This wonderfully written article is from a fellow Democrat in my local area, was not copyrighted, and enouraged to be shared.
The professor agreed that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and that Iraq was run as a totalitarian state for 35 years. But, within that system, people knew what they could do and say without being bothered by Saddam's agents. Yes, his phone was bugged and his mail was probably opened and read, but he thrived in a secular Iraq where education was encouraged and where women were treated with dignity. He said the sanctions imposed on Iraq during the 1990's created severe hardships and made importation of materials to make weapons of mass destruction impossible.
The professor was home in his study when the World Trade Center was attacked on 9/11. His wife called him to the living room to watch what was happening, and he says he still remembers one of the TV cameras zooming in on a man on one of the top floors who was waving his shirt out the window signaling for help. A police helicopter hovered near the man and then went away. Moments later the building collapsed. The professor and his colleagues gathered in shock and grief to ask themselves how human beings could do such a brutal and inhumane thing.
When it became apparent that Pres. Bush was intent on attacking Iraq, delegations of prominent Iraqi citizens traveled to European capitals to ask U.S. friends and allies to intervene and stop him. They tried to offer proof that Saddam had no WMD's and that there were no links with al Queda. The professor said that religious fanatics such as those trained by al Queda were outcasts in Saddam's Iraq and suppressed by his agents. They tried to tell the few foreign journalists in Iraq how absurd it was to think there was any kind of partnership between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, but they could not get the message out.
After the fall of Saddam, the Americans (Paul Bremer specifically) made three mistakes. When Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army, he put 400,000 men out of work. Those men lost face because they couldn't feed their families. They became enemies of the U.S. for that reason alone. "De-Baathification" meant removing from office all the members of the political party loyal to Saddam. These were the only people who knew how to run a government, and they were sent home. In many cases, they left Iraq with whatever records, materials and resources they could sneak out of the country.
The third mistake was when the U.S. military stood by and allowed the "mobs" to loot all the government buildings, hospitals, transporation depots, and universities. By far, the most tragic consequence of the chaos in the weeks after the fall of Saddam was the looting of the national museum in Baghdad where artifacts several thousand years old were stolen or destroyed.
So Iraqi society lost its military power, its ability to function as a government and its cultural history all within a few weeks. The American administrators (or "occupiers," as they were called by the Iraqis,) were warned that the borders must be guarded to prevent gangs from neighboring countries from pouring into Iraq, but that advice was ignored.
The professor said that two years ago and maybe even one year ago, the situation may have been salvageable, but not now. He said all the neighboring countries now have their own agents in Iraq protecting their interests, forming bonds with ethnically and religiously like-minded Iraqis who want nothing more than to be protected from enemy militias. Each of the various groups of religious extremists has its own militia, checkpoints and cut-throat gangs. People are warned not to have anything to do with U.S. military or civilians or suffer the consequences. Women are being forced to cover themselves when out in public, even in the middle and northern parts of Iraq that had always been the more modern and secular areas.
The entire southern third of the country is controlled by religious leaders, many of whom are brothers in faith with their counterparts in Iran. Turkey has troops in northern Iraq to protect the Turkmen. There is no way they will allow the few million Iraqi Kurds to establish a free and independent Kurdistan because the 10 million or more Kurds who live in Turkey will then get the same idea.
The professor told of one of the bright, ambitious female students in his British literature class. Her father was warned to keep her home because she was being tainted by her exposure to the decadent ideas of the West. The father supported the girl's educational ambition and drove her to and from class. One day, he was late because of car trouble and the girl took a taxi home. She was kidnapped, raped, killed and her body was dumped on the threshold of her father's house. These are truly terrorists, and they have the majority of the population trapped by fear.
One of the people in the audience today asked if things were really as chaotic in Iraq as they appear on our TV programs. The professor said it is much worse. A friend of his, a 60-yr-old intellectual was murdered just for saying he believed the university should remain open to women and to be tolerant and open-minded. There is no place in Iraq anymore for liberal voices. Rational discourse is impossible because the religious extremists have such a stranglehold on the minds and hearts of the people. So, when Americans complain that the "moderate" Iraqis don't speak up and condemn the killings, they really have no idea what they are suggesting. Even Iraqi-Americans have to be careful because they all still have family and friends back in Iraq. To make things even more complicated, the American soldiers are under orders not to mess with those right-wing Iraqi groups that operate under the protection of the current legitimate government of Iraq because we (the U.S.) support that "duly elected" government no matter how corrupt it may be. There is NO way that government can turn back the clock and "crackdown" on the "insurgents." The genie is out of the bottle. There is a saying that power loves a vacuum. All the various powers in the region are vying for a stake in whatever the outcome is in Iraq. Like vultures and hyenas, they are feeding on the corpse that was once a strong country.
Asked what he thinks the real motives were and are of Bush's advisers who led us into this mess, the professor mentioned that private contractors paid by the U.S. government are building and supplying 14 military bases which he, the professor, feels certain are meant to be a permanent staging area for the U.S. military. (Many others have said basically the same thing - that the neo-cons truly believe it is America's destiny to control the world's resources.)
So when I watch the evening news now and hear Congressmen and others debating what to do in Iraq, I have to wonder how they could not know what the reality is over there. How can they talk about timetables for withdrawal, or, as Sen. McCain is suggesting, sending more U.S. troops, when it's obviously too late for any western country, including the U.S., to control the outcome? The professor says we have created so many hard-core enemies in that region now that it will take generations to repair the damage. His only hope is dialogue among the reasonable people on both sides. He said there are so many misconceptions all around that it will take a long time, but he believes we have no choice but to try.
SC - Franklin County, Missouri - 11/13/06 - Freely Redistribute and Discuss.