Raed in the Middle: Early Elections, Sham Elections

The real roots of the current Iraqi crisis and occupation can be traced back to the Iraqi Iranian war, where the US government supported the war completely in the so called “dual-containment” strategy articulated by Martin Indyk. The US administration supported the Iraqi government by every possible way starting from intelligence information, and reaching to supplying Iraq with weapons and justifying the Iraqi government’s use of weapons (including chemical weapons). When the sad, yet overused and manipulated, incident of Halabchah happened, the US administration announced that they were not sure who did it, and they were not sure it was chemical weapons. According to a New York Times article http://www.counterpunch.org/boles1010.html ) in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran. "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas." "It was just another way of killing people - whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."

As our old friend said, some administrations don’t have permanent friends, they have permanent interests. It is not about morals, it never was, and it won’t.

The US government was making sure the Iraqi army was “not losing” ( http://www.finalcall.com/perspectives/iraq_us10-01-2002.htm ), and that the Iraqi government would be the new policeman of the gulf after the Iranian Shah was kicked out. The Iraqi government was completely supported by the US government for decades; giving the Iraqi government about $5 billion in aid and encouraging allies to provide it with billions worth of arms, including technology reportedly used in plants for making mustard and nerve gas. According to a 1994 Senate Committee Report, U.S. firms also supplied Iraq with biological materials, including anthrax, botulism and E. coli bacteria.

All of this support created the big strong dictatorship in Iraq, a national dictatorship that could not be changed or at least enhanced from inside because of the strong external blind support.

When the Iraqi political leaders found themselves facing big financial problems after the end of the Iraqi Iranian war with tens of billions of dollars of loans, and while they were still feeling strong with their big army and the unlimited US support, they were under pressure by the small and rude Kuwaiti neighbor because of oil prices problem. They made the biggest mistake in the contemporary history of the region by attacking and occupying Kuwait. Whether the US government actually gave the green light through April Glaspie or not, it was the best excuse for old bush to send his army to the Middle East and start acting as the gulf policeman himself.

The Iraqi government wasn’t the friend anymore; the Iraqi government wasn’t the ally anymore. The story with Iraq is different than what happened with Osama bin Ladin. It is true that both the Iraqi government and Osama bin Ladin were blindly supported by the US government. Yet Osama bin Ladin decided to bite the hand of his masters, at the same time that the masters chopped off the head of their ally in Iraq. The Iraqi government was the sacrifice goat to occupy the gulf.

Operation Iraq: The Sacrifice Goat, took around 14 years. The main target was milking the gulf rich countries, and destroying Iraq gradually until the right time for occupying Iraq and turning it into a main US military base in the region arrived. The targets were the Iraqi army and Iraq’s national government, both with its political and civic divisions. In 1991, old bush knew that it wasn’t the right time to occupy and destroy Iraq easily, he knew that keeping the Iraqi government weak and contained was the best way to stay in the gulf for years and destroy Iraq slowly. So, the game of sanctions started. Anyone who thinks that old bush didn’t want to occupy Iraq is wrong, he just wanted to do it in the right time.

This occupation that we are living now is the result of decades of planning and on-ground work. Maybe the planning of the post-occupied Iraq wasn’t planned in the best way, but the outlines were drawn long time ago.

Attack the country, destroy the public sector to make it a part of the global capitalist village, destroy the national army to keep other US friends in the region safe, remove the national political leaders and put puppets (i.e. karazay, allawi, abu mazin, etc.). Whether we liked the Iraqi national political leaders or not, they were the legal leaders of the country. And even if we didn’t like them and believed that we should remove them by an illegal foreign invasion, destroying the civic divisions of the government is not linked to removing them at all. It was possible to remove the political leaders without destroying the civil ministries with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis working in them. These hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were the legal national civil government of Iraq.

Attacking a country and removing its political leaders is illegal and invalid in all the international laws and conventions. Attacking a country and destroying every functioning institute and killing thousands upon thousands of people is a historical genocide that people will never forget. There are differences between the thousands of civilians killed and displaced in Fallujah (and other Iraqi cities) and the thousands killed in Auschwitz, but there are many similarities too.

I am one of the people affected by the Iraqi political national government. I have relatives that were killed in all the wars, I have relatives that were thrown on the borders during the Iraqi Iranian war because of our Iranian descent. I had many personal problems because of my critique of the Iraqi government’s attitudes inside the country. The quality of my life would have been better if the Iraqi government was different. I am one of millions of people who were affected in a negative way by the government during our life inside Iraq. Yet, I understand that the government before this war was the national and official government, and nothing justifies the illegal war that happened to “liberate” the country. I had this position even before the war, and I believed that the only way for enhancing the lives of Iraqis is a change from the INSIDE. I was against the sanctions, against the war, and now I am against the occupation.

These elections are part of the bush project in the Middle East. The bush project in Iraq… and taking a part of this election justifies every part of this project. It justifies the dual containment, it justifies the first war, and the sanctions, and it justifies the war of occupation and the tens of thousands of lives taken because of it. Voting in these elections justifies every murder that happened, and every illegal move that the bush administration made.

Every move that the bush administration did on behalf of the Iraqis would be justified by the fact that people will be going to elections. Didn’t this administration come all the way to "liberate" us? Didn’t they come all the way to give us the right to elect? Aren’t these their fake excuses to come and destroy our country? Anyone who votes will unfortunately complete the bush story and make it look as if everyone is happy with what happened.

It is not about Sunnis and Shias, it is about people taking pro-national position, and others surrendering (under the name of pragmatism) to the illegal brutal super power. Take a look on the Iraqis positions: As-Sadr is an important Shia leader and he is boycotting the elections, Al-Pachachi markets himself as a secular leader and he is taking a part of the elections. Some sunnis are taking a part of the elections, many shia are not. It is a matter of national position more than an ethnic division.

Countries surrounding Iraq are supporting the elections because little bush said so, Iran is supporting the elections because they will be the winners in case the SCIRI candidate (supported by Sistani) wins. No one supports the elections because he believes in them.

Iraq needs a road map, a pre-elections road map. Elections are not papers with names thrown into boxes, they needs a massive scale organized social and infra-structure capacity. Iraq needs a plan with a vision for ending the current crisis:

One: End the foreign military and political presence, an end for the occupation.
Two: Fix the destruction that occurred because of the illegal war, and pay compensation.
Three: Stop the internal cycle of violence.

After these three points are made, we can talk about elections.

* Three-Point-Plan, yet much of hard work. I really think the first step to start in this plan is to confess that the Iraq war was illegal. A public apology and confession on the part of the occupiers will be the real turning point. Putting a schedule for pulling out the occupying forces should be announced as soon as possible, and groups of international forces can fill the security gap for the next couple of years with a clear schedule about the exact time of them pulling out of Iraq too.


* Compensation should be paid to Iraqis as individuals (ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars), the same case that happened with Kuwaitis after the illegal Iraqi invasion of 1990, and other compensation should be paid to Iraq as a country (some hundreds of billions of dollars), the same case that is happening with Iraq paying compensation because of the illegal acts of its government.

* The internal cycle of violence will decrease gradually with the withdrawal of the occupying forces and the enhancement of the economical situation. Iraqis can solve their problems by themselves; they don’t need a foreign occupation to help them.

When bush was re-elected, he considered winning the elections as legitimization for his policy in Iraq, the thing that is untrue. The Iraqi issue wasn’t on the priority of voting for people, and even people that had foreign policy as a priority elected him because of the lack of another clear vision. This election will be abused the same way, to legitimize the war and occupation, the death of tens of thousands of people, and the destruction of an entire country with its culture ……

Most Iraqis know all of these facts. That’s why less than quarter million out of millions of Iraqis outside the country registered their names for elections. Iraqis know that these are fake elections that will use them instead of helping them.

I am not going to vote...

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