Region pays for US misadventures

Jan.16, 2007

Region pays for US misadventures



IT IS amusing yet disgusting to hear the Bush administration continuing to insist that critics of the administration's new strategy in Iraq and its refusal to quit the war-torn country are playing into the hands of Osama Bin Laden and global terrorism. It not only sounds like a cracked music record with a broken needle but also like a high-stinking stale dish served in a new plate.
Even the Americans know it. Here is a typical and telling commentary by McClatchy Newspapers: "President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq."
In simpler words, the writer is accusing the Bush administration of lying to the American people and the international community at large.
The argument the Bush administration puts up is a blatant denial of the fact that it is the US military occupation of Iraq that is the root cause of the crisis that Washington is facing in the country. Iraq has become a breeding ground for militancy, with the US soldiers present there presenting a convenient target for the so-called "international jihadists," who, contrary to US arguments, represent less than 10 per cent of anti-US insurgents in the country. The others are Iraqis themselves whose agenda is Iraq-specific, and their number would only grow with every high-handed American military action in the country. They are fighting a guerrilla war against the foreign military occupiers of their country as much as whom them see as the local allies of the occupiers. Forgotten or sidestepped is the reality that they are also killing far more innocent Iraqis than American soldiers on a daily basis, and there could be no justification whatsover for it.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney, who played the leading role in the scenario that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and who is naturally the most ardent advocate of continued US military presence there, portrays the confrontation in Iraq as a conflict between the US and Osama Bin Laden.
"Bin Laden doesn't think he can beat us. He believes he can force us to quit," Cheney said on Sunday. "He believes after Lebanon and Somalia, the United States doesn't have the stomach for a long war and Iraq is the current central battlefield in that war, and it's essential we win there and we will win there," argued Cheney, who is described as the most influential and powerful vice-president in US history.
"They're convinced that the United States will, in fact, pack it in and go home if they just kill enough of us," he said.
True indeed. What Cheney left unsaid in so many words was that withdrawing from Iraq would deal a severe blow to the US image as the world's sole superpower and leave a major dent in Washington's self-declared determination to fight global terrorism.
Simultaneously, there is the multi-billion-dollar angle, which, many critics of the war argue, was and is one of the key administration considerations in Iraq.
Cheney is actually targeting members of Congress who are threatening to withhold funds for the war in Iraq. Denial of funds would not only deadlock the US role in Iraq but also deprive Bush-administration-linked American corporates of business worth of billions of dollars.
These corporates make thousands of dollars per American soldier per day in Iraq. They invoice the US government for unsupplied goods and unoffered services and inflate bills by hundreds of millions of dollars and get paid without questions being asked. They should be rubbing their knuckles in glee in the wake of Bush's announcement last week that he was sending 21,500 soldiers to join the 132,000 US troops already deployed in Iraq. They and their patrons in the administration would be deeply disappointed if they are denied the easy chance to make billions of dollars in American taxpayers' money.
Indeed, it is the American system and money, and the people raising an uproar over being taken for a ride by the administration should be Americans themselves. But the issue ceases to be an all-American affair because the Gulf region and the wider Middle East have a key stake in it when the US ride is over an Arab country and Arab people and is leaving major waves in its wake that have serious regional implications.