Widgetized Section
Go to Admin » Appearance » Widgets » and move Gabfire Widget: Social into that MastheadOverlay zone
The Islamic Republic of Iraq? Is This What Americans Died For?
more from Hrafnkell Haraldsson
The (Islamic?) Republic of Iraq
The Republic of Iraq is officially a parliamentary democracy. It is predominantly – 97 percent -Muslim (Shia 60%-65%, Sunni 32%-37%), Christian or other 3%). Thousands of Americans and tens of thousands Iraqis gave their lives after 2003 to make this parliamentary possible, all part of President George W. Bush’s vision of spreading western democracy at the point of a sword.
Though thousands of American soldiers will remain to bolster the new government, President Obama declared an end to the American combat mission On Aug. 31, 2010.
Things have been much less clear-cut politically, as Iraq has teetered on the brink of anarchy. Warring factions are still in the field; people are still dying – including the occasional American soldier.
The Washington Post reports that in a addition to the fatalities,
As a result of the insurgent and sectarian fighting that occurred following the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, an estimated 1.6 to 2 million Iraqis had left Iraq by the end of 2006, mainly to neighboring Jordan or Syria; a similar number had relocated within Iraq. Among those who have left are an estimated two thirds of Iraq’s Christians.
Iraq and the Middle East
President Bush wanted a regime change. British Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted a regime change. Others, including Britain’s senior military officer at the time, did not. His concern was that the war be lawful (a concern largely overridden in the 9/11-traumatized United States). Bush and Blair got their way, Saddam Hussein got the noose, and the people of Iraq got the screw.
Not so much...
In May 2003, President Bush gave his infamous “mission accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. One would have expected the story to end there. But you can’t wish away the world and you can’t legislate facts out of existence.
Iraq’s nightmare was just beginning, and with it, America’s greatest trauma since the Vietnam War a generation earlier.
Plans for Iraqi self-rule were approved by the UN Security Council in October 2003 and Saddam Hussein was captured in December. In January of 2004 it was demonstrated that the American reasons for invading Iraq – weapons of mass destruction – did not – and had not ever – existed. By March of that year an interim Constitution had been signed and in November 2006 Saddam Hussein was tried and sentenced to death (he was hanged at the end of December). All the while fighting continued and people kept dying. In fact, as the Washington Post tells us by late that year nearly 3,000 Iraqis were dying each month.
The Iraqi elections took place in March 2010 but were inconclusive and it was not until eight months later, in November, that a new government was actually formed. Imagine a delay like that in the United States. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki (who won 89 seats) got a second term but it took another month for the loser, Ayad Allawai (who got 91 seats), to accept the result, rather a Miller-Murkowski situation writ large. Both men are Shiites but Mr. Allawai is the more secular of the two and he had support from the Sunni minority.
The Sunnis, you may remember, ruled the country when Saddam Hussein was in power. Mr. Maliki had the support of Kurds and the Americans wanted the Sunni minority represented in the government.
Parliament approved the outcome on December 21, a mere day before a constitutionally mandated deadline. The government supposedly elected by the Iraqi people was a secular government.
A year later, American combat forces are gone – home or to Afghanistan – and the remainder are supposed to depart by December 2011. Mr. Maliki has said he will not permit U.S. combat forces to remain.
That might pose a problem, and what’s new about that where Iraq is concerned?
Now a new report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is saying that, in the words of Army General Lloyd Austin – who commands U.S. forces in Iraq – “The situation in Iraq is at a critical juncture.”
The report goes on to say that
Terrorist and insurgent groups are less active but still adept, the Iraqi army continues to develop but is not yet capable of deterring regional actors, and strong ethnic tensions remain along Iraq’s disputed internal boundaries. Although a government has finally been formed, it remains to be seen how cohesive and stable it will be.
And American diplomats and other mission employees might not be safe.
You see, violence is far from ended in Iraq: insurgent attacks in January killed at least 159 Iraqi citizens and 100 police and soldiers – “the deadliest month for Iraq since September, according to data released Tuesday by security and health ministry officials in Baghdad.”
We could keep up to 800 soldiers in the embassy to protect them but as the report concludes, “though such a force would have little interaction with the Iraqi public, it might also be cited as evidence that the United States has no intention of leaving Iraq.”
On top of it all, Iraq isn’t looking much like what we would recognize as a democracy. In December the government closed social clubs that serve alcohol in the capital, sparking protests by writers and poets that the move was Saddam-style repression. Turns out they’re enforcing one of Saddam’s old laws. All those people dead, so Saddam could rule Iraq from the grave?
But that wasn’t all. Next was theater and music classes, banned by the Iraqi ministry of education. Iraqi’s parliamentary democracy – the Republic of Iraq – is beginning to look more like the Islamic Republic of Iraq. It’s not exactly what either freedom-loving Iraqis or Americans who gave so much to the war effort hand in mind.
Doesn’t sound like all that both Iraq and the United States have been through since President Bush declared Mission Accomplished has accomplished all that much, does it?
Maps from CIA World Factbook
Related Posts :
In his remarks today about the successful completion of Iraq’s second ever national election, President Bara ...
In a statement to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown laid the groundwork for the with ...
A new report by Amnesty International found that contrary to the Bush/McCain rhetoric, the situation in Iraq ...
With the Iraq drawdown comes criticism and violence. Expect these criticisms to warp unrecognizably and ...
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama issued a statement today, in reaction to President Bush's Ira ...
14 Responses to The Islamic Republic of Iraq? Is This What Americans Died For?
Public Service Advertisements
Reynardine
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 8:18 am
It appears that Bush and Blair had a folie a deux of establishing a joint British- American Raj which was supposed to rule Mesopotamia (as they doubtless thought of it): in Blair’s case for the glory of wave-ruling Britannia, if only as the yappy little head of the dog-wagging American tail; in Bush’s case, for his own vainglory and the enrichment of the cartel that put him in power. The stated idea was to make the Iraqis pay for their own ruin with their own oil, an idea whose ingenuity was matched only by Goering’s after Crystalnacht, when he made Jews pay for the damage to themselves by confiscating their property. Perhaps, indeed, that was the inspiration, but the stated policy was never the real one anyway.
We began the Twenty-first Century with a budget surplus. Under the Constitution, that had to be spent on the public commonweal. What? Spend money on parks schools, roads, bridges, infrastructure, programs that would enable all those icky little people and their icky little children to feel uppity? We couldn’t have that! You see what happened. The little people are going to have to give it all back. We can’t have their selfish little needs inconveniencing the rich, after all, or the latter will ship out the rest of our jobs.
As Emmanuel Goldstein said, war is peace.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 8:26 am
Some mistakes you can’t undo. Bush screwed the pooch in Iraq and now we’re forced to deal with the results of that fiasco, as are the Iraqi people and government (whatever form it eventually takes). Right now, the situation is none too promising.
Shiva (Moderator)
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 8:22 am
This is exactly what I am afraid will happen in Egypt.
Some who read sources other than American media will remember that by 2005 militant and hardliner muslims were bombing liqour stores and other forms of enjoyment in Bagdad. Liquor and drug use were rampant during the war. The hardliners will eventually endure to quash any real freedoms in order to control the people and to maintain their religious outlook. I think the power if Islam over peoples lives may well triumph over people having actual rights. We paid in blood and in billions just to prove that in Iraq. You cannot take a country where corruption is deeply embedded and turn it into a white sheet squeaky clean government nor should you try. You only get people killed at a higher rate.
I still want Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in prison
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 8:25 am
I’m with you Shiva. Prison is where they belong. The lessons of Nuremberg were apparently a one-fer and don’t apply to our own “side.” We can condemn Hitler for creative excuse making to attack Poland but we can’t do the same to Bush. And you can’t shove democracy down anyone’s throat either. It’s a rather bizarre way to spread liberty, isn’t it? By force? I hope things go better in Tunisia (and in Egypt). At least Americans won’t be dying to secure a future for oligarchs there, whatever else happens.
Shiva (Moderator)
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 8:40 am
I wouldn’t count on any Americans dying there just yet. The president is acting like the Egyptian people are looking towards the US for help. They arnt. Just this morning a CNN crew was attacked just for being Americans. There is a huge banner in one of the main squares there showing their hate of us. The less we say or do to the Egyptians future ends the better. And we might want to consider that our alliances with Egypt may be falling apart as well.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 8:56 am
We haven’t really done anything to earn any love from Egyptians. I was reading this morning about Americans leaving Egypt, many of whom love Egypt, but sadly, our government hasn’t shown any evidence of similar feelings, being content to support oligarchs.
Here is Mubarak’s human right’s record: motherjones.com/mojo/2011...
Shiva (Moderator)
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 9:11 am
Reading that list reads like the republican tea party national platform
Sarah Jones
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 10:03 am
Exactly. A power vacuum is a dangerous time.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 10:16 am
That power vacuum was apparent enough to Bush Sr. that he let Saddam off with an “ass-kicking” but his son wasn’t half as bright, was he?
Shiva (Moderator)
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 10:43 am
His son let Cheney pull the punches so pliny the younger wouldn’t lose cheney as a friend.
Sam
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 9:28 am
Wait.. so a country that is predominantly Muslim is ruling in a typical Muslim manner?
This is an outrage! How dare other cultures govern themselves differently than us?!
Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 10:15 am
The point being of course, that many Muslims aren’t happy with a return to Saddam-era laws and governance, Sam. As recent history has shown (Tunisia and Egypt) Islamic people are perfectly capable of demanding secular government (and one of those was supposedly elected in Iraq, if you will remember, and as I point out in my article). You seem to miss the point entirely.
You might also observe from history that Islamic countries were more enlightened and tolerant than the Christian kingdoms of medieval Europe.
Reynardine
Feb. 2nd, 2011 at 11:28 am
In fact, however repressive Wahabi custom has been, the maligned Sharia law granted more rights to women than our own did until the mid-Nineteenth Century. A woman kept her name at marriage; she was entitled to half the inheritance of her brother at a time when tail-male in the West often excluded women entirely; her bridegroom had to set aside a sum as haq mehr to be paid to her if he divorced her, and divorce was available to her. Educated Muslims never regarded women as intellectually inferior, and the Prophet himself married doctors, jurists, social workers and military strategists simply because it would have been indecent to work with them otherwise. The injunction that a man might hit his wife if, after nine month’s sexual abstinence, they still disagreed, was based on three premises: decent people rarely keep up quarrels that long, loving couples rarely keep up abstinence that long, and if he finally did hit her, at least she wouldn’t be pregnant. In the West, men were, until the mid-Nineteenth Century, allowed to beat their wives with a stick no bigger than a wedding ring, and as far as I know, only Russia punished a husband who beat his wife into a miscarriage, because he had deprived the Czar of a future subject.
Cultures, like people, go through youth, prime, decay, and senility. Unlike people, they can rejuvenate themselves and each other. Maybe ancient Egypt is growing young again. Maybe we, too, can shake off the thickening smugness of middle age.