The paradise promised in Iraq has been lost - by Iraqi Poet

[debbie mannas]

Food for thought.. debbie



The paradise promised in Iraq has been lost, writes Sinan Antoon*



In the imagocratic world which inhabits us, one image is usually repeated ad nauseam until it secures its permanent place in this or that grand narrative as the moment par excellence. Such is the case with the toppling of Saddam's statue at Al-Firdaws Square in my hometown of Baghdad a few days ago. For the majority of this planet's inhabitants that image will crystallize the so-called "liberation" of Iraq and the end of Saddam's dictatorship. Like millions of Iraqis, I have spent years fantasizing about Saddam's demise. I used to scout the murals in our neighborhood and had planned to rush to the closest one as soon as Saddam was gone to start my revenge against his likeness. I thought of adding two horns to his head, or even giving him a long tail. But, alas, I fled the country after the 1991 Gulf War and Saddam was still in charge (thanks to the US which had bombed Iraq back to the pre-Industrial age, but left Saddam in place). The very last glimpse I caught of Iraq as the bus crossed the border to Jordan was yet another mural of Saddam in military attire. However, the relief and joy I felt upon seeing Saddam's statue toppled lasted only a few seconds. The scene was marred by the presence of American tanks and soldiers who, before reaching that square to help a few Iraqis topple down the statue, had slaughtered many civilians and left a trace of blood and destruction. Alas, tyranny is now replaced with colonialism. Let us not be intoxicated by that image and let it erase the fact that this "liberating" power itself was complicit in propping and supporting Saddam throughout the 1980's when he waged his war against Iran and killed one million Iraqis. All those Iraqis were not worthy of liberation back then, because they were serving another function: fodder for weapons and for containing Khomeini's Iran. I remember seeing Rumsfeld shake hands with our oppressor on Iraqi TV back in the early 1980's and both Bush I and Reagan supplied him with weapons and military intelligence while he was gassing Iraqi Kurds. No wonder it was difficult to topple him without his original sponsors who came uninvited and with ulterior motives that have become painfully obvious by now. Yes there were Iraqis cheering and dancing, but that should not be (mis)interpreted as rolling out the red carpet for American tanks. The crowd at Al-Firdaws square was a few hundred and no more. Baghdad is a city of 4.5 million. Some were cordial towards US troops, but the great majority in other parts of Baghdad and the country at large were looking through the rubble of their lives and counting the dead and the wounded. After surrounding the statue and announcing the end of Saddam's era to the world, the liberators stood still and watched the country descend into lawlessness. The power vacuum unleashed the violence and repression of three decades of tyranny and exposed the total erosion of Iraqi social fabric (thanks to twelve years of the most draconian sanctions in history). Even if there were some Iraqis who had given the US the benefit of the doubt, they have changed their mind by now and one can see their anger everywhere. It is surely no coincidence that the only ministry protected from looting is the Ministry of Oil! Bush's first words to Iraqi soldiers on the first day of the war were "not to burn the oil wells." There is much more than misplanning and blatant disregard of the responsibilities of an occupying power towards the occupied population. The chaos and anarchy allowed by the US in Iraq will be used as a justification for a longer military presence in Iraq. The latter will, in turn, ensure the emergence of an Iraqi regime totally beholden to US interests. One other important detail erased by the image of liberation is the sight of American corporations salivating like hyenas and waiting for the prey to give out its last breath so they can jump in and sink in their powerful claws. Make no mistake about it. Every single item looted and destroyed will be replaced by an American corporation and paid for by Iraqi oil. The more the merrier. The Lebanese-American apologist Fouad Ajami was right when he called the war "the acquisition of Iraq." "Al-Firdaws," the name of the square where "liberation" took place, means "paradise" in Arabic. The hawks promised that a post-Saddam Iraq would be a paradise for Iraqis. It seems that that future paradise has already been lost!



* Sinan Antoon is an Iraqi poet

[Social Spit]

Jeremiah 50



21 ¶ Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod: waste and utterly destroy after them, saith the LORD, and do according to all that I have commanded thee.

22 A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.

23 How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!

24 I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD.

25 The LORD hath opened his armoury, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation: for this is the work of the Lord GOD of hosts in the land of the Chaldeans.

26 Come against her from the utmost border, open her storehouses: cast her up as heaps, and destroy her utterly: let nothing of her be left.

27 Slay all her bullocks; let them go down to the slaughter: woe unto them! for their day is come, the time of their visitation.

28 The voice of them that flee and escape out of the land of Babylon, to declare in Zion the vengeance of the LORD our God, the vengeance of his temple.

29 Call together the archers against Babylon: all ye that bend the bow, camp against it round about; let none thereof escape: recompense her according to her work; according to all that she hath done, do unto her: for she hath been proud against the LORD, against the Holy One of Israel.

30 Therefore shall her young men fall in the streets, and all her men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD.

31 Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.

32 And the most proud shall stumble and fall, and none shall raise him up: and I will kindle a fire in his cities, and it shall devour all round about him.

[MIKE BURN]

All I know is, that U.S. soldiers shot 10 Iraqi protesters

(NOT Looters!) today in Mossul.



U.S. soldiers today took violently away the camera's of

journalists, who wanted to film a public outrage against U.S.

occupation in front of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

[DreamTone7]

Let us suppose that you, Mike Burn, were a soldier that your country sent somewhere to fight a war for whatever reason. (For purposes of this analogy, the reason is not important.) You fight against soldiers. Then soldiers dressed as civilians start suicide bombing you and your buddies. You become less trustfull of civilians and warn them to keep their distance. You have to shoot a few along the way after warning them because they refuse to listen. Now we see you in the streets with a large group of civilians. It's not easy to decide which are just protesting, and which might be there for other reasons. (They've tried suicide bombing in situations just like this before.) You warn them to keep their distance. Some of them do not. What would you do Mike? I WOULD SHOOT THEM TOO! As a soldier I would be responsible for doing my duty in going wherever my government told me to. (There is a minimum time of service for males in most countries.) I would not be concerned at the moment whether it is right or not that I was there.....I'm there now; that's where my attention must be focussed. I am alive, and I intend to stay that way.



I believe if the protest was indeed peaceful and had maintained its distance, nobody would have been killed. Taking a look at the big picture is important....but sometimes in order to understand things, we must (as someone else put it) put ourselves in someone elses shoes. The deaths are tragic, yes. But this is war (or the aftermath of it). Until a normal routine is established in the wake of what has occured in Iraq, I'm sure we will see more of this.....hopefully not too much more. Maybe if you were actually there, Mike, you might have understood the situation a little better?

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

---

You warn them to keep their distance. Some of them do not. What would you do Mike? I WOULD SHOOT THEM TOO!

---

Trying to understand other people and cultures.



Not invading and occupying other countries,

for seeking own world dominance, using phony

'threat' theories.



Summary: Not sticking my nose into other people's affairs

in their own countries.

[bbchris]

Wasn't a big part of the problem that the Iraqi civilians didn't speak English?

|Blah Blah|Talk Soup|Thinking Out Loud|thewireweb|

[DreamTone7]

Yes chris, that is possible. However it would be a rare Iraqi who hasn't been warned or had the warning passed to him/her by another at this point. This warning has been "on the street" for weeks now. Ever since the "Taxicab incident" where 4 US soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber pretending to be a civilian.



Mike, assuming you were responding to my post, if other peoples cultures involved suicide bombing me I would not hesitate to shoot under the aforementioned circumstances. I draw the line about cultures right there. I reserve the right to live....at the expense of someone else if he/she is trying to take my life from me.



AS I MENTIONED (did you read my post?), the reason for being there is not pertinent to the example....but since you mentioned it, haven't you been spending a lot of your time poking your nose into the affairs of America and Iraq? You can't have it both ways big guy. The only opinions at this point that really matter are those of the Iraqis who lived under Sadaams rule. They will be the final judges in this matter......and nobody else.

[debbie mannas]

GAH.



You don't seem to realise that what the US chooses to do impacts us all. Of late its been in most horridly negative ways.



Terrorism does not only happen in the US. It also happens on Western interests abroad, and innocent people get blown up in totally unrelated countries. Bali is a case in point.

When oil prices go up, all of us get hit where ever we are.

The war has wreaked havoc on economies everywhere.



So when we speak out, its not meddling in other people's business. What the US does affects us all.

[MIKE BURN]

Quote:

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The only opinions at this point that really matter are those of the Iraqis who lived under Sadaams rule. They will be the final judges in this matter......and nobody else.

---

In case you missed it... that's how the 'freed' feel and think:



























SOMEthing went wrong is you ask me...

[DreamTone7]

Thank you Mike for showing us only one side of the issue.......again.



And thank you Debbie for helping me make my point. What was going on in Iraq (under Sadaam) DOES effect us all (including America) just as the aftermath does so today. The world is much smaller than it used to be even 100 years ago.



There will always be people who are willing to do something to make a change....just as there will always be people who will criticize their efforts.

[MIKE BURN]

[Galmin]

Quote:

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I WOULD SHOOT THEM TOO!

---

Of course you would.

Quote:

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I reserve the right to live....at the expense of someone else if he/she is trying to take my life from me.

---

That's not only your right but as a soldier it is your damned duty.

Shooting "warningshots" through a crowd only because you're nervous is a good way to be sent home with a dishonorable discharge waiting, though.





The Brits should take the guard stuff over, instantly. Jesus.

Quote:

---

Wasn't a big part of the problem that the Iraqi civilians didn't speak English?

---

No. Why should they? They're Iraqis. Or was, rather. Now that you mention it maybe a crashcourse in English would have kept them alive



The big problem was that the checkpoint personell couldn't shout "STOP" in any other tounge then their own.



Hell, I, even I learned to yell "STOJ" during the greens.

Edited by: Galmin  at: 4/16/03 7:46:18 pm

[DreamTone7]

Thank you Mike....that was generous.



And as far as the Brits taking over policing duties until Iraq can stand on its own, I agree with Galmin. Too much bitterness has been created between the US and some of the Iraqis. I don't believe the UK has that same problem.

[Phil Frazier]

Some Iraqis are starting to wake up. Their liberation from Saddam may be appreciated yet they now see what the invasion was really about.





LOOKOUT by Naomi Klein

Privatization in Disguise



On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer than that."



And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers. "There has got to be an effective administration from day one," Wolfowitz said. "People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that's a coalition responsibility."



The process of getting all this infrastructure to work is usually called "reconstruction." But American plans for Iraq's future economy go well beyond that. Rather, the country is being treated as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business.



Some highlights: The $4.8 million management contract for the port in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services of America, and the airports are on the auction block. The US Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks. Most of these contracts are for about a year, but some have options that extend up to four. How long before they meld into long-term contracts for privatized water services, transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatization in disguise?



California Republican Congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the Defense Department to build a CDMA cell-phone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit "US patent holders." As Farhad Manjoo noted in Salon, CDMA is the system used in the United States, not Europe, and was developed by Qualcomm, one of Issa's most generous donors.



And then there's oil. The Bush Administration knows it can't talk openly about selling off Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry official. "We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the country," Chalabi says. "The only way is to partially privatize the industry."



He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles who have been advising the State Department on how to implement that privatization in such a way that it isn't seen to be coming from the United States. Helpfully, the group held a conference on April 4-5 in London, where it called on Iraq to open itself up to oil multinationals after the war. The Administration has shown its gratitude by promising there will be plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the interim government.



Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth.



It's no surprise that so many multinationals are lunging for Iraq's untapped market. It's not just that the reconstruction will be worth as much as $100 billion; it's also that "free trade" by less violent means hasn't been going that well lately. More and more developing countries are rejecting privatization, while the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Bush's top trade priority, is wildly unpopular across Latin America. World Trade Organization talks on intellectual property, agriculture and services have all bogged down amid accusations that America and Europe have yet to make good on past promises.



So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How about upgrading Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom bullying, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields of pre-emptive wars? After all, negotiations with sovereign nations can be hard. Far easier to just tear up the country, occupy it, then rebuild it the way you want. Bush hasn't abandoned free trade, as some have claimed, he just has a new doctrine: "Bomb before you buy."



It goes further than one unlucky country. Investors are openly predicting that once privatization of Iraq takes root, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be forced to compete by privatizing their oil. "In Iran, it would just catch like wildfire," S. Rob Sobhani, an energy consultant, told the Wall Street Journal. Soon, America may have bombed its way into a whole new free-trade zone.



So far, the press debate over the reconstruction of Iraq has focused on fair play: It is "exceptionally maladroit," in the words of the European Union's Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, for the United States to keep all the juicy contracts for itself. It has to learn to share: ExxonMobil should invite France's TotalFinaElf to the most lucrative oilfields; Bechtel should give Britain's Thames Water a shot at the sewer contracts.



But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling and Tony Blair may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's post-Saddam, pre-democracy liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatizing is done unilaterally by Washington or multilaterally by the United States, Europe, Russia and China?



Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might--who knows?--want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but without any real democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatization without representation.



A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country has been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their newfound "freedom"--for which so many of their loved ones perished--comes pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling.



They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.

[DreamTone7]

I still think they'll be happier in the end, Phil. It will take time before the Iraqis will even understand what a democracy is....let alone how to work it.