Watching the news about what’s happening in Iraq, I am struck by two things: they only talk about the number of Americans killed (or perhaps “Coalition forces”), and they do not even try to answer the question “Why now?” There are fatuous references to the weather, as though we were talking about a bunch of crips in the ‘hood on a hot summer night. Why? In the grand scheme of things, I am not surprised, and I want to say “I told you so”, but even so…. Why?
I turn to Salon, and read Andrew Cockburn’s piece. It reminds us of history, of how things unfolded just like this in 1920, and it mentions the unmentionable: the way some American troops are turning on the civilian population, robbing them during searches, the naive young men and women brutalized by their situation, just like in Vietnam.
But why now? Ask the Iraqis. I have an Iraqi colleague at work who insists, angrily, that things are not as bad as they seem, but his perspective seems distorted. So I turn to Baghdad Burning, and read what River has posted from the city itself. If you care about what’s happening over there, you should read her journal.
Now it seems we are almost literally reliving the first few days of occupation… I woke up to the sound of explosions and gunfire last night and for one terrible moment I thought someone had warped me back a whole year and we would have to relive this last year of our life over and over again…
We haven’t sent the kids to school for 3 days. The atmosphere is charged and the day before yesterday, Baghdad was quiet and empty, almost… the calm before the storm. The area of A’adhamiya in Baghdad is seeing street fighting: the resistance and Americans are fighting out in the streets and Al-Sadr city was bombed by the troops. They say that dozens were killed and others wounded. They’re bringing them in to hospitals in the center of the city.
Falloojeh has been cut off from the rest of Iraq for the last three days. It’s terrible. They’ve been bombing it constantly and there are dozens dead. Yesterday they said that the only functioning hospital in the city was hit by the Americans and there’s no where to take the wounded except a meager clinic that can hold up to 10 patients at a time. There are over a hundred wounded and dying and there’s nowhere to bury the dead because the Americans control the area surrounding the only graveyard in Falloojeh; the bodies are beginning to decompose in the April heat. The troops won’t let anyone out of Falloojeh and they won’t let anyone into it either- the people are going to go hungry in a matter of days because most of the fresh produce is brought from outside of the city. We’ve been trying to call a friend who lives there for three days and we can’t contact him.
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And now Muqtada Al-Sadr’s people are also fighting it out in parts of Baghdad and the south. If the situation weren’t so frightening, it would almost be amusing to see Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom describe Al-Sadr as an ‘extremist’ and a ‘threat’. Muqtada Al-Sadr is no better and no worse than several extremists we have sitting on the Governing Council. He’s just as willing to ingratiate himself to Bremer as Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom. The only difference is that he wasn’t given the opportunity, so now he’s a revolutionary. Apparently, someone didn’t give Bremer the memo about how when you pander to one extremist, you have to pander to them all. Hearing Abdul Aziz Al-Hakeem and Bahr Ul Iloom claim that Al-Sadr is a threat to security and stability brings about visions of the teapot and the kettle…
Then Bremer makes an appearance on tv and says that armed militias will *not* be a part of the New Iraq… where has that declaration been the last 12 months while Badir’s Brigade has been wreaking havoc all over the country? Why not just solve the problem of Al-Sadr’s armed militia by having them join the police force and army, like the Bayshmarga and Badir’s Brigade?! Al-Sadr’s militia is old news. No one was bothering them while they were terrorizing civilians in the south. They wore badges, carried Klashnikovs and roamed the streets freely… now that they’ve become a threat to the ‘Coalition’, they suddenly become ‘terrorists’ and ‘agitators’.
Bush: what the hell have you done?