Occupiers Evolution – Moon of Alabama

May 5, 2007

Occupiers Evolution

There is nothing astonishing here. Look at the occupation troops’ behavior in the West Bank and you will find the same viciousness.

Only 47 percent of the soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect.
About a third of troops said they had insulted or cursed at civilians in their presence.
About 10 percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating civilians or damaging property when it was not necessary. Mistreatment includes hitting or kicking a civilian.
Forty-four percent of Marines and 41 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the life of a soldier or Marine.
Thirty-nine percent of Marines and 36 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to gather important information from insurgents.

The occupiers, through their behaviour and disdain for the occupied (which is a deep hidden disdain for themselfs) each day create more opposers to their occupation. This especially in a tribal/clan society where an insult to a member of a family is a revenge demanding insult to the whole family, clan and tribe.

There is no way to pacify occupied people but by eliminating more opposers from the battlefield than new ones are created. The methods to do so are ethnic cleansing and/or genozide.

Looking at the above questionnaire results, the troops have the basic will to do such a pacification.

But given the CYA mentality of the U.S. officer corps, the likes of their 1940s German collegues, they will ask for
a written order. Bush is too week a person to openly give such.

There were several Himmleresce characters in Thursday’s Republican
candidate discussion who might have that drive – believing in their
"God’s will" in what is (i.e creationism) and becomes (i.e. rapture). Another
9/11-alike incident and the time might be right for one of them.

Posted by b on May 5, 2007 at 19:19 UTC | Permalink

Comments

The fish stinks … well …
NYT: Propaganda Fear Cited in Account of Iraqi Killings

Recently unclassified documents suggest that senior officers viewed the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in late 2005 as a potential public relations problem that could fuel insurgent propaganda against the American military, leading investigators to question whether the officers’ immediate response had been intentionally misleading.
…
The documents suggest that General Huck ignored early reports that women and children were killed in the attack, and later told investigators that he was unaware of regulations that required his staff to investigate further.
…
“The regimental judge advocate informed me that we don’t do investigations for ‘troops in contact’ situations,” said Captain Stone, referring to the regiment’s lawyer, Maj. Carroll Connelly. Troops in contact is military language for combat against enemy fighters.

Posted by: b | May 5 2007 20:54 utc | 1

Einstein used to sit about doing thought experiments. Railroad locomotives traveling at 90% of the speed of light, and such.
Let’s try one — three million American grunts, all mean and surly and unrestrained, stomping the living shit out of the Iraqi population, making up the rules to suit themselves, and enforcing them with a vengeance.
Victory at last?
Hell no. There’s twelve thousand billion dollars worth of oil underneath Iraq. The world will not leave America to it, or to ethnically cleansing of its native owners.
Russia and China have only put up with the American adventure in Iraq because it is such a quagmire. The most that will be allowed to come of it is for the American oil majors to have their PSA’s, since that is fair payment for America keeping the oil flowing to China and all its overseas customers.
America is still the world’s policeman, especially of the high seas oil routes. But America will not be allowed to expand that service role into global conqueror, any more than your local beat cop would be allowed to rule the neighborhood. If China ever actually fears losing equal access to oil supplies, America will lose its sugar daddy right pronto.
America does not lead the world economy any longer. We do have a very important dual role to play in it, though — Couch Potato Extraordinaire, and Rent-A-Cop.

Posted by: Antifa | May 5 2007 21:01 utc | 2

Forty-four percent of Marines and 41 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to save the life of a soldier or Marine.

Thirty-nine percent of Marines and 36 percent of soldiers said torture should be allowed to gather important information from insurgents.

I’d like to know how those 2 questions were worded. If the wording followed exactly the syntax of those 2 sentences then it’s no wonder the percentages are as high as they are, and slightly surprising to me they aren’t even higher. The questions seem to assume that torture would actually work in those circumstances.

Posted by: mats | May 5 2007 21:27 utc | 3

The best writing on this subject that I have seen is that of Tom Ricks in the Washington Post Link.
The subjects were combat arms troops, who had done 2 or more tours of Iraq. It’s primarily about survival, combat fatigue, and mental illness resulting therefrom. It’s about a broken army.
But I guess you can drive this piece of lead through any preconceived ideoligical die that you choose to use. If you weild a heavy enough mallet.
And come up with the “politically correct” results.

Posted by: Mephistopheles | May 5 2007 21:40 utc | 4

Again:
Ricks Link

Posted by: Mephistopheles | May 5 2007 21:53 utc | 5

But there are those who wouldn’t demand an explicit written order; they are diligently going about their task. And it doesn’t look as if anyone will be called to account anyway.

Who is Responsible?
Last January, the municipality of Baghdad published a short advertisement calling tenders to bid on burying the tens of “unidentified” bodies found in the streets of the capital every morning for almost a year now. Few months before, the Iraqi ministry of Health proudly declared that it imported two big refrigerators with a capacity of 2 hundred bodies each, to keep those “unidentified” bodies. At the same time a new very big “state” graveyard was created to bury the bodies, after giving them numbers and taking their pictures , just in case one day a family would be lucky enough to identify a son, a husband, or a father…
(snip)
Lately, many other prestigious international organizations sent out similar warnings of an impending tragedy in the Middle East : the Intel Red Cross, the Human Rights Watch, and the Amnesty International. Good, it is important to raise the awareness of the world to this crisis, and to urge the peoples to help the Iraqis. But it is really striking how NONE of these prestigious organizations, including UNCHR, actually named the real perpetrator of these crimes. None of them called the original crime in its name, or the original criminal in the proper name: the occupation and the US administration.
(snip)
Some Iraqi refugees left the country because they were terrorized by the sectarian militias, that is true, but who is behind these militias. How many people outside Iraq have heard the name of Shiite or Sunnis before the American invasion? Who allowed them and included them in the new Iraqi security forces? Who maintains them? It is the Occupation.

Meanwhile, Aswat is reporting violent tensions between Mahdi Army and SCIRI in Sadr City…

Posted by: Alamet | May 5 2007 22:13 utc | 6

In the wider context, an excellent two piece article on the ME picture and Iran’s growing role in the region:
Part one – Questioning the Shia crescent
Part two – What the moderate Arab world is
Clearheaded, broad in scope, and informative. I really can’t recommend this article strongly enough. Some excerpts (not in order):

In this connection, Iran’s right to nuclear power is supported by 61 per cent of Arabs, according to the results of the Telhami-Zogby poll, although half of all respondents in the survey suspect that Iran’s nuclear programme is intended for weapons manufacture. For the majority of “moderate” Sunni Arabs then, a nuclear- armed Iran is a desirable counterweight to US and Israeli military dominance in the region.
…
In effect, the much promoted “Shia crescent” theory appears to be far less of a political reality, or widespread social concern, than a card played by “moderate” Arab regimes to whip up fears among their Sunni publics within the context of a wider, US-orchestrated campaign to enlist the support of Sunni Arab regimes in demonising and isolating Iran. Since these regimes are unwilling to forgo their alliances with the US, they feel compelled to invent an enemy to counter- balance and deflect attention away from the US- Israeli threat, on which they cannot deliver, with the purpose of winning back some popular legitimacy via an imagined threat called “Shiism”.

A factoid I had missed:

Nasrallah’s call, on the eve of the US-led invasion in March 2003, for reconciliation between the Iraqi Shia opposition and the Saddam regime, along the lines of the Lebanese Taif Accord, was a clear attempt to dissuade the Shias from collaborating with the would-be occupiers and from making any political gains out of the impending occupation.

And an analysis that gave me a bitter pause:

Finally, a mass resistance campaign, with or without a US exit from Iraq, would deprive Iran of a valuable bargaining card vis-à-vis the US, hence Iran’s preference for the current scope of resistance. Though some have interpreted this preference as “collusion” with the US, it is more akin to entrapment.

Granted, Iran didn’t choose the field and the setting here… but Iraq’s people is the prey in this trap keeping the predator busy.

Posted by: Alamet | May 5 2007 22:42 utc | 7

i heard some really sad news a few moments ago.
this is my favorite iraqi blogger for personal preference reasons.
Omar is studying journalism in the US and just got back from a trip to new orleans where he was doing an assignment. it is very very hard hearing about this latest development. i cannot imagine what he must be going thru right now.

Posted by: annie | May 5 2007 22:43 utc | 8

Since the development of Nuclear Weapons, states have been devolving. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) guarantees that Super States with nuclear weapons no longer have to fear conquest. In lock stop has been the development of Multi-National Corporations who control politicians through campaign contributions and ownership of the media. Good paying jobs are outsourced. Borders are essentially unguarded. New Orleans remains in ruins. The poor, left to fend for themselves, turn to cult religions. Three Republican Presidential Candidates do not believe in evolution. Overpopulation strains natural resources.
The Iraq Invasion was the last grasp of a crumbling super state trying to create the last Western Colony. But, the State was unable to raise the manpower or taxes needed to conquer Iraq and assure control of the second largest reserve of petroleum. Since the basic strategic goal is unobtainable, American leadership is ad hoc and incompetent from the privatization of Iraqi industry to the Baghdad Surge.

Posted by: Jim S | May 5 2007 23:48 utc | 9

That a military attracts violent people, those who like a license to play paint ball with real bullets on a population that their society has declared open season on should not be a surprise.
That a military attracts people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder should not be a surprise.
That war is a monstrous, bestial undertaking is not a surprise.
Emphasize the murders, the rapes, the terrorism on the ground if you think it will energize opposition to its continuation.
But please remember that the War Criminals are in Washington DC, and not just in the White House. They are in the Senate and House of Representatives where they are interested in using this holocaust to cast the other party in a worse light than their own, not to end it.
They are in the Pentagon with braid on their shoulders where they are interested in using this holocaust to further their careers along with it.
Worst case these people actually performing the crimes in Iraq would be cleaning their weapons after target practice, the real killers among them at least off the streets, if the War Criminals in the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives had not co-operated to initiate this war of aggression, to launch the invasion and to continue, as we fume at the results of their studied decisions, to fund the occupation of Iraq and of Palestine.
Some of the troops in Iraq were undoubtedly murderers at heart enabled by the War Criminals in Washington DC. Some were more nearly ordinary people made murderers of by the War Criminals in Washington DC. Most of them I think were and are being destroyed by the War Criminals in Washington DC.
I think that the enemies of the United States of America are in Washington DC. I think they must be stopped and that they must be tried for their War Crimes. If we do not stop them their War Crimes will continue. If we do not try and convict them their War Crimes will resume at a later date.
I don’t know how I can do that. I have now thrown in with Mike Gravel. I hope that he will produce draft legislation to fund the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq over the course of sixty days, and to fund only their withdrawal. I hope that he will post that draft on his website and that hundreds of thousands of people will cut and paste it into emails and snail mails to the War Criminals in Washington DC and demand that they pass it.
I am of course open to any and all other suggestions as to how to end the war in Iraq.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 6 2007 0:14 utc | 10

John Francis Lee, yes indeedy. (and thank you for liking site) But war criminals will not be tried because the powers that be be powerful.
It’s still the same old story
a tale of love and glory
a case of do or die.
The world will always welcome lovers,
as time goes “bye”.

Posted by: plushtown | May 6 2007 0:52 utc | 11

This is an intractable situation. A huge portion of the Iraqi population wants America out, and is willing to support attacks on the occupation to bring it about. Occupation forces then, are correct in seeing every Iraq as a potential enemy, and by their actions over the past 4 years they themselves have insured the present situation. Their mission has never been to secure the population and nurture its trust, but rather to rearrange that society by brute force and political manipulation.
American troops have been presented with an irreconcilable set of circumstances born of the mission and rules of engagement. Parameters of behavior that have created more resistance than it has quelled, that at this point, have evolved into almost universal hatred.
This is quite different than even Vietnam where large tracts of the population (in the south) were, if not amenable, not contemptible to this level. And the PF and ARVN forces were not at all infiltrated to the degree the Iraqi security forces are. Not that it was a love fest, there was of course, much suspicion and the kind of loathing of the population that is being reported on here, its just that presently in Iraq the situation has degenerated way beyond that of Vietnam. Along with the potential for that loathing to further escalate into outright genocidal activity. Which depends primarily upon the orders from Washington, because what is being faced by the troops is a hostile POPULATION. Where EVERYBODY IS potentially the enemy.

Posted by: anna missed | May 6 2007 1:04 utc | 12

what is being faced by the troops is a hostile POPULATION. Where EVERYBODY IS potentially the enemy.
not just the troops. citizens don’t know whether to tell the truth whether they are sunni or shia at roadblocks because they don’t know which answer will get them shot. they learn the prayers of the other to be able to recite in case of emergency.

Posted by: annie | May 6 2007 1:48 utc | 13

Your descriptions of the devolution of mankind are furry and wry, plushtown.
I like the Curs of Zenda best.
But ought not we stop it?
Or just tarry and smile, well amused?

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 6 2007 2:41 utc | 14

first the pedantic- themselves, genocide, weak,
second- this post is an echo echoechoecho, no?
what is the reason for your recent obsession with the idea that the american troops are on the verge of genocide, b?
(not to say that the massive killing is not grotesque enough)
I agree that the troops have no clear objective, have no reason to be in Iraq beyond pacifying Bush’s ego, and that any troops occupying any land will dehumanize the people there. they are trained to do so.
bush is responsible for a massive clusterfuck to people who did nothing to deserve such treatment. it makes me sick to know the horrors visited upon the Iraqi people. however, I again wonder why you keep repeating the idea that the troops are on the verge of genocide.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 6 2007 4:11 utc | 15

@fauxreal:

“on the verge of genocide”? I’d say that the evidence supports “in the middle of genocide.”

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | May 6 2007 5:42 utc | 16

fauxreal,
The troops could be on the verge of genocide because nothing short of that will allow the U.S. to prevail. And the stakes, being what they are, are high enough they actually may entertain the idea. The troops, after so many rotations are probably so burnt out and frustrated, without any prospect of “winning” by other means, may abide in the worst of the already bad. The only card they have left is “overwhelming force” against the enemy — which is everyone in the red zone.
And its long been a central excuse (from the right) for why things have gone bad. Liberal pussyfooting. By comparing post WWII Germany/Japan’s total political and social capitulation as being the results of their total annihilation ala Hiroshima/Dresden — that broke their will to resist.
The last card in the deck for sure, but a distinct possibility nonetheless.

Posted by: anna missed | May 6 2007 5:48 utc | 17

Genocide:Deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.
Think you might be throwing a bit of over-heated hyperbole around here tonight, Truth.

Posted by: Mephisto | May 6 2007 6:20 utc | 18

@Mephisto (#18)
My impression has been that the aim of The War Against Terror (TWAT™)was the systematic destruction of certain brands of political, religious and cultural thought deemed unacceptable to the interests of globalists. I don’t think the use of that word in the strictest sense is hyperbolic in this instance at all. It only becomes hyperbolic if you assume that the aim is to physically kill every individual. Eradicating them through intimidation and assimilation is closer to the goal here.

Posted by: Monolycus | May 6 2007 7:21 utc | 19

If you destroy Palestine have you not committed genocide against the Palestinians?
The Israelis have long insisted that there is no such place as Palestine and no such thing as a Palestinian.
The Americans have already driven as much as a third of the population out of Iraq. They may have killed as much as two or three percent of the Iraqi population already.
If you destroy Iraq have you not committed genocide against the Iraqis?
The American “Oil Bill” that everyone keeps waiting for the Iraqi parliament to pass certainly envisions the destruction of Iraq and the substitution of quasi-autonomous “Kurdistan”, “Sunnistan”, and “Shiastan” in its place.
The American Navy and Air Force are optimized to wage war against civilian populations. The American land forces are defacto fighting a war against the civilian population of Iraq.
Is not a purposeful war against a civilian population genocide? Real or attempted?

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 6 2007 7:36 utc | 20

An innocent old man, yet they shot him

He said his commanders had ‘concerns’ about my interviewing him, but insisted soldiers had followed the rules of engagement. ‘When they find themselves in a situation and they recognise there is a credible threat there, then they will act accordingly … if the vehicle was approaching at a checkpoint and all other vehicles have stopped, and that one vehicle keeps coming at them – what would you do in that case?’
But my uncle did not keep coming at them – he had turned his car round. And despite the major’s defence of the soldiers’ actions, the Foreign Claims Commission did classify my uncle as a ‘wrongful death’. In return for signing a pledge not to take any action against the US military, Sabah was given $2,500.
In my week in Kirkuk, I met families of 10 other victims of ‘wrongful deaths’. Like my cousin Sabah, they have lost faith in the Americans as liberators. If the soldiers are not held to account for their actions, what is to stop it happening again and again?

Posted by: b | May 6 2007 9:44 utc | 21

The LA Times main editorial: Bring them home

Having invested so much in Iraq, Americans are likely to find disengagement almost as painful as war. But the longer we delay planning for the inevitable, the worse the outcome is likely to be. The time has come to leave.

(sidenote – the editorial has a major error calling a brigade a batallion – though they are right in their opinion, that certainly gives them little credibility)

Posted by: b | May 6 2007 12:02 utc | 22

“If the soldiers are not held to account for their actions, what is to stop it happening again and again?”
Nothing will stop them, because continuing conflict is good for the really big money boys, and lots of underlings trickling down nastiness.
Paid provocateurspatriotic patsies are priceless.
And to JFL #14, no, I believe part of the problem is that we’re treated to everything as entertainment, and few of us attack even a weak spot. (pt 2 below)

Posted by: plushtown | May 6 2007 12:34 utc | 23

(part 2)
We’re taught we’re all in the same boat but our interests are quite opposed.
And yes, I wish they were funny, but as a rule editorial cartoons aren’t funny, an exception is Tim Krieder.

Posted by: plushtown | May 6 2007 12:35 utc | 24

Iraq’s fate awaits Bush exit

May I interrupt the clamorous political debate raging in Washington over Iraq to set the record straight? Contrary to what his critics say, President Bush does have a timetable for ending the war. He plans to hand the disaster over to his successor at high noon on Jan. 20, 2009.
If Iraq is going to have an ugly ending, as it almost surely will, Bush is determined to see that it doesn’t happen on his watch, and there’s not much the Congress can do to foil him short of cutting off funds for the war, a step Democrats apparently are not ready to take.

The Democrats must be forced to take that step. How can we ordinary Americans claim to have no part in this war when we know exactly what is happening?
Moral Meltdown

What should one call it but immoral when American citizens, unlike the Germans of the 1930s and 1940s, could speak against the criminals, and vote to throw them out, without fear of being hung from lamp posts or meat hooks, yet instead speak in favor of the criminals and vote to keep them in office?

The author of the above is talking about the supporters of the Neocon Republican regime, but I can see no effective difference at this point between the Liberal, Progressive Democrats and the Republicans when it comes to support for the war, and we knew that even as we elected them.
Can no one imagine how to force the Congress to cut off the funds for the war and so end it?
Shall we allow the war to continue for at least another 624 days, when we know full well that in all likelihood on the order of 624*3 = 1872 Americans and 624*100 = 62,400 Iraqis will be murdered due to the inaction of us Americans, politicians and citizens alike?

Posted by: John Francis Lee | May 6 2007 12:52 utc | 25

what is the reason for your recent obsession with the idea that the american troops are on the verge of genocide, b?
Simple: The data keeps pointing into that direction. It is not happening yet, but the possiblility grows.
The troops are frustrated and there are lunatics in every army. That is normal. But when only 47% say noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect it is frightening.
What is more concerning is the lack of reaction to this by the officer corps. It seems to be unwilling to dicipline the troops. Instead it seems to condone a more violent behaviour towards the occupied.
I know the genozide word is loaded, probably too loaded. When, like last week, barrages of heavy artillery are used on civilian areas that is “only” mass murder.
A well disciplined army with a straight officer corps will reject an order of “kill ’em all.”
The US army isn’t well disciplined anymore and the officer corps is rotton from the top down. If the order comes now, like say “clear Sadr city by all means”, I’m afraid the army would follow through.

Posted by: b | May 6 2007 13:24 utc | 26

According to Azzam, 43 % of Iraqis live in ‘absolute poverty’ today.
link
Poverty of that kind kills. Hard to say how many in what time span; it involves millions.
The soldiers aren’t aware of that and have no control over it. I’m not trying to excuse them; just, the genocidal issues are elsewhere; military brutality is a small part of the picture.
(that high number, from an iraqi gvmt. study that i could not find to post in eng, is not unreasonable; it corresponds to what one might expect following preivous UN studies with different criteria – 1/3 in dire poverty in 2004, etc.)

Posted by: Noirette | May 6 2007 14:51 utc | 27

JFL: If you destroy Iraq have you not committed genocide against the Iraqis?
What do you mean “if”? There is no need to use the hypothetical here. Iraq – its peoples, its cultures, its religions, the nation itself – has been destroyed. It is a loss not only to the Iraqi peoples, but to the world community. As words now fail us, it is a struggle to emphasize that it is not necessary for destruction to be 100% complete in order to label something as destroyed. I am ashamed to use any comparisons, but just asks a car insurance adjuster to describe when a car is deemed “totaled”. It takes little damage in such a material commodity to be labeled as “totaled”. But yet, beyond value and description, are Iraqi lives and culture lost. Genocide does not have to be 100% total or complete to be called genocide. With only shame, we shy away from the totality of what America has done.
Fauxreal: “pedantic”? I agree with you that to use a “pedantic” form of logic, as in the past instance where the logic of impressive American body counts is a hoped for realization, is an unacceptable use of logic. I purposely remove myself from any debate that is morally wrong on its face. I know many here knock the concept of religion, but logic falls short in debate where life is nothing more than a commodity for use in a political tally sheet. “We are dust and to dust we shall return.” Typically, religion teaches that life is more precious than “evolved dust” and hopefully teaches us to reject notions of social Darwinism, a belief that our Neocon siblings have not rejected. Religious beliefs are axioms that are not forced upon us as rigorous mathematical deductions. One believes or one doesn’t for any number of reasons. In a similar vein and as noted in previous posts, debates or discussions regarding the logical merits of torture and its “acceptable use” are equally not worthy of participation. As other posters have noted, some things are just plain wrong, and again, such a declaration of right or wrong is not a derivation by logic, it is a conclusion of one’s religious beliefs.
Some things are morally wrong and to wish success in war by methods of “body counts” is just that – morally wrong. However, I will not agree to soften the death and destruction in Iraq at the hands of Americans. The damage is done. It is nothing less than genocide.

Posted by: Rick | May 6 2007 15:21 utc | 28

#27, noirette re poverty
The soldiers aren’t aware of that and have no control over it. I’m not trying to excuse them; just, the genocidal issues are elsewhere; military brutality is a small part of the picture.
this flies in the face of logic. you can’t work w/a war going on. people are afraid to leave their houses. lack of basic utilities and food, total breakdown of infrastructure, has everything to do w/military actions. just as the wall is a tactic of war so is denying people’s basics like clean water.
some could assert it is just ‘the terrorists’ but that is crazy because we know the same neocons who planned this went directly bombing the electric grid in gaza.
the country lost 1.5 million during the sanctions and severly weakened the military a ‘softening’ process for the decade prior to invasion.
our foriegn policy has everything to do w/iraq’s poverty. then and now.

Posted by: annie | May 6 2007 17:16 utc | 29

wikipedia

Saddam actively fostered the modernization of the Iraqi economy
Within just a few years, Iraq was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the “National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy” and the campaign for “Compulsory Free Education in Iraq,” and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels; hundreds of thousands learned to read in the years following the initiation of the program. The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).[16][17]
To diversify the largely oil-based Iraqi economy, Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. The campaign revolutionized Iraq’s energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas.
Before the 1970s, most of Iraq’s people lived in the countryside, where Saddam himself was born and raised, and roughly two-thirds were peasants. But this number would decrease quickly during the 1970s as the country invested much of its oil profits into industrial expansion…
Saddam became personally associated with Ba’athist welfare and economic development programs in the eyes of many Iraqis, widening his appeal both within his traditional base and among new sectors of the population. These programs were part of a combination of “carrot and stick” tactics to enhance support in the working class, the peasantry, and within the party and the government bureaucracy.
Saddam’s organizational prowess was credited with Iraq’s rapid pace of development in the 1970s; development went forward at such a fevered pitch that two million persons from other Arab countries and Yugoslavia worked in Iraq to meet the growing demand for labor.

this is why iraq was considered israels biggest national security threat in 1982. the poverty in iraq has everything to do w/ the same kind of genocidal intentions being carried out in palestine.

Posted by: annie | May 6 2007 17:40 utc | 30

Man in Afghan uniform kills 2 U.S. GIs
Isolating the occupation force form the local army increases the likelihood of them acting against the people they occupy … (yes I know it’s Afghanistan – what’s the difference?)

Posted by: b | May 6 2007 18:17 utc | 31

@Rick #28
Well said. I agree. We are witnessing the destruction of a civilization, a society, and an entire way of life, as well as the dismemberment and complete dislocation of a country and everything that it stood for. Even with the first “shock and awe” campaign I saw it this way. One had only to see the completely shocking images of the libraries with their ancient historic texts bombed to smithereens and lying every which way in the street to know that this was the goal and the intent, and the inevitable ultimate outcome of this war.
This war can have no possible justification, ever. Period. It is a crime against humanity of the very worst, most heinous proportions.

Posted by: Bea | May 6 2007 21:55 utc | 32

rick- genocide has a particular meaning to me, and apparently to some others here, as opposed to destruction of a nation via war.
this is not to dismiss what you said, but merely to put my question to b into context. anna missed and b both helped me to understand the issue as a tactical move, because that idea is an escalation. Fallujah writ large.
I don’t think the initial idea behind the neo-con invasion was genocide. I do believe they thought they could install Chalabi in the same way the Shah was installed by Kermit Roosevelt so many years ago.
The world has changed in that time.
I think the fall of the Soviet Union has made the entire world less “tolerant” of puppetry…the original rational no longer applies. And I agree with Annie that Iraq had to be “taken out” because of the perceived threat to Israel by the radical right wing here and there.
part of the hubris and overall worthlessness of the current administration was their failure to acknowledge reality, to guard over the entire world’s cultural heritage embodied in Iraq, to care about the fate of citizens. but this is different than a notion of genocide. it’s different than a notion of shock and awe, tho shock and awe is definitely a descendant of Dresden.
one great difference in the conservative comparison to Dresden and Hiroshima, of course, is that the U.S. was the aggressor nation in this conflict, so such “total war” only increases the war crime that was and is the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
at the time, as far as I know (and I certainly may be wrong) there has not been systemic bombing of the entire nation of Iraq to deal with “insurgents” or divisions among groups vying for power.
and off on something else…
unlike what Slothrop posted about Fisk, I did not agree with nor support overthrowing Saddam. This meant, at the time, enduring taunts and scorn because I “supported” leaving a totalitarian murderer in power,” to the detriment of the Iraqi people. How could I be so heartless…how could anyone “support” Saddam? Of course, I didn’t support Saddam, but I thought the outcome would be worse that the situation as it existed.
so, it wasn’t/isn’t damned if you do, damned if you don’t. you don’t. but they did, and the result, like it or not, is that the U.S. has damaged itself around the world. the invasion, in other words, accomplished exactly the opposite of what was intended. no outcome will change this. not genocide, not defeat, not withdrawal at this moment or after Bush is out of office.
some things simply are, once they are done.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 6 2007 22:50 utc | 33

fauxreal
many villages & towns in iraq have been completely destroyed – in what is effectively carpet bombing
just recently on crroks & liars a doc covering just that

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2007 22:58 utc | 34

fauxreal
many villages & towns in iraq have been completely destroyed – in what is effectively carpet bombing
just recently on crroks & liars a doc covering just that

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2007 22:58 utc | 35

b – i don’t know why some of my posts repeat – is it me or the whatchamacallit

Posted by: remembereringgiap | May 6 2007 23:00 utc | 36

diyala is in big trouble.
what i think is happening i dare not say.

Posted by: annie | May 6 2007 23:59 utc | 37

Genocide…
Is there a difference if it is intended or merely a consequence? If so, who has to intend it – the executioner, the president, or mid-level genocide management?
Ward Churchill has dug up quite a number of sources to show that the genocide on american indians was intended or at least welcomed. Yet on the other hand, the 16th century state (Aztec & Incas lost over 90% of their population in a century) had not the tools of mass-killing of the 20th (or 21st) century state and could probably not have succedeed without germs that geography and coincidence had granted the white folks with. So they intended, but succees was from coincidence. Genocide?
And where does a genocide start? I have sometimes argued – in relation to Godwins law – that not even the nazis were so evil (at time they got into power) to be compared with the nazis (as we knew them after ww2).
I think I have some mayor objections with the whole concept. Is a people (Genos) something that has a life of its own and be killed? Who determines what constitutes a people, the perpetrator or the ones killed? If a crazy dictator makes up a hidden people (say those with bad eyesight (you know that is genetic), marked by glasses) and kills most of them is that then genocide? If he kills the same humans because they are class-enemies, then that can not be genocide, can it? Does it matter?

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | May 7 2007 14:37 utc | 38

diseases only made the intention easier, it would have been carried out regardless

Posted by: jcairo | May 7 2007 16:06 utc | 39

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