[WCUSP] Here come the odious excuses by Robert Fisk

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Here come the odious  excuses By Robert Fisk

The philosophers  behind the bloodbath in Iraq are now washing their hands 

By Robert  Fisk

11/11/06 "_The  Independent_ 
(http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1953700.ece) " -- -- 
 
"Great news from America!" the cashier at my local Beirut bookshop  shouted 
at me yesterday morning, raising her thumbs in the air. "Things will be  better 
after these elections?" Alas, I said. Alas, no. Things are going to get  
worse in the Middle East even if, in two years' time, America is blessed with a  
Democrat (and democratic) president. For the disastrous philosophers behind the 
 bloodbath in Iraq are now washing their hands of the whole mess and crying 
"Not  Us!" with the same enthusiasm as the Lebanese lady in my book shop, while 
the  "experts" on the mainstream US east coast press are preparing the ground 
for our  Iraqi retreat - by blaming it all on those greedy, blood-lusting, 
anarchic,  depraved, uncompromising Iraqis. 

I must say that Richard Perle's version  of a mea culpa did take my breath 
away. Here was the ex-chairman of the  Pentagon's Defence Policy Board Advisory 
Committee - he who once told us that  "Iraq is a very good candidate for 
democratic reform" - now admitting that he  "underestimated the depravity" in Iraq. 
He holds the president responsible, of  course, acknowledging only that - and 
here, dear reader, swallow hard - "I think  if I had been Delphic, and had 
seen where we are today, and people had said:  'Should we go into Iraq?' I think 
now I probably would have said, 'No, let's  consider other strategies...'"

Maybe I find this self-righteous, odious  mea culpa all the more 
objectionable because the same miserable man was shouting  abuse down a radio line to me 
in Baghdad a couple of years ago, condemning me  for claiming that America was 
losing its war in Iraq and claiming that I was "a  supporter of the 
maintenance of the Baathist regime". This lie, I might add, was  particularly malicious 
since I was reporting Saddam's mass rapes and mass  hangings at Abu Ghraib 
prison (and being refused Iraqi visas) when Perle and his  cohorts were silent 
about Saddam's wickedness and when their chum Donald  Rumsfeld was cheerfully 
shaking the monster's hand in Baghdad in an attempt to  reopen the US embassy 
there.

Not that Perle isn't in good company.  Kenneth Adelman, the Pentagon neocon 
who also beat the drums for war, has been  telling Vanity Fair that "the idea 
of using our power for moral good in the  world" is dead. As for Adelman's mate 
David Frumm, well he's decided that George  Bush just "did not absorb the 
ideas" behind the speeches Frumm wrote for him.  But this, I'm afraid, is not the 
worst to come from those who encouraged us to  invade Iraq and start a war 
which has cost the lives of perhaps 600,000  civilians.

For a new phenomenon is creeping into the pages of The New  York Times and 
those other great organs of state in America. For those  journalists who 
supported the war, it's not enough to bash George. No, they've  got a new flag to 
fly: the Iraqis don't deserve us. David Brooks - he who once  told us that 
neocons such as Perle had nothing to do with the President's  decision to invade 
Iraq - has been ransacking his way through Elie Kedourie's  1970 essay on the 
British occupation of Mesopotamia in the 1920s. And what has  he discovered? That 
"the British tried to encourage responsible leadership to no  avail", quoting 
a British officer at the time as concluding that Iraqi Shia  "have no motive 
for refraining from sacrificing the interests of Iraq to those  which they 
conceive to be their own".

But the Brooks article in The New  York Times was also frightening. Iraq, he 
now informs us, is suffering "a  complete social integration", and "American 
blunders" were exacerbated "by the  same old Iraqi demons: greed, blood lust 
and a mind-boggling unwillingness to  compromise, even in the face of 
self-immolation". Iraq, Brooks has decided, is  "teetering on the edge of futility" 
(whatever that means) and if American troops  cannot restore order, "it will be 
time to effectively end Iraq", diffusing  authority down to "the clan, the tribe 
or sect" which - wait for it - are "the  only communities which are viable".

Nor should you believe that the  Brooks article represents a lone voice. Here 
is Ralph Peters, a USA Today writer  and retired US army officer. He had 
supported the invasion because, he says, he  was "convinced that the Middle East 
was so politically, socially, morally and  intellectually stagnant that we 
(sic) had to risk intervention - or face  generations of terrorism and tumult". 
For all Washington's errors, Peters  boasts, "we did give the Iraqis a unique 
chance to build a rule-of-law  democracy".

But those pesky Iraqis, it now seems, "preferred to indulge  in old hatreds, 
confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of  corruption". Peters' 
conclusion? "Arab societies can't support democracy as we  know it." As a 
result, "it's their tragedy, not ours. Iraq was the Arab world's  last chance to 
board the train to modernity, to give the region a future...".  Incredibly, 
Peters finishes by believing that "if the Arab world and Iran embark  on an orgy 
of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries"  because 
Iraq will have "consumed" "terrorists" and the United States will "still  be the 
greatest power on earth".

It's not the shamefulness of all this -  do none of these men have any shame? 
- but the racist assumption that the  hecatomb in Iraq is all the fault of 
the Iraqis, that their intrinsic  backwardness, their viciousness, their failure 
to appreciate the fruits of our  civilisation make them unworthy of our 
further attention. At no point does  anyone question whether the fact that America 
is "the greatest power on earth"  might not be part of the problem. Nor that 
Iraqis who endured among their worst  years of dictatorship when Saddam was 
supported by the United States, who were  sanctioned by the UN at a cost of a 
half a million children's lives and who were  then brutally invaded by our 
armies, might not actually be terribly keen on all  the good things we wished to 
offer them. Many Arabs, as I've written before,  would like some of our 
democracy, but they would also like another kind of  freedom - freedom from us.

But you get the point. We are preparing our  get-out excuses. The Iraqis 
don't deserve us. Screw them. That's the grit we're  laying down on the desert 
floor to help our tanks 

_www.independent.co.uk_ (http://www.independent.co.uk/) 
 


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