Iraq: How
Have the Mighty Fallen!
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Dansville, CA
It was the 9th of April, 2003. The American army
was in possession of Baghdad. To make the point,
an engineering detachment of the US Marines was
instructed to pull down the statue of Saddam Hussain
in Firdous Square. It did so with military efficiency.
Before they pulled it down, a few good men draped
the Star Spangled Banner over it, memorializing
America’s moment in the Middle East.
Seeing it, no one would have doubted who had won
the war. Most thought the war was over. And many
seemed to think that Iraq was poised for freedom
and democracy.
Even Iraqi citizens, brought up on the Qur’an,
may have thought that “Good has now arrived
and falsehood perished, for falsehood is bound
to perish.” But four years later, they have
discovered that one falsehood has been replaced
with another falsehood. It seems that Baghdad
has been bombed back to the Stone Age, first by
the Americans and then by the insurgents.
Electricity is only available for a few hours
a day. Hospitals lack medicines and are short
on staff. The universities have ground to a halt.
The shops are empty. Garbage and sewage are overflowing,
along with morgues and cemeteries.
True, Saddam Hussain and his henchmen have had
their life snuffed out of them by the hangman’s
noose. One of them even managed to get decapitated
in the process. Their bones lie next to each other’s
in the desolate sands of Tikrit, relics of another
era.
One recalls Shelly’s famous poem, in which
he talks of a traveler to Babylon who encountered
two vast and trunk less legs of stone besides
which lay a shattered visage. On its pedestal
was the inscription:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Since the passing of their “king of kings,”
The Iraqis have held elections and proudly held
up their purple fingers as proof. They have elected
a parliament, a civilian prime minister and a
cabinet. But their democracy only exists in the
Green Zone in Baghdad. Outside, a cruel war continues
to rage, mocking democracy’s incompetence.
The liberators have become occupiers. The war
has killed more than 3,000 of them and maimed
and wounded more than 20,000. But they have no
intention of leaving.
Their elected leader wants to stay the course
and has mounted a surge to pacify Baghdad. Some
good news has come from that terrified metropolis
of five million souls. The night curfew has been
shortened by a full two hours! Iraqis can now
go about the routine business of life until 10
pm. In addition, the number of civilians killed
violently is down.
The bad news is that even then 500 people were
killed last week. The neocons say the toll would
have been higher without the American surge.
But it may well have been lower, since the surge
has brought about a counter surge, a political
corollary of Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
Last month, 2,762 Iraqi civilians and policemen
were killed, down a mere 4 percent from the previous
month. Can anyone be surprised that the Iraqis,
while they are angry at each other, like their
liberators even less?
After all, who is to blame ultimately for the
sectarian violence, for Al Qaeda’s attacks
and for round-the-clock suicide bombings? None
of these existed under the dictatorship. Saddam’s
deposition, arrest and execution are yet another
confirmation, if any was needed, that the road
to hell is paved with good intentions.
A hill across from the BART train station in the
San Francisco suburb of Lafayette is filling up
rapidly with white crosses, one for every American
fatality in the Iraq War.
This grim scene, which stretches for a 100 yards,
is seen daily by trainloads full of commuters.
Nothing could better impress upon them the futility
of invading a country half way around the globe
that had caused no harm to them.
Even Bush acknowledges that the country is tired
of the war. He is wounded politically, barely
limping along, first with the conviction of Dick
Cheney’s Chief of Staff, then with the furor
over the firing of eight federal prosecutors.
He has apologized for the dilapidated conditions
of the Walter Reed Medical Center. And, while
he is down, he has witnessed the public disavowal
by a former top campaign aide, Matthew Dowd, who
has lambasted the president for his “my
way or the highway” approach.
His former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld famously
said that in life one had to deal with many known
and unknown events but the most troubling were
the “unknown unknowns.” Unknowingly,
he was speaking of his upcoming dismissal.
His successor, Robert Gates, wants to close down
Guantanamo Bay, since he says it has caused irreparable
harm to America’s image. Just a few years
ago, a US Congressman was forced to apologize
for having compared the notorious prison to the
Soviet gulag. Things have come a long way when
both houses of Congress are calling for troop
withdrawal and when Republican senators are turning
on the Republican President.
Bush is a shadow of his former self and his chances
of political recovery are slim. A Princeton historian
thinks he is the worst president in US history.
Yet he continues to trumpet the war, in visible
disassociation from reality. Speaking to troops
at Fort Irwin, California, Bush said that the
war in Iraq had convinced him that the enemy was
evil and hardened his resolve to protect the American
people.
Very few Americans are buying that tired argument.
Support for the Iraq war is at an all time low
and so are Bush’s job approval ratings.
In California, only one out of four approve of
his performance. He has crossed the red line that
Richard Nixon crossed just prior to resigning
over the Watergate Scandal.
A while back the presidential mantra was, “If
we leave, the enemy would follow us here.”
Picking on that cue, cartoonist Gary Trudeau featured
a satirical conversation in “Doonesbury,”
where one soldier says that the US had finally
figured out a way of winning the war. It involves
getting the allies to withdraw. As they go home,
the enemy follows them to their home, ensuring
an American victory.
Khalilzad must read Doonesbury. On being nominated
to be America’s ambassador-designate to
the United Nations, the former US Ambassador to
Iraq said that victory was still a possibility.
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