Clinton and colleagues peddle Iraq mythologies

Earth to Hillary: Iraqi voters did not choose occupation


Clinton says Iraqi women "thank" the United States.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Senator from New York state, while visiting the US "Green Zone" garrison in Baghdad, made the rounds of Sunday talk shows in pre-taped interviews with Republican colleagues John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). As Clinton and Graham were being prodded out (evidently by nervous handlers) at the end of the CBS Face the Nation segment, it was explained by host Bob Schieffer that the pre-taping was required for "security reasons."

Right there, the audience should recognize that despite all the American self-satisfaction about the elections in Iraq, it is in fact running a colonial occupation that is being contested by terribly dangerous forces -- forces that have shown the ability to strike anywhere at any time, even the fortified Green Zone confines from which the senators spoke.

Myths
The biggest myth of all is that the fairly large percentage of Iraqi people who did courageously come out to vote three weeks ago under threat of violence actually voted for continuing US occupation. The winning Shiite coalition has a public platform that in fact called for ``a timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq; a social security system under which the state guarantees a job for every fit Iraqi ... and offers facilities to citizens to build homes;" and a pledge to ``write off Iraq's debts, cancel reparations and use the oil wealth for economic development projects."

None of these policies agree with administration aims or the circumspection, PR language, and unsaid assumptions Clinton peddles -- with approving purrs of how "moderate" she is from interviewers and analysts on the talk shows. Somehow, continued devastating bombings killing dozens of people every day, a security situation so bad that "that none of the senators dared drive through Baghdad's streets, even in armored cars," is translated by Clinton into a story where Iraq is "functioning quite well" and that the rash of suicide attacks was a sign that the insurgency was "failing."

On the matter of continuing US occupation, Clinton may as well be President Bush. She says exactly the same thing as her Republican colleague Graham:

[The US military will not be leaving Iraq anytime soon.] How long I don't know, but to leave too soon would be devastating to stay too long is unnecessary...I ask the American people to be patient, because what happens here will affect our security back home...We're years away from leaving with honor.

Clinton added in some extensive remarks to Tim Russert on Meet the Press:

...we have just finished meeting with the current prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the finance minister, and in our meetings, we posed the question to each of them as to whether they believed that we should set a firm deadline for the withdrawal of American troops. To a person, and they are of different political parties in this election, but each of them said that would be a big mistake, that we needed to make clear that there is a transition now going on to the Iraqi government. When it is formed, which we hope will be shortly, it will assume responsibility for much of the security, with the assistance and cooperation of the coalition forces, primarily U.S. forces.

So I think that what the American people need to know is, number one, we are very proud of our young men and women who are here, active duty, Guard and Reserve. We've seen many of them today, and we'll see more of them tomorrow. And so we all can be very grateful for their service and also very admiring of their sacrifice for other people's freedom. But secondly, we need to make sure that this new government in Iraq can succeed. There are lots of debates about, you know, whether we should have, how we should have, decisions that were made along the way with respect to our involvement here. But where we stand right now, there can be no doubt that it is not in America's interests for the Iraqi government, the experiment in freedom and democracy, to fail. So I hope that Americans understand that and that we will have as united a front as is possible in our country at this time to keep our troops safe, make sure they have everything they need and try to support this new Iraqi government...We don't want to send a signal to the insurgents, to the terrorists that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date certain. I think that would be like a green light to go ahead and just bide your time. We want to send a message of solidarity....

I say these common propaganda notions Clinton airs out quite fully here are bull. An announcement that the US was pulling back from base building, bombing, raiding homes, and rounding up Iraqis for interrogation in its dungeons would actually calm the situation.

And look at who she cites as Iraqi sources for Iraqi support of US occupation! The three chief American puppets, current prime minister (Allawi), the deputy prime minister (Barham Saleh), and the finance minister (Adil Abdul Mahdi) who favors selling off Iraq's oil industry!

Though I personally believe that the sooner America gets out of Iraq the better, I would not say that it'll be easy. America has dug a deep trench for itself there by following the criminal Bush policy of invasion, conquest, occupation, and management of a puppet government. The problem of power relationships within Iraq without foreign occupation would be significant. There are reasons to believe elements of Saddam's former military (including some Baathists now enjoying rehabilitation in Allawi's puppet government) would attempt to seize power. But solutions are possible though international action, which would become much more likely if the US was not in charge of the whole show. But predictions of ``chaos" after America leaves are hardly a fait accompli. There is already chaos, and my opinion is it just gets worse from here. Every day America stays in Iraq makes the withdrawal that much more difficult. The light at the end of the tunnel is now actually to America's back.

Prime minister mysteries
Selection of the new Iraqi prime minister is cloaked in secrecy. Depending on Naomi Klein in an earlier post, I was suggesting that finance minister Adil Abdul Mahdi, an American puppet in favor of privatization of the oil industry, would be a leading candidate. It looks like this is wrong -- Mahdi's economic neolibralism seems to make him unsuitable, and he has withdrawn his name from consideration. Who knows, though, will the Americans revive him? Isn't the candidacy of the Pentagon's former agent and WMD liar, Ahmed Chalabi, even more laughable?

Juan Cole has covered the machinations pretty well here, here, here, and today here. And this is Cole's key post about Mahdi's withdrawal and the emergence of the Iran-sympathetic, religious Shiite Al-Dawa party leader Ibrahim Jaafari as leading candidate for prime minister.

FLASH! Cole points out that although "Jaafari is on record opposing the establishment of a specified timetable for a US military withdrawal from Iraq,"

Jaafari fled to Iran in 1980. There he tried to keep the Dawa Party from becoming captive to Iranian political currents, as happened to some other expatriate Iraq parties in Tehran. He also worked with the umbrella group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, serving on its executive committee. Kadhim al-Haeri and some other clerical leaders of the Dawa Party wanted to dissolve it into Khomeini's Hizbullah. Jaafari opposed this move.

In the early 1980s, Dawa spun off terrorist "al-Jihad al-Islami" groups in Lebanon and Kuwait, which engaged in terrorism against France and the United States. It is not clear how involved the central Dawa Party leadership was in these shadowy groups, or what Jaafari's stance was at that time.

Does this last bit disqualify Jaafari in US eyes, with memories of the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in the back of the mind?

I want to highlight just one more thing Juan Cole says today:

Al-Hayat reports that a decision on the new prime minister will not be announced until at least Wednesday. The decision was postponed in part because of Ashura, and in part because of the difficulty in getting a "green light" from Washington in the wake of Ambassador John Negroponte's appointment as intelligence czar. (US news sources have not spoken as openly of the need for a green light from Washington, but al-Hayat's sources are frank about it. This frankness agrees with the comment made by one embassy official that Iraq cannot select a prime minister who is unacceptable to Washington.

This notion of US approval of the Iraqi prime minister totally belies the mythological notion of America officials like Hillary Clinton that the meaning of the brave Iraqi voters surmounting danger to get to the polls had thing one to do with their independent choice of government.

Women in Iraq
The establishment of Islamic sharia law would be a huge step backwards for Iraqi women. It looks like that is on the table with the Shiite religious parties gaining control of the "interpersonal" principles of Iraqi law. So how does Hillary figure that Iraqi women Clinton "thank" the United States for what the war has wrought, as she told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation this morning. It's a throw-away line, to be sure. Here's a fuller exploration of the plight of Iraqi women from an interview on PBS Now, February 4:

DAVID BRANCACCIO (host): Speaking of economic indicators, here's one. A strong indicator of the health of a country is the status of it's women. Look at Iraq. We all saw that women voted in big numbers in this week's elections. But overall, the indicators are not all that good. Zainab Salbi has been working to change that. She's an Iraqi-American and founder and President of Women for Women International. A group that helps women overcome the horrors of war across the world. Zainab Salbi, welcome to NOW.

ZAINAB SALBI: Thank you.

BRANCACCIO: Iraqis, Americans, the world want to know, now that the elections are done, is the situation in Iraq coming together to form a state that really works? How is watching the status of women in that country a good indicator of this?

ZAINAB SALBI: Well women are like the bell weather in a society. If you look at Iraq right after the war, the first kidnapping incidents that happened right after the war is actually against women. They were trafficked, and they were kidnapped, and raped, and the violence increased immediately.

Now, a lot of groups start paying attention to that. Human Rights Watch, actually, was one of the few who reported that. Women for Women International reported that. And there was no action whatsoever. There was absolutely silence to that phenomenon.

Now, eventually, men started getting kidnapped. Children getting kidnapped. And all foreigners, as we know it, are getting kidnapped. And this kidnapping business in Iraq is one of the most flourishing business and it's increasing. Now, this is a bad indicator. And in the last few months, particularly since about September of last year, women have been assassinated. And assassination of women became very targeted and very strategic.

Educated women. Working women. Women who are out spoken. Women who kept their old lifestyle. Kept on driving cars. Kept on wearing their western clothing. They were all assassinated one by one. Reporters, professors, pharmacists, doctors, activists. Again, they all have the same profile. The messaging here is for women to go home. 'Women, we don't want to see you in the streets.' And so far, Iraqi women are being very resilient about it. So far, they're insisting they go out and they have a voice. So their participation in the election was, actually, very courageous. Very courageous.

Yes, thank you America. The meaning of this election will become positive for Iraqis only if Iraqi women, and the whole population in general, manages to wrest control of their own history from the tenacious desires and pillages of the US occupiers. With friends like Hillary Rodham Clinton saying she is on their side, it won't be easy.

Update 2/21: I added a few words stating that the Hillary Clinton interviews took place in Baghdad, Iraq.