I am surprised no one has written here yet about this article that appeared on Alternet titled as the diary:
U.S. Imperial Ambitions Thwart Iraqis' Peace Plans
If anyone has and I missed it my apologies, but I didn't find it in a search.
From the article:
Iraq's resistance groups have offered a series of peace plans that might put an end to the country's sectarian violence, but they've been ignored by the U.S.-led coalition because they're opposed to foreign occupation and privatization of oil.
The article starts out by talking about another article they featured titled Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation.
More from the article:
The very next day, the Al Fadhila party, a Shi'ite party considered moderate by the (often arbitrary) standards of the commercial media, held a press conference, in which they offered a 23-point plan for stabilizing Iraq.
The plan addressed not only the current situation in Iraq -- acknowledging the legitimacy of Iraqi resistance, setting a timetable for a complete withdrawal of occupation troops and rebuilding the Iraqi government and security forces in a non-sectarian fashion -- but also the challenging mission of post-occupation peace-building and national reconciliation. It included provisions for disbanding militias, protecting Iraq's unity, managing Iraq's natural resources, building relationships with other countries based on mutual interest and the principle of non-intervention in domestic issues, and healing the wounds of more than 30 years of dictatorship, war, sanctions, and foreign occupation.
An online search shows that the peace plan was largely ignored by the Western commercial media.
They then go into a number of peace plans which have been offered by various groups in Iraq, and our government's resistance to recognize any of them as legitimate resistance groups or to negotiate with them. We continually hear these people referred to as terrorists, or extremists and never as Iraqis who might have some legitimate beef with wanting us the hell out of their country. They don't want a permanent military presence in their country, they don't want our economic policies we've heaped on them, and they don't want to give away control of their oil fields. The nerve of them! The article then refers to another a post in Raed Jarrar's blog In the Middle titled The Four Missing Points.
From the blog:
In the first days of June, 2006, Mr. Al-Maliki declared that a detailed Iraqi reconciliation plan would soon be announced. This was six months after the First Iraqi Reconciliation Conference in Cairo produced a list of recommendations to the government on how to initiate full-scale national reconciliation and accord. The Cairo conference recommendations, announced on November 21st 2005, included a request for a timetable for withdrawal of the occupation troops and recognized the right of the Iraqi people to resist against their occupiers. It condemned terrorist attacks against civilians and demanded the release of non-convicted prisoners, as well as the immediate halt of any more raids and arrests without court orders.
A majority of Iraqis were looking forward to hearing the details of this reconciliation and accord plan. According to local and international polls, most Iraqis believed this plan was the light at the end of the tunnel. On June 23rd, a 28 point package for national reconciliation was published in both The Times and Az-Zaman, a major Iraqi daily newspaper. The plan was extremely appealing to the vast majority of Iraqis, even Iraqis affiliated with violent and non-violent resistance. Yet in America, the plan triggered a wave of protest in the United States government which opposed some of its major points.
What were those four points?
- Amnesty
- Time Table for Withdrawl
- A Halt of US Led Operations
- Compensation for War Victims
According to the Alternet article, those four points were unacceptable to Washington, and they forced the Iraqis to water their 28 point plan down to 24 points, leaving the four listed above out which was a deal killer for the Iraqis.
The article then goes into how the peaceful protests going on in Iraq have been supressed:
But while the commercial press focuses on the bloody scenes created by those who have taken up arms against the occupation and the fledgling Iraqi government, the reality is that there has been a significant opposition expressed in non-violent means; as in regular demonstrations on the streets of Baghdad and other cities, petitions signed by Iraqis, strikes organized by Iraqi unions, through parliamentarian work to create binding legislations, and on the opinion-pages of the dozens of Iraqi newspapers that have proliferated since the invasion. This non-violent demonstration of Iraqis' anti-occupation sentiment reflects large majorities of all of Iraq's major ethnic and sectarian groups -- more than eight out of ten, according to many polls.
They link to this article by AntiWar.com titled Yankee, Go Home and this article by Juan Cole Sunnis Demonstrate in Baghdad As Bombings Kill 28, wound 46, with 3 US Soldiers Dead 1 Million Iraqis say "US Out"!
The Alternet article also links to this article which points out that one of Saddam's only laws that the decided to keep in place was not allowing workers to organize:
Saddam's Labor Laws Live On
And this article:
U.S. Arrests Iraqi Union Leaders
They also go into how the US has been targetting Iraqi newspapers and TV stations. Again from Alternet's article:
Much of the violence in Iraq has been fueled by this systematic disregard for non-violent means of opposing the occupation.
In that sense, Washington's choice after the invasion was always clear: the administration could have given the Iraqis a chance to build a sovereign and independent state for themselves -- one without the meddling of outside forces, be they Qaeda, Iranian or American -- and take its chances with the outcome. But it chose instead to use the invasion as a means of securing a toe-hold in the region for the U.S. military and an unprecedented and an extreme form of "business-friendly" legal structures for international investors. The situation in Iraq today is not a result of a lack of options; it's due to constantly choosing the wrong one.
The American strategic class faces the same choice today; they can continue to refuse to offer a timetable for leaving, continue supporting Iraq separatists and pro-Iranian groups and push a disastrous oil law that will tear the country apart, or they can return the country to the Iraqis and let them try to put their country back together. Continuing to ignore Iraqis' non-violent resistance to the U.S. occupation can achieve nothing other than pushing the country towards more violence.
This article published in AlterNet does a better job than anything I've read lately about how our policies in Iraq are not stopping the violence there, but instead making it worse. I emailed the Alternet story to my Congressmen today and asked them to please read it, and said it's time for the politicians in this country to start being honest about just what exactly we're doing in Iraq, and what our presence means there for the Iraqi people.
I don't see how we're ever going to get out of that country if the dialog doesn't start with some honesty, and that's out of all sides, D and R. NO ONE is talking about these things. We hear timelines from the Democrats, but what do timelines mean if we do not address the realities of how this occupation has been run and just who we are supporting, who we are suppressing, and who we're talking to, and who we're not talking to. To merely say that the Iraqi government must "step up" is a joke. Step up and do what?
The ones who need to "step up" are the ones in our government. The entire conversation has been dumbed down to talking points, and when that's allowed the ones doing it are not trying to win the peace, but instead allowing George Bush and our military leaders to escalate the violence. I sure as hell don't have any answers and am no expert on anything, but the points laid out in this article sure do look like a way forward to recognizing what mistakes are still being made there, and what needs to be addressed to stop the violence and what the root causes of the violence are. It's time to stop with the talking points. It's time to stop with the lies, and it's time to ask our leadership to show some, and tell the truth. We're never going to be out of Iraq if we don't.
I hope everyone who reads this shares the Alternet article with as many people as they can, and that you send a copy of it to your Congressmen as I did and ask them when they're going to start having an honest conversation about just what we're doing in Iraq instead of more of the same empty rhetoric.