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Malaysia Sun, Malaysia
Feb 2 2007
History makes way for Surge
The journalist Hossam al-Hamalawy was right to wonder aloud in May
2003, shortly after America's invasion had commenced, whether Iraq
had become "the new bus stop for the mujahideen after Kabul, Bosnia,
Grozny, Kosovo and Kashmir."
Others were thinking along similar lines.
It seems the US occupation has created "a new generation of
mujahideen similar to the Afghani Arabs, the 'Iraqi Arabs'," said
Muhammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief of Al Hayat, a little over a month
after American troops breached Iraq's borders. US aggression, Salah
said, "has created favorable conditions for recruiting more cadres"
and "has shifted the fortunes of Islamists."
And, of course, even then it should have been obvious that
al-Hamalawy and Salah were right.
A month after the US invasion in 2003, young Indonesians were queuing
up openly to register and volunteer to fight in Iraq against American
troops. Around the same period, Islamist fighters composed largely of
volunteer students from Jordanian and Syrian universities were
battling US marines inside Baghdad. In Saudi Arabia, authorities
interrogating three hundred captives -- young Saudis on their way to
fight in Iraq -- determine that among their captives, "few if any had
previous contact with al-Qaida and that most were motivated by the
U.S. occupation."
"I'm sure George Bush never meant to help us," said the head of the
Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, Mamun Hodaibi, in 2003. "But he did."
Of course he did. But too few noticed because maybe too many wanted
to be blind.
How many Iraqi lives were ground to dust during America's brutal
assault on Fallujah alone? How many family members and friends who
survived the carnage have since added their rage to the Iraqi
furnace? These are uncomfortable questions. We would rather have
asinine formulas: topple Saddam's government and rose water and rice
will be thrown at the feet of the invading troops. Capture the tyrant
and the violence will wind down. Take out the Ba'athist dead-enders
and the fighting will stop. Take out Uday and Qusay Hussein and it'll
be Mission Accomplished. Bump off Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the
insurgency will collapse.
And now the monster Saddam has been lynched; there is a new
Disneyland blueprint for winning. The Bush administration calls it
The Surge: one more push in Iraq for total victory -- the deployment
of over 20,000 more US troops-- in addition to the 135,000 US
soldiers already stationed in Iraq -- "to help Iraqis clear and
secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population."
Feral stupidity is fanaticism: you discover you are going in the
wrong direction, and you double your speed.
In The Burning Tigris, a book about the Armenian genocide, Peter
Badakian reminds us that memory today has become such a moral act;
it's surely a timely reminder. Because without remembering, we "are
subject to somebody else's remembering, or somebody else's
forgetting."
It's a compelling way of looking at things, and maybe if we thought
about it more we'd be thinking less about the cost-benefit aspects of
America's proposed surge and more about the wake of US global
peacekeeping.
February 1986; extracts of a taped conversation between the US
government and the government of Iran. Iranian representative: "We
must get the Hawk missiles.... Iran is being destroyed. We need those
missiles."
The US government: "[I]f your government can cause the humanitarian
release of the Americans held in Beirut ... ten hours immediately
after they are released the airplane will land with the remaining
Hawk missile parts."
After the US received one hostage, Iran got millions of dollars worth
of missiles, a cake in the shape of a key, revolvers and a Bible with
a handwritten note quoting St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: "And
the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by
faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying 'All the
nations shall be blessed in you.'" Signed, "Ronald Reagan, Oct. 3,
1986."
On the same year, Reagan told Saddam Hussein "Iraq should step up its
air war and bombing of Iran." Three years later, through the
determined prodding of James Baker, the same Baker who headed the
eminent Iraq Study Group advising George W. Bush on how to secure
peace in Iraq, America gave the Iraqi tyrant an additional $1 billion
subsidy, "along with germ seed for anthrax, helicopters, and the
notorious 'dual-use' material that could be used for chemical and
biological weapons."
"I tremble for my country," said Thomas Jefferson, "when I reflect
that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." And he is
right to tremble. We should, too.
We reap what we sow, we sow with what we forget, and some have sown
bitter fruit, in the land of others where life has become what the
poet Pablo Neruda described as great sorrow, where each "day is not
hour by hour / but pain by pain."
(Renato Redentor Constantino is a writer and painter based in Quezon
City. He is the author of the recently released book The Poverty of
Memory: Essays on History and Empire (CFNS: 2006). He maintains a
blog site at www.redconstantino.blogspot.com and can be reached via
[email protected]. )
Feb 2 2007
History makes way for Surge
The journalist Hossam al-Hamalawy was right to wonder aloud in May
2003, shortly after America's invasion had commenced, whether Iraq
had become "the new bus stop for the mujahideen after Kabul, Bosnia,
Grozny, Kosovo and Kashmir."
Others were thinking along similar lines.
It seems the US occupation has created "a new generation of
mujahideen similar to the Afghani Arabs, the 'Iraqi Arabs'," said
Muhammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief of Al Hayat, a little over a month
after American troops breached Iraq's borders. US aggression, Salah
said, "has created favorable conditions for recruiting more cadres"
and "has shifted the fortunes of Islamists."
And, of course, even then it should have been obvious that
al-Hamalawy and Salah were right.
A month after the US invasion in 2003, young Indonesians were queuing
up openly to register and volunteer to fight in Iraq against American
troops. Around the same period, Islamist fighters composed largely of
volunteer students from Jordanian and Syrian universities were
battling US marines inside Baghdad. In Saudi Arabia, authorities
interrogating three hundred captives -- young Saudis on their way to
fight in Iraq -- determine that among their captives, "few if any had
previous contact with al-Qaida and that most were motivated by the
U.S. occupation."
"I'm sure George Bush never meant to help us," said the head of the
Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, Mamun Hodaibi, in 2003. "But he did."
Of course he did. But too few noticed because maybe too many wanted
to be blind.
How many Iraqi lives were ground to dust during America's brutal
assault on Fallujah alone? How many family members and friends who
survived the carnage have since added their rage to the Iraqi
furnace? These are uncomfortable questions. We would rather have
asinine formulas: topple Saddam's government and rose water and rice
will be thrown at the feet of the invading troops. Capture the tyrant
and the violence will wind down. Take out the Ba'athist dead-enders
and the fighting will stop. Take out Uday and Qusay Hussein and it'll
be Mission Accomplished. Bump off Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the
insurgency will collapse.
And now the monster Saddam has been lynched; there is a new
Disneyland blueprint for winning. The Bush administration calls it
The Surge: one more push in Iraq for total victory -- the deployment
of over 20,000 more US troops-- in addition to the 135,000 US
soldiers already stationed in Iraq -- "to help Iraqis clear and
secure neighborhoods, to help them protect the local population."
Feral stupidity is fanaticism: you discover you are going in the
wrong direction, and you double your speed.
In The Burning Tigris, a book about the Armenian genocide, Peter
Badakian reminds us that memory today has become such a moral act;
it's surely a timely reminder. Because without remembering, we "are
subject to somebody else's remembering, or somebody else's
forgetting."
It's a compelling way of looking at things, and maybe if we thought
about it more we'd be thinking less about the cost-benefit aspects of
America's proposed surge and more about the wake of US global
peacekeeping.
February 1986; extracts of a taped conversation between the US
government and the government of Iran. Iranian representative: "We
must get the Hawk missiles.... Iran is being destroyed. We need those
missiles."
The US government: "[I]f your government can cause the humanitarian
release of the Americans held in Beirut ... ten hours immediately
after they are released the airplane will land with the remaining
Hawk missile parts."
After the US received one hostage, Iran got millions of dollars worth
of missiles, a cake in the shape of a key, revolvers and a Bible with
a handwritten note quoting St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: "And
the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by
faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying 'All the
nations shall be blessed in you.'" Signed, "Ronald Reagan, Oct. 3,
1986."
On the same year, Reagan told Saddam Hussein "Iraq should step up its
air war and bombing of Iran." Three years later, through the
determined prodding of James Baker, the same Baker who headed the
eminent Iraq Study Group advising George W. Bush on how to secure
peace in Iraq, America gave the Iraqi tyrant an additional $1 billion
subsidy, "along with germ seed for anthrax, helicopters, and the
notorious 'dual-use' material that could be used for chemical and
biological weapons."
"I tremble for my country," said Thomas Jefferson, "when I reflect
that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." And he is
right to tremble. We should, too.
We reap what we sow, we sow with what we forget, and some have sown
bitter fruit, in the land of others where life has become what the
poet Pablo Neruda described as great sorrow, where each "day is not
hour by hour / but pain by pain."
(Renato Redentor Constantino is a writer and painter based in Quezon
City. He is the author of the recently released book The Poverty of
Memory: Essays on History and Empire (CFNS: 2006). He maintains a
blog site at www.redconstantino.blogspot.com and can be reached via
[email protected]. )