More than a year and a half has passed since the U.S.-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq, and yet little progress has been seen in the daily lives of Iraqi people. Not only has reconstruction stalled, but human rights abuses by U.S. soldiers at the Abu-Ghraib prison and the crackdown on political opposition groups have undermined Washington’s efforts to emerge as a champion of democratic and human rights in Iraq.
Increasingly desperate to find a winning formula in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials are promoting Lebanon as a political model for Iraq. Agreed, the situation in Iraq is looking more and more like Lebanon–but not the “Lebanese model” Cheney talks about. The vice president appears to have in mind a pre-1967 Lebanon in which an elite of notables presided over a pluralistic republic, open to foreign capital, and free enterprise. Beirut in those days was known as the Paris of the Orient.
Editor’s note: This is a condensed version of a report prepared by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) which can be found at http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=262.
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The Bush administration has begun to strike Fallujah with 10,000-15,000 U.S. soldiers, starting with gunships indiscriminately raking the city with cannon fire. By the end of the first day, warplanes had carried out some two dozen sorties against the city, and four 500-pound bombs were dropped over Fallujah.
As many members of Congress and President George W. Bush’s administration argue that it’s unacceptable to leave Iraq as a failed state, it becomes clearer every day that U.S. operations and policies are fueling violence and instability. It’s time for the government to directly confront the question of how to fulfill U.S. obligations under international law, restore basic security, and responsibly withdraw U.S. forces.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001 it has become a commonplace that religious extremism, particularly of the Muslim kind, lies at the heart of the problems that seemingly condemn the Muslim majority world to political and social backwardness, economic stagnation, and cultural oppressiveness. For the planners and supporters of Bush administration policy in Iraq, the actions of the country’s Sunni minority, and the thousands of foreign “jihadis” who have come to fight the Great Satan “between the two rivers” (as Musab al-Zarqawi has allegedly renamed his Iraqi branch of al-Qaida), have become a poster child for all that is wrong with Islam.