Thoughts on Liberation

[an opinion about the war in Iraq]
http://www.monkeyfist.com/articles/840/plain


Thoughts on Liberation
By Dru Oja Jay

When German troops marched into Estonia during World War II, they were
greeted as liberators. Not because the Germans were bringing democracy or
even ambiguously defined "freedom," but because life under the Russians had
been the worst thing to happen to the country up until that point. As it
happened, being ruled by Nazis wasn't much better. Life under Stalin after
the war was still worse (thousands were shipped off to Siberian labour camps
and prisons or simply killed), but that was yet to come. From similar
experiences, a massive underclass in the post-communist countries (and the
Third World) has long realized that "liberators" seldom are.

Iraqis in Iraq seem to understand fairly well that the sanctions
strengthened Saddam Hussein, strangled their economy, and led to the horrors
of the past ten years. For example, crucial supplies for sewage treatment
and water purification plants have been held up by the sanctions, quite
intentionally. Some of these facilities have been bombed intermittently. One
Japanese engineer who visited in the '90s described people drinking water
out of puddles, and recent Al-Jazeera footage shows residents of Basra
gathering water from a river polluted with thousands of gallons of raw
sewage every day.

Many also don't seem convinced that being invaded by the Americans is better
than life as usual under Hussein. Indeed, many Iraqi refugees who landed in
Jordan have re-entered Iraq to fight the Americans, along with thousands of
volunteers from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

The US (or the UN) could have taken it upon itself to liberate Iraq at any
point during the past ten years, through a combination of the following
options: creation of autonomous zones in southern Iraq (like those that were
successful in the north), adoption of sanctions that hurt Saddam instead of
hurting his people, supporting dissident groups, and finding ways to ensure
that people don't starve, and have access to clean drinking water. Each of
these possibilities has been neglected, thanks to a combination of strategic
objectives and banal evil.

It's important to understand what makes those options different from a
military invasion. Foremost, it involves giving power over to the Iraqis (of
whom Shi'ites and Kurds form a vast majority). The Shi'ites would likely
make peace with Iran and form strong cultural and economic ties with that
other member of the axis of evil, while the Kurds would leverage political
power into the creation of a Kurdish state, or put a lot of pressure (maybe
by funding and staging terrorist attacks, among more peaceful means) on
Turkey, which has oppressed the Kurdish people for too long.

For these same reasons, real democracy in Iraq would directly contradict US
interests. I'm guessing that's why the Bush administration never says
"democracy" in relation to Iraq, but substitutes effectively meaningless
phrases like "self-government" and "representative government." Many
observers have, with undue charity, claimed that Bush will set up a
democracy, though I know of no instance where Bush himself has actually made
the claim.

The US isn't primarily interested in placating Turkey and Saudi Arabia while
keeping Iran from growing in power, though. From what I can see, there are
four intertwined objectives in the Middle East: the enrichment of US
corporations and investors; a military presence and credible threat of
"regime change" or retaliation throughout the region; influence over the
price of oil, and an impotent OPEC; and control over the economic interests
of other competing industrialized countries (France, Germany, Japan, China)
in the Middle East.

Any significant Iraqi self-determinism runs counter to these objectives as
well.

Luckily for the US, the self-determinism of a people who have been starved
by sanctions and oppressed by a small elite for ten years isn't really an
issue. If free markets and a well-trained "representative government" are in
place, the current elites will be in an excellent position to funnel the
wealth of the country into the bank accounts of US corporations (foreign
multinationals have not been allowed to bid on "reconstruction" contracts).

The majority of the population lives in abject poverty, and are in no
position to wield the kind of political power necessary to overturn a new
constitution with conditions favourable to exploitation built in.

Or will they?

Surely there will be demand for a re-redistribution of wealth and a use of
Iraqi resources for Iraqi interests. This is a country, after all, that had
widespread university education, free health care, and a large middle class
within living memory. Many successful political struggles took place while
Hussein was in power, and many more could begin once people are no longer
starving.

On the other hand, the control over media outlets and distribution of goods
by an elite with a huge head start cannot be underestimated. Likely,
post-war Iraq will be a poorer version of post-war Bosnia, or post-communism
Russia: plenty of unrest and instability with nothing to show for it. Like
the ex-KGB in the post-Soviet Eastern Bloc and Russia, the current elites in
Iraq who are not killed in revenge by Iraqis will undoubtedly have no
trouble making the transition to organized crime of one variety or another.
Add a heavy dose of anti-American sentiment, and stir.

I'm assuming, of course, that it is impossible that Bush will actually try
to build an Iraq for the Iraqis. There is simply no precedent for such an
undertaking, except during the Cold War, when West Germany, Japan, and
France had to be built up, lest they be susceptible to communism as Vietnam
and Cuba were. In a world of American dominance, there is no such need.

From any perspective, the needs are much more immediate. As of this morning,
over 600 civilians have been killed by US bombs, and thousands of others
have been wounded. The majority of Iraqis are set to run out of food by the
end of May, and half of the million people living in Basra have no access to
drinking water. Thousands of children who were malnourished before the war
began are likely to get sick. As one aid worker put it, "Everyone is
concentrating on Baghdad and Basra, but we are forgetting that Iraq is a
huge country where we know nothing about the rest." The UN estimates that it
will need to provide close to the entire population of Iraq with food for
months.

If the war takes "months," as some generals are now saying, thousands of
Iraqis could experience a kind of liberation that no one bargained for.



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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/840