Juan Cole / Informed Comment – 2004-09-26 22:39:04
http://www.juancole.com/
(September 22, 2004) President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country. What would America look like if it were in Iraq’s current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.
Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.
And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?
What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?
What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units?
Picture America with 275,000 ‘Insurrectionists’
There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totaling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities?
What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated?
What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year?
What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target “safe houses” of “criminal gangs”, but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies?
What if the US Army Bombed Virginia Beach?
What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall?
What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades?
What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire.
What If the Alaska Pipeline Was Bombed Once a Month?
What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%?
What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis?
What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new “president” quietly installed in the statehouses as “governors?” What if several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas?
What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner?
The European Press on Religious Violence in Iraq
Paul Wood of the BBC reports on the situation in the British-dominated South. It is not a pretty picture, and it should be remembered that this part of Iraq is generally less problematic than areas to its north.
Wood describes the fighting in Amara during the recent US attack on Sadrists in Najaf. Amara and Kut were virtually ignored in the US press. Wood writes:
‘ British officers characterise the August fighting as merely a “spike” in the violence. Some spike. Last month, British troops fired 100,000 rounds of ammunition in southern Iraq. . . The base in Amara sustained more than 400 direct mortar hits. The British battalion there counted some 853 separate attacks of different kinds: mortars, roadside bombs, rockets and machine-gun fire. They say that no British regiment has had such intense “contact” since Korea. ‘
Wood implicitly explains why the British military has generally done a much better job in Iraq than the US forces. Speaking of the occupation of some intersections in Basra by small Mahdi Army units during the assault on fighters at the holy shrine in Najaf, he says:
‘There are lots of moderates here who support you. But if the shrines are touched, I’ll kill you myself.” That was the warning given to a British brigadier by a leading Shia figure in Basra, during the long hot month of August . . . Since the shrines were not touched, it’s thought that only 400 hard-core gunmen joined the fight against the multi-national forces in Basra.
Still, in an area which is 99% Shia, the great danger for the British is of a general Shia uprising . . . The British — with tanks, air support and thousands of soldiers — say they could have destroyed the small militia force attacking them. But they were asked by local people not to turn Basra into a war zone. And because they didn’t, the majority still welcome them here . . . But perhaps the most worrying development of the August fighting was that none of Basra’s 25,000 police officers came to the aid of the British soldiers. Some even helped the gunmen.
To be fair, it seems increasingly clear that George W. Bush keeps ordering the US military to attack in such situations, against the better judgment of his own officers. So if the US had been in Basra, Bush would have in fact insisted on turning it into a war zone and alienating its 1.3 million Shiites.
As it is, Wood interviews caretaker PM Iyad Allawi, who admits that he didn’t have the authority with the Basra police to countermand the local commissioner’s instruction to his men not to aid the British. When a prime minister can’t control the police commissioners of his major cities, he is a helpless giant.
Alistair Ryan of Reuters explains that Iran faces severe constraints in intervening in Iraq. He quotes Columbia University Iran analyst Gary Sick as saying that the last thing the Iranians want is a civil war in Iraq. Sick is right. Still, Iran is giving money to various Iraqi factions, including to the Sadrists in Basra, according to British military intelligence.
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posted by Juan @ 9/22/2004 06:01:18 AM
