will play out in afghanistan, but honestly why bother. there's the choir and the deaf and nothing in between anymore.

[metapunditedgy]

3. All those dead, maimed, and shattered people really need to TURN THE PAGE!

:sarcasm:

Seriously, it's disgusting what we did to that country. Even if Saddam had been the Devil's right-hand man, Iraqis did not deserve what we did to them.

And now the US is telling everybody (over *there* and "over here") to "turn the page." It's shameful and abusive language.