HOW DO WE RESPOND TO THE STATEMENT…

The United States should not have invaded Iraq, but now that we are there, aren’t we responsible to clean it up and ensure that there is no bloodbath when we leave?

Much of the answer to this question begins with a critical look at the premises hidden inside the question.

Premise 1: The “United States” invaded Iraq.

Premise 2: “We” are the United States who did it.

Premise 3: The invasion was a “mistake.”

Premise 4: “We” are better suited to “clean up” Iraq than the Iraqis by themselves.

Premise 5: The violence in Iraq is a reflection of divisions existing inside Iraq.

Premise 6: Iraqis cannot be trusted to guide the reconstruction of Iraq without US supervision about HOW to do reconstruction.

Reply to Premise 1:

“The ‘United States’ invaded Iraq.”

The decision to invade Iraq was not made by any democratic process in the United States. It was made by the executive branch without consulting Congress for a declaration of war, as mandated by the Constitution.

Many millions of Americans opposed the war and still oppose it.

Reply to Premise 2:

“’We’ are the United States who did it.”

The United States did not conduct the invasion, the United States military did, under orders from the Bush government.

The larger “we” has never seen anything but snapshot of this war, and has no real experience of it. The use of the term WE serves to purposes: it masks those who are responsible and transfers responsibility to the whole American people; and it implants in our thinking a sense of “us & them”,” the US being a privileged category.

Reply to Premise 3:

“The invasion was a ‘mistake.’”

This premise ties into the preceding ones, by suggesting WE conducted this invasion out of some sense of righteousness, that was merely misguided. The President was mistaken, or even exercised bad judgment, and we share in this “mistake.” But the invasion was not a mistake or an accident. It was carefully conceived by a group of people in the executive branch, as we now know from the Downing Street memo and a host of other sources, and the reasons for the war were not miscalculations, but carefully calculated deceptions. It was based on those deceptions that large sections of the US were convinced of the need to invade Iraq.

A deception is not a mistake!

If the reasons given for the war are lies, then we have to ask what are the reasons for the invasion and occupation. There is an overwhelming body of evidence available to show the real reasons for the war, much of it written over the past decade by the architects of the war itself, to show what the real reasons were and are.

Their purpose is to reconfigure the US military from its former Cold War disposition to retain US global power in the future. Their method is to establish permanent US military installations in this critically strategic region to (1) ensure American access to continued flows of cheap oil for American corporations, and (2) to use control over the region as strategic leverage against global competitors, like China, Western Europe, and India.

Reply to Premise 4:

“’We’ are better suited to ‘clean up’ Iraq than the Iraqis by themselves.”

If the reasons for being in Iraq are to control the region with a permanent military presence, and this agenda is determined not by a collective “we,” but by the corporate-controlled American government, why do we believe that the vandal is the person most suited to get the contract to rebuild the house? And by what magical process of transformation will the leopard, the US government in this case, change its spots?

Governments, especially imperial governments, do not make decisions based on morality. They base their decisions on the question of getting and keeping power. The decision to invade Iraq was made with the goal being conquest. The goals later stated by the occupation, like stability and democracy, are no more honest than the weapons of mass destruction. It is still a deception. The goal is still US power and permanent military bases there.

So “clean-up” is not on the agenda, unless clean-up includes American military and financial power there.

More importantly, perhaps, what is the additional premise hidden in this premise? That the Iraqis are somehow less-than, somehow inferior, to us, and thereby incapable of self-governance. In the period of the British empire, there was a similar argument that was more open with its racism; it called this the “white man’s burden to bear civilization to the darker races.” And it was, of course, civilization that included British political, financial, and military oversight.

The same argument by Americans now, for Iraq, fails to remember that Iraqis were civilized for thousands of years before the British or the Americans.

Reply to Premise 5:

“The violence in Iraq is a reflection of divisions existing inside Iraq.”

On of the impressions that the Bush administration has fostered throughout this aggression has been the idea of sharp division between Iraqis. The American corporate press has dutifully echoed this simplistic notion, which supports the related idea that these “violent, irrational Arabs,” if left to themselves, will immolate themselves in an orgy of blood and iron.

Yet when one looks at the various faces of violence in Iraq, the most prominent an d lethal source of violence is the American military itself – which has killed more than 100,000 Iraqis just since the March 2003 invasion.

One segment of the resistance, so-called foreign fighters (that comprises less than 15 percent by reputable estimates) are drawn to Iraq precisely because the Americans are there.

The attacks on Shia leaders in the South and on Kurdish leaders in the North are not “sectarian,” “religious,” or “ethnic.” Statements from various groups within the nationalist resistance – both secular and Islamist – have specifically stated that their attacks are directed at those who are collaborating with the Americans, because of that collaboration… NOT based on ethnic or religious rivalry. In fact, the rates of intermarriage between these groups has always been very substantial, and Shias, Sunnis, Islamists, and secular nationalists have expressed the desire from the very beginning to find a framework for political cooperation and co-existence.

The Anglo-American military presence is the cause of most of this violence. If the occupation ends, no one will be targeted for collaboration, because there will be no one to collaborate with. And it must be restated with emphasis that the American presence is not there to ensure what is best for Iraqis, but to ensure what is seen as best for the American corporate-controlled government.

Reply to Premise 6:

“Iraqis cannot be trusted to guide the reconstruction of Iraq without US supervision about HOW to do reconstruction.”

First of all, who says the Iraqis will decide to remain a unified Iraq? Those boundaries were drawn by British imperialists. Iraqis may decide to become a regional federation, an ethnic federation, or to split into autonomous regions and nations.

That process may involve some fighting, but it cannot be fighting on the scale we have seen with the Americans, if it happens at all.

History sometimes leaves people little choice. The question of slavery in the United States was resolved, after all, by what was at the time the bloodiest war in human history. Nothing of this scale will happen in Iraq, and whatever happens, the history of Iraqis must be left in the hands of Iraqis – not a foreign imperial power.

The main question preoccupying the Bush administration is not “reconstruction” at any rate, but how to ensure that Iraqis don’t have public control over their own oil wealth, and how to prevent – what is already happening despite US attempts to control Iraqi politics – Iraqi and Iranian cooperation in the region.

The notion that the Iraqis CAN not or SHOULD not be left to their own initiative to determine their future is another display of “white man’s burden.”

THE SOLUTION IS TO END THE OCCUPATION AND BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW.