12/10/06 Time For Occupation Of Iraq To Finally End
Submitted by WNPJ member Marion Stuenkel
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Pictured was the building with the Internet Cafe, across from the ice cream store with the splendid pistachio flavor, not far from the potato chip stand I frequented. I grocery shopped on this street, bought a birthday cake, laughed at the Teletubby dolls for sale in the toy store.
In 2004, that building and street were a vital part of the neighborhood where I lived in an apartment, without guards and with friends to visit. The friends were Christian, Sunni and Shia -- businessmen, doctors, lawyers, artists, clerics and priests.
Not far is San Rafael Church, where Paul Bremer attended mass when he first came to Baghdad.
I think the U.S. military industrial complex has succeeded in Iraq. What the corporate elites wanted, happened. They destroyed a civilization.
The same tactics all empires use -- from Assyrian to British to United States -- has worked yet again to the shame of us all.
What they've done is set tribe against tribe, religion against religion, women against men, profession against profession, city versus country and, finally, the inner self against itself.
For the Iraqi people, the first Gulf War was the war against Iran. More than a million men were killed. Many Iraqi perofessionals are single women. They had no men to marry.
Then came the 1991 war, won by superior technology on the field while terrorizing women and children at home. Next, the long seige, from 1991 through the "shock and awe" campaign in 2003, followed by looting that destroyed infrastructure and cultural artifacts.
Selective repairs followed, so that Green Zone U.S. soldiers have a swimming pool, while in Sadr City, strands of fecal matter can be indentified in the drinking water.
They've done dirty operations, then manipulated impulsive repsonses, committed war crimes and built on the reactions.
Many who can leave Iraq have done so, and they mourn in exile. Many of those who remain are ill from the same diseases war always leaves. During the Punic War, the earth of Carthage was salted. In Iraq, the earth is poisoned with depeleted uranium.
Tribes, hundreds of them, move herds back and forth within Iraq, and to and from Iran. Sunni are married to Christians and Sunni to Shia. Iraq, too, is a melting pot. There are many cooperative efforts about which nothing is reported, but as historians write, "The British always leave behind a civil war."
Some Iraqis say, "The servant (Saddam) has departed because the master (empire) has returned."
U.S. policy has been a success if what we wanted is a nation so divided and destroyed we can control its resources. Our behavior is mean, greedy and selfish, so we think everyone else's is too.
We who abhor such behavior must keep doing whatever we can to get our military out of Iraq. Some of the Iraqi people I met, with an arms-open gesture, said to me, "We people, we get along just fine," and, with hands arched overhead, continued, "It is our governments that are the problem."
I live in a representative democracy where government is said to be of, by and for the people. So I tell my representatives I want us to leave Iraq. The question of success or failure is not the right question. We didn't get into the mess, we made it. We can leave.
As I left Iraq, from the apartment not far down the street from the latest car bombings shown on the front page, our translator kissed me on the forehead in blessing.
I had just said how sorry I was that my government had hurt so many.
He said, "We have been invaded for thousands of years, and we will survive this occuaption as well."
It is time to leave Iraq now so the world around can heal.
Time For Occupation Of Iraq To Finally End
Wisconsin State JournalSunday, December 10, 2006
MARION STUENKEL
The picture on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal on Tuesday took my breath away, because I knew that corner.
It was as if I were in Iraq, and the Baghdad newspaper had a picture of Madison's State Street with Michaelangelo's and The Childrens' Museum buildings all ragged and ripped out.Pictured was the building with the Internet Cafe, across from the ice cream store with the splendid pistachio flavor, not far from the potato chip stand I frequented. I grocery shopped on this street, bought a birthday cake, laughed at the Teletubby dolls for sale in the toy store.
In 2004, that building and street were a vital part of the neighborhood where I lived in an apartment, without guards and with friends to visit. The friends were Christian, Sunni and Shia -- businessmen, doctors, lawyers, artists, clerics and priests.
Not far is San Rafael Church, where Paul Bremer attended mass when he first came to Baghdad.
I think the U.S. military industrial complex has succeeded in Iraq. What the corporate elites wanted, happened. They destroyed a civilization.
The same tactics all empires use -- from Assyrian to British to United States -- has worked yet again to the shame of us all.
What they've done is set tribe against tribe, religion against religion, women against men, profession against profession, city versus country and, finally, the inner self against itself.
For the Iraqi people, the first Gulf War was the war against Iran. More than a million men were killed. Many Iraqi perofessionals are single women. They had no men to marry.
Then came the 1991 war, won by superior technology on the field while terrorizing women and children at home. Next, the long seige, from 1991 through the "shock and awe" campaign in 2003, followed by looting that destroyed infrastructure and cultural artifacts.
Selective repairs followed, so that Green Zone U.S. soldiers have a swimming pool, while in Sadr City, strands of fecal matter can be indentified in the drinking water.
They've done dirty operations, then manipulated impulsive repsonses, committed war crimes and built on the reactions.
Many who can leave Iraq have done so, and they mourn in exile. Many of those who remain are ill from the same diseases war always leaves. During the Punic War, the earth of Carthage was salted. In Iraq, the earth is poisoned with depeleted uranium.
Tribes, hundreds of them, move herds back and forth within Iraq, and to and from Iran. Sunni are married to Christians and Sunni to Shia. Iraq, too, is a melting pot. There are many cooperative efforts about which nothing is reported, but as historians write, "The British always leave behind a civil war."
Some Iraqis say, "The servant (Saddam) has departed because the master (empire) has returned."
U.S. policy has been a success if what we wanted is a nation so divided and destroyed we can control its resources. Our behavior is mean, greedy and selfish, so we think everyone else's is too.
We who abhor such behavior must keep doing whatever we can to get our military out of Iraq. Some of the Iraqi people I met, with an arms-open gesture, said to me, "We people, we get along just fine," and, with hands arched overhead, continued, "It is our governments that are the problem."
I live in a representative democracy where government is said to be of, by and for the people. So I tell my representatives I want us to leave Iraq. The question of success or failure is not the right question. We didn't get into the mess, we made it. We can leave.
As I left Iraq, from the apartment not far down the street from the latest car bombings shown on the front page, our translator kissed me on the forehead in blessing.
I had just said how sorry I was that my government had hurt so many.
He said, "We have been invaded for thousands of years, and we will survive this occuaption as well."
It is time to leave Iraq now so the world around can heal.
Submitted by wnpj on Tue, 12/12/2006 - 10:55am.