The current crisis gripping Iraq and it’s neighbors, the territorial grab by the Sunni group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS in the media), is the latest example of the United States military interventions blowing up in our face, and becoming a sort of Frankenstein’s monster to the U.S. and it’s Gulf allies as well, who were all too happy pour fuel on this fire by supporting terrorist groups called the “opposition” or “freedom fighters” to overthrow the Syrian government. The consequences of invading Iraq in 2003 under the Bush II administration were predicted, even by the administration’s insiders like Colin Powell, who is cited as warning George W. Bush at the time, “that if you break it, you own it.” In response to criticisms of the first President Bush’s decision in the Gulf War in 1991 to not press into Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein, the wiser Bush cited easily predictable consequences, mainly that he feared the U.S. would become bogged down in an Iraqi civil war that could last years. What is stunning, and also infuriating to watch and listen too, is the recycled lies and rhetoric of the architects of the Iraq war, such as Dick Cheney, and his war mongering allies in Washington, such as Senator Lindsay Graham and Senator Sore Loser, John McCain, who act and talk as if the public hasn’t figured out that we were lied to about “weapons of mass destruction” that could lead to “a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud” if we didn’t invade Iraq.
The lies about the reasons for invading Iraq and the newly declared reasons of “democracy promotion” that Bush offered afterwards when no weapons of mass destruction were found, are now so clearly visible to anyone but the most ardent neo-conservatives, that even Fox Propaganda News’s blonde cheerleader, Megyn Kelly – who famously declared this past Christmas season that Santa Clause and Jesus were both white – actually took on Dick Cheney directly in an interview in which she cited how he had been wrong on almost everything on Iraq when he was in power. She went through a brief list about WMD’s, being greeted as liberators, the time frame and the costs about which Cheney was wrong. Mrs. Kelly deserves a lot of credit for this, especially since she works for the neo-conservative, propaganda machine that is called Fox News. She also deserves extra credit for actually rising above the level of “journalism” that other talking heads in the media, both on Fox and the other major television network news programs, have shown recently, by handing the mega-phone over to the liars and starters of the Iraq War and giving them a free pass to repeat the proven lies about the Iraq War, unchallenged as if history has no place in the news.
The television news programs, in large part, have also allowed a false narrative to be repeated regularly, that the current mess in Iraq is the fault of President Obama’s withdrawal of American armed forces in Iraq, in his rush to end the war. I watched different news stations for nearly two days allow John McCain, Dick Cheney, and others, to spew this utter bullshit of facts without any correction or clarification whatsoever. Sadly, it was the satirical programs of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report that gave viewers the most accurate information on this claim: the withdrawal of American troops was signed into agreement in Baghdad by President George W. Bush in 2008. President Obama repeatedly tried to undo this deal, wanting to leave behind a residual military force, which was refused by the new Iraqi government. Obama wanted some level of troops to remain in Iraq, but on the condition that American troops be immune for any type of prosecution from the government of Iraq. President Maliki refused, and finally President Obama was forced to carry out his predecessor’s plans for troop withdrawal, and to take credit for getting our troops out, even though he really wanted them to stay. Now we have former Bush administration officials and the war mongers claiming that the civil war in Iraq is because Obama withdrew our forces too soon. These liars know better, but in an age of unchallenged media propaganda, they shamelessly repeat bullshit that they know to be false, just to blame the current president and act as if they weren’t the starters of the Iraq War and subsequent “quagmire” that followed.
President Obama is not without blame, however, and neither are our allies in the Gulf States, such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Quatar, Turkey, France and Britain. Last August 30th on my blog about the so-called civil war in Syria titled “War All the Time, Syria Here We Come” I talked about newspapers reporting that the CIA has been working with these allies in a covert and sometimes overt effort to overthrow Syria’s president and current dictator, Bashar Assad. As I wrote, and many others pointed out in the media then and now, a good deal of those “freedom fighters” (John McCain’s description of them) attempting to overthrow Assad are foreign fighters composed of Islamic terrorists and others, funded and armed by the U.S. and it’s allies. President Obama publicly acknowledged this problem at the time as more vocal calls came from McCain, Graham and others to do more to arm the “rebels” in Syria. He cited his concern that some of the fighters were radicals and terrorists, and that the U.S. was only going to support “non-lethal” aid. By non-lethal aid of course, he wasn’t talking about money, food and clothing for Syria’s refugee’s fleeing the war, which the United Nations had put the number at 2.58 million as of this past April. The war has claimed claimed over 100 thousand lives at this time. Obama was still supporting the opposition and the notion that “Assad must go.” It now appears that his caution and concern about arming the wrong kind of radicals in the war in Syria were well founded. Many of the foreign fighters and various groups fighting to overthrow Assad are believed to be members of the ISIS group, expanding the war in Syria into Iraq and threatening Jordan as well. Frankenstein’s monster has turned on it’s creators, once again. Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey are on the receiving end of most of the refugees. In recent history, this monster took the form of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network that began with the U.S. support, training and arming of him and his mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation during the Cold War. Another former former friend and “ally” of the Bush family, the mythical Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others. . . was of course, the beloved dictator of Iraq until he turned against us, Saddam Hussein. He was another monster supported by the U.S. until he turned against us, and only then did he become labeled by our leaders as the “Butcher of Baghdad.” Prior to that news footage exists of Donald Rumsfeld shaking his hand. The United States also blocked United Nation actions against Hussein when he ordered chemical attacks the Kurds in Northern Iraq, because at the time we were giving him those chemical weapons to use against Iraq’s eight year war against Iran. It was only later when Saddam was no longer a Washington puppet that our leaders began harping about how cruel and unpredictable Hussein was, citing him as “the man who attacked his own people with chemical weapons” – omitting of course, that we had given him those weapons and a free pass at the U.N. for his crime at the time.
Being of great geo-politcal importance as the center of the world’s energy supplies, and home to the birthplace of many of the world’s religions, imperial powers have a long history occupying and supporting brutal dictators to serve their own needs. This of course goes on today, with these countries being pulled and manipulated in all directions from world powers. Iraq’s modern borders were drawn up after World War I, and reflect British and French interest’s at the time. The result is a country consisting of three distinct sectarian groups, the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. Under Saddam and the United State’s domination in more recent history, Hussien’s Baath party, a Sunni minority, brutally oppressed the large Shiite majority of the country, as well as the Kurds. This was viewed as a “stabilizing” arrangement for Iraq, since the United States’ neighboring enemy Iran, is also mostly Shiite. Iran had become an enemy of the United States since the Iranian revolution that overthrew the United State’s puppet dictator, the Shaw at the time. The new Iranian government committed the ultimate crime, in U.S. and Western allies minds, by nationalizing their nation’s oil supply and kicking our oil companies out. Now, it is Iran that’s coming to Iraq’s aid, as Iraq’s new president is also Shiite. The Iraq invasion that W., Cheney, Rumsfeld, and England’s Tony Blair, envisioned as retaking control of Iraq’s future and putting it back under our control, is now spinning out of control, threatening to fracture along sectarian lines, and giving Iran a new friend and partner with it’s Shite majority.
Renewing relations with Iran is something that is long overdue, but politically difficult if not impossible until now because the United States’ need to punish Iran for taking control over their own resources, and because the United States’ favorite client state and largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid and weaponry, Israel, is bitterly opposed to any kind of reconciliation. If hawks in the U.S. and Israel had gotten their way, Obama would have bombed Iran over it’s perceived threat of developing a nuclear weapon instead of the sanctions and subsequent negotiations that the Obama administration was successful in getting Iran to enter into. Now it appears we may find ourselves fighting against I.S.I.S. along side Iran, and isn’t that ironic?
Rarely commented on for more than a brief moment by U.S. politicians, pundits and think tanks, is the human costs that the people of the Middle East have suffered as a result of living on top of “our” oil, with “our” referring not just to the U.S. but all other world powers who seek control of this region and resources. Sympathy and pictures and footage of blood and carnage for the people of the region are usually only trotted out as an excuse for Western military intervention, by government propaganda hoping to rally it’s citizens behind a just cause for war. The sudden concern by our leaders for the poor victims of chemical attack in Syria last year was only expressed when the Syrian civil war seemed to be tipping back towards Assad prevailing, and there was calls for President Obama to bomb Syria. Up until this point, Americans were not shown footage of the vast humanitarian crisis developing in Syria as a result of us and our allies covert plans to overthrow Assad. It was only when our “freedom fighters” started losing the coup, that suddenly our leaders were horrified of chemical weapons and suffering. At this point, there had already been well over a million refugees and a hundred thousand casualties, all scarcely reported.
After the first Gulf War, President Bill Clinton presided over sanctions against Iraq that resulted in over 500 thousand deaths of Iraqi children – a half a million dead children, by all accounts and not disputed by our leaders, as a direct result of U.S. led sanctions and embargoes. Bill Clinton and his partners in crime still defend this record, as Madeline Albright said in a 60 Minutes interview, that it was worth it ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0WDCYcUJ4o ) . Perhaps our double standard of what is a war crime is why recent wars have been sold more on fear and the “war on terror” than on false humanitarian motivations. But that old lie of crying wolf and weapons of mass destruction is becoming harder to sell, now that Bush II’s lies became so obvious and public, and thanks to Edward Snowden’s whistle blowing of the United States’ massive, secret surveillance program against it’s own citizens, denied by both President Bush and President Obama until it their denial was proven to be lies.
It will be interesting to see what is to become of the region now up in flames and chaos, after decades of brutal oppression and destruction, brought about in the struggle of regional hegemony by the great world powers. It will be sad to see how many more millions must die in this region before the new power systems are settled and put into place. What is clear though, is that decades of military interventions, coups, and propped up dictators, has blown up in our face and come back to bite us on the ass, just as predicted all along by experts, academics, and some politicians, who are willing to see reality and measure it’s causes and effects. Let’s hope President Obama isn’t too institutionalized by the office of the U.S. Presidency, to avoid the usual trappings of more military intervention and pouring more fuel on the fire.
