Ten spinners spinning, nine internal wars raging
As a followup to the bit on Iraq I posted earlier today, Juan Cole begins Top Ten season in fine fashion with a quick and easy top ten list of Bush-promulgated myths about Iraq as he wants us to think it is. Professor Cole tells it as it is.
Most notably, I do think it’s telling that Bush is palsie-walsie with al-Hakim, whose Interior Ministry death squads have been the Fount of Retribution towards everyone Sunni, because Saddam happened to be born Sunni. And now he’s pals with the Sunni tribal leaders, except in Baghdad where al-Hakim has successfully driven most Sunnis out… the ones who survived his cleansing ops.
And as Cole notes, al-Hakim is the friendliest towards Iran. Which means if there’s any truth to the claim that Iran was supplying arms used against US soldiers, those arms came through al-Hakim, not through Sunni insurgents and not through a nationalist like al-Sadr who doesn’t bow to Tehran.
Bush has a record of supporting the rich over the poor, no matter what their brutalities may be, even when the brutalities impact our own troops. Above his words, his actions ring loudest. He’s a royal monarchist to the core, without any benevolence attached. It explains a lot about his failures as a president. He’d rather be loyal to his own class than he is towards Americans, even our own troops. It’s not only been a deadly bias, but it’s the reason he lost the Iraq War three years ago and persists in the delusion that he can get a mulligan every six months, where he might undo his previous shots.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
I haven’t seen anyone in these parts referring to any so-called success of the surge. Most people are far too aware of the lessons of Vietnam and, if anything, are not even bothering to mention it.
What I do hear, instead, is the growing grumbling with economic woes, particularly the coming recession.