By
Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen

“We’re
winning the war in Iraq,” declared Fox News cackler Sean Hannity.

Wait
a second,” we said. “On May 1, 2003, Bush declared victory aboard
the USS Lincoln — ‘Mission Accomplished.’ We won, but now we’re
finally winning?”

Click to continue reading…

 

By
Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen                                     Read Spanish Version

“We’re
winning the war in Iraq,” declared Fox News cackler Sean Hannity.

“Wait
a second,” we said. “On May 1, 2003, Bush declared victory aboard
the USS Lincoln — ‘Mission Accomplished.’ We won, but now we’re
finally winning?”

We
know Bush started the war in Iraq on impulse. It only took a year or
so for the impulse to realize itself. But why have major political
figures and mass media continue to accept the nuttiness of this
bloody gag and report that the president and his fellow “warriors”
are winning five years after Bush first declared we had won?

How
many times can one declare victory? The answer: as often as necessary
to keep the war going and elect another Republican president. Lincoln
said: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the
people all of the time and that’s all it takes to get a Republican
elected.”

The
Republicans adore Bush family values — like peace and loyalty. The
President put his arm around and repeatedly swore support for Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — his hand-picked man in Baghdad. But
loyalty obviously requires a healthy degree of suspicion —
especially of close friends. So, Bush ordered Maliki’s phone tapped
and had his spooks spy on him, his office and other Iraqi government
officials. (See Bob Woodward, The
War Within.)

Such
details don’t impact on campaign propaganda, however. The
organizers of the Republican National Convention in Minnesota
banished all truth from their agenda and instead promoted the
“winning the war” fable while its hordes — called delegates —
chanted “USA,USA” (not German for Sieg Heil, by the way) and
“drill, baby, drill,” a fittingly logical answer to liberal
wusses who hold fast to the global warming myth.

Vice
Presidential candidate Sarah Palin in her September 3 acceptance
speech won thunderous applause from the giddy crowd when she showed
her loyalty to the chant: “Victory
in Iraq is finally in sight.” She did not elaborate.

Accepting
his Party’s presidential nomination, “maverick” McCain praised
himself for supporting the January 2007 surge of nearly 30,000 troops
to Iraq: “I fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq,
when it wasn’t a popular thing to do.” McCain has repeatedly
attacked calls for troop withdrawals and voiced “support for
continuing efforts to win in Iraq.” He has also assured voters that
more wars will come — as if to say, “Elect me and I’ll show
‘em.”

Some
voters might have gotten distracted by the media tumult over moose
hunter Palin’s nomination. Like McCain, she has her Christian
values. She would rather see her 17-year-old daughter pregnant than
teach her birth control. Hey, one little slip in the abstinence
method and well … But the important issues according to McCain and
Palin involve character and experience. McCain could teach young
pilots how not to get shot down while trying to bomb civilian
targets. Palin, having served as a small town mayor and briefly as
Alaska’s Governor, is almost as qualified as Dan Quayle, according
to an Anchorage reporter who has followed her career.

Amidst
the chanting and theatrical prevarications, the Republican heavies
repeated silly platitudes about the economy and Iraq. Thanks to
Bush’s and General David Petraeus’ brilliant surge strategy, for
example, U.S. forces have turned the corner toward victory in Iraq, a
corner they had turned successfully half a decade earlier. But who
remembers?

The
convention delegates agreed with the right wing radio screamers who
assure the faithful that this bold strategy has befuddled the “rag
heads” and
embarrassed the pacifist liberals.
Informed observers on the scene, however, noted that the U.S. troop
escalation had little to do with reducing the force of the Iraqi
resistance. Rather, say reporters Patrick Cockburn of the Independent
and CNN’s Michael Ware, before Bush announced the surge the U.S.
military had already turned from fighting to bribing Sunni militants
— people who formerly targeted U.S. troops. They paid these tough
guys well and gave them better arms to fight against Al Qaeda and any
other “un-cooperative” group in Iraq.

These
“Sunni militias,” the so-called “Sunni Awakening,” began to
operate without the oversight of Iraq’s fragile central government.
According to Nir Rosen, members of the Awakening “are men the
Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders,
evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will
happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the
new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the
insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert
to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.”
(Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008)

In
his testimony to Congress in April, Petraeus attributed reduced
levels of violence and civilian deaths in Iraq to the increase of
troops, the role of the Awakening and Moqtada al-Sadr’s 2007
ceasefire (which declared that the Mahdi Army would not attack rival
Shia groups or the U.S. military). He didn’t explain how having
more U.S. soldiers led to decreased violence. Did the suicide bombers
get scared? He also neglected to mention that the reduction of
violence in some parts of Iraq also related to the ethnic cleansing
of civilians and to 4 million plus Iraqis who were displaced since
the war began in 2003.

Unlike
Petraeus and his boss, Ware attributes ethnic cleansing as a
disturbing reason for “security improvement” in Iraq. “The
sectarian cleansing of Baghdad has been — albeit tragic — one of
the key elements to the drop in sectarian violence in the capital,”
notes Ware. “It’s a very simple concept: Baghdad has been
divided; segregated into Sunni and Shia enclaves. The days of mixed
neighborhoods are gone. […] If
anyone is telling you that the cleansing of Baghdad has not
contributed to the fall in violence, then they either simply do not
understand Baghdad or they are lying to you.” (Think Progress,
April 3, 2008)

The
motives behind U.S. actions in Iraq may have more to do with the
presidential elections than with war strategy. “The aim is to give
the impression that Iraq has finally come right for the US and
victory is finally in its grasp,” wrote Patrick Cockburn from
Baghdad. “The surge is promoted as the strategy by which the tide
was turned and it is true that the Sunni uprising against the U.S.
occupation has largely ended. But it has done so for reasons that
have little to do with the surge or American actions of any kind.
Crucial to the success of the government against the Mahdi Army has
been the support of Iran. It is they who arranged for the Shia
militiamen to go home.” (Counterpunch.org Sept. 3, 2008)

McCain
chants “real progress” in Iraq. But had he taken a real trip
through Baghdad’s segregated neighborhoods — not his heavily
armored guided tour — he would have seen the mythological nature of
“Progress in Iraq.” Indeed, the rosy lens of “progress”
conceals a larger problem issue: how to convince 2.5 million Iraqis
who have fled the country mainly to Syria and Jordan to return “home”
when their residences have likely been destroyed or their
neighborhoods seized by hostile militias? On August 11, for instance,
Prime Minister Maliki began sending his own jet to retrieve Iraqi
refugees from Egypt. Some 1,000 returned home (Washington Post,
September 7, 2008). The vast majority (nearly 100,000) stayed put.
The offer of free flights home did not include guarantees to
returning refugees — those who no longer can afford to live
elsewhere — such as the certainty of reintegration into a very
broken country; nor did it promise them security from daily ethnic
violence.

While
the Republicans chant “the Iraqis are better off” mantra, AP
reports cholera killed at least “five people in Baghdad and
southern areas in an outbreak partly caused by the deterioration of
water facilities during years of conflict.”

Iraq’s
Health Minister Salih al-Hasnawi “confirmed 36 cases …so far
[September 11], including 13 cases in Baghdad and 20 cases in Babil
province, south of the capital.”

The
Minister blamed the outbreak on “war and hardship,” which
“degraded water-treatment facilities in Iraq and deprived many
Iraqis of clean drinking water, contributing to the cholera
outbreak.” (AP, September 11, 2008)

 

In
addition, the optimists don’t refer to U.S. forces having arrested
and jailed at least 2,500 children in detention centers since 2002.
According to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, “The
detention of children in adult detention centers violates U.S.
obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as
well as accepted international human rights norms.” (AP, May 19,
2008)

Iraqi
unemployment remains at high double digit figures, public sanitations
systems still don’t function and no life insurance salesman in his
right mind would sell a policy to an Iraqi. Despite these
superficially unpleasant facts, W continues to claim with a smile and
McCain and Palin repeat confidently, “The Iraqis are better of
because they’re free” and remain free thanks to W’s brilliant
surge strategy. The new dictionary has interesting synonyms for the
word “absurgeity.”

Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow, author of A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD
(A/K-Counterpunch) and producer of many films. See
http://roundworldproductions.com/Site/Films_by_Saul_Landau_on_DVD.html.

Farrah
Hassen is the Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow at the Institute
for Policy Studies.