Yesterday was just another day and another bomb or eleven in the city of Baghdad. The recent bombs in London pale into insignificance when we see the daily horror Baghdad’s citizens live through.
Forgive me if I seem a little cynical when George Bush talks of liberating Iraq. The coalition forces were not an army of liberation, they were one of invasion. They are not there by invitation. Had they been, there would have been no objection from me. This was a war waged on a false premise. A premise exposed as a lie. And as each lie was exposed, the next layer would be peeled away to reveal another equally preposterous fabrication. Until we hit the inviolable truth; regime change. Saddam Hussein was indeed a nasty, vicious, brutal dictator who terrorised his citizens and I shed no tears at his downfall – good riddance to very bad rubbish. It was the one decent achievement of the whole sorry escapade. But regime change is illegal. And that makes the war illegal – whatever the attorney general might say. Even if governments and heads of state can paint a thin veneer of respectability over it, the sheer absence of morality seeps through.
Perhaps worse, was the utter incompetence. In their haste to invade, the US and UK failed to even consider the lessons of history. If as a casual observer, I could foresee the current quagmire of warring tribes, surely they with their intelligence services could? Surely, they cannot have been that crass, stupid and blind? Iraq is an artificial nation carved from the downfall of the Ottoman empire, an uneasy collection of competing tribal groups. The cracks were held together with the band-aid of the Ba’athist regime. Removing that regime as happened in the former Yugolsvia brings the whole edifice down.
We may be fed news of “insurrection” and “insurgency” or even terrorism. But the truth is; Iraq is engaged in a tribal civil war that was entirely predictable. That the coalition did not predict this and prepare for it along with a suitable exit strategy, compounds their ignorance, stupidity and arrogance. If the war was illegal, that it was so incompetently planned and executed, is criminal.
Still, we may rest easy. The good citizens of Baghdad may sleep well tonight, for they have been liberated, George Bush said so.
I love the way the TV and press keep saying…”on the verge of a civil war”. I hate to think what it will be like when it starts.
Please have a look to Iraqi bloggers such as baghdadee.ipbhost.com to get some other point of views by Iraqis
”’Longrider replies: I’ve looked at all points of view and there is merit in them. It doesn’t alter the thrust of my point, though. This war was based on a lie, was illegal and incompetent. The current civil unrest was entirely foreseeable and avoidable.”’
There is no doubt that many Iraqis will feel that they are better off without Saddam. (One ought to of course bear in mind who put Saddam there and funded his regime) I remember a quote from an onlooker when the US first arrived in Baghdad, he was interviewed by the BBC who asked “So, you’re pleased to see the US army then?” He replied George Bush, Saddam, we don’t care we just want peace.”
As for the reasons, well, no-one with a brain was really in any doubt as to what they were. After all the same is/was true of Afghanistan – look for the the Caspian pipeline.