Hulagu Khan may be one of the least known of the ancient Khan clan; his violent history was mostly overshadowed by the earlier adventures in conquest of his grandfather Genghis Khan, and those carried out by one of his four brothers, Kublai Khan. But that doesn’t make his reign of military terror any less bloody and torturous than that of his more infamous family members.
With that said Hulagu’s stature as top Mesopotamian conqueror is now under threat by a more contemporary, and yes, even more ruthless subjugator, one Richard B. Cheney. Don’t laugh; his name may not sound quite as malevolent as Khan, but deeds speak louder than mere words, and Mr. Cheney’s bloodlust and esurient thirst for power and material wealth more than make up for his innocuous sounding name.
Consequently, the date March 19, 2003 will forever bear an asterisk in the history books: referring to the most successful -- the most ruthless -- and yes, the most torturous conquest in Mongolian/Mesopotamian history.
Of course, most Americans couldn’t testify as to how the occupation of Iraq is going today. It has literally disappeared from our TV screens. In fact, anyone currently residing inside the United States who’s not monitoring the international press coverage of Iraq; lacks any real data with which to argue against the "surge is working" propaganda widely propagated by both pundit and press.
On the neocon conqueror’s surprise visit to Iraq the other day, he proclaimed that he sensed "phenomenonal changes" since his last quick-stop 10 months ago, and declared security progress as "dramatic."
Writing for the Asian Times, one of my favorite international investigative reporters, Pepe Escobar, offers his critical assessment of the five year occupation.
The "dramatic" progress was celebrated in style by a Sunni Arab female suicide bomber who managed to detonate her payload under her black abaya near the ultra-protected Imam Hussein shrine in holy Karbala, killing at least 42 Shi'ites and wounding 73.
Cheney did not see the real Baghdad, drowning in sewage, desperate for water and plunged in the dark - lacking 3,000 megawatts of electricity (it may take as many as 10 years before the city gets power 24 hours a day; so much for "reconstruction"). As no US official was suicidal enough to take Cheney, for instance, to a real life suicide bomber-targeted vegetable market in Sadr City - or to Imam Hussein's shrine in Karbala for that matter - these "phenomenal changes" warrant examination.
Cheney seems not to be very fond of the humongous Pentagon study based on more than 600,000 Iraqi documents which proved that there was no link whatsoever between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. In a curiously sedate propaganda effort, the report will not be posted online and will not be e-mailed by the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia; any reporter who wants it will have to ask it to be sent via CD in the mail. That's quite a "phenomenal change" with regard to the George W Bush administration's hyped 2002 build up towards war.
Cheney’s not so awfully fond of body counts either. In fact, he loathes them; refuses to comment on them. The people who prosecute this occupation for him avoid counting the Iraqi dead as well. I’ll never forget hearing General Tommy Franks dismissive, matter-of-fact answer to a question from a U.S. journalist concerning Iraqi deaths attributed to the invasion. This was very early on, mind you. Franks answered. "We don’t do body counts." No shit.
The British agency Oxford Research Business does body counts. They’ve recently updated their grim estimate of "additional deaths" due to the occupation. Their educated guess was revised upwards in the range of 1.3 million Iraqis since the initial invasion. Another British outfit The Lancet.com also does body counts. Perhaps, it’s because their estimate is broken down per day but their figure of up to 600 Iraqis per day sounds exponentially more ominous than even the 1.3 million totals -- even though it’s less if you multiply the 600 figure by (approximately) 1830 days since the initial invasion.
Note: Both body count estimates include deaths indirectly caused by the occupation as well as those directly caused by the occupation. Non-violent fatalities include those due to disease, famine, lack of water, squalid living conditions and displacement.
Due to the mass destruction and widespread sectarian cleansing, displacement is beyond [my] comprehension. Up to 4 million people have lost their homes and been forced to relocate internally or become refugees -- going mostly to overburdened Syria and Jordan.
Mission accomplished, Mr. Bush; Baghdad has officially been cleansed.
From the air, the Iraqi capitol looks more like a huge cubicle’d office complex with all its cement walls separating whole neighborhoods.
Baghdad - following the strategy of counterinsurgency ace General David Petraeus - has been reduced to a rotten, amorphous, bloody and dangerous stockpile of blast-wall ghettos controlled by local warlords and militias. This "strategy" is being financed by US taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars a month.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes, in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, estimate that by 2017, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion. Republican presidential contender John McCain wants this to last indefinitely as millions of Americans finally realize this avalanche of funds could instead provide them with better public schools; better health insurance and better projects to repair crumbling US infrastructure.
So, what about this catch-all strategy known as the "surge?" Well, for one thing, the so-called "surge" is no longer a surge but has mysteriously transformed into a "pause," a term recently confirmed by General Petraeus to the Army Times (archives). Not surprisingly, Petraeus describes the amorphous strategy as both "sensible" and "prudent." Of course, it depends on who you ask. I’m sure if you were to ask the recently "retired" Admiral Fallon, I doubt that he would agree with General Petraeus’ assessment. In fact, Fallon was dead-set against the "pause." According to Escobar, Fallon wanted to start drawing down troops immediately. It’s no wonder why he was sacked by the Bush regime. Not only did he oppose war with Iran, apparently, he was against the prolonged deployment to Iraq as well.
Escobar also delivers another more ominous revelation.
Up to the US presidential election, for political reasons, many would be led to believe nothing moves on the US front. At least nothing visible. Because in Kuwait, the Pentagon is busy building, in virtual secret, a mammoth permanent command structure to project "full spectrum dominance" not only in Iraq but all over the arc from the Middle East to Southwest Asia. Lieutenant General James J Lovelace minced no words to the Middle East edition of Stars and Stripes. It will be a "permanent presence" - of course compounded with all those extra permanent bases in Qatar, Bahrain the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Be it under pro-withdrawal Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or pro-"surge" McCain, the "war" in and on Iraq will go on - supported from Kuwait and the Gulf petro-monarchies.
Baghdad is not only the 21st century heart of darkness. It is Fear Central - a desert sand nightmare frozen in fear, a direct consequence of the soggy mix of Petraeus' "surge" profiting from the uneasy Shi'ite Mahdi Army truce and the proliferation of the 80,000-strong anti-al-Qaeda movement dominated by Sunnis, Sahwa (Awakening).
As middle class Shi'ite professionals tell Asia Times Online, rape and pillage and widespread killing is down (65 Iraqis killed daily in August 2007, 26 killed daily in February 2008) because most neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed. Baghdad is only "safer" - as the current official mantra in Washington goes - if compared to horrific post-February 2006 after the bombing of the Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, during the battle of Baghdad, when as many as 3,000 people were being killed every single month.
There’s much more of Escobar’s article, "Shocked, awed and left to rot". For anyone wanting to cut through all the spin on Iraq, I highly recommend it and his prior missives. (Escobar's excellent stuff on South America [ (here] and [here] will curl your toes)
The article raises even more questions. Like, exactly what does redeploying our troops from Iraq mean to both Obama and Clinton? Will our troops really come home -- or -- will they simply be redeployed to Kuwait, Oman, UAE, Qatar and Bahrain?
It’s past time for clarity in this matter. We must begin to ask the followup questions of our candidates.
I’ll leave you with this conclusion from Escobar.
No matter what Washington decides or spins, it won't alter two major facts on the ground. Of all the major overlapping wars in Iraq, the Sunni Arab resistance has for all practical purposes stalemated the US occupation to the edge of defeat. And on a sectarian level, the Shi'ites have defeated the Sunnis as a whole - as they now control, allied with the Kurds, the government, Parliament, the army (13 divisions, half of them militias aligned with Iran) and the police.
(snip)
This country is no more. This is an ex-country. It has gone to meet its maker (the Sumerians, presumably). The "surge" is a public relations-created illusion - as ghostly as those abandoned, burned out Iraqi tanks littering Baghdad's empty, dirty boulevards in April 2003; after all there was no war to speak of, the Iraqi army having preferred to flee.
End the killing
End the occupation
End imperialism
Peace