Could chaos in Iraq suit U.S. designs? Here's a message that I sent to friends way back in 2003. Maybe it still has relevance, perhaps not. Of course my comments have to be considered in light of the present chaos in Iraq. This tragic collapse of any semblance of civil society could well suit the U.S. purposes that I've noted below. But then...
Who can claim clairvoyance concerning the changing course of political events? From a multitude of opposing predictions only one or two, from hindsight, may, by sheer luck, be shown to have hit the target. Sometimes we can divine intentions, and with attention to history and human nature we may even be able to reasonably reject a few outcomes outright, but there's always the joker in the deck. The inconceivable - chance - has a way of sweeping the table.
What's a few thousand killed when oil and empire's at stake? Bush and friends believe, probably correctly, that Iraq's leaders can be bought and that the rest will fall in line, given a few crumbs from the capitalist table. Only a wildly optimistic reading of recent history or contemporary events would suggest that the U.S. won't have its way - but it may have its way only in the elusive and indefinite short term.
The US intends to stay in Iraq: to control Iraq's oil, to humble, humiliate and marginalize Saudi's rulers, to destroy OPEC, to undercut the EURO and, of course, to enrich the good old boys. The U.S. would like to make Iraq its very own secure and friendly Middle Eastern military outpost. Whether the Iraqis (or the Muslim family) will allow all this to happen, whether they can prevent it, whether they even WANT to prevent it, is conjecture. Would - could - the Iraqis ever, on their own, have ousted Saddam? (Not wholly off the subject: Can the "Americans" oust Bush?)
If indeed the Iraqis are one family, as some of my correspondents have suggested, it appears to be a most dysfunctional one, and the same can be said for the whole of the Muslim "family." It's a dysfunction particularly agreeable to both the U.S. and Israel, and one they have each promoted to their advantage. Had all the ostensibly Muslim nations joined in active, resolute and coordinated support for the Palestinians, that suffering people MIGHT today enjoy their own state and the worst of Israel's genocidal atrocities might never have happened - and there might not have been a U.S. invasion of Iraq. As the slaughter goes on, Palestinians feud among themselves amid unsettling reports that their leaders are notoriously corrupt. Some of the Middle Eastern nations have remained passive while others have materially aided the U.S. in pursuing its base Iraqi and Middle Eastern ambitions. Suppose for a minute that the ENTIRE Iraqi people, all at once, decided to just sit down, to follow the non-violent example of Gandhi and King, what then?
What I want to suggest in my clumsy way is that things aren't very neat, that what we so desperately hope for may lead us to the false and vain assumption that our hopes will become - are becoming - reality. No "other" is likely to shape the world to our satisfaction. I believe that if we want it to conform - however tenuously - to our particular vision, we must first take it for what it is and then try our damndest, within the limited sphere of possibilities open to us, to shape it for ourselves.