Naomi Klein in Baghdad: "The battle the US wants to provoke"

[Minstrel Boy]

The battle the US wants to provoke
Bremer is deliberately pushing Iraq's Shia south into all-out chaos
Naomi Klein in Baghdad
Tuesday April 6, 2004
The Guardian

I heard the sound of freedom in Baghdad's Firdos Square, the famous plaza where the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled one year ago. It sounds like machine-gun fire.

On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers, trained and controlled by coalition forces, opened fire on a demonstration here. As the protesters returned to their homes in the poor neighbourhood of Sadr City, the US army followed with tanks, helicopters and planes, firing at random on homes, shops, streets, even ambulances. According to local hospitals, 47 people were killed and many more injured. In Najaf, the day was also bloody: 20 demonstrators dead, more than 150 injured.

...

On the surface, this chain of events is mystifying. With the so-called Sunni triangle in flames after the gruesome Falluja attacks, why is Bremer pushing the comparatively calm Shia south into battle?

Here's one possible answer: Washington has given up on its plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30, and is creating the chaos it needs to declare the handover impossible. A continued occupation will be bad news for George Bush on the campaign trail, but not as bad as if the hand-over happens and the country erupts, an increasingly likely scenario given the widespread rejection of the legitimacy of the interim constitution and the US- appointed governing council.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1186566,00.html

[aquart]

1. How many dead Marines will it take to dethrone the emperor?

[Malva Zebrina]

4. as many as will keep perpetrating the myth

and be convinced that they are some sort of a brave elite defending our "freedoms"

It should be obvious to anyone--the United Syates will not be, in the near or even in the far future, invaded or attacked by any other sovereign nation. It simply is not a viable theory.

Any military activity that is indulged in by the US will by only, and can be only, wars of aggression against other countries who have something we desperately want and are willing to kill innoncent by the thousands to get--illegally.

We can now make up all kinds of excuses if the pre=emptive doctrine reigns over us all. Hell, anything will do. The leader was actually "thinking" of implimentaing a policy of developing nuclear weapons. Yup--like an ignoramus such as a George Bush, is smart enough to know that. This is the danger. Any idiot who chooses to steal an election and hwo will not be challenged on his "win" can do this.

It must never ever happen again.

Certainly, many realize that this doctrine, used ofr many years by Ariel Sharon, cannot accomplish anything but can only serve to bring our precious children to an early death in defense of a leader whose head is not screwed on tightly.

Obviously the military will be used by a president. if that president is a religious nut, an is a sociopath, and is stricken by delusions of grandeur and power , that leader, duly elected or not, can USE the proud Marines as his wimply pawns. Obviously these proud Marines, can never, ever do antying to usurp a madman in charge, so they , in reality are not really that brave at all. They are just, it seems, as much a robotic institution as the rest of the robotic military, who have bougjt it, that we, the people of the US, are indebted to these military forces who killo ten thousand innocents, as our vaunted and brave defenders of our freedom.

It is time to take a good hard long look at the way we use language and the way we mysticize our soldiers and especially the Marines. None have not a scintilla of power over a stupid CIC. None.

and it is time to hold these historical revisionists that would have us defending our "freedoms" instead of admitting to the truth that we are killing tens of thousands of innocents on trumped up charges, to satisfy our greed under the leadership of an insane man who actually forced himself upon us, by resorting to having his cronies on the SCOTUS appoint him president.

WE cannot depend on the Marines, or any in the military for that. They are all, and have the capacity to pander to and obey, evil men interested in expanding our empire--not in defending our country.

They are the unthinking pawns, more concerned with military "tradition" and the good old boy subscription , than they are with honor, truth ,the consitution of the US, it's citizens and all of those ideal we who are aware of history know what is the fabric of our country and it's weave.

[NewHampshireDem]

2. Grange On Point on CNN ...

pointed out that the insurgents seemed to be both Shi'a and Sunni. He essentially referred to it as a marriage of convenience--that they have come together to fight against the Americans. I guess they've learned one thing from us: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

[pberq]

3. events actually part of the hawks' broader agenda

Here's another possiblitiy, from Justin Raimondo's April 5 column. He is qouting Joshua Micah Marshall, writing about the neocons in the Washington Monthly.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/

"To most Americans," Marshall wrote, "this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated."

Forget about the costs, in lives and treasure: forget about the unwillingness of the "liberated" to agree to the terms of their "liberation," the fueling of Al Qaeda's agenda in the region, and the certainty that the West will be visited with yet more terrorism. None of this matters to the cabal that lied us into war, as Marshall points out,

"Events that may seem negative … while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments – or, failing that, U.S. troops – rule the entire Middle East."