Presiding over the morgue that is Iraq
by Jim Klobuchar
The inevitable chorale of wise heads is sitting down in Washington to discuss the fate of a country that has been transformed into a morgue.
The cast of characters is not totally credible for these macabre deliberations over the civil war in Iraq. They have been organized variously by the Pentagon, by the White House and by the Congress to give the country some kind of advice that is supposed to rise above political rhetoric and the periodic claims from the White House that “we are winning.”
It might be better if one of those august panels delivered a judgment instead of advice.
The advice is likely to be mixed enough and freighted with options broad enough to allow the Bush government to find the escape hatch of ambiguity. The White House wants us to keep the war and the occupation going until it can (a) leave office having satisfied its machismo oath to cling to a gory path that has killed nearly 3,000 American men and women, wounded 20,000 more and killed Iraqis by the scores of thousands (or) until the carnage in Iraq graduates into a larger carnage inflaming the whole Middle East.
One of the wise heads should be telling the American public: That is why your young people are dying in Iraq today.
Iraq is a slaughterhouse. It is a horrific sight, created by an American government obsessed with power, driven by a delusion of omnipotence but exposed now like a phony god peddling shiny gospels of democratizing the world.
It was always about power, and about vassalizing the parts of the world important to us and to our commerce.
The government doesn’t now know where to turn, a captive of its arrogant refusal to admit its failure and deceit. But we should take care about where we direct our sympathies for the trap in which the government has now taken the United States.
Abbas Mehdi was a college professor at St. Cloud, MN State and the University of Minnesota from the 1990s through 2006. Before that he was a merchant. He is a native of Iraq who became an outcast with the arrival to power of Saddam Hussein. Despite his hostility to Hussein and the recognition of his crimes, Mehdi opposed the invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Ultimately, he said, they would fracture and destroy the country. A few months ago he had heard enough of the violence in Iraq. He was born there. He said he needed to be with his people and possibly aid in the restoration of peace. He took a job and an armored vest as part of an Iraqi transition team working with the struggling Iraqi government.
He wrote this from Baghdad today to his friends in Minnesota:
“Thank you so much for your emails and your concern. I wish with all my heart I had some good news to share with you.
“Alas, all I can say is that the situation here is VERY bad and getting worse every day. There is no government, there are no institutions, no security, no jobs, no water, and no electricity. Even worse than that, I don't see any solution in the near future. Of the many possible options I hear about, none seems to me to provide the answer, not even the Baker report, which I know is attracting a lot of attention right now in the US.
“The reality for both the US and Iraq is very grim. If the US leaves, it will make the situation here worse very quickly; but if the US stays, it will become worse very slowly. In the meantime, ethnic killing has started to spread widely among different communities in Baghdad.
“If you ask me what I think the answer is, I have to say I simply don't know, and I don’t know if anyone else really knows, either.
“Iraq’s future is in serious doubt and it's moving toward one of the darkest chapters in its history. Iraq has been destroyed as a result of stupidity and policies that were rushed through too fast, and it may be a very long time until the damage can be repaired.
“The Iraqi people have lost three generations, they are hungry, and hundreds are dying unnecessarily every day.
“Someone must be held responsible and accountable for what’s happening here; otherwise history and humanity will not forgive us.
“On a more personal subject, I still haven’t been able to see my family and it's becoming increasingly out of the question. You can imagine how frustrating and sad that is for all of us.
“Again, I so much wish I could be writing to you with hope and optimism and a sense of better things to come.”
Abbas didn’t return to Iraq, a place he actually loved as a boy and young man, to write an obituary. But he may have.
The inevitable chorale of wise heads is sitting down in Washington to discuss the fate of a country that has been transformed into a morgue.
The cast of characters is not totally credible for these macabre deliberations over the civil war in Iraq. They have been organized variously by the Pentagon, by the White House and by the Congress to give the country some kind of advice that is supposed to rise above political rhetoric and the periodic claims from the White House that “we are winning.”
It might be better if one of those august panels delivered a judgment instead of advice.
The advice is likely to be mixed enough and freighted with options broad enough to allow the Bush government to find the escape hatch of ambiguity. The White House wants us to keep the war and the occupation going until it can (a) leave office having satisfied its machismo oath to cling to a gory path that has killed nearly 3,000 American men and women, wounded 20,000 more and killed Iraqis by the scores of thousands (or) until the carnage in Iraq graduates into a larger carnage inflaming the whole Middle East.
One of the wise heads should be telling the American public: That is why your young people are dying in Iraq today.
Iraq is a slaughterhouse. It is a horrific sight, created by an American government obsessed with power, driven by a delusion of omnipotence but exposed now like a phony god peddling shiny gospels of democratizing the world.
It was always about power, and about vassalizing the parts of the world important to us and to our commerce.
The government doesn’t now know where to turn, a captive of its arrogant refusal to admit its failure and deceit. But we should take care about where we direct our sympathies for the trap in which the government has now taken the United States.
Abbas Mehdi was a college professor at St. Cloud, MN State and the University of Minnesota from the 1990s through 2006. Before that he was a merchant. He is a native of Iraq who became an outcast with the arrival to power of Saddam Hussein. Despite his hostility to Hussein and the recognition of his crimes, Mehdi opposed the invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Ultimately, he said, they would fracture and destroy the country. A few months ago he had heard enough of the violence in Iraq. He was born there. He said he needed to be with his people and possibly aid in the restoration of peace. He took a job and an armored vest as part of an Iraqi transition team working with the struggling Iraqi government.
He wrote this from Baghdad today to his friends in Minnesota:
“Thank you so much for your emails and your concern. I wish with all my heart I had some good news to share with you.
“Alas, all I can say is that the situation here is VERY bad and getting worse every day. There is no government, there are no institutions, no security, no jobs, no water, and no electricity. Even worse than that, I don't see any solution in the near future. Of the many possible options I hear about, none seems to me to provide the answer, not even the Baker report, which I know is attracting a lot of attention right now in the US.
“The reality for both the US and Iraq is very grim. If the US leaves, it will make the situation here worse very quickly; but if the US stays, it will become worse very slowly. In the meantime, ethnic killing has started to spread widely among different communities in Baghdad.
“If you ask me what I think the answer is, I have to say I simply don't know, and I don’t know if anyone else really knows, either.
“Iraq’s future is in serious doubt and it's moving toward one of the darkest chapters in its history. Iraq has been destroyed as a result of stupidity and policies that were rushed through too fast, and it may be a very long time until the damage can be repaired.
“The Iraqi people have lost three generations, they are hungry, and hundreds are dying unnecessarily every day.
“Someone must be held responsible and accountable for what’s happening here; otherwise history and humanity will not forgive us.
“On a more personal subject, I still haven’t been able to see my family and it's becoming increasingly out of the question. You can imagine how frustrating and sad that is for all of us.
“Again, I so much wish I could be writing to you with hope and optimism and a sense of better things to come.”
Abbas didn’t return to Iraq, a place he actually loved as a boy and young man, to write an obituary. But he may have.
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