May 12, 2006
They say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but these days, fearmongering invocations of "Islamofascism" perform the same rump-covering function just as well.
Defenders of U.S. President George W. Bush's war crime in Iraq -- particularly those super-tough "liberal hawks" who have cast their lot with the crony conquistadors -- trot out the term at every opportunity. What else can they do? All the other excuses for their pet war have been exploded as bare-faced, deliberately concocted lies. So they've been reduced to the ludicrous claim that Bush's murderous plunder is actually a noble defense of civilization against black hordes of "Islamofascists." In this way, these desk-bound warriors seek to identify themselves with the sainted figures of old, like George Orwell, who actually put their bodies on the line against real fascists.
Yet it is painfully obvious that the forces which come closest to matching this ignorant propaganda term have in fact been empowered by Bush's war. Obscurantist clerics and deadly sectarian groups backed by Bush now rule in Iraq, while his war of aggression there -- and his global gulag of torture and unlawful detention -- are swelling the ranks of violent extremists around the world, as his own State Department acknowledges in its latest report on international terrorism.
For example, last month, 14-year-old Ahmed Khalil was shot dead by the Bush-backed Iraqi police on the doorstep of his home, the Independent reports. His crime? Homosexuality. He was just one of scores of homosexuals -- or suspected homosexuals -- systematically slaughtered by the sectarian militias that Bush is arming and training to serve as Iraq's official "security" forces. Ironically, Ahmed might not even have been gay; he was having sex with men in the neighborhood for money to help his poverty-stricken family, which has been completely wiped out in the economic meltdown wrought by Bush's "liberation."
The "sexual cleansing" campaign by the death squads Bush has unleashed is just part of the ongoing slaughter in Iraq, where -- by conservative, "tip-of-the-iceberg" estimates -- almost 4,000 civilians have been murdered in Baghdad alone so far this year, many of them "hogtied and shot execution-style," the Los Angeles Times reports. "Others were strangled, electrocuted, stabbed, garroted or hanged. ... Many bore signs of torture such as bruises, drill holes, burn marks, gouged eyes or severed limbs." Most such killings are now being carried out by the government-backed militias and their infiltrated agents in the Bushist police brigades, as Bush's ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, openly admits.
Keep in mind why this is happening. Iraq's bloody "regime change" was engineered in order to implement a thorough-going economic rapine plan drawn up for the Bush administration in early 2003 by the corporate consulting group BearingPoint, as Antonia Juhasz reports in her new book, "The Bush Agenda." BearingPoint, headquartered in the CIA company town of Maclean, Virginia, provided a detailed blueprint for opening up Iraq to predatory foreign "investment" on terms that allowed the wholesale looting of the nation's wealth while acing Iraqi companies out of the action.
Bush's appointed satrap, Paul Bremer, executed the blueprint faithfully during his dictatorial rule in Baghdad. His edicts were then incorporated wholesale, hugger-mugger and without negotiation into the new Iraqi constitution. They are now the law of the land. The dark heart of the scam is, of course, the oil laws. Now that a "sovereign" government has been established, these can be finalized at last. The plan is for 40-year "production-sharing agreements" that will give Bush's oil cronies a vast slice of Iraq's oil output at rock-bottom prices ("at cost"), as Chris Cook reports in the Asia Times. This windfall will make today's record-breaking oil company profits look like chump change.
Last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced that it is dispatching a "petroleum adviser" to Baghdad to help the new Iraqi government complete its "critical petroleum law," Dow Jones Newswires reports. The adviser is being sent at the request of the U.S. State Department, headed by former oil exec Condoleezza Rice. And the company contracted to supply the adviser is -- oh, you already guessed! -- BearingPoint Inc.
So that's why Ahmad Khalil had to die, along with thousands of others, gay and straight, Sunni and Shiite, religious and secular, Iraqi and American. It has nothing to do with any of the grand abstractions employed by the apologists for empire to mask their complicity with the immoral dictates of raw power: national security, humanitarian intervention, the war on terror, Islamofascism, and so on. No, it's just a crude, brutal -- and no doubt temporary -- marriage of convenience between old-fashioned religious extremism and old-fashioned elitist greed. Both are committed to the destruction of Iraqi society in order to impose their own form of bondage in place of Saddam's tyranny.
As long as the Iraqi sectarians are willing to give away their nation's wealth in exchange for some of the temporal power now in the gift of the money-grubbing Bush elite, the suffering of the Iraqi people will only increase day by day. Yet the inevitable break-up of this unholy union -- when the sectarians decide to throw off their vassalage, or when Bush's looming attempt to secure the Iraqi conquest by eliminating its greatest threat, Iran, results in a horrendous revolt by the Iranian-backed extremists he has enthroned in Baghdad -- this suffering will reach a new pitch of agony.
There is no good solution to the hell Bush has wrought in his arrogance and folly. There is only blood and horror all the way down.
Annotations
Iraqi police 'killed 14-year-old boy for being homosexual' The Independent, May 5, 2006
Antonia Juhasz: Bush Clears the Way for Corporate Domination Alternet, May 5, 2006
Targeted Killings Surge in Baghdad Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2006
Sweet deals: Behind the Iran 'crisis' Asia Times, April 11, 2006
Reason for Their Death Is Known Truthout.org, May 3, 2006
Long Black Veil: Iraqi Women's 'Liberation' Nightmare Empire Burlesque, May 8, 2006
Gay Iraqis fear for their lives BBC News, April 17, 2006
Saving Iraq: Mission impossible Salon.com, May 11, 2006
Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun CounterPunch, May 4, 2006
All of Us Participate in a New Iraq Antiwar.com, May 11, 2006
Casualty toll soars in Iraq The Herald (Scotland), May 11, 2006
Iraq at the mercy of 'kingmaker' Muqtada Asia Times, May 6, 2006
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law Empire Burlesque, August 15, 2003
Top Spy-s Story on Prewar Intel Is Finally Told Truthdig, April 25, 2006
Ahmed-s Story v A Cruel, Barbaric Death UK Gay News, May 2006
The US's geopolitical nightmare Asia Times, May 9, 2006
US admits Iraq is terror 'cause' The Times, April 29, 2006
USAID Provides Adviser to Iraq Government on Oil Law Dow Jones Newswires, April 28, 2006
Militias Killing More Iraqis Than Insurgents, says US New York Times, March 27, 2006
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