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Analysis Last Updated: Sep 20th, 2006 - 16:17:35


The Zarqawi affair, part 7 of 15
By B. J. Sabri
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Sep 20, 2006, 01:20

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�See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." --George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 (Listen to audio) [Italics added]

Why does Israel want to partition Iraq? Does Israel possess the material means to do it? And, where does Zarqawi fit in this plan? For all practical reasons, Israel (via decision makers loyal to it and to Zionism inside the American regimes since George H. W. Bush) had, de facto, partitioned Iraq with the so-called No-Fly Zones (NFZs) on Iraq�s national airspace after the end of the Gulf War Slaughter in 1991.

Overview: without authorization from the United Nations that previously authorized the war, the U.S. and its lackeys, Britain and France, imposed two NFZs: the first over areas with predominate Kurdish populations, and the second over areas with predominate Arab Shiite Muslims. While the U.S. rationalized the imposition as a measure to protect Kurds and Shiites from �Saddam�s wrath� after a failed rebellion promoted by Bush senior against the central government, the division of Iraq into three zones carried with it a blueprint for an eventual partition of the country regardless of its historical or modern realities.

Once the U.N. declared the U.S. and Britain as the occupying powers of Iraq in 2003, the project to partition Iraq returned to the forefront with geographical delimitations that mirrored the projections of the NFZs. Without debating the illegality of the NFZs, it is important to underline the central obsession of Israel: separate the Kurdish region, even if the rest of Iraq would remain unified. That would constitute the precedent to partition the Arabic and Islamic worlds.

What was the scheme to separate the Kurdish areas from Iraq in 1991?

When the U.S. imposed the Northern NFZ (Kurdish areas), it also coupled it with a political diktat that the Iraqi central government end its presence in those areas. By force of this fact alone, Iraq, as a political state, ceased to exist inside a portion of its own national territory.

After the invasion, Israel, now in total control of the United States, revived the scheme to partition Iraq, as a part of its global policy to fracture, thus controlling, the Arab states. Remember, the Arab world is not entirely Arab, and tens of ethnic and religious groups live in this rich mosaic called the Arab civilization. If Israel would succeed in scrambling the mosaic, then we would have tens of micro units with such names as Shiite-stan, Copto-stan, Arabistan, Kurdistan, Berberistan, Kabili-stan, Christian-stan, Maronite-stan, Lebano-stan, Sunni-stan, Druze-stan, and so on.

In breaking Iraq�s historical continuity and national mosaics, the American occupation and the strategy to conquer it had only brought to fruition a long effort by Israel to destroy Iraq. Still, while it was easy to separate the Kurdish areas from Iraq, it was still difficult to partition Arab Iraq with the same logic, because we are dealing with one homogenous ethnic group (Iraqi Arabs) that is also religiously homogenous except for conflict in interpretation of religious dogmas.

Again, since the Kurdish region is technically out of Iraq�s control, severing it ethnically from Iraq sets the pace to partition the rest of the country, but this time on a confessional basis. But how can the American-Israeli axis partition Arab Iraq on a confessional basis regardless of common ethnic heritage of Iraqi Muslim Arabs? The Zionist planners of the American Empire came up with one single strategy: a war between Sunni and Shiites.

If that was the strategy, what was the tactic? Answer: create a situation of incompatibility problems strong enough to justify a split. But Iraqi Arabs, be they Shiites or Sunnis have never battled each other. Socially, Arab Shiites and Arab Sunnis are identical ethnical twins in all forms of societal transaction, cultural origins, religions, etc. That means they are not somatically distinguished groups as African-Americans vs. Caucasians. In other words, unless because of specific religious rituals, no one could ever differentiate between a Shiite or Sunni; the only distinguishing mark between them is the attire of their respective clergy. In Iraq�s secular society, there is no telling who is Sunni or Shiite.

Under these conditions of total, innate similarity (except the Shiite�s exaggeration over their veneration for Imam Ali -- Mohammad�s cousin -- and his son Hussein) creating a war between Iraqi Arabs was an insurmountable barrier that the United States seeks to overcome -- but only to a certain degree -- with a two-pronged catalyst that includes fuel and igniter.

The fuel

As fuel, the U.S. drummed up the notion that Saddam Hussein persecuted the Shiites -- Iraq�s relative confessional majority. Of course, that charge is fictitious and its sole purpose was to create a psychological condition predisposed to arouse confessional passions. The reality is different though. In fact, although the Shiites did not occupy the very highest posts in the Saddam government (these were reserved to his hometown mates), they were, nonetheless, the backbone of Saddam�s rule.

Second, Hussein only persecuted only those who opposed his political system regardless of their origins. Briefly, taking advantage of rivalry between Shiism and Sunnism, the U.S., in collaboration with Sistani, Hakim, Chalabi, Allawi, Rubeiee, Jaffari, and Makia created the myth that the time had come for the Shiites to rule Iraq -- keep in mind, the U.S. strategic target is to rule Iraq alone but with the help of the Shiites as inconsequential bureaucrats and facilitators.

The igniter

In order for the U.S. to push the myth of Shiite rule in Iraq and induce the Shiites to separate from Iraq, the U.S. had to create a Sunni figure and endow it with an extreme hatred for Shiism. To hit two birds with one stone, the U.S. invented an anti-Shiite adversarial personality that combined two qualities: 1) it must be a �Qaedaist,� so the U.S. could say that is was battling al-Qaeda in Iraq, and 2) it must be an Shiite hater in the tradition of Saudi Wahabism. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, here enters Zarqawi.

Keep mind that even the ruse of extremist Saudi Wahabism does not work as it relates to the Zarqawi hoax. For instance, there are over 5 million Arab Shiite Saudi citizens living in Saudi Arabia, yet, no one has ever lost a finger because of assumed Wahabi loathing of Shiism.

In historical equivalency, though, and as far as it concerns Israel, the Zarqawi hoax (which in the meanwhile developed into a full-fledged affair) is the inverse repetition of the Zionist Lavon Affair in Egypt (1950) and Operation Babylon in Iraq (1950) to force the relocation of Arabs of Jewish faith from those two countries. While in these operations, Israel�s aim was revolving around solidifying the Jewish presence in Palestine by massive emigration to it; in Iraq, it is revolving around two objectives: 1) break Iraq�s millennial geographical continuity through partitions executed by the United States, and 2) cause massive emigration from Iraq by implanting terror and insecurity.

Having related the Zarqawi hoax to the Israeli and American objectives, I must note that the calculated formula to carry out the hoax was elementary. First step: American mercenaries and private army commit acts of terrorism against all Iraqis without distinction. Second step: attribute those acts to the Iraqi resistance (Sunni or Shiite), or to fictional forces such as �extremist Islamists,� �Qaedaists,� and so on. Thus, when the U.S. kills Shiites, it announces that �Zarqawi� did it; but when it kills Sunnis, it announces that Shiite militias did it.

Yet, in studying the news coming from Iraq, it is binding to make a categorical statement: at killing both Sunni or Shiites is no other than the United States -- it is (with Israel) the only beneficiary of the killing, i.e., it has a motive: conquer Iraq by any means necessary. For instance, if Zarqawi were an anti-Shiite then who killed over 500 top Iraqi scientists from both confessions (Sunni and Shiite)? If Zarqawi were a Sunni lover, why did he not spare the Sunni scientists? In addition, who killed over 1,200 Iraqi physicians (Sunni and Shiite), and why?

That does not mean, however, that Arab sympathizers of Islamic fundamentalism could have come to aid the occupied Iraqis. This is primarily due to 1) Arab solidarity, and 2) Islamic solidarity. This should not be strange; the Arabs consider themselves one people. (It is ironic that the Muslims transliterated the word, �fundamentalism� from the English to the Arabic and used it in the meaning designated by Tel Aviv and Washington. Thus, fundamentalism as it applies to crusading Christian mentality became in Arabic: al-Oosuliya al-Islamiya, although Muslims believe that Oosuliya (fundamentalism) in religion means only the strict observance of the teachings of Mohammad.)

One thing to debate here is the American deceptive practice that identifies Islamic fundamentalism with terrorism. If this concept implies that fundamentalism in religions equates with terrorism, then we are dealing with a paradigm.

But for a paradigm to be universally accepted, it must be applicable to all situations where religions are involved. Accordingly, if one believes that Islamic fundamentalism promotes terrorism, then he or she has to agree that Christian and Jewish fundamentalisms promote terrorism, as well. Any objection to this dialectical outcome would 1) nullify the paradigm and its premises, and 2) deny its applicability to any religion. In the end, while a religion cannot be fundamentalist in the American invented sense, its adepts could become dogmatic, or, if one insists, even fundamentalist (or extremist), which is a Western concept with calculated ideological overtones. But this is another subject.

Further, a few observations can reinforce the statement that �terrorism,� often identified with al-Qaeda and its offshoots, never existed, nor exists today, in Iraq. Aside from recent revelation by the U.S. government that denied relations between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government, I can reinforce this statement by noting the following. 1) Because the U.S. occupies both Afghanistan and Iraq, 2) considering the size of forces that occupy Iraq is 10 times the size of those that occupy Afghanistan, and 3) because al-Qaeda had its principal presence in Afghanistan, why is it we never hear about any al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan? Why is that we only hear the phrase: the resurgent Taliban?

Did al-Qaeda evaporate and then reemerge as Taliban? Did the U.S. exterminate all al-Qaeda members, and then make a census that they no longer exist in Afghanistan? What yardstick did the U.S. use to identify the Qaedaists in the first place? Did these marks include robes, turbans, and beards? Or did the U.S. follow computerized brainwave models identifying them? Pointedly, how did the U.S. know who was Qaedaist and who was not, so it could claim that al-Qaeda had become history in Afghanistan but a newly mushroomed reality in Iraq? Why is it that we never hear about beheadings in Afghanistan but only in Iraq?

To give you a comprehensive answer: al-Qaeda never existed nor exists in Iraq today. If it exists, then it does so in the archives of the CIA, the NSA, and the White House. Al-Qaeda is an organization created and trained by the United States to fight the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan. In an article permeated with Western clich�s about Islamic terrorism, Robin Cook, (a British imperialist who died recently and a former foreign secretary, and a war criminal for his role in the sanctions and war of attrition against Iraq in the 1990s) told how the U.S. created al-Qaeda and gave its name.

Despite the U.S. propaganda about the cosmic capabilities of al-Qaeda, it is certain that Osama bin Laden and his followers could not have been more than a band of anti-Soviet War veterans, who then defied the U.S. order to stand down and surrender to the new American order after the Gulf War Slaughter (1991) and the subsequent collapse of the USSR. Forcefully, the ensuing war between bin Laden and the United States stems from one fact only: the American occupation of Saudi Arabia. That hardly qualifies a bin Laden-U.S. war as a one for Islamic or Christian fundamentalist values.

In a recent article, Patrick J. Buchanan, a sharp and articulate analyst (despite his basic indoctrination in conservative and xenophobic ideological agendas) confirmed what I just said. Said Buchanan, �Al-Qaeda appears to exist for one purpose: plot and perpetrate mass murder to terrorize Americans and Europeans into getting out of the Islamic world.� The flip of the coin is that Buchanan approached the equation between the West and al-Qaeda by mingling facts and fiction.

On the side of fact, it is correct that bin Laden wanted the United States to evacuate its forces from Muslim land, since he fought with the United States to evacuate the Soviets from the same lands. Unless Buchanan advocates empire and imperialism, is there any problem with bin Laden�s position? Would Buchanan accept that Russia, China, Syria, or Saudi Arabia station military forces in New York and Virginia against the will of the American people?

Nevertheless, this fact has a ramification: Buchanan ignored a much bigger fact whereby the United States has been exercising massive state terrorism when it attacked Iraq because of the invasion of Kuwait, and then remained in the Middle East, and even transferred its world strategic command to it (in Bahrain). Buchanan, therefore, failed to mention an important epistemological truth: U.S. terrorism generates Arab counter-terrorism.

On the side of fiction, Buchanan involved the Europeans collectively. He stated, without providing evidence, that a-Qaeda also wants to terrorize the Europeans. Of course, he was alluding to terrorist acts in Bali, London, and Madrid. But these acts happened after the invasion of Iraq and most likely, they are the product of American and Israeli intelligence services to implicate al-Qaeda, thus justifying the wars of hyper-imperialism.

Having examined how a prominent insider of the American �Republic� confronts the issue of al-Qaeda, I have to restate that the claim depicting the U.S. as fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is baseless from the sub-foundation all the way up. Can we prove that by extrapolation of facts?

Consider the following points. First, the nuclear-like bombardment of Afghanistan most certainly destroyed all primitive training camps of that ragtag organization which the U.S. elevated to a mythological status to magnify its implied danger. Second, consequent to that bombardment and from the viewpoint of military logistics, it is impossible for al-Qaeda to re-organize and transfer personnel, hardware, etc., to Iraq, a country occupied by the same superpower that just destroyed it in Afghanistan.

To conclude, propaganda is the lifeline of the American intervention in Iraq. After it claimed in the pre-war period that Iraq had connections to al-Qaeda, and after seeing the fierce Iraqi resistance to its occupation, the only course of action that remained was to create a material focus for its �war on terrorism.� In other words, to conquer Iraq, U.S. strategists had to come up with an idea that keeps that bogus war running: a string of hoaxes such al-Qaeda, Zarqawi, terrorists, etc., must occupy the headlines.

Explanation: to translate the strategy from theory to practice the U.S. and Israel executed first a series of attacks against selected targets in Iraq, and then spread the speculation as who stood behind them. Effectively, the time had become ripe to name a villain, then elevate his name to a cosmic symbol of an �evil force.�

In chronological succession, three important preludes predated the creation of the Zarqawi hoax and they all happened in August 2003. Officially, however, the United States (as you will read soon) gave birth to the hoax at the end of October 2003. What were these three preludes to the debut of the Zarqawi show, and, most importantly, was there a premonitory prelude before all preludes?

B. J. Sabri is an Iraqi-American anti-war activist. Email: bjsabri@yahoo.com.

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