APRIL-MAY2008
Dictators
Supported by the USA
iraq, Layla Anwar has
something to say to you all
A friend whose opinions I greatly respect, told me “There
are good dictatorships and bad democracies...”
And Iraq was a good dictatorship and yours is a very bad
democracy.
For starters, under the former dictatorship, we were
alive, now we are all dead corpses...
Under the former dictatorship and during and in spite of
13 years of the most inhumane sanctions ;
We had no ghettoes, we did not know each other’s
sect, we intermarried, we had mixed neighborhoods, we
could go out without being riddled with bullets from an
Iranian militia or from one of your army patrols, we had
no checkpoints, we had no car bombs, we had no Al-Qaeda
psychopaths, we had no sectarian Shia sadists in turbans
and black uniforms, we did not have to dress like a
ninja, we were not raped, we did not have acid thrown
into our faces, we were free to worship in a church or a
mosque, we had jobs, we had homes, our children were fed,
our hospitals functioned despite your tyrannical
sanctions (today 90% of Iraqi hospitals are in dire need
of qualified staff) our roads were not destroyed, our
bridges assured safe passages, we did not have women and
children begging and sleeping in the streets, we did not
have refugees (4.5 million) stranded at borders or
rotting away in tents, we had electricity and water and
we did not find worms floating in it either...
Our rivers were not dumping grounds for cadavers and our
parks were not turned into cemeteries. Our children were
not sold or trafficked. Our academics, (over 450 killed)
doctors (500 murdered) and professionals (in the
hundreds) did not flee or get killed. Our universities
still managed to produce graduates and our schools were
not attacked by mortar bombs. Our women could drive,
work, marry and divorce as they pleased...
Under the former dictatorship our trees were still
producing fruits and not razed to the ground. Under the
former dictatorship music was still allowed, so were
films. Under the former dictatorship we had no drugs,no
poppy fields, no drug addicts and no drugs peddlers and
traffickers. Under the former dictatorship we had no
pedophile rings, no professional killers, no professional
drillers and no professional rapists...
Under the former dictatorship, we had no over
100’000 detainees with no trial, no children
sodomized in prisons and no women gang raped in exchange
for freeing their loved ones...
Under the former dictatorship, our artists, poets,
writers, singers, journalists (233 killed since 2003)
were not abducted, kidnapped or assassinated...
Under the former dictatorship, we were not rejects. We
still earned the respect of others. Under the former
dictatorship we had no mass corruption, no public
thieves, no fraud...
Under the former dictatorship we had no Israelis, no
Iranians and no Americans...And sell out, treacherous
Iraqis with foreign political agendas, were silenced, for
the greater good.
Under the former dictatorship we had no 2 million widows,
5 million orphans, 4 million wounded, an X number of
disappeared, we had no mass graves of a million plus
murdered by Democracy.
Under the former dictatorship we were not considered the
second most corrupt country in the world and the FIRST
most dangerous country on earth...
Under the former dictatorship, we had a country called
Iraq. Under the former dictatorship we had a Life. Under
the former dictatorship, we were Free.
IRAQ Layla teaches:
I had to go again to have some "paperwork"
done, authenticated, officialized, approved, signed...
Again the fucking queue. One would have thought that I'd
be used to it by now...
Again, all of them were Iraqis. One was limping, the
other holding an infant, an elderly woman so frail, I
felt she was going to collapse any minute, a man
perspiring carrying around 10 passports, he was trembling
so much, all his papers fell dispersing themselves like
white flakes on the grey, dirty, floor...
He apologized to the "official" a thousand
times for wasting 3 minutes of his precious time, he
needed to get approval, he needed that signature...
Your name?
Your father's name ?
Your mother's name ?...
Go and get your security check !
I've had my security check.
Not enough, more ...
The basement with thick metal doors. It actually looks
like a prison.
I could have sworn I saw cells there...
Went into a bare room. A desk and a machine made in the
USA.
Again the same questions
Your name?
Your father's name ?
Your mother's name ?...
Sit down !
Look into the machine. Look at the circle. Wrong ! I
said look at the circle!
There were two circles but the idiot did not even know
it.
Wrong! Tilt your head to the left. No, tilt it to the
right...Yalla look at the circle...there is one circle !
"Actually there are two circles" I said...one
for each iris.
Yalla, give me your fingers said another. She
was very heavy, perspiring under her polyester veil and
the odor emanating from her armpits was making me
nauseous.
She gripped my fingers one by one, with her pudgy hand,
and she could not even work the fucking machine...made in
the USA.
I wanted to shout, "can't you see what the computer
screen is telling you, it is telling you CANCEL you
fucking idiot..." but I said nothing.
She kept repeating, why can't you lay your fingers
properly, on the scanner?
"But I am, I am laying my fingers on your
scanner..."
No you are not !
And she would take each finger and press it so hard, I
felt my tendons about to snap...and all I wanted to shout
was "look at your fucking screen you moron, it says
CANCEL...you can't work the damn thing before you click
CANCEL..."
Now look into the camera. click, click,
click....
And here I was. They had my eyes, my fingers, my
face...thanks to the "security" machine made in
the USA.
Another elderly man was there with his cane and he was
blind, his daughter in black was helping him, she looked
so pale, so lost...how is he going to look at the circle?
And then came another couple and I saw the woman
anxiously tearing little pieces from the tissue she was
holding in her hands and stuffing them into her pocket.
And there was a woman with a little girl wearing slippers
and no socks.
And there was a man with stained trousers.
And another woman carrying a handbag with holes in it, as
if perforated by a machine gun.
And another woman covering her head with a woolen hat,
hiding her chemotherapy.
And another elderly man badly limping.
and another, and another, and another ...
All numbers...
Number: 154, 155, 156, 157, 158...
All Iraqis. All here because of You.
All waiting to sit in front of the machine made in the
USA.
Fingers, eyes and invisible faces....
And as I saw more of them approaching the thick metal
gates, I prayed.
**************************************************
Did you know that since our "liberation" by
the United States, our muslim feasts are celebrated as
per the Iranian calendar and not only that but check this
out --
Last year Iran decided not have summer and winter
timings.
And guess what? Iraq, and this is official, decided to
follow suit and stop the summer and winter clock too.
How nice ! The Iraqi government installed by the U.S is
very faithful to Iran don't you think?
Now the best part - next to the annexation of Basrah, the
pumping of free oil from Majnoon oil field, the dealings
in Tooman in the South of Iraq, the colonisation of Nejaf
and Kerbala, the Iraqi governmental application forms in
Farsee and Arabic, next to all of that hear this --
And that too is official, straight from Baghdad. The
military and police academy will only accept Iraqis of
Iranian origins from now on. Arabs will be excluded. And
that explains why Ahamdinajad's visit to Iraq was guarded
by the Peshmergas as the loyalties of the Iraqi police is
not yet fully guaranteed.
discussion sent from Israel Shamir from his web-site:
Some time ago we wrote about
unnecessary animosity between Arabs and Iranians which
was aroused and exploited by the Empire. Our friend David
Montoute wrote about it. In my view, we should try to
make peace between Arabs and Iranians, between Sunnis and
Shias, a peace between them and a war to the empire. So
the bottom line for me is: who fights and who
collaborates?
From David Montoute
Re: Scorpion Logic
I write to discuss a comment in your 'Scorpion Logic'. You say "Uruknet publishes terrible diatribes against “the Persians”.
Whilst it is true that the old
Arab/Persian rivalry frequently emerges in the discourse
of the Iraqi Resistance, it is also equally true that
Iranian-backed militias (Badr and Jaysh al-Mehdi) have
been engaged in wholesale liquidation of Sunni
communities across the country. This can be confirmed by
the statistical breakdown of Iraqi refugees - i believe
some 90% are Sunnies.
So, the diatribes you mention have some legitimate basis. What is being described as a civil war by the Western press is more accurately understood as a counterinsurgency war in which the Iranian-backed militias have emerged as the principal shock troops. Iraqi intellectual Abdul Jabbar al-Kubaysi is certainly no chauvinist, yet he predicted this very process in a 2002 interview:
FAV: Are we to understand..
Al-Kubaysi: No! [There isn't.]
FAV: Even those who are with the Iranians?
Al-Kubaysi: You said
"Iraqi", not extensions of the Iranians. Be
aware of the fact that the opposition abroad is split up
along ethnic and confessional lines. If
The real patriotic Iraqi
oppositionists today are the ones who own nothing and are
supported by no foreign state. (http://www.freearab
1. David Montoute:
hi Stan,
i discussed this article recently with Layla Anwar, and
we both agreed that Pepe Escobar is way, WAY off-base
with his analysis. Describing the visit to al-Anbar by
the “affable” Amar al-Hakim, son and heir to
one of
“1) Sadr will NOT make an alliance with Baathist, neo baathists or a sunni Islamic Resistance. Because Sadr’s program is essentially a SECTARIAN one.
2) He may toy with the idea, to specific political purposes (even though I doubt very much that will happen) then will shove his foot like he does.
3) in my opinion it is not only
ludicrous but also suicidal to make resistance alliances
with groups that are PART of the Govt which arrived with
the occupation.
And Muqtada al Sadr is one of them.
4) Sadr popularity is dwindling even amongst his supporters, ordinary shias… The fear element prevents MANY of them to come out in the open and say it.
5) the in fighting and I call them
squirmishes more than in fighting between Sadr and other
shia factions are political fights over territorial
control and not fight in differences of political
ideology.
Even though on the “current language” that Sadr
uses and I say current because with him, it is never what
he says it is.- is anti federalism. This is only a
leverage he is holding to offset SIIC gains of power and
not a true and irretrievable difference on principles.
It is if you want, the “popular” card he likes
to play…for domestic purposes and also reflects some
of the tensions within
It ultimately boils down over
control of territory and resources.
And not over the partition.”
Ultimately, if Sunnis and Shia are to unite, then it cannot be through the existing Shia organizations, whose agenda is radically different from that of the Resistance. What it would entail would, if anything, be the arming of nationalist Shia tribes opposed to both as-Sadr and al Hakim.
David Montoute
2. Stan:
These assertions are as good as
anyone else’s who cannot see into the mind of Sadr
or any of the other actors in
I can’t judge anything except by what the various principles have done (I’m as skeptical as the next person on what public pronouncements by any “leader” say, because they are always instrumental pronouncements.
But Sadr has made alliances
with Ba’athists and others, which is how he got on
the
I have my own questions about some
of the things Escobar has written (especially his
insistence that the
Ms. Anwar seems as ideological as analytical here; and I know from my own hard experience that this can lead us to misrepresent… even to ourselves.
The 3rd para in her comments is the
one that tips me off on this. Such categorical beliefs
make for great dogma, but rule out tactical agility from
the very beginning… ensuring irrelevance. Her
reference elsewhere to Chomsky as a “
She seems to have almost made a recent career out of her Sadr-hatred. But neither Escobar nor Patrick Cockburn nor Chomsky have ever claimed that Sadr is the guy we’d want to spend Saturday night with… they (and I) have pointed out that his political instincts have served him very well so far (the US once swore he’d be taken dead or alive), and have done so even with his unwavering demand for an immediate end to the US occupation.
3.
David Montoute:
Hello again Stan,
the Mahdi Army’s april 2004 uprising in Najaf was
co-ordinated with its offensives elsewhere. But its
relation to Fallujah was tenuous at best. As-Sadr’s
rebellion followed the banning of his newspaper and a
subsequent
So we don’t need to see into his mind to know his
intentions - it’s enough to watch what he does.
This is not an appeal to any sectarian agenda, obviously.
But i don’t think the anti-war movement’s
activities are served by the kind of fuzzy wishful
thinking that Pepe Escobar is indulging in here.
As for Layla, yes, she may have her prejudices, but
neither you nor I are living inside the Iraqi
meat-grinder, where things no doubt look VERY
differently. So who are WE to criticize?
With respect to her remarks on Chomsky, these are the professor’s OWN WORDS:
“As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less”
Nothing too sinister here, but there
is no doubt that Chomsky is fundamentally a Zionist, even
whilst criticizing Zionism (the same could be said for
Uri Avnery, for example). He supports a solution for
regards
dm
4. Stan:
David, you are being intentionally dishonest, and I won’t pretend to see into your motives any more than I would Sadr.
First, Chomsky. Let’s see the full quote:
As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less.
Why should the
And we can ask much the same about other states. State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.
Doesn’t exactly sound like Jabotinsky, does it? And you can capitalize “OWN WORDS” all you want… your inference is not the same as what Chomsky meant, and you damn well know it.
As a supporter myself, in theory, of the one-state solution, I have to challenge the implication that failure to hold that position qualifies one as a Zionist.
I was a right-wing libertarian as a youth… people change, but when we tell about those changes, we don’t deserve to have our tellings taken out of context to rationalize the bigotry of a source.
The Sadrists are no innocent lambs; they are not even always a cohesive and disciplined poltico-military force. But the lion’s share of Shia-instigated targeting of Sunnis has been by the SCIRI, who not only are not the same as Sadrist, but so opposed to Sadr’s repeatedly stated anti-federalism that they required miniature treaty talks to stop them shooting at one another… in spite of your colleague’s simplistic reduction of this rivalry to “territory.”
This conflation — coming from
someone who seems at least conversant with the actual
situation in
So Sadr cheered Saddam’s hanging. Duh. He, his followers, and his family were some of Saddam’s favorite impact areas.
That proves nothing about whether
Sadr is willing — out of political pragmatism —
to work with Ba’athists, when the Ba’ath Party
was rather like the Chinese Communist Party, an
administrative-
I’m well aware of Sadr’s 2004 activities, and have written about them at some length. No. the rebellions themselves were not coordinated, but once in motion — and I might note, repeatedly ever since — Sadr has called for Shia-Sunni nationalist unity. This is not an apology. It is an observation.
Montoute replied:
Stan,
there is no
dishonesty here at all, and i am not
"rationalizing" anyone's bigotry. I already
said there was nothing sinister about the quote. Quite
simply, as i understand it, Chomsky is a Zionist, that
is, he accepts
As for your other comments: "But the lion’s share of Shia-instigated targeting of Sunnis has been by the SCIRI"
I have to disagree, as i believe,
will the majority of Iraqi refugees. The Mahdi Army is
far larger than the Badr corps, but since BOTH are
involved with the interior ministry's death squads, the
question of primary responsibility for sectarian purges
may not be easy to disentangle. I do not simply conflate
al-Hakim and as-Sadr as "Shia". There are
differences, as you state, but their common ground is
greater than their differences. Both hold a theocratic
conception of Iraqi society, both are intensely hostile
to the secular state that the
You say: "This rivalry between Hakim and Sadr is real"
I agree, and I’ve made the case
that it could be exploited. But rivals always want the
same thing. Jaysh al Mahdi and SIIC both want a
theocratic state under the patronage of
The Resistance, on the other hand,
are not 'rivals' to the
Lastly, your defensiveness is unnecessary - I never accused you of apologizing for as-Sadr. My original contention was that Pepe Escobar's misrepresentation (or misinterpretation) of al-Hakim's visit to al Anbar was dangerous. And since my "colleague" as you call her is out in the thick of it, with relatives dying at every turn, i think her appreciation of the Sadrists may be more accurate than ours.
regards
david
http://www.feralsch