(Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.)
Clio was the Greek muse whose task was to watch over the course of human history, a comforting figure of the ancient past assuring western man this his noble compulsion to record what happened in their political structures and events gave him power and unique survival ability for life on earth. If nothing else, at least a detailed recorded history can stand as a testament to honorable faith and accomplishment, a worthy screed of who we are, what we tried to do and what actually happened.
The United States has committed cliocide in Iraq. All of the recorded history for Iraq for the 20th century, all of it, has been completely lost in a mayhem of looting, destruction and fire. Everything the Iraqis have done and recorded since the Ottoman Empire, since the British took over and left, since the CIA gutted their Democracy with a coup in the 1950, obliterated and lost forever.
Iraq is also easily one of the most precious archaeological countries in the world, stuffed with ancient treasures and artifacts from fascinating peoples and cultures long gone. One can only shudder at the immense damage inflicted on Iraq’s amazing past from the American war.
There is nothing about current Iraq in human terms that has not been smashed to complete destruction and unrecognizable rubble. Professor Juan Cole, University of Michigan:
"And the sheer horror of this war is something that we miss. When it's reported in the news that 50 bodies were found in Baghdad -- do you realize that there's actually a corpse patrol in the Iraqi police, that this is one of the duties if you're a policeman, that you get up in the morning and you go around looking for the bodies that are showing up in the streets that day? And the U.N. reports that these bodies show signs of drilling, of chemical exposure, of torture of various sorts, and then typically they have a bullet behind the ear, Mafia style.
And 50, 60 of them every day are showing up in Baghdad, and then more are showing up in places like Baqubah and elsewhere. In -- even in Mosul now you begin to see some of these statistics emerging."
Even after all of this was started for filthy lies to a people that had done nothing to us, the United States still has the unmitigated gall to speak down to the Iraqis, to sneer at the government and make demands upon what it should do.
"So I agree with Professor Roberts that, you know, a sense of contrition, a recognition of the reality here, of what the actions of the United States have done to an entire country, to -- really to a civilization, is in order. And we cannot debate what should be done in Iraq unless we have a clear-eyed vision of what has been done in Iraq."
The statement Saddam was a brutal dictator we did the world good by getting rid of is ludicrous and offensive—Saddam never unleashed the furious mayhem engulfing Iraq right now. The United States is a lying, murdering hegemon responsible for ungodly death, destruction and human misery in Iraq.
That is who we are and what we have done. I write this out a profound sense of shame, bafflement and futility. Why is it that the ruling elite in DC is so blind to this? How did we ever get so sick to abandon so many of our precious human principles to ever get to this point?
To the people of Iraq and the world, I am profoundly sorry. There were many of us right from the beginning screaming this was murdering criminal lunacy of the highest order, but we were ignored. If there was anything I could perform to undo this horror I would, but I can only hopelessly watch. I do not know if the United States will ever snap out of its delusions and take responsibility for its actions; given what we know, it seems very doubtful. I don’t know of anything else to do except stand here in utter helplessness and shame. I’m so sorry.