Will Revolution in Civilization’s Cradle Provoke Political Revolution in U. S.?

“The gates of Hell will open, . . . if the U. S. invades Iraq,” expressed by some Iraqis at this invasion’s outset, today remains the most concise description of relevance for these nations, at opposite ends of modern human history.

Consumed in late 2006 by whether or not to use the term “civil war” to describe the evolving situation of Iraq, most all commentaries have failed to ask the more fundamental, political question: “why wasn’t this area’s immense, historical proclivity for civil strife properly recognized within U. S. war analyses?”

Culturally disparate regions of the collapsed Ottoman Empire were quickly cobbled together for purposes of British and U.S. commercial interests, at the end of W.W. I, then renewed after W.W. II, attaching three very distinct former provinces based in Mosel, Baghdad and Basra. This new aggregation of imperial convenience was designated: “Iraq.”

Famed as the “Cradle of Civilization” through modern understanding of its ancient history, this region (around the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) gave rise to initial efforts at agriculture, alphabet, law and multi-layered political bureaucracies, leisure arts, economic currencies, and other elements quite basic to modern forms of human life.

In recent times, not until Saddam Hussein consolidated utter control of “Iraq,” during various periods of the Cold War, was there any success with the enterprise of actually creating this contrived, pseudo-nation. There was only a succession of failed political scenarios, imperial puppets and stooges, and roiling civil unrest within the context of foreign development of this area’s huge petroleum resources.

Just as the U. S., using the C. I. A., toppled Iran’s democratically elected president during the early 1950s, because he challenged imperial plans regarding this region’s oil development, any potential problems in the newly arranged “Iraq” were similarly quashed, leaving truly indigenous political aspirations to deeply percolate for many decades, . . . until about now.

Unleashed at last, with a twist of irony that boggles historical imagination, three long suppressed schisms of this region will finally shatter U. S. imperial dreams of easy oil. Hubris and greed eventually compelled the U. S. to attempt removal of its old Iraqi strongman, Saddam. This was, of course, a fatal mistake in the circumstance of Iraq. It may have worked with 1953 Iran, but not 2003 Iraq. Only Saddam kept this (former) imperial dreamboat buoyant, and not even the fervent prayers of neo-conservative politics were capable of altering that reality.

So now, for years, day by day, week by week and month by month, precious blood and treasure of the U. S. is hopelessly and uselessly squandered in history’s new, crucible quagmire, which is primed to predictably and dramatically expand into a massive and multifaceted, regional conflict whose intensity and consequences dwarf any realistic threats from Saddam or any durable benefits from his ouster.

So, . . . why is the U. S. in Iraq? Because the Democratic Party in the U. S. Congress utterly lacked the intelligence, courage and political motivation to manage its civic duty, to preserve the interests of this nation in the face of a clear and certain human and political disaster, engineered by avaricious, neo-conservative-ridden Republicans, trying to extend “manifest destiny” into “a new American century.”

Barbara Lee of Oakland was the only Member of the U. S. Congress to refrain from immediately jumping on to the bandwagon of this immoral and ultimately catastrophic war, a conflict which will serve to starkly curtail U. S. influences within the rising internationalism of the new millennium.

Political pundits even claim, with layered irony, that the Democratic Party’s new majority in Congress is due to conservative Democrats winning swing seats because of their (overdue and timidly premised) questioning of U. S. policy in Iraq. The Democratic Party’s new electoral gains truly flow from its prior war cooperation in allowing such a fiasco to proceed, permeating its establishment order, until inevitable catastrophe ensued. Once always incipient “civil war” was apparent, our two-party system simply swung the pendulum to the other pole.

Let’s face reality. Regardless of these recently quibbling Democrats, Iraq will now be in a brutal state of civil war for years into the future, and there is — absolutely nothing — that the U. S. can do about this situation — despite the fact that the U. S. has caused it. None of the surrounding nations: Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc., possess abilities to meaningfully influence such events in Iraq. These nations only hope to minimize the eventual scope and consequences of this fracture of Iraq.

There are no solutions, either political or military, except emerging dissolution of Iraq, the dynamics of which will for decades involve basic aspects of political and social life throughout this entire region of the world. Plus, the U. S. has now drained its treasury against service to urgent domestic concerns, and the Neo-conservatives’ tidy, ideologically spawned dream world of a “new American century” has evaporated within the steam rising from oceans of spilled blood.

This result was very easy to see coming, for many folks, and the nation was well-warned not to follow Bush’s greedy lead. But our national political apparatus was purely incapable of fathoming or responding to this crisis, because it’s too tough to do the political work needed to break away from the established political herd.

Only someone like Barbara Lee, in a fully safe (and fairly sophisticated) district, would wager the political currency needed to even attempt to discover the actual situation with Iraq and U. S. policies, and to tell her constituents the truth. Now, U. S. voters are suddenly alarmed enough to spin control of Congress to the Democrats, who propose various means of often torpid recourse from their earlier compliance in establishing the abyss which is now “Iraq.”

But the big question is: How far will U. S. political upheaval ultimately go? Issues and problems flowing from this debacle will swirl like typhoons for many years. Will folks in the U. S., upon understanding these dire political circumstances, finally wise-up to their underlying, political predicaments? Or will they fall asleep again, like after the Vietnam War, counting themselves as sheep?

Advertisement