Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
25, 2003
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
Recent
Stories
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
25, 2003
The Obvious Solution
Give
Iraq Back to the Arabs
By MICHAEL S. LADAH
What has transpired in Iraq since the military
invasion by the US and British allied troops had been predicted
by many honest and informed observers. It is true that we have
eliminated the regime of Saddam Hussein, but we have not accomplished
much else.
We have replaced the tyrannical rule
of Saddam with the rule of anarchy and fear; we have destroyed
the country's infrastructure, its institutions, its heritage
and its security, and we have replaced poverty under Saddam with
more poverty-and-impoverishment under our military rule. We
haven't liberated the Iraqis nor have we given them freedom or
our style of democracy. Instead, we have given them a foreign
military governor on top of an Iraqi council headed by a criminal
convicted in, and wanted by, at least one Arab country for bank
fraud and embezzlement.
Since the "victory" of the
allied forces in Iraq, we haven't been able to start a reconstruction
program nor provide the basic elements of a normal life: water,
power, medicine, communications and, above all, security. And,
we haven't been able to find those weapons of mass destruction
that were our compelling reason for going to war and which seem
to have vanished, making our argument for the war look simply
stupid. Above all, terrorist threats against our country and
our interests, which we allegedly went to war with Iraq to reduce,
may have increased as a result of our presence in Iraq and no
one knows whether they might increase even further from their
present level.
Today, there are many who have called
for deeper involvement, either by appealing to other prominent
members of the Security Council to help us "internationalize"
our occupation or by sending more US troops to Iraq. Such actions,
if implemented, will result in certain failure; legitimizing
the occupation in the eyes of the western world, through involvement
of the UN, will not legitimize it for the Iraqis, for the Arabs
or for the Moslems of the world. Increasing the level of our
troops will only further antagonize those who are opposed to
our presence in Iraq; the objections by those whom we have alienated
and whom we have chosen to ignore will change only too little,
if any, to make any difference in their antagonism toward us.
There are also those who have called
for ending our involvement in Iraq and called for our immediate
withdrawal. These calls are just as irresponsible because we
can not simply abandon Iraq after impoverishing it; we are responsible
for destroying the Iraqi society and its means of survival and
must correct what we have done to Iraq and its people in terms
of physical damage and moral transgression before we call for
withdrawal.
We are told by our leaders that we have
met our stated objective from invading Iraq, by removing Saddam
Hussein and eliminating his threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Our leaders have also rationalized that the only reason we are
there now is to help the Iraqi people build their government,
institutions and infrastructure. If that is the true reason,
then the most obvious solution to this quagmire, which may result
in saving our face with the rest of the world, has been eluding
us.
The Iraqis do not want us or any other
foreign force on their soil. The Arab world does not want us
in Iraq nor do they want their old European occupiers who colonized
their land for over half a century. The Moslem world can not
withstand the sight of western imperialists dictating what goes
on in the Moslem world and our European allies continue to believe
that we shouldn't be there in the first place. That, we can
change by turning over what we are planning for Iraq to powers
that the Arabs and the Moslems can trust and with whom the Iraqis
can cooperate. Through a smooth quick transition, the physical
and political reconstruction of Iraq can be turned over to the
people of Iraq under the guidance of, and commitment from, the
Arab League. Member states of the Arab League have so far not
come forward to aid Iraq in any responsible way and it is about
time they took some action to salvage their standings with their
respective peoples. They have the means and the manpower, but
they lack the will and the guts to tell us that now is the time
for them to take over in Iraq and for us to leave it in their
hands. They have not taken the initiative only because of our
intimidation and their concern about alienating us.
The allied troops can be replaced by
Arab forces; this will assure the Iraqis, the Arab world and
the Moslem world that we have no ambitions in Iraq, as our politicians
have repeatedly stated. It will assure them that it had not
been our intention all along, as the Arab masses suspected, that
we force Iraq first, then other Arab and Moslem countries next,
to acquiesce to the western imperialist ambitions and the Zionist
transgressions, and accept Israel with its current expansionist
policies as occupier of Arab land and oppressor of Arab people.
The Jordanian police force and their al Badiyah troops
can train the Iraqi police and help train their armed forces.
The Saudis and the Kuwaitis can manage the reconstruction effort
throughout Iraq as the Saudis did with their successful industrial
development in the 1970s and 1980s and as the Kuwaitis did after
the destruction of Kuwait by the evil forces of Saddam Hussein
in 1990. The Egyptians can provide the labor force for the reconstruction
and other Arabs can provide troops to maintain law and order,
expel zealots of al-Qaida and control allies of the defunct
regime.
The United States can turn over these
responsibilities within a few months and bring our troops home
with honor and dignity starting within six months. But, to implement
such a plan, we must first change our course charted for us by
those whose agenda has been in conflict with the interests of
this country. We must apologize to the Iraqis for the death
that we caused and for the destruction of their institutions
and their infrastructure; we must pledge to pay the Iraqis the
costs of reconstructing what we destroyed in Iraq. Such costs
are probably a fraction of what could otherwise be the cost of
maintaining a large U.S force in Iraq at the current or higher
level for an indefinite period, an alternative which will soon
become unacceptable to the American people. After all, the danger
to our national interest that we went to Iraq to eliminate turned
out not to be there.
Above all, those who got us in Iraq must
be dealt with, with extreme measures; they must be fired for
getting us in this potential black hole and for their intransigence
in the aftermath of the military invasion. They must apologize
to the American people for their deceit, for the lives that were
lost, and for the costs that propelled our budget deficit to
historical levels, all for a cause which is still being debated
and which is still unclear to most of us.
Michael S. Ladah
is an Arab American who lived and worked in various parts of
the Middle East. He is the author of "Quicksand, Oil and
Dreams: The story of one of five million dispossessed Palestinians."
Visit his website: http://www.ladah.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the
Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
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