A tidal wave of misery is engulfing Iraq

[Orwellian_Ghost]

A tidal wave of misery is engulfing Iraq

By Michael Schwartz

11/02/08 "Mother Jones" -- -- A tidal wave of misery is engulfing Iraq—and it isn't the usual violence that Americans are accustomed to hearing about and tuning out. To be sure, it's rooted in that violence, but this tsunami of misery is social and economic in nature. It dislodges people from their jobs, sweeps them from their homes, tears them from their material possessions, and carries them off from families and communities. It leaves them stranded in hostile towns or foreign countries, with no anchor to resist the moment when the next wave of displacement sweeps over them.
The victims of this human tsunami are called refugees if they wash ashore outside the country or IDPs ("internally displaced persons") if their landing place is within Iraq's borders. Either way, they are normally left with no permanent housing, no reliable livelihood, no community support, and no government aid. All the normal social props that support human lives are removed, replaced with…nothing.

Overlapping Waves of the Dispossessed

In its first four years, the Iraq war created three overlapping waves of refugees and IDPs.

It all began with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which the Bush administration set up inside Baghdad's Green Zone and, in May 2003, placed under the control of L. Paul Bremer III. The CPA immediately began dismantling Iraq's state apparatus. Thousands of Baathist Party bureaucrats were purged from the government; tens of thousands of workers were laid off from shuttered, state-owned industries; hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military personnel were dismissed from Saddam's dismantled military. Their numbers soon multiplied as the ripple effect of their lost buying power rolled through the economy. Many of the displaced found other (less remunerative) jobs; some hunkered down to wait out bad times; still others left their homes and sought work elsewhere, with the most marketable going to nearby countries where their skills were still in demand. They were the leading edge of the first wave of Iraqi refugees.

As the post-war chaos continued, kidnapping became the country's growth industry, targeting any prosperous family with the means to pay ransom. This only accelerated the rate of departure, particularly among those who had already had their careers disrupted. A flood of professional, technical, and managerial workers fled their homes and Iraq in search of personal and job security.

...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174892

[msongs]

1. aren't you glad Obama AND Clinton both vote to support and fund the occupation? nt

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. You know that point

goes over the head of many in the Obama camp. It's really amazing. I was at a large event where people were actually castigating Hillary, rightly so, for her support of the Iraq WAR AND saying that Obama never supported the war which is of course false as he did just as you stated alongside Hillary.

In fact Obama pulled back from his original statement in 2002 with a mealy-mouthed version of how he might have come to a very different set of conclusions if he had different intelligence. He said this bit in 2004.

His current proposal is not to get all US troops out as some mistakenly state and/or believe.

And the Iraqi people just continue to suffer...

[MadMaddie]

3. They made a mistake ...but they are not responible for the

irresponsible actions of the current Republican administration. Give credit where credit is due that will be the * Legacy.


At least they are talking about removing the troops and not leaving them there 100 years.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. A mistake?

That sounds really trivial when millions have been slaughtered/displaced.

Every time they voted for the funds they sanctioned the policy. This is not just some "mistake." It was and is a calculated political maneuver of the most cynical kind.

And neither Hillary or Obama plan to remove all US troops from Iraq.

Asked if they could promise to have the troops out by 2013 both said they could not make that promise. That is consistent with both their policy statements on this.

[MadMaddie]

6. As in "they were presented evidence in which they believed to be

true at the time".

Their votes still do not represent the poor or lack of planning on the part of Rumsfeld who through his rose colored glasses said the war would be a cakewalk.

The * administration is directly responsible for the 3000 American lives lost on 9/11, they are responsible for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, they are responsible for the ethnic cleaning, they are responsible for the almost 4000 American soldiars deaths and thousands of injured.

Hillary and Barak did not lie this country in the war the * Administration did. People still seem to forget that.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

7. You completely skipped over the point

I'm seeing a lot of that these days.

[MadMaddie]

9. Okay lets agree their votes were bad...I will concede that

But who is ultimately responsible for the destruction and the castastrophe that ensued? Hillary and Barack did not make those decisions...

No one wants to talk about prosecuting the people in the WH and their staff for war crimes...when alarms were raised that the war was a bad idea we were called Anti-American or terrorist lovers.

You are talking about war crimes and the American media is silent...

All of the civilian deaths...should have never happened. The Adminstration did not plan for our troops to be there over 6 months...they had not contingency. They are there for the oil not the civilians.

War crimes plain and simple.

[paparush]

4. Our country will pay for this for decades to come.....

in economic costs, in retaliation, in lost leadership, in so many ways....

[IsItJustMe]

13. I agree. The unforeseen results of this war have not even begun to hit us. But hey, fantasy land

seems great until reality hits you dead center.

[spanone]

8. don't tell junior, the dumbfuck thinks we're winning

it's unbelievable that we have created such misery for so many undeserving civilians.

we have recruited terrorists for eternity

[FirstLight]

10. What's more disturbing is that ...

...the American people have tuned out so much of the daily violence. (I have to admit, I too am responsible for that , it's so hard to hear - and it makes me cry when I think about it too much or hear a story like the one about the guy who died on Christmas but his dogs were brought home..)

This is a HUMANITARIAN event, and Amnesty International among others should step in to help...but can they ? when it is so volatile and unstable, the people there are just left to "deal" until the service can get in there and help.
Meanwhile how many children are starving, how many mothers are losing families to more and more violence, how many lives are trashed because we are there at all? I have heard that women who have lost the men to take care of them are forced to be prostitutes, Nightline did a segment 6 mos ago or so... there are no social services, and the patriarchal society is not set up to acknowledge these women as in need, they are reviled and have to resort to desperate measures...I don;t even want to think what the children are up against.

If we just up and leave - and the region dissolves into chaos and civil war, it will be worse and much bloodier...can it even GET better?

Wasn't Iraq just a regular country with a bad leader before all this? And even though Saddam was horrendous, he was pretty much under control with sanctions, wasn't he? (corect me if I am wrong, please) The counrty had infrastructure, businesses, schools, etc... maybe not perfect, but alot closer to "normal". But Bush Jr, just HAD to finish what his daddy couldn't ... and besides, it is easier to control OUR country if we are afraid of the evil terrorists hiding under the rocks in evil Iraq...so there we went...

Not only do I weep for our own soldiers who were brainwashed into this farce and trapped into 3 and 4 tours of service and maiming and loss of life and limb....
But the civilians loss of livelihood, family and a shot at a regular life is just reprehensible. It smacks of a long, torturous form of ethnic cleansing... "let 'em all blow eachother up!" ( ya, again, Cowboy diplomacy fucks it up for us all)

Problem with this is that 10 - 20 yrs down the pike, we are looking at a generation of young Iraqis who will loathe the US even more than ever before, because they will have the childhood scars from these times in their minds & hearts.

No matter HOW or WHEN we "get out" of Iraq - the damage and hatred and bloodshed is far from over I fear.

edit sp & typos..i got excited

[slipslidingaway]

11. The Iraqi Brain Drain....

"...in less than five years approximately 50 million Americans would have fled their homes..."

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174892

"I'm an innumerate, but the figures on this -- the saddest story of our Iraq debacle -- are so large that even I can do the necessary computations. The population of the United States is now just over 300,000,000. The population of Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion was perhaps in the 26-27 million range. Between March 2003 and today, a number of reputable sources place the total of Iraqis who have fled their homes -- those who have been displaced internally and those who have gone abroad -- at between 4.5 million and 5 million individuals. If you take that still staggering lower figure, approximately one in six Iraqis is either a refugee in another country or an internally displaced person.

Now, consider the equivalent in terms of the U.S. population. If Iraq had invaded the United States in March 2003 with similar results, in less than five years approximately 50 million Americans would have fled their homes, assumedly flooding across the Mexican and Canadian borders, desperately burdening weaker neighboring economies. It would be an unparalleled, even unimaginable, catastrophe. Consider, then, what we would think if, back in Baghdad, politicians and the media were hailing, or at least discussing positively, the "success" of the prime minister's recent "surge strategy" in the U.S., even though it had probably been instrumental in creating at least one out of every ten of those refugees, 5 million displaced Americans in all. Imagine what our reaction would be to such blithe barbarism.

Back in the real world, of course, what Michael Schwartz terms the "tsunami" of Iraqi refugees, the greatest refugee crisis on the planet, has received only modest attention in this country (which managed, in 2007, to accept but 1,608 Iraqi refugees out of all those millions -- a figure nonetheless up from 2006). As with so much else, the Bush administration takes no responsibility for the crisis, nor does it feel any need to respond to it at an appropriate level. Until now, to the best of my knowledge, no one has even put together a history of the monumental, horrific tale of human suffering that George W. Bush's war of choice and subsequent occupation unleashed, or fully considered what such a brain drain, such a loss of human capital, might actually mean for Iraq's future. Tom"


"...The most devastating impact of the Iraqi refugee crisis, however, has probably been on the very capacity of the national government (which de-Baathification and privatization had already left in a fragile state) to administer anything. In every area that such a government might touch, the missing managerial, technical, and professional talent and expertise has had a devastating effect, with post-war "reconstruction" particularly hard hit..."

[scarletwoman]

12. k&r -- people need to pay attention to what's being done in our names. (nt)

[countryjake]

16. Reading thru that whole thing, that's all I kept thinking...my country is responsible...

and the term "blithe barbarism" doesn't even adequately describe the attitude with which our entire government...every damn one of them, from Chief Criminal right down to any greenhorn rep sitting in Congress, each of the candidates, with all their spin and promises and cunning intonations...have managed to conduct the business of decimating an entire culture and destroyed Iraq.

I can't shake the feeling that I have blood on my hands.

[FirstLight]

14. Kick & rec

This is an important issue for us all
...and slipslidingaway makes an excellent point in putting these numbers into American terms - (because of course we are such a narcisistic society, uck)

Why are these issues not at the heart of the debates?
...OH YEA, because all the candidates who actually thought that people were important, both here and overseas, were bumped out of the race!

I pray that we never see this type of American strife, and after reports about our food supply today (wheat crops, bad news)
- I wonder if we are very far behind the Iraqis in some ways... All it would take is Martial Law and we will see the same "surge against the insurgents" talk right here at home...


(gosh I am fatalistic tonight, sorry, mus' be the wine talking)

[leftofthedial]

15. and the USA

[countryjake]

17. Still time to get this higher on the Greatest Page...

it's one of the most enlightening articles I've read, on the damage our government's illegal occupation has done to the Iraqis.

[malaise]

18. I can't take much more of this

Fuck George Bush! Fuck Dick Cheney! Fuck every single enabler! Enough is enough!

[slipslidingaway]

19. Kick for more exposure. n/t