[R-G] Fisk: The Iraqis Don’t Deserve Us. So We Betray Them

[Anthony Fenton]

  Published on Thursday, August 23, 2007 by The Independent/UK
The Iraqis Don’t Deserve Us. So We Betray Them…
by Robert Fisk

Always, we have betrayed them. We backed “Flossy” in Yemen. The  
French backed their local “harkis” in Algeria; then the FLN victory  
forced them to swallow their own French military medals before  
dispatching them into mass graves. In Vietnam, the Americans demanded  
democracy and, one by one - after praising the Vietnamese for voting  
under fire in so many cities, towns and villages - they destroyed the  
elected prime ministers because they were not abiding by American  
orders.

Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don’t deserve our  
sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing what  
we want them to do.

Does that remind you of a Palestinian organisation called Hamas?  
First, the Americans loved Ahmed Chalabi, the man who fabricated for  
Washington the”‘weapons of mass destruction” (with a hefty bank fraud  
charge on his back). Then, they loved Ayad Allawi, a Vietnam-style  
spook who admitted working for 26 intelligence organisations,  
including the CIA and MI6. Then came Ibrahim al-Jaafari, symbol of  
electoral law, whom the Americans loved, supported, loved again and  
destroyed. Couldn’t get his act together. It was up to the Iraqis, of  
course, but the Americans wanted him out. And the seat of the Iraqi  
government - a never-never land in the humidity of Baghdad’s green  
zone - lay next to the largest US embassy in the world. So goodbye,  
Ibrahim.

Then there was Nouri al-Maliki, a man with whom Bush could “do  
business”; loved, supported and loved again until Carl Levin and the  
rest of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee - and, be sure, George W  
Bush - decided he couldn’t fulfil America’s wishes. He couldn’t get  
the army together, couldn’t pull the police into shape, an odd demand  
when US military forces were funding and arming some of the most  
brutal Sunni militias in Baghdad, and was too close to Tehran.

There you have it. We overthrew Saddam’s Sunni minority and the  
Iraqis elected the Shias into power, and all those old Iranian  
acolytes who had grown up under the Islamic Revolution in exile from  
the Iraq-Iran war - Jaafari was a senior member of the Islamic Dawaa  
party which was enthusiastically seizing Western hostages in Beirut  
in the 1980s and trying to blow up our friend the Emir of Kuwait -  
were voted into power. So blame the Iranians for their “interference”  
in Iraq when Iran’s own creatures had been voted into power.

And now, get rid of Maliki. Chap doesn’t know how to unify his own  
people, for God’s sake. No interference, of course. It’s up to the  
Iraqis, or at least, it’s up to the Iraqis who live under American  
protection in the green zone. The word in the Middle East - where the  
“plot” (al-moammarer) has the power of reality - is that Maliki’s  
cosy trips to Tehran and Damascus these past two weeks have been the  
final straw for the fantasists in Washington. Because Iran and Syria  
are part of the axis of evil or the cradle of evil or whatever  
nonsense Bush and his cohorts and the Israelis dream up, take a look  
at the $30bn in arms heading to Israel in the next decade in the  
cause of “peace”.

Maliki’s state visits to the crazed Ahmedinejad and the much more  
serious Bashar al-Assad appear to be, in Henry VIII’s words,  
“treachery, treachery, treachery”. But Maliki is showing loyalty to  
his former Iranian masters and their Syrian Alawite allies (the  
Alawites being an interesting satellite of the Shias).

These creatures - let us use the right word - belong to us and thus  
we can step on them when we wish. We will not learn - we will never  
learn, it seems - the key to Iraq. The majority of the people are  
Muslim Shias. The majority of their leaders, including the “fiery”  
Muqtada al-Sadr were trained, nurtured, weaned, loved, taught in  
Iran. And now, suddenly, we hate them. The Iraqis do not deserve us.  
This is to be the grit on the sand that will give our tanks traction  
to leave Iraq. Bring on the clowns! Maybe they can help us too.

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent.

© 2007 The Independent