False flags, dirty tricks and the dismemberment of Iraq

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=11709

Israel Shamir


The erosion of a target country’s integrity and viability has always been a conscious goal of the Western colonial project. Creating instability and dissatisfaction with existing reality was a necessary prerequisite to “tame” and then integrate native peoples into the dominant hierarchical model. Today, of course, we are told that colonialism is a thing of the past. The leading nations of the international community no longer seek to enslave their less fortunate neighbours, but rather pursue policies of world benefaction - within the limits imposed by healthy competition, of course. When this miraculous conversion took place we are not told, but perhaps it occurred incrementally, parallel to the increasing divide between the world’s rich and poor. In any case, a casual glance at the state of the Muslim world is enough to shatter this foolish delusion.



As Iraqi society descends further and further into mayhem, comedians, satirists and commentators of all kinds have made great hay from the supposed incompetence and stupidity of our leaders. But as the Canadian Spectator suggested recently, if it should happen that the United States is not run by buffoons, “one must conclude that chaos, impoverishment and civil war in the Muslim world…far from being the unintended consequences, are precisely the objectives of U.S. policy.” (1)



As with 9/11, the trigger event for the War on Terror, incompetence is the preferred explanation for the nightmare scenario in Iraq today. Though counterintuitive to the domesticated populations of the West, a plan to deliberately fragment Iraq along ethnic lines is amply confirmed by the published record. Resuscitating earlier Zionist schemes, the US Council on Foreign Relations recently called for the dissolution of the “unnatural Iraqi state.” (2) On the grounds of its ethnic diversity, Iraq is said to be a false, artificial construct, a product of arbitrary colonial decisions in the early 20th century. It is a judgment that could apply to many of the world’s countries, and yet the theme is being enthusiastically adopted by reams of ‘experts’ who would never dream of questioning state sovereignty in Quebec, the Basque Country or Northern Ireland. In typical fashion, policy analyst Michael Klare recently dismissed Iraq as an “invented country…to facilitate their exploitation of oil in the region created the fictitious “Kingdom of Iraq” by patching together three provinces of the former Ottoman Empire…and by parachuting in a fake king from what later became Saudi Arabia.” (3) Accepting the Bush Administration’s bogus rationale for the invasion, Klare ascribed Sunni resistance to the desire for a bigger share of oil revenues in the future partition of the country. Missing is any idea that resistance extends beyond “Sunnis” or could be motivated by Iraqi nationalism or the need for self-determination.



Ultimately, the ease with which Western academics casually decide to reshape the countries of their choice owes itself to the continuing legacy of Orientalism. In classic nineteenth century style, the chattering classes suggest that Iraq, despite its five thousand-year history, is now incapable of managing itself, and so its fate must be decided by outside powers. A country that held together in 1991 through six weeks of the most intensive bombing campaign in history, (which according to the UN left Iraq in a “pre-industrial age”) and continued to survive through 12 years of the most complete and devastating sanctions ever imposed on any nation is now blithely consigned to history by concerned Western experts. To bolster their case, the myth of ancient sectarian hatreds, a staple of the ‘humanitarian intervention’ crowd, is rehashed and fed on a daily basis by journalists who neither question the authorship of “sectarian” attacks nor report the view of ordinary Iraqis, who blame the Occupation army and its puppet government for the orchestrated chaos.



Dismantling Iraq