verging_on_random

A dose of reality

December 19, 2006 on 6:16 am | In Uncategorized |

Most commentary on Iraq discusses it from an American perspective. It’s as if Iraq is some kind of inert organism that can be manipulated by the United States to achieve the desired result. Our own prime minister has taken this to absurd extremes by claiming that the most important aspect of the whole affair is the need to preserve American prestige.

This welter of ill-informed nonsense ignores the history of the region-now-known-as-Iraq and the circumstances that actually apply. For a dose of reality here’s a great primer from the Sunday Times. Sample extracts:

Iraq, like 17th-century Germany, has never been a viable independent nation-state. It was always part of various empires, run by Persians or Greeks or Turks — and then the British. It was always divided, even under the Ottomans, into three provinces centred on Baghdad, Mosul and Basra. And it has long been divided ethnically between Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Marsh Arabs and others and on sectarian lines between Sunni and Shi’ite.

…

At the end of the first world war, the British had 410,000 troops in Iraq to control a population a fraction of its current size. America has 140,000 …

When politicians here and in America demonstrate an awareness of the reality existing in Iraq their utterances might deserve some sensible attention. Until that happens they continue to make themselves look ignorant and shallow-minded every time they open their mouths on the subject, and the same applies to many of the pundits who rush in to offer their silly predictions and recommendations.

The appalling human catastrophe that our country has helped unleash in the middle east should hang over our national mood this Christmas like the palls of 100 bushfires. But it won’t of course. They’re only Muslims, who have been carefully and deliberately dehumanised over a long period by our contemptible prime minister and his media cheer squad.