Collins shameless on Iraq and Afghanistan
Her oped published today shows why most of the US public knows nothing about and cares little for civilian catastrophes wrought by US bombing and killing
A stuffed animal has more conscience concerning the US policy choice of depopulation and widespread aerial bombardment of Iraqi cities than US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).
Results of the US bombing campaign in Fallujah that Senator Collins failed to mention. [Update 4/21/2005: I replaced the image that was originally displayed here, as links into Crisis Pictures or Fallujah in Pictures are now missing or unreliable.]
There has been a lot of noise recently in the news in America about how Iraqis are angry about loss of life caused by “insurgent” attacks. Of course the war-torn people of Iraq are angry at the terrible toll the violent opposition to the US occupation causes. Unfortunately, people seeking jobs as security personnel for the occupation are perceived as collaborators, no matter that the desperate economic situation is what leads Iraqis to seek these jobs — not a belief in American goals for their country.
But missing from the discussion of “insurgent” violence is any like discussion of massive-scale US violence and war crimes applied to whole cities over the last few months. (Some of my previous entries on the US flattening of Fallujah are here, here, here, here, and here.)
Senator Collins in her piece today refers to a recent junket to Afghanistan and Iraq she took with her colleagues John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Russ Feingold and Hillary Clinton. I blogged on the remarks of Hillary Clinton two weeks ago, calling the senator’s rosy picture of Iraq a mythology. The true picture of the city is more like a scene from Warsaw after the Nazis were through with it in 1943.
I find it ironic beyond belief that Senator Collins in her piece admits while trying to talk up potential US “success” and its “tipping point”, that the real picture of the US occupation are conditions (well after the January election) where
our Senate delegation could not drive along the streets of Baghdad. We were transported in armed Black Hawk helicopters to the heavily fortified “Green Zone,” where American and British headquarters as well as the Iraqi government offices are located. We wore 45-pound armored vests and heavy helmets much of the time and had to return to Kuwait each night.
But this is the paragraph from the oped Collins wrote that struck me hardest:
The most encouraging part of my visit to Iraq was our trip to Fallujah, a city once synonymous with danger and firmly in the insurgents’ control. Once a sanctuary for insurgents, Fallujah is now what one Marine described as the “safest city in Iraq” due to a fierce battle in which the Marines rooted out the insurgents and destroyed scores of weapons caches. This success has also encouraged more than a thousand Iraqis in the Fallujah area to have the confidence to come forward to fill police and army positions.
That’s all the US did to achieve “success”? Root out some weapons caches? What sickness ignores the overall leveling of a city once with a population of about 300,000, creating a massive refugee problem and thousands of deaths? War crimes committed in the process included destroying hospitals, shooting fleeing civilians, and prohibiting relief from entering the city — actions all specifically condemned by the Geneva Conventions.
The rest of the story, gathered by independent journalists, and told by Dahr Jamail in a recent interview goes like this…
Basically Fallujah today closely resembles a concentration camp. The military maintains that strict cordon; any of the people who live there who want to go back into the city have to get a retina scan and get finger-printed, and then get an I.D. card made. Then they go through a very strict checkpoint with full body searches, very intrusive searches. Then they’re allowed into the city, where at least 60 per cent of the city’s been bombed to the ground. There’s no electricity, no water, and of course no jobs. So, of the 350,000 people who lived there, roughly 25,000 have returned to try to sort out what’s left of their homes. It closely resembles a wasteland at this point.
So I have prepared a letter today for my esteemed senator, asking her to
please explain to me your motivation for leaving out news of the complete shattering of this city and its mostly innocent people. Do you not understand what has happened there, or are you intentionally keeping the truth from the American people? Your gall in calling this “success” should at least be an issue for your conscience.
For now, I won’t take on Collin’s mellow picture of Afghanistan, except to say that the recent reports suggest it has evolved into a failed narcotics state. I am ashamed to have as my senator the shameless propagandist Susan Collins.
March 15th, 2005 at 15:38
Gee Eric: Don’t you get tired of dredging that stuff up again and again while rest of the world is beginning to recognize the wisdom of Bush’s plan. I’d post some photos of the children who died in their Mother’s arms from Saddam’s poison gas attack on Halabja, but I’d just be boring my readers who are already well aware of the human disaster that Iraq was BEFORE we invaded. It continues to amaze me that we are winning with so few civilian deaths. The ultimate judge of the rightness of the policy will be the Iraqi people themselves.
Now, about Iran…. I really have to wonder where you get this stuff… Bombing Iran would be so counterproductive and contrary to popular leftist beliefs, Bush is no idiot.
Bombing would achieve NOTHING militarily and neither would provoking a hardline Islamist crackdown.
The goal is to offer as much support to the democracy movement as possible. If you read the Iranianin freedom blogs, they hang on every word of hope and support from Bush and Rice.
Unfortunately, our European friends seem to care more about making money than freedom. Of course we saw this in Iraq pre-war and we see it in regard to China as well.
You might want to give the shopworn “HALLIBURTON” squawking a rest and go after European arms sales to China… FREE TIBET!!!
March 15th, 2005 at 19:39
Thanks for the commennts, Mike. You make it sound like “Bush’s Plan” is some sort of ordained and sanctified scripture. I don’t think so. And here is where I disagree with Hersh — it is about resources and domination, by any means necessary. This is a tenacious choke hold Bush, Cheney, and the Pentagon have put on Iraq. There will be no letting go unless the Iraqis themselves break free. Interestingly, the election, I believe, was a courageous statement in that direction, even though it has been reported here with smug self-satisfaction.
On Saddam, Halabja, and his pre-1991 atrocities, you are not teaching the human rights community, of which I am a part, anything. We were there to oppose it when it happened. We worked with Peter Gallbraith and our senators, then Mitchell and Cohen, to try to stop the support the Reagan government was giving to Saddam. Read my Iraq chronology for a good recounting of the story. I’ll agree with you, it’s not a pretty picture. But you ought not be scolding me for it. Shine that bright light towards your Reaganaut friends.
Look, I don’t know what they will do in Iran. Previous experience suggests that what they are saying points to ominous things. I’d agree with you that an attack on Iran would be stupid. It would unndermine the people Bush rightly purports to support. But I’m not so sure that isn’t exactly the idea.
March 16th, 2005 at 17:51
It’s interesting how the Europeans are accused of only desiring to make money when it comes to its relations with Iran or others. Until very, very recently Cheney’s very own oil company was doing just that in Iran. Furthermore, making money, if we’re honest, was most definitely one of the main aims of the Iraq war and not, as it is often constructed in the media, to free the Iraqi people, which, incidentally, came six on the Bush Administration’s list of priorities after the mendacious claims about WMD and al-Qaida links fell apart. Paul Bremer’s many illegally binding edicts which place control of Iraq’s resources and its economy firmly in the hands of Washington puppets were not put there to benfit IRaqis themselves but to line the pockets of foreign corporations (foreign menaing American, of course, since thos pesky Europeans only wanted to make money). Indeed, one of the edicts effectivly places foreign ownership of all of Iraq’s institutions on a par with the “sovreign” people (I hope the irony here is screaming at you). Unfortunately, despite Sistani’s successful defiance of Bush and Brener in demanding elections and not local caucuses, the CPA and GC (the US in other words with Arab headscarfs on) have seen to it that any attempt to overturn BRemer’s “laws” would be nigh impossible since it would require a 2/3s majority (very difficult in the current political climate. I mean how the f*** do you get that kind of result from power-hungry Kurds, majoritarian Shias and non-existent Sunnis?) and only effective after five to seven years by which time a “moderate” Shia may be well installed in a client capacity within a new Iraqi government. Optimistically, however, Sistani appears to have been quite aware of White House shenanigans thus far so who knows.
March 16th, 2005 at 20:36
Here is yet another chapter in the “shopworn” story of Halliburton war profiteers taking the taxpayer to the cleaners.
March 20th, 2005 at 13:19
Thans for the link Mike. I would read the new article by Greg Palast too. Mr Palast is one of a dying breed of truly investigative journalists and, unlike circuses like FoxNews, actually provides empirical and thereby testable data in support of his claims.
March 20th, 2005 at 13:25
Incidentally, I was watching the UK version of SkyNews yesterday as they covered the protests twos years after the IRaq War. Usually SkyNews is reasonably balance, not fair exactly, but balanced. However, I was dumbfounded when they asked a FoxNews correspondent in Bagdhad (Steve Harrigan) to comment on Iraqis desire for the troops to live (the reason why they voted as has been confirmed by polls). In true FoxNews style, Steve made the false and vacuaous claim that only a small minority of Iraqis would want the troops to leave. I would love to see the evidence he collated to support that. As we say in Britain; what a twat!!!
March 21st, 2005 at 02:41
Thanks for the comments, Wallsy. Most of these correspondents get fed from the confines of their hotels, too scared to go out unless embedded. While embedded, they only get the military point of view, which is strongly sanitized. For God’s sake, they destroyed hospitals in Fallujah lest the news get out that they were killing civilians. Flat out war crimes…sadly.
March 21st, 2005 at 19:22
Exactly Eric. The Fallujah attack was a textbook war crime. I reccommend you read some of Dar Jamal’s recent blog in which he cites witness accounts of deliberate killings of civilians at Fallujah. Very harrowing stuff; made me weep.