Concealing the Truth about Fallujah

The origin of the present contradiction is not in giving priority to the Iraqi elections, on the account of the necessities of expelling the occupation; it is rather in squandering the first decree of sovereignty, since the rulers become captives of implementing the policy imposed on them, until it reaches the stage of justifying the incompetent war against civilians. Assuming that there are gunmen, this can be attributed to their resistance of the occupation; hence, the government's reaction would be a way of defending the occupation, which is a stance that reflects the great gap between the anticipation of the Americans, and that of the Iraqis. The basic question is not how would Iraq comply with the 'American' democracy, but rather how would Iraq be liberated from the occupation. Meanwhile, the assumption is that the values of freedom, democracy, and the election's mobility, are of a somehow totalitarian nature, since no one is moving in the right direction to test the Iraqi people's will, as long as the ongoing occupation remains contradictory to their will. The present experience in Iraq has indicated that the country is under an imperious authority, and the conditions for the rise of an absent democratic regime began with the lack of political stability. What is even more striking is that the interim Iraqi government continues to prevail the hawks logic in dealing with the Iraqi crisis, to the extent that it seemed more austere than the Americans themselves. While the Americans kill without mercy, the government tallies the casualties' figures based on allegations of outlaws. The paradox in the stated figures is that they do not support the government's point of view. If the number is high, this would indicate that the resistance musters more; and if the number is too low, this would mean that there is no need to mobilize such a military arsenal to confront a city under siege.

In order to justify the attack on the city, the Iraqi government announced that Abu Musaab Al Zarkawi, who is wanted as a man, a phantom, or a justification, is residing in Fallujah. It later talked about Zarkawi's escape to another direction, in order to psychologically prepare the Iraqis for an attack against Mosul or any other Iraqi city. Consequently, it would have replaced its role for protecting the Iraqis and securing their stability, with the role of steering the whereabouts of the wanted. Regardless the justifications, murder can never become an independent policy, since it is similar to violence and hence produces violent reactions and do not only reflect the failure of the government's reactions and the interim period, but also prolong the entire experience which cannot evolve in any direction other than the misled conceptions. Moreover, the negative prospects increase the intensity of the security conditions.

The objective of the attack on Fallujah and other Iraqi cities is to occur simultaneously with the intention of imposing government's authority before the elections. It seemed that excluding regions from the elections, due to the lack of security and stability, would not be effective and would bind these elections to partial democracy. However, force alone cannot compel the Iraqi to head to the ballots, since it is a matter of conviction, education, and culture, and it is not possible to get rid of the former authority by resorting to excessive force. The Iraqis, who were accustomed to yielding from fear of the former regime's oppression, are hard to convince that they are now facing a new type of authority, as long as the policy of mass graves has the same flavor regardless of the different hands that commit these bloody crimes. Nobody believes that Iraq got of the policy of terror.

Iraq is facing severe changes which are up for numerous possibilities; the gravest thing is the continuity of war in the region, where faces and names change, while objectives remain the same.

http://english.daralhayat.com/opinion/OPED/11-2004/Article-20041116-41ff1acf-c0a8-10ed-003a-92db28f4b577/story.html