December 18, 2011





The United States has lost the war in Iraq; yesterday, the U.S. officially withdrew from the country, after it had also lost the war on terror, while it shall surely lose the war in Afghanistan.



Lying is part and parcel of every war. But in Iraq�s case, lying had the magnitude of the crime that was perpetrated against the country and its people. Indeed, the premises adduced by the administration of George W. Bush to invade Iraq in the beginning were deliberately falsified, and we know today who amongst the American neocons and Iraqi collaborators had participated in this deception. And with respect to the end, President Barack Obama, with Iraq�s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki beside him, predicted that Iraq will be a model democratic country in the Middle East, and said that Iraq�s economic growth is higher than the rates seen in China and India. He even said that he considered Maliki to be a national � not sectarian- leader . Then yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, as his soldiers bade farewell to Iraq, spoke of a flourishing future, prosperity and progress - when this is sheer delusion given the current situation there.



The truth is that Iraq today is a sectarian and undemocratic country, and is the worst model for governance in the Arab countries, which all suffer from poor governance to begin with. The alleged economic growth, even if the figures are true, mean nothing as long as Iraq lies at the bottom of the global corruption index (along with Afghanistan, and there is no surprise here, since both countries are occupied by the same power). In other words, a minority is enriching itself in Iraq while the people are starving.



Between the lies of the beginning and the lies of the end, around 4500 U.S. soldiers were killed for oil-related and Israeli calculations, as well as one million Iraqis whose killing is still ongoing. The United States has directly spent one trillion dollars on the war. But there are many more undeclared trillions. For instance, thousands of disabled U.S. soldiers will have to depend on government support for decades to come. This is not to mention the fact that the U.S. and the world economies have landed in an abyss that they have yet to climb out of.



Every word in the above is true, and so I shall move on from the lies to the sheer arrogance that only Benjamin Netanyahu can accomplish, or his ilk of neocons and Likudniks in America.



Here, one example suffices: That of what Kimberly and Frederick Kagan, from the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the Washington Post a few days ago.



Today, this institute and other neocon think-tanks that incited war against Iraq want a war on Iran. However, the Kagan pair is not content with what they have perpetrated so far. Instead, they want Iraq, after the withdrawal of U.S. troops, to assist the United States in spreading stability in the region, to resist al-Qaeda and Iranian-funded terrorist groups, and to seek to contain Iran�s influence.



But I will let the readers judge this.



The Americans established the first sectarian regime in Iraq since the independence, and left the country wide open for Iranian hegemony. Yet they want a Prime Minister, who took office through the Shiite Dawa Party, to contain the Iranian influence that supports his government. But this influence would not have come to Iraq were it not for the American war crime against Iraq, its people and the entire region.



Yet Nuri al-Maliki is better than others. But can he carry out what is asked of him, even if he wanted to? Kimberly and her husband quoted Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, deputy commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, as saying in a press conference that there are still "security gaps" in the country that include their air sovereignty, their air defense capability, the ability to protect the oil platforms, and then the ability to do combined arms operations for an external defense�



In other words, they know that Iraq lacks adequate military capabilities, yet they ask it to carry out the ambitions of the neocons that destroyed the country atop its people.



Their dreams are nightmares to us, yet they still try. However, what matters is for us to see their backs as they leave Iraq amid a moral, humanitarian, military and economic defeat. Good riddance.



In the meantime, Maliki is not an Iranian agent. Rather, he is an ally who coordinates with Tehran. But in the end, he is his own ally before being the ally of anyone else. Indeed, the recent campaign against the alleged Baathists and the detention of around 600 of them are nothing but an attempt to divert the attention of the Iraqis away from more important issues, such as the rampant corruption, the fact that the posts of Defense and Interior Minister remain vacant 18 months after the elections, and the deterioration of services that Saddam Hussein had managed to provide, on a superior level, even under the embargo.



Despite all this, Iraq belongs to the Iraqis, and the country is indeed better off without the Americans.



- khazen@alhayat.com





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