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American in Paris |
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On Iraq and the Sorry State of World Affairs |
 "Pres. Bush wants to announce that as of June 30 we'll be turning the running of Iraq back to Saddam Hussein in return for his promise to leave the Kurds alone and to show us where he buried all his weapons of mass destruction." |
Some pungent thoughts
on dreary situations
of TheColumnists.com
1. Bill Clinton was nearly run out of office because of a blowjob. Yet today, purportedly intelligent, knowledgeable persons are actually considering the re-election of George W. Bush, the president who has done more damage, physical and moral, to more people, American and other, in more places, at home and around the world, than possibly any other US president in history. If a blowjob is an impeachable offense, what about a completely blown job?
2. The recent success of Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Army commanders and troops in quelling the uprising in Falluja points the way to a promising future. To reestablish order, security and national unity in Iraq, the U.S. could reinstate Saddam.
3. Regardless of whether it was ever possible for the U.S. to replace Saddam Hussein’s regime with a more benign one, it is becoming increasingly clear that the effort has failed. No Iraqi government will be in a position to rule Iraq in the near future. So the issue now is what to do before the victor in the U.S. presidential election, whoever it is, caves in to public pressure to cut U.S. losses by withdrawing from the Iraqi quagmire. There is still time to figure out how to prevent the country from falling into total chaos and civil war.
One way to save the Iraqis is to forget about Iraq. That is, forget about Iraq as a single, unified country. After all, Iraq, whose various subdivisions had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries, was a pure creation of French and British colonialism at the end of the First World War. Dis-integrating Iraq is not a simple solution, not least because of those oil fields. Turkey and other neighboring countries with Kurdish populations would hate the idea, for fear of Kurdish separatism. Iran’s ayatollahs would surely try to coopt the Iraqi Shiites into their sphere of influence. The Saudis and Israelis would undoubtedly come up with myriad mischievous endeavors to advance their interests. The oil-less Baathists running Syria could also be expected to get involved. And that’s not even to mention the rainbow coalition of Islamic terrorists already being drawn to the sunny banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.
But in light of the various options, it may well be the least bad choice. To make it work, the U.S. would need to line up allies, including Arab and European ones, around this new approach, Then the coalition would have to leverage all its combined influence in the Middle East and Asia Minor to gerrymander Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni, Kurd and Christian communities into a series of balanced regional configurations. This would undoubtedly be messy. But less messy than a bloody, oily free-for-all.
4. There are days when it seems as if there is a struggle under way between civilization and barbarianism--and the barbarians are winning. It felt that way this past week as members of a supposedly liberating army were seen attaching electrodes to prisoners’ genitals in the same dungeon used by the deposed despot. As hooded men proudly filmed themselves beheading a poor, innocent victim in the name of god. As freedom fighters combed the ground for even the tiniest body parts of their exploded enemies, to use as barter.
5. In all of this,
it seems as if the images matter more than the actual reality.
As if it were okay to torture, behead, humiliate and degrade,
as long as no one takes pictures. After all, that’s what
Rumsfeld said. That he knew about the prisoner abuse back in
January; he just didn’t know what would happen with the
pictures. So what did he really apologize for--the reality or
the pictures?
©2004 by Kenneth Dreyfack. The cartoon is from IMSI's Master
Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA.
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