The Joy of Looting

I speak not of the mobs in Basra that stripped clean the Sheraton Hotel as the U.S. military looked tolerantly on, or the masses in Baghdad who ran away with everything not nailed down, or of the marauding gangsters who ransacked European embassies.

No, I refer to scenes in the oil city of Kirkuk, where "coalition forces" entered to seize control of the oil fields, and in southern Iraq where U.S. and British forces have "secured" all 1,000 oil wells. These are the real prizes of this war.

Source: Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

 
As a consequence of America and Britain's intervention, Iraq is spinning out of control, its tensions and divisions rising to the fore. The routing of the old regime has already triggered battles for power, as small, armed and opportunistic groups move into the vacuum left by the war.

Analysts argue that the situation could be resolved if Washington were prepared to allow in UN stabilisation forces at short notice...but chances of the Bush administration agreeing to this is almost nil.

 
Many Arabs feel that Iraq has now been occupied by the Americans. Some Arab newspapers even accuse the coalition forces of encouraging the looters in Iraq.

 
"If too large a proportion of the state’s resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term." With signs that the US victory in Iraq is not creating the economic stimulus required for an upturn, this can be worrying. The US may have miscalculated the cost of the war and the economic benefits from it especially because the economy was already shaky at the start of the war. Kennedy says the correlation is borne out by the history of the rise and fall of the leading countries in the great power system since the advance of Western nations. The war may cost the US much more than just dollars and cents. Like ancient Rome, America may have reached the limits of power.

Source: Paul Kennedy’s 'Rise and Fall of the Great Powers'

 
The defenders of Mosul in the north have clearly had enough of the aerial bombardment.

They are preparing to surrender, as long as the Americans grant them amnesty and, above all, stop the air strikes.

But the US commander on the ground says that he is not in the business of providing amnesties.

 
--- Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda only emerged because of the presence of US troops on Saudi soil; a presence the Muslims perceive as humiliating for them and desecrating for Islamic shrines. Disagreements have begun to show in the opposition factions. What is certain is the Sunnis, who are counted as supporters of

Saddam’s regime, will turn into an opposition because they are secularists who mostly believe in Arab nationalism.

But perhaps the most serious development is the transformation of the Shi’ites, who are supposed to be most hostile to Saddam, into a resistance movement that employs suicide operations as weapons against the coalition.

Lebanese Shi’ite sources close to Hizbollah have confirmed to me an Iraqi Hizbollah is being founded.

Elements of this group, who are trained to carry out resistance in South Lebanon, have been infiltrating Iraq and will begin their operations against the US and British troops.

The intrusion of the US troops into Najaf and Karbala, the two most sacred cities for 60million Shi’ites in Iran, is considered a humiliation.

The Iraqi borders with Iran are more than 1,000km long and so are those with Syria.

Don’t be surprised to see weapons smuggling and recruits volunteering to fight, especially in the wake of threats by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against both countries.

Officials in Syria and Iran firmly believe they are next in line.

Iraq is proceeding rapidly not in the direction of a democratic model, but one of anarchy and confusion, just as in Somalia, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

It is now the most fertile soil for radicalism, and it will attract radicals and extremists from all sides.

They will all embrace the call for jihad against the occupation.

The American and British honeymoon in Iraq may be a short one. But if it drags on it is only likely to be bloody.

Hence, it is rather premature to celebrate the fall of Baghdad despite the end of Saddam Hussein.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12833498&method=full&siteid=50143

 
"We've destroyed a large majority of their military and they still need to secure their country," says Lt. Col. Woody Radcliffe, who heads a 3rd Infantry Division operations center. "It's an absolute shame. We didn't want to do this. Even a brain-dead moron can understand we are so vastly superior militarily that there is no hope. You would think they would see that and give up."

 
"We've destroyed a large majority of their military and they still need to secure their country," says Lt. Col. Woody Radcliffe, who heads a 3rd Infantry Division operations center. "It's an absolute shame. We didn't want to do this. Even a brain-dead moron can understand we are so vastly superior militarily that there is no hope. You would think they would see that and give up."

 
'To indulge, one more time, in the metaphor of war as a kind of living thing, a parasite on human societies: The idea of a war to end war is one of its oldest, and cruelest, tricks'.

By
Barbara Ehrenreich, columnist for The Progressive. She is the author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (Metropolitan Books, 2001) and "Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War" (Henry Holt, 1997).

 
Renuart said U.S. forces have covered "about half or 60 percent" of Iraq, mostly in the south.

"There's a long way to go still," he said. "We're not sure when a military victory will be complete."

 
Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Los Angeles Times that the United Nations would have little role in choosing a postwar administration for Iraq.

 
Posted by Lakshmi on April 9, 2003 @ 3:31PM

Al Jazeera is reporting that Saddam Hussein may be negotiating an eleventh-hour deal that could see him exiled to a safe country. The network is fingering the Russians as the possible brokers of the deal.

 
"It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them."
-- Adolf Hitler

 
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms .. is squandering the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” - pre Enron States of America, Eisenhower, April, 1953

 


'The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.'
----------

Samuel P. Huntington

 
U.S. forces invading Iraq make frequent reference to ‘nuking’ Iraqis, whom they call ‘ragheads’ and ‘camel jockeys,’ often without appearing to distinguish between civilians and enemy forces. The extent to which such remarks are part of the daily vernacular underscores the cultural and political challenges the United States faces as it becomes a major military presence in a post-Saddam Iraq.

As for non-hostile Iraqis, ‘I think they can be brought up intellectually, but it'll take some work because they're still in the Stone Age,’ Lance Cpl. Christopher Akins, 21, of Louisville, KY said. He appeared startled to hear that Iraqis are descendants of ancient Mesopotamia, a thriving civilization that created the world's first known system of writing and body of law, and that until it was bombed and sanctioned back to the Middle Ages, Iraq also enjoyed a substantial and highly educated middle class.

 
According to former Marine Chris White*, Marine recruits are trained
to the rhythm of little ditties like this one, which they must sing
as they march:*

Throw...some...can...dy...in the...yard
Watch...the child...ern...gather...round
Lock...un-load...your AK...forty...seven
Mow...them...lit...tle...bastards...down

 
Richard Murphy, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 1983 to 1989, said :

------ "There's a perception that the time has come to spread democracy in the Middle East. Their view is that the US paid heavily on September 11 for having not stood by its principles in dealing with autocracies in the Middle East."

 
"These guys are young and most just want to get their first confirmed kill, so they're too anxious to get off shots. I hate to say 'bragging rights' but they want that kill," First Sergeant Eric Engram said.

 
'I did what I had to do', says US soldier after killing a child

 
"Ah, Jayzuz, the ways we invent to get away from our responsibilities.

"The only thinking animal on the goddamn planet and what do we spend most of our lives trying not to do?

"Correct.

"We join armies, we enter monasteries or nunneries, we adopt the party line, we believe what we read in ancient books or shit newspapers or what we’re told by plastic politicians, and all we’re ever trying to do is give someone else the responsibility for thinking. Let us enter this order, obey that one; never mind we end up being told to massacre or torture or simply believe the most absurd thing we’ve ever heard; at least it’s not all our fault.

"Nothing to do with us, John; we just did what we was told."

Iain Banks, Espedair Street

 
British soldiers organised a soccer match in Zubayr, just south of Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, last week, and lost to

a group of young Iraqis.

 
"The Iraqi people gotta know, see, they gotta know..they..will..be..liberated. And Saddam Hussein..will..be..removed..no..matter..how..long..it..takes."
GW Bush, 2003

 
Last Wednesday, CIA officials gave a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill about the rising tide of anti-Americanism sweeping the Arab world. Particular emphasis was placed on Jordan and Egypt. As agency officials discussed the depth of hatred for U.S. actions, the senators fell silent. There were delicate discussions about the uncertainty, if the war was protracted, of “regime stability.” After the briefing, “there were senators who were ashen-faced,” said one staff member. “They were absolutely depressed.” Much of what the agency briefed would not have been news to any close watcher of the BBC or almost any foreign news broadcast. “But they [the senators] only watch American TV,” said the staffer. Most of the senators had been led to believe that the war would be quick and that the Iraqi populace would be dancing in the streets.
-Newsweek, April 7 Issue

 
“There are none so enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”
Goethe

 
" Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar."