Zarqawi was a symptom. The occupation is the disease.

WilliamPitt

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Sun Jun-11-06 09:37 PM
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Zarqawi was a symptom. The occupation is the disease.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead. We've turned a corner in Iraq. Again.

We turned a corner back in 2003, or so we were told, with the capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "For the Ba'athist holdouts largely responsible for the current violence," said George W. Bush in formal remarks after Hussein's capture, "there will be no return to the corrupt power and privilege they once held. For the vast majority of Iraqi citizens who wish to live as free men and women, this event brings further assurance that the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever."

That was three long years ago, and despite all the triumphalist crowing after Hussein's capture, nothing has changed. Indeed, matters are far worse now than when they put the bag on him in 2003. Empty elections have been held since then, in which most of the candidates were anonymous, because they feared assassination. The corrupt power and privilege once held by Hussein's people has been deftly transferred to hand-picked Iraqi leaders like Ahmad Chalabi, who cower behind bunkered walls while the nation they supposedly lead tears at itself, and to petroleum corporations like Halliburton that steal with both hands.

As for the torture chambers and secret police, well...the Bush administration set those up a while ago. The horrors of Abu Ghraib, and the secret "renditions" of prisoners, are perfectly legal, you see. The Attorney General says so.

Now that Zarqawi is dead - again - many would have us believe this is a stirring victory. To be sure, the Shi'ite civilians massacred by Zarqawi can take comfort that his attacks have been brought to an end. But to see this as an end to the violence is to buy into a distinctly American view of the Iraq occupation, a view that would have us believe that it is one villain masterminding all the carnage.

This simply isn't true.

A report from the UK Telegraph last year quoted a number of anonymous intelligence sources who stated, flatly, that Zarqawi was not the all-encompassing boogeyman he was portrayed to be. "We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," said one source in the report. "Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

Said another source in the report, "From the information we have gathered, we have to conclude that Zarqawi is more myth than man. He isn't in the caliber of what many politicians want to believe he is."

More recently, on April 10, 2006, the Washington Post ran a detailed article titled "Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi." The opening paragraph reads, "The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

"One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq," continued the Post piece, "said that (Brig. Gen. Mark) Kimmitt had concluded that, 'The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date.'"

Hm.

Our leaders would love us to believe that what is happening in Iraq is black-and-white, an issue of evil-doers attempting to shatter the hopes of democracy. Unfortunately, too many Americans buy into this Etch-a-Sketch view of our policies and practices there. The reality behind the bloodshed is far more discouraging, and hued with many shades of gray.

Those who fight and kill in Iraq did not do so because Zarqawi ordered them to. They fight because they are Sunnis with a generational hatred for Shi'ites, or because they are Shi'ites with a generational hatred for Sunnis, or because they are Kurds defending their turf, or because they don't want Iran running their country, or because they are defending their neighborhood, or because they are settling old grudges, or because they are opportunistic criminals looking to make a buck. In many instances, those who fight and kill in Iraq do so because they absolutely will not tolerate an occupying force under any circumstances.

The death of Zarqawi will not change any of this. The violence will continue, because the violence has nothing to do with him. He was a symptom, not a cause. Think of Iraq as a cancer patient. By killing Zarqawi, we have indeed cut out one tumor. But the cancer cells have metastasized, and have spread, and there will be a dozen more tumors to replace the one that has been removed. At the end of the day, the occupation itself is the cancer, and until it is removed, the tumors will continue to fester and grow.