US AND THEM: US, UN & Iraq, version 8.0

So nothing to do with knocking those tall buildings down in NYC then Ican, and what was that other reason...hard to recall now...oh yes something called Weapons of Mass Destruction. What was that all about? Yes I remember now. Saddam Hussein threatened to launch a Weapons of Mass Destruction, and we didnt want that, so we saved the world from destruction by bringing democracy to Iraq and putting Sheik Osama bin Laden under house arrest.

...
When you wish to respond to the people responsible for attacking your country, you go after those people - not some madman that had nothing to do with the event.
...

Three basic reasons we invaded Iraq are the same three basic reasons we invaded Afghanistan:

1. Al Qaeda murdered almost 3,000 civilians in the USA on September 11, 2001;

2. Afghanistan’s government tolerated Al Qaeda training camps established in their midst May 1996, and ignored repeated USA requests made in September and October 2001 to stop doing that; and Iraq’s government tolerated Al Qaeda training camps established in their midst in December 2001, and ignored repeated USA requests made in 2002 and in February 2003 to stop doing that;

3. Removal of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and in Iraq required removal of the governments of these countries because these governments would otherwise continue to tolerate Al Qaeda training camps in their midst.

The attacks on September 11 kill almost 3,000 in a series of hijacked airliner crashes into two U.S. landmarks: the World Trade Center in New York City, New York, and The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.

The night of 9/11, the President broadcast to the nation that we will not distinguish between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.

The night of 9/20, the President Bush broadcast to the nation and to a joint session of the Congress that: our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them; that it is civilization’s fight to punish this radical network; and that we ask every nation to join us in this fight.

On 10/25, the pre-9/11 draft presidential directive on al Qaeda evolved into a new directive, National Security Presidential Directive 9, now titled "Defeating the Terrorist Threat to the United States." The directive would now extend to a global war on terrorism, not just on al Qaeda. It also incorporated the President's determination not to distinguish between terrorists and those who harbor them. It included a determination to use military force if necessary to end al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan. The new directive -- formally signed on October 25, after the fighting in Afghanistan had already begun -- included new material followed by annexes discussing each targeted terrorist group. The old draft directive on al Qaeda became, in effect, the first annex. The United States would strive to eliminate all terrorist networks, dry up their financial support, and prevent them from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The goal was the "elimination of terrorism as a threat to our way of life."

No. You go after al Qaida where they primarily live and operate, and destroy them. If they survive, and they did survive, they will have the opportunity to expand their operations. Without the leadership, it becomes very dificult to sustain any kind of terrorist group.

Yes! Because we didn't destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan, al Qaeda fled to Iraq December 2001 and subsequently expanded their operations in Iraq. At the time of our invasion of Iraq March 2003, al Qaeda was growing rapidly in Iraq.

This president and administration took their eye off the ball, and now we are paying heavily for their incompetence.

Yes! "Now we are paying heavily for their incompetence": Those damn fallible fools.

... You may continue your rhetoric about "malignancy" all you want, but people aleady have realized that our administration is the worst malignancy that are causing untold agony and hardship at home.

Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Monday, October 03, 2005

Constitution Conversations...
I went to sit in the garden to peruse two different versions of the draft constitution. It was 7 pm and the electricity had just gone out for the sixth time that day. There was no generator because people usually allow their generators to rest during the evenings- the sun is on its way to setting so while it's still light outside, the heat is bearable.

In the yards of most Iraqi houses, there is often an old, rusting swing large enough for three adults (or five children). The swing is usually iron with white, peeling paint, and its seat is covered with dusty mats or cushions so that one doesn't rise from it with a grid-like pattern on ones backside from the crisscross of the thin iron bars.

Our summers and springs in Iraq revolve around those sofa-like swings or ?'marjuha'. As the summer comes to an end, Iraqis often have their evening tea outside in the garden, in the waning afternoon light, with plastic chairs gathered around the swing and a folding table in the center. At night, when the electricity goes out and the generator can't be turned on, we gather outside and sit on the swing, careful to keep bare legs and feet high enough to avoid insects lurking in the grass.

When adults want to have a confidential conversation far from curious ears- you can find them out on the swing. During family gatherings, when the cousins want to hang out and gossip away from the prying eyes of their parents, they'll be on the swing. Every family member has a photo on the swing- and every child has at some point fallen off of it.

So four weeks ago, I went out to the swing carrying two different versions of the draft constitution. Though the electricity had gone out, it was still too early to light the kerosene lamps indoors. After beating the dust out of the striped cushions and making myself comfortable, I began with the Arabic version of the constitution.

I had been reading for five minutes when a rustling sound in one of the trees caught my attention. It was coming from the ?'tooki' tree near the wall separating our garden from our neighbor's driveway. The tree is on our side of the wall, but more than half of its branches extend over to Abu F.'s side.

I don't know the name for tooki in English, but it can best be described as a berry-like fruit. It's either deep purple in color- bordering on black- or red or white. The fruit, when ripe, is both sweet and sour all at once. Our tooki tree is the red tooki type and while the fruit is lovely, it also stains everything it touches. Umm F. (Abu F.'s wife) constantly complains of it staining their driveway. Every once in a while, she revolts against the tree and attacks it, armed with a large pair of rusting hedge clippers.

This thought occurred to me as I focused on the rustling leaves and sure enough- a moment later- I saw the hedge clippers rise ominously from behind the wall clutched in a pair of hands. Snap, snap, crunch… and a medium sized branch fell towards their driveway.

"Umm F.!!!" I called out exasperated from my seat on the swing, "Again??? I thought we agreed last week you'd stop cutting the branches!!!"

The clippers paused in mid-air, like some exotic, mechanical bird with its beak open. They lowered slowly and a head took their place. Since the wall is about 180 cm high, I could tell Umm F. was standing on the pile of bricks she stacked adjacent to the wall. We had a similar pile of bricks under the tree, and we used our respective brick piles when we needed to communicate with each other over the wall.

"My driveway is a mess!" She called back to me, "You know we haven't had proper water for a week… how am I supposed to clean it? This cursed tooki tree…" She waved her clippers in the air to emphasize her frustration.

"Well it wasn't cursed when you made tooki jam last month!" I got up and walked to the wall to face her. In one hand, I had the Arabic version of the draft constitution (Version 2.0) and in the other I was clutching the New York Times English version and fanning myself with it furiously.

"So Umm F., did you have a look at the constitution yet?" I asked casually, trying to change the subject.

"Well, Abu F. read me some of it from one of the newspapers last week or the week before…" Came the disinterested reply. She raised the clippers and furtively snapped away at a couple of branches.

"And what do you think?" I was curious. I had my own ideas about the constitution back then but I wanted to hear hers.

"I don't care. They've written it and they'll ratify it- what does it matter what I think? Is it my father's constitution (qabil distoor bayt abooyeh?)?"

I frowned and tried to hand her the Arabic version. "But you should read it. READ IT. Look- I even highlighted the good parts… the yellow is about Islam and the pink is about federalism and here in green- that's the stuff I didn't really understand." She looked at it suspiciously and then took it from me.

I watched as she split the pile of 20 papers in two- she began sweeping the top edge of the wall with one pile, and using the other pile like a dustpan, she started to gather the wilted, drying tooki scattered on the wall. "I don't have time or patience to read it. We're not getting water- the electricity has been terrible and Abu F. hasn't been able to get gasoline for three days… And you want me to read a constitution?"

"But what will you vote?" I asked, watching the papers as they became streaked with the crimson, blood-like tooki stains.

"You'll actually vote?" She scoffed. "It will be a joke like the elections… They want this constitution and the Americans want it- do you think it will make a difference if you vote against it?" She had finished clearing the top edge of the wall of the wilting tooki and she dumped it all on our side. She put the now dusty, took- stained sheets of paper back together and smiled as she handed them back, "In any case, let no one tell you it wasn't a useful constitution- look how clean the wall is now! I'll vote for it!" And Umm F. and the hedge clippers disappeared.

It occurred to me then that not everyone was as fascinated with the constitution as I was, or as some of my acquaintances both abroad and inside of the country were. People are so preoccupied trying to stay alive and safe and just get to work and send their children off to school in the morning, that the constitution is a minor thing.

The trouble is that as the referendum gets nearer, interest seems to diminish. We see the billboards and the commercials on various channels all about the ?'distoor' and we hear the radio programs and the debates on channels like Arabiya and Jazeera, but there isn't real public involvement.

In August, there was more enthusiasm about the referendum. It was taken for granted that the Kurds, and Shia affiliated with SCIRI or Da'awa, would vote in the referendum. It was surprising, however, when the Association of Muslim Scholars (influential Sunni group) started what could almost be called a campaign encouraging Sunnis (and Shia) to vote against the constitution. The reasons they gave were that federalism, at this time and under the circumstances, would contribute to the division of Iraq, and also that the constitution encouraged secular and ethnic friction.

For a few weeks, there was actual interest on the part of Sunnis, especially in rural areas, to take part in the referendum. There were arguments about whether the referendum should be boycotted like the elections or whether it was the duty of Iraqis in general to vote it down.

And then the military operations on Sunni areas like Tel Afar, Ramadi, Qaim and Samarra began once again. The feeling has been that Sunni areas are being intentionally targeted prior to the referendum to keep Sunnis from voting. When your city is under fire, and you've been displaced with your family to some Red Crescent tent in the middle of the desert, the last thing you worry about is a constitution.

Sunnis are being openly threatened by Badir's Brigade people and the National Guard. Two days ago, in ?'Ras il Hawash' in the area of A'adhamiya in Baghdad, National Guard raided homes as an act of revenge because prior to the raid, they were attacked in A'adhamiya. People from the area complain that every home they raided, windows were broken, doors kicked in, tables overturned, people abused and money and valuables looted.

In places like Tel Afar and Qaim, dozens of civilians have been killed or wounded and conveniently labeled ?'insurgents' so that people in the US and UK can sleep better at night. Residents of Tel Afar who left the town returned to their homes to find many of them only rubble and to find family and friends dead or wounded. I read one report that said all civilians were evacuated before the military operation. That isn't true. Many residents didn't have cars or transport to leave the city and were forced to stay behind. Some weren't allowed out of it.

Now, as the US troops attack a little village on the Syrian border, we hear reports that the civilians are heading towards Syria. Not Arab fighters, nor insurgents- ordinary men, women and children who feel that the Iraqi government cannot shelter them or give them refuge from the onslaught of occupation forces.

What is more disturbing is the fact that most of the people who do want to vote, will vote for or against the constitution based not on personal convictions, but on the fatwas and urgings of both Sunni and Shia clerics. The Association of Muslim Scholars is encouraging people to vote against it, and SCIRI and Da'awa are declaring a vote for the constitution every Muslim's duty. It's hardly shocking that Sistani is now approving it and encouraging his followers to vote for it. (If I were an Iranian cleric living in south Iraq, I'd vote for it too!)

It is utterly frustrating to talk to someone about the referendum- whether they are Sunni or Shia or Kurd- and know that even before they've read the constitution properly, they've decided what they are going to vote.

Women's rights aren't a primary concern for anyone, anymore. People actually laugh when someone brings up the topic. "Let's keep Iraq united first…" is often the response when I comment about the prospect of Iranian-style Sharia.

Rights and freedoms have become minor concerns compared to the possibility of civil war, the reality of ethnic displacement and cleansing, and the daily certainty of bloodshed and death.


- posted by river @ 2:58 AM

Double post

Don't Give Up on Iraq Yet
By David Ignatius
Washington Post
Sunday, October 2, 2005; Page B07

BAGHDAD -- Ask the generals and colonels who are running the war in Iraq what really worries them, and it's rarely a military problem. "We haven't lost a platoon in combat! We haven't lost a skirmish!" explodes one general when describing a recent poll that reported a majority of Americans think we are losing the war.

The problems that vex the military here are political -- above all, the difficulty of shaping an effective Iraqi government that can unite Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. That has been the real challenge since U.S. troops reached Baghdad in April 2003, and it's one that all of America's military and economic power hasn't yet been able to crack. Our vast resources haven't subdued the molten passions of what Winston Churchill in 1922 called the "ungrateful volcano" of Iraq.

Because the decisive battles here are political, not military, many officers feel the recurring debate in Washington over the proper troop levels in Iraq misses the point. "We've been pounding this with a military hammer, but we all agree that the solution will be political," says one infantry colonel on the front lines.

So what is the way forward in Iraq? I come to the question with a good deal of baggage. I thought the war made sense three years ago, not because of the putative weapons of mass destruction or the al Qaeda threat but because I hoped that toppling the Arab world's most repressive regime could open the door to positive change in the region. I still believe that, but I shudder at the administration's postwar mistakes and at the human cost of the war. And I sense that both Americans and Iraqis are running out of patience. We are at a crucial decision point, so here is what I think:

The right way forward now is exactly what it was in April 2003. The United States must foster a modern, secular Iraqi government that can bring together Sunnis and Shiites and, under that umbrella of national reconciliation, stabilize the country. Above all, that means finding a way to engage the people who feel most left out of the new Iraq -- the Sunni minority that held power under Saddam Hussein and now feels disenfranchised.

Here's how Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, who oversees the war, puts it, expressing what he says is a "personal" opinion: "You must have a viable Sunni engagement plan that distinguishes between people who participated in the old regime because they had no choice and those who committed crimes against their people." That means the current "de-Baathification" rules must be eased so that they aren't a score-settling mechanism for the newly ascendant Shiite majority.

Unfortunately, Iraq's first elected government, under Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, has reinforced the sectarian tensions rather than the spirit of reconciliation. Most Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election that brought this government to power; the decisive political figure was Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who told Shiites it would be sinful not to vote for Najaf's cleric-dominated list. Jafari's government has been weak and inefficient -- and it produced a draft constitution that reassured Shiite mullahs and Kurdish warlords but left Sunnis out in the cold.

Some analysts argue that the constitution is so flawed that this month's referendum to approve it should be delayed. I disagree; like most military officers I talked to here, I see the constitution as a work in progress. The current version is far from perfect, but it can be amended and adapted by a future government. As Abizaid says, "It's a workable document from which good things can flow."

Actually, I don't think it matters all that much whether the constitution is ratified. What's crucial is that Sunnis turn out to vote Oct. 15 and that they come back to the polls at year's end, when a new government will be elected. There are encouraging signs that's going to happen, with Sunni clerics now urging people to register. Every commander
I talked with said Sunni registration is up. That signals a recognition that Iraq's future will be shaped by ballots, not suicide bombers.

The real political milestone is the December balloting to elect a new, permanent government. The good news for people who want to see a secular Iraq is that the Sistani-backed clerical list is almost certain to get fewer votes than it did in the Jan. 30 balloting. And possibly, just possibly, enough Sunnis, Kurds and secular Shiites will vote for alternative lists to allow a new ruling coalition of secular parties, perhaps allied with religious ones, which might link arms across the Shiite-Sunni divide. Such a coalition might be headed by a secular Shiite politician, such as the wily Ahmed Chalabi or former prime minister Ayad Allawi.

Maybe I'm dreaming in imagining that a stable, secular government can still emerge. But the point is that we're finally approaching crunchtime. If the next six months don't produce something like the outcome I have described, there is every likelihood that Iraq will descend into the civil war that has been looming for two years.

What I cannot understand is the call for a quick exit from Iraq, before we've given the December elections and a permanent government a chance. Make no mistake, we are looking over the lip of Churchill's volcano, and there is a chance that -- if domestic political pressure for withdrawal carries the day -- the United States could suffer a major defeat in Iraq that would reverberate for a generation. We may fail in Iraq, but let's not rush it.