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And Now, Iraq's Ali A. Allawi And Another 'America' Message ...
Staying on the subject of sending Bush some messages -- how does this seem for size?
NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country — a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."Certainly sounds like some super-strong stuff, eh?
"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.
Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.
And there's much more of the same from whence that came.
Click across to Associated Press to see said story yourself.
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Labels: Allawi, America, corroded, corrupt, incompetent, inefficient, Iraq
posted by Richard at Sunday, April 08, 2007
8 Comments:
Only the ignoramuses among us didn't already know all this.
But drip drip, drip. Eventually, things will sink in to even the thickest skulls - while we all carry on taking the time and trouble to spread the truth.
Sadly, no matter what anyone says the US and UK know that it matter not what anyone says. They're not going to change their criminal acts now - not for anyone. Too much money still to be made - blood money.
bluey--
Right now, the only reason there's any support at all for continuing the occupation is the notion that it's the duty of the US to stay and help repair Iraq. This justification is undercut when people learn just how badly the occupation has been mismanaged. So I do think that getting information like this to the public is a good way of forcing an earlier withdrawl.
It's funny how one's perception of the same book are shaped by their political positions. Read the commentary of Christopher Hitchens http://www.slate.com/id/2164824/ His analysis of portions of the book, analyzing the conditions prior to the coalition's occupation of Iraq,lead him to this conclusion:
"But I have never been able to overcome the feeling that Iraq was our (United States) ward and responsibility one way or another, and that canceling or postponing an intervention would only have meant having to act later on, in conditions even more awful and dangerous than the ones with which we have become familiar." While I will not argue against the obvious, that the US led forces have made serious mistakes, and lots of them, the impication that the mess in Iraq was precipitated and perpetuated by the US intervention is clearly a matter subject to debate.
My main contention is to point out that there are, in fact, two sides to this issue. A stick-your-head-in-the-sand and ignore the problem, hoping it goes away is not always the best way to handle world affairs. Tough, unpopular decisions often need to be made. We here in the states often feel that the world expects us to unilaterally clean up the rest of the world's mess, and then blame us when things go wrong. The problems faced by the world today are global in scope, and demand global cooperation.
Just one man's opinion.
Chris - 'lush - Hitchens? Hitch the snitch?
How can he analyze anything at all? He sees everything through an alcoholic haze and then through the bottom of a bottle.
He's a scruffy, drunken, American based Englishman who couldn't cut it at home.
I expected intellegent discourse, not just an attack on the commentator cited in my entry. My point is: Read Allawi's book, listen to the author's interviews. He has much more to say than to simply attack the American intervention (which he does as well). His view from the inside is a disconcerting look at the nature of the country of Iraq and of the inevitibility of serious instability in that country and in the middle East as a whole, American intervention or not. The mess in Iraq is a result of the historical division amongst the people inhabiting that country, compounded by the tyranical rule of Hussien and his thugs, compounded by a series of international mismanaged foreign policy, including, I must admit, US policies missteps, and eventually and currently perpetuated in large part, not by the US, but by the hatred that exists between the various factions within Iraq who see violence and terrorism as a way to gain power and destroy their historical enemies. As I earlier stated, it is a global problem that requires a global solution.
Intelligent discourse?
Okay. All and any of Mr Chrisopher Hitchen's conclusions can only ever be drawn by way of his oft proven poor judgement ~ invariably via the alcoholic haze of which Charles writes.
On Richard's blog it would be rather difficult (though far from impossible), to imagine a worse source to cite.
rIguV4 The best blog you have!
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