View: Rafia Zakaria
The increasing support for the formation of a Truth Commission by Senator Patrick Leahy to investigate the warrantless wiretapping, torture and other allegations of wrongdoing by the Bush Administration further illustrates the incipient anger of an American public increasingly cognisant of being duped by their leaders
On June 30, 2009, the United States officially withdrew from Iraq, handing over the security apparatus to Iraqi security forces. The day was declared a national holiday in Iraq and propitiously entitled National Sovereignty Day. Celebrations were held all over the country. While American forces will remain embedded in Iraq with Iraqi security forces, all combat operations are set to end in September 2010 with a complete troop withdrawal scheduled for 2011.
Many prognoses have been offered to explain the future of the Iraq following the debacle it has been since the invasion. Some analysts have insisted that the respite provided by the much-touted surge is temporary. It provides only a momentary calm and the country will be ultimately threatened by the dramatic nature of the planned pullout.
The withdrawal of forces is significant; with nearly 50,000 American forces scheduled to be pulled out, Iraq will be left with approximately 128,000 US troops, including 12 combat brigades. The current withdrawal means that American troops will no longer be fighting in Iraqi towns and cities for the most part with a change in their position from commanders to overseers of existing Iraqi forces. This is supposed to bring to an end the fighting initiated nearly seven years ago.
The post-invasion carnage in Iraq is well known and documented. According to estimates, a devastating 101,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the beginning of the conflict. In the past month alone, 517 civilians including 62 children have been killed. Apart from the human casualties, Iraqs service provision, institutional and governance infrastructure, much of which was constructed around the Baath party, has been all but decimated.
According to a report published in The Guardian the billions of dollars of US reconstruction aid have failed to provide the needed respite. Of the nearly USD51 billion spent in rebuilding Iraq, large chunks have gone to reconstructing electric power stations and enabling Iraqi oil fields to begin pumping oil again. Yet on the very day of the American handover, oil companies rejected the stipulations put forth by the Iraqi government, leaving all but one of Iraqs largest oil fields without contracts. There is hope that a second round of bidding will produce better results but the possibility that the reconstruction of Iraq would be paid for by new oil revenues now seems far from likely.
It is undoubted that the American invasion (and occupation) of Iraq has produced extremely tragic results for all aspects of Iraqs existence. Reports of whether things are better or worse depend of course on whom you ask.
But the war has also changed the US. The focus on the impact of war on Iraq has often left unexplored the changes that the war has wrought on the American political psyche. As Americans attempt to gather some elusive celebratory spirit on the 233rd anniversary of their nations birth, it is precisely these changes that are worthy of attention.
One place they were evident was in a conversation aired by the BBC between two ordinary Iraqi civilians, a student and a doctor and two everyday Americans. One of the Americans was a middle-aged woman from Idaho whose son had died fighting in Iraq. I found one snippet of this interesting conversation particularly emblematic. In nearly every question she posed to the Iraqis, MJ, the mother of the dead soldier, seemed to be begging for affirmation that her sons death had indeed not been in vain.
But you are freer now, she plaintively insisted to the Iraqis on the line. We are so proud to have assisted you in ushering in an era of freedom, she would announce. Her comments illustrated two tragic realities. On one hand they represented the cries of a parent who wants desperately to believe that the loss of her sons life was worth something more than a name on a roster of dead and something more than an accidental death in a war that has now been discarded politically as a mistake on every account. The second showed the increasing incongruity of neo-conservative catchphrases like freedom and liberty among the post-Iraq American public. No sooner had she uttered some of these statements that the BBC was barraged by calls not from angry Iraqis but from irate Americans who spoke of her ignorance.
As one war ends and another in Afghanistan continues, there are also suggestions of change in the American forces that are fighting the battle. Confronted with the onerous question of what exactly they are dying for, forces in training are confronting the reality that their arrival in Iraq and now Afghanistan is seen as the latest in a wave of colonial occupiers rather than as forces of liberation.
In the wake of broken promises to Iraq war veterans, losses of thousands of lives the gleaming patriotic promise that galvanised many to join the Army has worn thin and invoked circumspection. It is notable therefore that in its current recruiting brochure the US Army focuses most prominently on the fact that as an active duty soldier you can earn up to $73,000 for a college education. In todays America, it is largely the poor who fight the wars and the army so often described as a colonising force is increasingly African-American and Hispanic rather than white.
This then is one fleeting snapshot of the post-Iraq America; a somewhat chastised nation less apt to swallow tales of American exceptionalism and abstractions like spreading freedom and liberty across the world. An almost palpable cringe is felt nearly every time freedom, liberty and other code words of the neo-conservative lexicon are used. In fact, most media outlets have nearly abandoned such usage.
The increasing support for the formation of a Truth Commission by Senator Patrick Leahy to investigate the warrantless wiretapping, torture and other allegations of wrongdoing by the Bush administration further illustrates the incipient anger of an American public increasingly cognisant of being duped by their leaders. In keeping with this trend as Americans celebrate their traditional red white and blue this year, they also seem to be accepting that the world is indeed grey.
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
The increasing support for the formation of a Truth Commission by Senator Patrick Leahy to investigate the warrantless wiretapping, torture and other allegations of wrongdoing by the Bush Administration further illustrates the incipient anger of an American public increasingly cognisant of being duped by their leaders
On June 30, 2009, the United States officially withdrew from Iraq, handing over the security apparatus to Iraqi security forces. The day was declared a national holiday in Iraq and propitiously entitled National Sovereignty Day. Celebrations were held all over the country. While American forces will remain embedded in Iraq with Iraqi security forces, all combat operations are set to end in September 2010 with a complete troop withdrawal scheduled for 2011.
Many prognoses have been offered to explain the future of the Iraq following the debacle it has been since the invasion. Some analysts have insisted that the respite provided by the much-touted surge is temporary. It provides only a momentary calm and the country will be ultimately threatened by the dramatic nature of the planned pullout.
The withdrawal of forces is significant; with nearly 50,000 American forces scheduled to be pulled out, Iraq will be left with approximately 128,000 US troops, including 12 combat brigades. The current withdrawal means that American troops will no longer be fighting in Iraqi towns and cities for the most part with a change in their position from commanders to overseers of existing Iraqi forces. This is supposed to bring to an end the fighting initiated nearly seven years ago.
The post-invasion carnage in Iraq is well known and documented. According to estimates, a devastating 101,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the beginning of the conflict. In the past month alone, 517 civilians including 62 children have been killed. Apart from the human casualties, Iraqs service provision, institutional and governance infrastructure, much of which was constructed around the Baath party, has been all but decimated.
According to a report published in The Guardian the billions of dollars of US reconstruction aid have failed to provide the needed respite. Of the nearly USD51 billion spent in rebuilding Iraq, large chunks have gone to reconstructing electric power stations and enabling Iraqi oil fields to begin pumping oil again. Yet on the very day of the American handover, oil companies rejected the stipulations put forth by the Iraqi government, leaving all but one of Iraqs largest oil fields without contracts. There is hope that a second round of bidding will produce better results but the possibility that the reconstruction of Iraq would be paid for by new oil revenues now seems far from likely.
It is undoubted that the American invasion (and occupation) of Iraq has produced extremely tragic results for all aspects of Iraqs existence. Reports of whether things are better or worse depend of course on whom you ask.
But the war has also changed the US. The focus on the impact of war on Iraq has often left unexplored the changes that the war has wrought on the American political psyche. As Americans attempt to gather some elusive celebratory spirit on the 233rd anniversary of their nations birth, it is precisely these changes that are worthy of attention.
One place they were evident was in a conversation aired by the BBC between two ordinary Iraqi civilians, a student and a doctor and two everyday Americans. One of the Americans was a middle-aged woman from Idaho whose son had died fighting in Iraq. I found one snippet of this interesting conversation particularly emblematic. In nearly every question she posed to the Iraqis, MJ, the mother of the dead soldier, seemed to be begging for affirmation that her sons death had indeed not been in vain.
But you are freer now, she plaintively insisted to the Iraqis on the line. We are so proud to have assisted you in ushering in an era of freedom, she would announce. Her comments illustrated two tragic realities. On one hand they represented the cries of a parent who wants desperately to believe that the loss of her sons life was worth something more than a name on a roster of dead and something more than an accidental death in a war that has now been discarded politically as a mistake on every account. The second showed the increasing incongruity of neo-conservative catchphrases like freedom and liberty among the post-Iraq American public. No sooner had she uttered some of these statements that the BBC was barraged by calls not from angry Iraqis but from irate Americans who spoke of her ignorance.
As one war ends and another in Afghanistan continues, there are also suggestions of change in the American forces that are fighting the battle. Confronted with the onerous question of what exactly they are dying for, forces in training are confronting the reality that their arrival in Iraq and now Afghanistan is seen as the latest in a wave of colonial occupiers rather than as forces of liberation.
In the wake of broken promises to Iraq war veterans, losses of thousands of lives the gleaming patriotic promise that galvanised many to join the Army has worn thin and invoked circumspection. It is notable therefore that in its current recruiting brochure the US Army focuses most prominently on the fact that as an active duty soldier you can earn up to $73,000 for a college education. In todays America, it is largely the poor who fight the wars and the army so often described as a colonising force is increasingly African-American and Hispanic rather than white.
This then is one fleeting snapshot of the post-Iraq America; a somewhat chastised nation less apt to swallow tales of American exceptionalism and abstractions like spreading freedom and liberty across the world. An almost palpable cringe is felt nearly every time freedom, liberty and other code words of the neo-conservative lexicon are used. In fact, most media outlets have nearly abandoned such usage.
The increasing support for the formation of a Truth Commission by Senator Patrick Leahy to investigate the warrantless wiretapping, torture and other allegations of wrongdoing by the Bush administration further illustrates the incipient anger of an American public increasingly cognisant of being duped by their leaders. In keeping with this trend as Americans celebrate their traditional red white and blue this year, they also seem to be accepting that the world is indeed grey.
Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
