Bombing Iraq to Democracy 2014 Edition

As if not troubled enough, Iraq, the country raped by the United States and Britain, is on the verge of complete mayhem once again as Iraqi security forces withdraw control from regions deemed too violent.

As violence intensifies to new record levels, the fear is that the Iraqi military and police will unable to handle the carnage and then withdraw, and undo ‘progress’ made after the US military officially left in 2011. Of course, calling it ‘progress’ depends on whether you supported the baseless Western invasion of Iraq or not.

And herein lays the problem: will the US invade Iraq once more? Indeed President Obama cannot be more pressured with the Iraq question than today. In the previous weeks the question was whether the US military should be involved in Iraq once more. But as of press time, it was decided to send military advisers to Iraq and Special Forces to help curb the new wave of mayhem.

Tony Blair’s Outrageous Denial

As the Al-Qaeda leftover Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group overpowers Iraqi security forces in more and more regions, some of the greatest offenders of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have lashed out the moderates for not doing enough to curb the new wave of ultra-violence.

Last week, Blair denied, to everybody’s astonishment, that the lies-ridden invasion of 2003 was to blame for the present state of Iraq. In a statement with regards to the possible outcome of a Western invasion, Blair insisted “we have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this. We haven’t.”

Mr. Blair also had the nerve to call claims contrary to his as ‘bizarre’ and instead blamed the current upsurge in violence to the West’s failure to act in Syria.  "It is a bizarre reading of the cauldron that is the Middle East today, to claim that but for the removal of Saddam, we would not have a crisis,” in a statement on his website. 

Being among the original fear-mongering Western leaders on the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Blair still hasn’t changed his stance and strategy regarding ‘inaction’ in Syria, saying If we don't deal with the Syria issue then the problems are not just going to be for Syria and for the region, the problems are actually going to come back and they are going to hit us very directly even in our own country.” You could replace Syria with Iraq easily and it becomes a statement sounding it was 2003.

Obama’s Options in Iraq

Riding on a platform of rejection of the war in Iraq during his first presidency, President Obama now is faced with a decision on how to invade Iraq once more. So far, the options include sending ‘advisers’ into Iraq and carrying out a new wave of airstrikes, Operation Desert Fox style with the sending of the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush to the Gulf.

On the other hand, hawks in the US government establishment are blaming Obama for creating a ‘security vacuum’ by unnecessarily pulling out US troops back in 2011. What unites the Western elites though is the belief in a ‘spillover’ of the Syrian civil war into, of all places, Iraq.

What remains true today are the facts: the lies that initiated the US-UK war against Iraq, the destruction of Iraq society, millions of lives and resources lost, the divide-and-rule strategy that paved the way for sectarian and civil war, all leading to the utter destruction of Iraq. 

'Humanitarian' Killing Spree: The Case of Qaddafi

 

What a difference a decade makes, as they say. Qaddafi's death has spread euphoria across the Arab world, a celebration we can call as delayed. Why? The same euphoria was felt  elsewhere back in the early 2000s as diplomatic ties between Libya and the West gained new heights. In the years following Qaddafi's decision to abandon development of weapons of mass destruction, Libya saw a renaissance of close ties with the West: then British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Qaddafi in 2004, the first such visit since 1943; US lifts its trade embargo on the country; and the EU followed by lifting arms embargo.

The timing could not be more right for the West, the Iraq war has just begun and how to keep it going without hurting the economy too badly than inviting themselves to explore and exploit Libya's natural resources? Looking back from this year, we can only see how the West, for a decade now, is busy shopping for oil across the planet.

2008 for Libya and the West becomes more intimate as then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Qaddafi in Tripoli, the first such visit since 1953.  Italy's leader Silvio Berlusconi then agrees to invest billions in Libya.

2009 brought Qaddafi closer to the leaders who will betray him in the future: he makes a controversial visit to Italy and there had to shake hands with Barack Obama while on a G8 summit.

But the West won't allow the world to see this renewed intimacy, so as the Arab Spring of 2011 arrived, a new policy on Libya was drafted. Thanks to the uprising, we can only imagine how some countries saw this as the most opportune time to act, and act fast. UN authorizes a no-fly zone in Libya basing the decision on false accusations that Qaddafi is bombing its own people. The resolution made it clear that: arms embargo applies, and that no ground troops and mercenaries are allowed to 'roam' Libya. All these were violated by NATO: the 'humanitarian' mission gave arms to the rebels while 'special ops' helped the rebels gain ground by secretly dropping mercenaries off Tripoli's shores. Today it is no secret; these secret forces are hailed for being strategic in helping pin down the unpopular leader.

So what now? I suspect there is power politics here as well, as hindsight; the Libyan humanitarian operation might be part of a larger agenda to isolate the Chinese from investing and having leverage in the African continent. Are we not tired of seeing Africans becoming under the boots of the West? Can we give the BRICs a chance to drive change and cultivate a wider policy of development for Africa? As far as history goes, Africa is nothing but the West's slave and resource exploitation waste land.

We can only speculate what happens to this energy-rich country. Qaddafi's death is an opportune time to rebuild Libya in the eyes of the West, as if anything, Afghanistan and Iraq serves a recent testament to the kind of 'democracy' Western interventions bring to these countries.