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Add an Event2000 U.S. soldiers killed?
I feel very sorry for each of them. I feel sorry for their families and friends as well.
The 2000 U.S. soldiers, along with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, are the result of this administration’s lies. They’re one of the indicators of the big failure of the U.S. occupation.
The new constitution is another sad chapter of the US failure in Iraq. It won’t have any effects on stabilizing or solving the problems of the occupied country. It’s more like an announcement of the death of the political process in Iraq, and the death of any future potentialities of political solutions. The US interference and hijacking of the political process, packaged as a “constitution support”, will result in turning off most (if not all) of the pro-politics and anti-violent people involved in the Iraqi arena.
Extremist groups will have great recruitment time now!
Sistani is the face of the new Iraq. The new Islamic constitution is the face of the new US-made Iraq. The Badr brigades and their daylight kidnappings and assassinations are the new law in Iraq.
January's elections were a mistake, because they turned off Iraqis' political voices, but these constitution elections are a bigger disaster, because they assassinated the non-violent voice in the war torn country.
Some weeks before the beginning of the 2003 war, I was having a discussion with a couple of friends about what’s going to happen next, how would Iraq and the world look like after the fall of Baghdad. One of us said “it’ll be the dawn of the US Empire, but it’ll be the first step towards its end too”.
Nobody meant it literally though. It was more like discussing the idea of “the first day of someone’s life being also his first day towards his own death”. It seemed like a good argument then, especially with the cheap Fareeda beer!
But now, it’s more like a bitter reality. Iraq was the first step towards the US Empire, but it seems like it’s going to be the last step too.
The U.S. administration, going on and on with their mistakes, closed the last small windows of political action, and put a big welcome sign on the door of violence. Iraq has turned officially into a battlefield waiting for more "Major Combat": bigger and bloodier major combat.
Bush has turned the US from being the superpower that everyone looks up to (and usually fears too), to a universal clown. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent to kill Iraqis and destroy their country searching for the fake WMD, while the US citizens need every dollar to build and develop themselves and their country.
I was listening to Castro making fun of the U.S. (with his propaganda thrown in as usual), telling the world how to have "a model country that protects the lives of its citizens", comparing how his poor country was more successful in dealing with Wilma than the US in dealing with Katrina. Musharraf of Pakistan didn’t make fun of his friend, bush. But he used the bush administration’s failure in dealing with Katrina as a good example and excuse when he declared, in a fit of exasperation, that it had only been 24 hours – even Bush had taken longer to start helping hurricane victims.
Bush is such a great gift from god to the corrupt governments of our world.
The miserable and pathetic bush administration’s capabilities and preparations in dealing with a domestic emergency were actually shocking. After four years of killing thousands of people worldwide for the sake of “protecting Ammmericaaaaaaaa”, and after four years of making the United States the new example of the “Republic of Fear”: putting U.S. citizens in daily fear of “terrorist” attacks, the administration couldn’t deal with a very predictable natural disaster and gave the world a first example of how a modern metropolitan can sink because of bad levees, and how thedead bodies of poor U.S. citizens decompose in the streets for weeks without having anyone paying attention.
Bush and his administration are giving the corrupt governments around the world great ethical examples too. If some governments used to feel ashamed of torturing their citizens, or putting people in prison for years without any legal actions, bush and his administration made the worst and most violent dictatorships around the world look humane and nice to their people. It made all the prisoners in the dirty dark jails under the ground feel like their going on a walk in the park comparing to what the U.S. would do to them. All of the world’s tyrants can smile now and tell their prisoners and citizens: feel happy you’re not in Guantanamo or Abu-Ghraib.
Even Saddam Hussein, one of the biggest examples of violent and authoritarian dictators in the world, can feel proud of his history comparing to what the US is doing in Iraq. Bush should consider himself the personal PR manager of Saddam and other dictators worldwide. Believe me, Bush is a Saddamist! The U.S. administration, and only the U.S. administration, made the image and reputation of the world’s war criminals and fundamentalist leaders look good in comparison.
Some days ago, some religious freaks blew up the statue of Abu-Jafar Al-Mansour in the heart of Baghdad. Al Mansour is the father of Baghdad. He's the Caliphate who built Baghdad and named it "The City of Peace". The same looney-toons who destroyed Al-Mansour are ruling Iraq now, supported by the U.S. administration.
The Sistani(s) in the "New" Iraq are the U.S.-enhanced-version-of-Taliban: they have all the cons of the backwards religious leaders, and they are slaves to the occupiers as well. At least the Afghani Taliban had dignity and national belonging.
I guess the Afghani Taliban should feel grateful to bush too; he made me become a Taliban Supporter!
*just kidding, don't Abu-Ghrieb me*
The U.S. Empire started and ended in Iraq. It ended some weeks ago, or maybe some months, or maybe a couple of years ago, no one can really tell.
But everyone can tell that the U.S. foreign policy Empire has already collapsed sometime after the fall of Baghdad. We're just waiting for the bubble around it to burst.
Robert Fisk wasn’t joking when he said: I speculated some weeks ago as to when the bubble will burst. With the insurgent capture (and massacre) of a US base in Iraq? With the overrunning of the Green Zone in Baghdad?
The huge and very well organized attack against Palestine Hotel and Ishtar Hotal in the heart of Baghdad was just some feet away from bursting the bubble. The first car bomber drove into the concrete barrier protecting the hotels and made a hole in it, and then a big truck filled with explosives made its way through the hole in the wall and was some hundreds of feet away from entering to the lobby and bringing the hotel down killing all the hundreds of private security and mercenaries hiding there, in addition to some stay-at-hotels-journalists.
Ukraine will pull out all its last 800 soldiers from Iraq in less than two months, and the shortage in U.S. army recruitment is not a secret anymore. The U.S. army is being defeated on the ground by small groups of Iraqi men with very primitive weapons.
I’m sure that everyone remembers all the details of the story about the four mercenaries killed and burned by Fallujans last year, and how the “revenge” of the “biggest Army in the world” burned Falujah. I remember what the U.S. soldiers and Marines used to say at that time, because they were actually capable of attacking back.
But now, things are different.
The U.S. army is not capable of fighting back anymore, and that’s why no one heard anything about the 4 contractors who were killed and burned last month in Ad-Doloia. No one mentioned that despite the fact that such news could have been used to balance the news of the U.S. soldiers burning two dead Taliban bodies.
I mean… bush, condi and the rest of the band should be telling us about that in the same way this angry dude is doing:
While US liberals, international human rights groups, and various media editorials agonize over whether US soldiers burned Taliban corpses, bear in mind that (if it happened) at least they waited until the guys were dead.
September 20th, a mob killed four American contractors driving north of Baghdad ... burned one of them alive and let their kids join in on the party...
But they can’t, because they can't "get revenge" anymore.
Bursting the empire's bubble may take days or months, but when it happens, the administration won’t be able to hide.
Nothing can be accomplished through politics in Iraq anymore.
The sounds of explosions and car bombs will mute pro-dialogue people.
Nothing can be accomplished through politics in Iraq anymore.
But there's a lot of politics that can, and should, be done in the U.S.
The U.S. people should make their government pull out all the troops from Iraq and pay compensation for all the death and destruction caused by little bush’s lies. The Americans should at least care about their soldiers and bring them back home.
Bush is a black page in the U.S. history, but he can be a turning point in the U.S. foreign policy.
