The Splendid Failure of Occupation
Part 36: George Bush occupies Iraq
By B. J. Sabri
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Sep 10, 2005, 15:38

Considering U.S. machinations, maneuvers, spins, lies, and changing rationales to invade and occupy Iraq, is it not surprising that the Bush regime survived and still rules the United State?

Two structural pillars support Bush�s survival: (1) the military power of the United States�it shields the U.S. government from international accountability, (2) the anti-democratic, corrupted, and monopolistic nature of the American political order�while the people are impotent to prosecute the crimes of the system, the system will never prosecute itself.

Ideologically though, the Bush regime survived by managing hate, fear, and propaganda. But, propaganda is the natural terrain on which the regime thrives. Take the swift defeat of Iraq after three weeks of massive bombardment and land �skirmishes� (Baghdad fell without resistance), Bush depicted it as a demonstration of American prowess and technology. Militarily, however, taking into account the formidable military power of the U.S. vis-�-vis Iraq�already collapsing under a 13-year old U.S.-U.N. siege�that depiction is worthless.

Not even the duration of Bush�s blitzkrieg is significant in the annals of wars. For instance, in June 1967, the illegal settler state of Israel (Britain, other western powers, and the USSR installed it on Arab land with U.N. resolution 181), defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in only six days. As for Hitler, the inventor of blitzkriegs, he defeated Poland in a month, Denmark and Norway in two months, powerful imperial France in six weeks, Belgium in 17 days, Holland in five, Yugoslavia in 11, and Greece in three weeks. [Source]

After hyper-inflating Iraq�s threat and then invading it for that bogus reason (in January 2003, Bush declared in mangled semantics, �Iraq poses catastrophic danger that requires us to confront the danger of catastrophic violence posed by Iraq�), the swiftness with which the U.S. defeated it did not generate swift conquest, but soon transformed into a dire incubus for the invaders.

Similarly, the ease with which the U.S. toppled the legitimate regime of President Saddam Hussein did not correspond with equal ease to conquer his country. I used the terms, legitimate and president, because by all standing international covenants despite America�s pretentious to the contrary, Saddam Hussein is still the legitimate president of Iraq regardless of the nature of his regime or our opposition to it.

The United States, itself, supplied the precedent to this concept of legitimacy. When Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait for over six months in 1990, the U.S., after defeating Iraq in 1991, restored the Kuwaiti ruler to power, as the legitimate leader of that country. For the record, and based on the turbulent history and static traditions of the Middle East, regardless of any criticism directed against their practices or nature, the ruler of Kuwait is no more or less legitimate than Saddam Hussein or any other Arab ruler.

Furthermore, it is now about time to revise the term �dictator� to name a regime�s strongman, for reasons that having nothing to with opposing or accepting dictatorship, but for the way that Washington is using that term. First, when a strongman ends his alliance with Washington, this turns him immediately from a �man whom we can deal with,� �moderate,� or a �president� into a �dictator.� Second, the noun, �dictator� has become a weapon of propaganda and a motive for war against nations that oppose Washington�s polices.

A recent example of a strongman�s imperialist rehabilitation is Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. When Musharraf overthrew the elected government of Pakistan and became, de facto, the �dictator� of Pakistan, the U.S. called him, in fact, �dictator� and �military ruler,� and Britain slammed Pakistan with sanctions. But when he allied himself with Washington and London after 9/11, he became, �His Excellency, President Musharraf.�

Concerning the illegality of Hussein�s removal, consider the following: the United States invaded Iraq without valid reasons, outside established international legality, and removed the Iraqi president from power in contravention of the U.N. charter. First, if the United States does not acknowledge the binding authority of that charter, it should not have used it to expel Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. Second, since the United States violated the charter to invade Iraq in 2003, then it should have withdrawn from the United Nations immediately prior to the invasion to rescind its obligations toward it. Simultaneously, however, that move would have meant that the United States breached the charter for political expediency hence the U.N.�if it were independent�should have punished it.

Upholding Hussein�s status as the legitimate president of Iraq, therefore, should be and is independent from our opposition to his regime. Categorically, since the U.S. invasion was illegal, so was Hussein�s removal, no matter how all theoreticians of imperialism would rationalize it.

As for the issue of Hussein�s legitimacy; for 24 years since he became president without election, all countries (including the United States who shook hands with him) recognized Iraq as a sovereign state, Saddam Hussein as its president, and exchanged ambassadors with Iraq. The point of this discussion is that rejecting aggression requires rejecting its outcome. The moment politically motivated selectivity approves certain items but excludes others, the whole edifice of how to confront aggressions would collapse. As a result, to state that Hussein is no longer the legitimate president of Iraq means accepting the whole concept of the illegal occupation of Iraq.

This discussion is neither about the restoration of Hussein to power nor in defense of his regime. My argument is that the United States used two separate issues as alibis to invade and occupy Iraq: (1) Hussein�s theme as a �dictator� and (2) Iraq�s right to own WMD to counter Israel�s threat to annihilate the Arabs with nuclear weapons, as well as deterrence against American interventionism in the Middle East, which the invasion of Iraq proved.

Now that Bush is occupying Iraq, what is he doing in that country to turn it into an undeclared colony of the United States?

In the following discussion, I shall answer these questions by starting out from two perspectives. First, by reprising the historical analogy of the Original Peoples of the United States and relating it to the Iraqi people; and second, by giving an overview of the military conquest of Iraq as a process with phases and targets.

The U. S., Iroquois, and Iraqis: the Immediate Results of Imperialist Policy

In parts, 32 and 33 of this series, I addressed the issue of the Original Peoples of the United States and tied it, ideologically and practically, to the conquest of Iraq. In addition, I also used Alexander Hamilton as a prototype for George H. Bush and his son, George W. Bush as all three men, albeit Hamilton was never a president, espoused similar ideology of extermination and empire.

Arguably and as it concerns the imperialist history of the United States, it does not matter which president or politician is employing aggression, intervention or mass destruction to achieve empire. It could be Jefferson, Jackson, Taylor, Hamilton, Polk, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, or Bush Jr. As if per hereditary rituals, every four or eight years, the sitting American president must designate an enemy and immolate it on the altar of American supremacist racism, political ideology, and capitalistic greed. In short, U.S. violence makes part of a larger national scheme or a national tradition.

The basic tenets of this tradition pivots around one and only one purpose: destroy anyone that stands in the way of the American Power. German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher exemplified my concept of the American tradition when he discussed Nazism:

Hitler and National Socialism were in a long-standing tradition. . . . They were not unfortunate accidents, not incomprehensible derailments in the path of German history; they were as Konrad Heiden said, a �German tradition.� [Italic added] [Quoted in: The PSYCHOPATHIC GOD, Adolf Hitler, by Robert G. L. Waite, Da Capo Press, 1977, pp, 269]

Assuming that Bracher defined the concept of �national tradition� in the right political frame, it follows that if Hitler�s violence were in line with the German tradition, then U.S. violence is in line with the American tradition. However, Bracher, as a historian of the Weimar Republic, was somewhat biased or even dogmatic. From the Holy Roman Empire through Bismarck and to Hitler, not all German history was violent, and even if it were violent, it did not share the motives of Nazism. Moreover, Bracher�s over-preoccupation with idealistic democracy made him see all the things under two contrasting colors.

Not so with the American tradition: this has been systematic, consistent, codified, institutionalized, violent, imperialist, and interventionist, every step of the way, from the origins until present.

By force of this conclusion, both, Alexander Hamilton and George W. Bush make part of that tradition; and both typify the duality that characterized the American system whereby public statements of policy or state�s philosophy does not reflect, correspond, or identify with the actual directives of power and its real aims. Let us examine Hamilton�s duplicitous thought.

Hamilton, the Idealist

From Hamilton�s papers: The Farmer Refute, February 23, 1775:

Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety. . . . It is true, that New-York has no Charter. But, if it could support it's claim to liberty in no other way, it might, with justice, plead the common principles of colonization: for, it would be unreasonable, to seclude one colony, from the enjoyment of the most important privileges of the rest. There is no need, however, of this plea: The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. [Emphasis added]

Hamilton, the Exterminator

The following is a directive, dated May 31, 1779, that Hamilton wrote with his own hand, authorizing Major General John Sullivan on how to deal with Iroquois:

To lay waste all the settlements around . . . That the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed. . . . But you will not by any means, listen to any overture of peace before the total ruin of their settlements is effected. . . . Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them. [Emphasis added] (Quoted in Facing West . . . , Richard Drinnon, pp, 331.)

If you noticed, the sentence, �Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them� is nothing else but the progenitor fascist ideology of �preemption� embraced by George W. Bush and Zionists allies. This proves my often-stated contention that the American political-ideological system is a closed loop, self-reproducing mechanism incapable of change or progress.

By comparing the situations of Iroquois and Iraqis, it should not be difficult to see the similarity that sealed their history. One important outcome of both histories is the way by which the U.S. government opted to destroy both nations and their social structures. In the case of Iroquois, the combination between American greed, attitudes, mentality, and ideology resulted in the physical decimation of the Iroquois as people, as well as the destruction of their political state: the Iroquois Confederacy. In 1779, the Iroquois who reached their apex of power in 1680 and formed a highly developed polity that included six closely related Native groups: Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora ceased to exist as a political entity. Other large advanced Native confederacies destroyed by the United States were the Seminole, the Caddo, and the Creek.

Likewise, after over 3,000 years of continuing vibrant civilizations including Acadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Arab, and despite past wars and invasions, the U.S. destroyed the historical continuity of Iraq as a nation, as national character, and as a state in just 13 years of wars, sanctions, invasion, and brutal occupation.

To speculate on history, had the newly formed U.S. colonialist government not destroyed the Iroquois and other Indian political state-like entities, these could have well developed into a higher form of modern nation-states, and kept their own culture, form of government, and economy. Likewise, had the United States not used imperialism, fascism, and Zionism to destroy Iraq, Iraq as a nation might have been able to recover despite its regime.

Incidentally, how did the American government resolve the issue of the U.S. Indian holocaust and the dissolution of preexistent Indian polities? The Congress of The United States issued a Machiavellian scheme that, in effect, was the prototype for the apology to Hawaii adopted in 1993 (read part 31).

On September 16, 1987, the U.S. government issued Senate Concurrent Resolution 76 with which it intended erasing the record of 400 years of massacres committed by U.S. settlers and governments against the Original Peoples. I am extracting here articles 1 and 2 of the resolution that are relevant to my argument:

(1) The Congress, on the occasion of the 200th Anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution, acknowledges the historical debt, which this Republic of the United States of America owes to the Iroquois Confederacy and other Indian Nations for their demonstration of enlightened, democratic principles of government and their example of a free association of independent Indian nations.

2) The Congress also hereby reaffirms the constitutionally recognized government-to-government relationship with Indian Tribes, which has historically been the cornerstone of this nation's official Indian policy.

Comment

• Article 1, S. C. R 76, is the highest expression of nonsense. Every written word is nothing but rhetorical vacuity, a worthless sugar pill to surviving Native Nations, and a cynical absolution of the United States from crimes that time would never erase. Are we to believe that the Reagan administration (notorious for its shallow intellectual and political essence), and the Congress (notorious for its theatrical deliberations) acknowledge the �enlightened, democratic principles of government and their example of a free association of independent Indian nations?�
• Debunking Article 1: Just as Hamilton was two-faced, so was President Ronald Reagan who acted in line with the American tradition. Reagan (who once attributed environmental pollution to trees) publicly exposed his utter hypocrisy on the spirit of resolution 76 thus proving it was just ink on paper. . . . Nine months after its adoption (June 30, 1988), Reagan told a Russian audience the following: �Maybe we made a mistake in giving Indian reservations. . . . Maybe we made a mistake in trying to maintain Indian cultures. Maybe we should not have humored them in that, wanting to stay in that primitive life style. May be we should have said: No, come join us, be citizens along with the rest of us.� [Facing West . . . Richard Drinnon, preface, pp, xiii]
• As for article 2, it is a brazen act of calumny. First, the validity of the statement, �hereby reaffirms the constitutionally recognized government-to-government relationship with Indian Tribes� is null. What the Congress was juxtaposing are two unequal realties: (1) the government of the United States, which is a state, endowed with national sovereignty, independent economy, army, legislature, and representations at foreign states, and (2) Indian tribal governments. The latter type of government has no traits of modern sovereignty or statehood except management of inter-tribal affairs and relations with the federal government of the occupying power�the United States of America.
• Second, the sentence, �which has historically been the cornerstone of this nation's official Indian policy,� is another calumny of historical proportion. The cornerstone of America�s Indian policy during four centuries of conquest was extermination, land confiscation, and destruction of the natural rights of the rightful owners of the land.

Conclusion: One hundred years after the final destruction of the preexisting Indian states and social polities, Ronald Reagan�s Congress, hypocritically spoke of Indian governments and their relations with the U.S. government as based on �relations among equals.�

Not ironically, 105 years after McKinley issued his proclamation for the �benign assimilation� of the Filipinos, and fifteen years since Reagan left office, along came George W. Bush, a common street bully, psychopathic demagogue, and perfectly in line with the American national tradition, singing the slogan of �freedom� and �democracy� to the Iraqis.

After he invaded and occupied Iraq, George Bush organized a farce in two acts: (1) the Iraqi �election� and (2) the Iraqi �constitution.� This is fine except that Washington imperialist Zionist think tanks scripted and directed these two �marvels� of maneuvering colonialism to implement the American conquest of Iraq under the approval of collaborating Iraqis and the continuing violence by the occupation force.

To continue, after hailing the �historical� Iraqi election, George Bush installed a government made of local pro-occupation figures and Iraqi CIA agents. But here is the histrionic climax of Bush as Iraq�s �liberator�: he called the occupied Iraqis, �free,� and Iraq�s American-appointed �government,� the �democratic government of Iraq.�

Because various political, economic, and ideological forces planned the military conquest of Iraq, what did they do to transform the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait into the future conquest of Iraq itself? In addition, and taking into consideration the anti-occupation resistance, what has the U.S. been doing in its attempts to transform the occupation into a permanent conquest?

Next, Part 37: Iraq, America�s lab of horror