The Wormwood Express: American War Crime Rolls On

WRITTEN BY CHRIS FLOYD

THURSDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2011 00:31

I had much to say about the recent terror bombings in Baghdad, which were framed almost universally in the American media as the result of the withdrawal of the steadying, beneficent hand of the U.S. military. For example, the New York Times spoke of "a country reeling from political and sectarian turmoil that erupted after the departure of the American military." It is hard to fathom the level of moral blindness -- not to mention the wilful ignorance -- required to write such a statement. To pretend to oneself, much less the rest of the world, that political and sectarian strife has only now "erupted" in Iraq, out of the blue, or more likely, due to the inherent savagery of those poor primitives we liberated -- think what a pathetic, self-deluded wretch you would have to be to hold such an belief. Think what it must be like to lose so much of your humanity and to have your intellect so stunted and diminished. Yet this is the viewpoint of the overwhelming majority of the American political and media elite. No causal connection is made between the unprovoked invasion by U.S. forces and the "eruption" of violence and political chaos in the conquered, broken, blood-soaked land. So yes, there is much to say about the continuing obscenity of the American war crime in Iraq, and its most recent manifestation in the eviscerated bodies on Baghdad's streets. But I think in this instance, I should put my voice aside and let an actual Iraqi speak of the situation and its implications and causes. Sami Ramadani writes powerfully of the hell that has been unleashed in his hometown. From the Guardian: Baghdad, the city of my childhood, is again being terrorised by cowardly attacks aimed at spilling the blood of as many workers, students, shoppers and bystanders as possible. As I write, the facts are becoming clearer: the hundreds of murdered and injured men, women and children are Shia, Sunni, Christian, Arab, Kurd, Turkuman – a cross-section of the mosaic of peoples who have inhabited Mesopotamia for more than 1,000 years. So, who is killing the innocent in Baghdad today, and why? In the rush to provide an explanation for the nihilistic violence, the same old simplistic mantra is trotted out. Thursday's co-ordinated, simultaneous attacks are invariably described by the media as sectarian. Few pause to ask why a "sectarian" attack would be aimed at all sects and ethnicities equally. Only a handful raise the possibility that these attacks are not sectarian in motive, or a reflection of sectarian hatred on the streets, but are instead designed to create sectarian entrenchment and animosity, and ignite street conflict. Similarly, analysts are quick to conclude that both the power struggle within the political elite, and the explosions are the result of the withdrawal of US troops. They portray the US forces as the good Samaritan who prematurely left the scene. Too few examine the legacy of the occupiers' poisonous presence at the heart of Iraqi society for nearly nine years, or ask why the US has built the biggest embassy in the world in Baghdad, staffed by 15,000 personnel and spies. Today's bitter power struggle can be traced back to the measured 2003 decisions made by Paul Bremer . Bremer, a Bush "civilian" appointed to rule Iraq, continued the military occupation under a different guise. Faced with massive popular opposition and armed resistance to the US-led invasion, the US recognised in 2003 that the occupation of Iraq could not continue without a prominent Iraqi component, so Bremer formed the Iraqi governing council while retaining control of all levers of power. The mix of the 25-member council was carefully calibrated, with quotas to reflect Iraq's sectarian and ethnic makeup. That sectarian formula was to be mirrored in all Bremer's appointments. Far from preventing sectarianism, it introduced it to all the political and military institutions created by the occupation. ..... Such is the anger at the occupation that many Iraqis think the US was behind Thursday's attack. This belief is dismissed as conspiratorial, but it is widely held. There is a reason for this. Apart from the horrific violence committed directly by the occupation forces and Pentagon-contracted mercenaries, the US also created Iraqi secret militia, and smuggled tens of thousands of weapons and tons of explosives into Iraq through private firms in Bosnia .... Indiscriminate killings and terrorist attacks were a permanent feature of the US-led occupation, and to many ordinary Iraqis, Thursday's bloodshed is just more of the same. Similarly, ordinary Iraqis see their current rulers, who arrived with the occupation, as self-seeking, corrupt politicians who use religious and ethnic differences to perpetuate sectarianism as a means of creating power bases ... The truth of what happened and is happening in Iraq is well-documented. The illegal invasion based on knowing and deliberate lies; the active fomenting of sectarian militias by the occupation forces; the use of death squads by the occupiers and their local allies; the widespread indiscriminate killing of Iraqi civilians by the occupiers and the local security forces they armed, paid and trained; the world-historical levels of looting and corruption on the part of the occupiers' war profiteers and their local appointees -- all of this and much more of the story of the suffering, anguish and degradation inflicted on the Iraqis by the invaders has been plainly evident for years. I have written about it on this site and elsewhere since the beginning, drawing almost entirely on mainstream sources of information, easily accessible to any ordinary citizen. It requires no specialist knowledge, no insider connections, no secret sources to know and see the horrendous reality that the Americans and their accomplices have created in Iraq. As we noted here the other day, all that it requires is a willful turning away from reality into the maniacal hallucination of fear-ridden righteousness that has swallowed the American mind: a hysterical dream-world where the giving-over to evil bears no fruit, has no consequences, can always be absolved, repaired, reversed. But time's arrow flies in only one direction: the past cannot be undone, and the poison we have served to others -- and poured into our own veins -- will eat through the walls of the hallucination and stain the future deep with horror.