An abundance of news is coming out of Iraq and it is easy to feel overwhelmed at times. The complexity of the social and political dynamics within the country makes it difficult to know exactly what to say and think about the situation. It is essential to remember, however, that as bewildered as we might feel sitting comfortably thousands of miles away from the conflict, it is nothing compared to what the people of Iraq have been forced to endure.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration is unable and unwilling to acknowledge the simple fact that Iraqi civilians are suffering as a direct result of the American military occupation. Rather, President Bush had the audacity recently to assert that the Iraqis should, in fact, be thankful.
In a “60 Minutes” interview last week, President Bush said, “We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That’s the problem here in America: They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.”
It is appalling and sickening that those words could come from President. The President’s comments show extreme ignorance about domestic attitudes toward the war and also an unmatchable level of disregard for the suffering of Iraqis.
What is even more disturbing is such comments feed into a continual process of rewriting and repackaging history. Because many uncomfortable facts remain in existence in regard to America’s historical involvement in Iraq, policymakers constructed a narrative that has a more convenient starting point and presents American intervention as benign.
U.S. involvement in Iraq did not begin with the “liberation of Kuwait” in 1991. It began in the late 1950s when the Central Intelligence Agency began its initial support of Saddam Hussein, who was forced to flee following a U.S.-sponsored assassination attempt of Abdul-Karim Qasim. A CIA-sponsored coup in 1963 led Saddam’s Ba’ath party into power. Support continued overtly in the 1980s when Iraq and Iran fought a bitter war.
In the 1990s, when Saddam threatened American interests, the U.S. military intervened in Kuwait. They left the Kurds and the Shi’a to fend for themselves against Saddam’s helicopter gunships, allowing them to be massacred. It is estimated that the U.S.-supported sanctions on Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of civilians without having any affect on Saddam’s regime.
When considering this history of intervention coupled with the impact of the current conflict, which has resulted in a minimum of 54,337 civilian casualties according to the public database Iraq Body Count and as many as 600,000 deaths according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, it is unconscionable that President Bush thinks Iraqis “owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.”
We have taken part in a perverse foreign policy cycle which has subjected the Iraqi people to horrendous human rights abuses. While this is often considered the post-colonial period in modern history, we have carried on the torch lit by former oppressors and now engage in neo-colonial exploitation and destruction of livelihood.
In tomorrow’s State of the Union address, President Bush will surely tell us that more patience and sacrifice are required for the U.S. to succeed in Iraq. It is hard to imagine that his proposed troop surge will halt the continuing deterioration and lead to any viable solution. An escalation of this kind cannot address the fragmentation and breakdown of a society or the hardening of sectarian identities. For bringing the situation to this point, President Bush owes an apology to Iraqis on behalf of his administration and American people.
Rajeev Ravisankar is a recent OSU graduate with a degree in international studies and political science. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
