United State Of Iraq

‘WHEN America announced that it was going to unite the disparate groups in Iraq and make it a model for the rest of the Middle East, many of us were sceptical.

‘Hands up if you hate George Bush!’

But we have to admit that President Bush has succeeded in at least one of his aims.

There is now some semblance of unity in the country as it appears that everyone is united in their hatred of the US-led occupying force.

Given that America appears to be hated in just about every other country in the Middle East with the exception of Israel, we might even conclude that he is succeeding in both his aims.

Not that we expect this to reflect well on George Dubya during an election year as both the Independent and Guardian warn that Iraq stands ‘on the brink of anarchy’.

The Indy says it took the British three years to turn both Sunnis and Shias into their enemies in the 1920s; the Yanks are achieving it in just under a year.

‘Anarchy has been a condition of our occupation from the very first days when we let the looters and arsonists destroy Iraq’s infrastructure and history,’ the paper says.

‘But that lawlessness is now coming back to haunt us. Anarchy is what we are now being plunged into in Iraq among a people with whom we share no common language, no common religion and no common culture.’

The Guardian says this is the Bush administration’s nightmare scenario – a war on two fronts against Sunnis and Shias less than three months before it is due to hand over power to an Iraqi government.

So far, the response has been to try to crush both insurgent groups simultaneously with US forces using Apache helicopter gunships against targets in Baghdad for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

But the Guardian warns that the US proconsul Paul Bremer’s mantra, ‘Violence will not be tolerated’, is sounding increasingly desperate.

‘However much the US administration may have brought this crisis upon its own head by an unwise war executed with a reckless disregard for the consequences,’ it says, ‘it is a crisis affecting all Iraqis and the surrounding region for which the rest of the world must now take responsibility.’

And, it says, that Britain should be arguing that Washington’s best interests are served by a genuine transfer of control which would attract international support from ‘the coalition of the so far unwilling’.

‘If secretary of state Colin Powell can suggest a role for Nato in Iraq, is it so naïve to talk about UN peacekeepers?’

While the White House is in the possession of a group of ideologues hell-bent in trying to recreate the rest of the world in their image, we fear so.’

Posted: 6th, April 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink