Report Card for US Invasion of Iraq in its 5th Anniversary: Astounding Success for War Beneficiaries, Disaster for the US Nation State, Death and Destruction of Iraq By Hassan El-Najjar

Report Card for US Invasion of Iraq in its 5th Anniversary:

Astounding Success for War Beneficiaries, Disaster for the US Nation State, Death and Destruction of Iraq

By Hassan El-Najjar

ccun.org, March 19, 2008

Five years ago, the US forces invaded Iraq for the two false accusations of linkage with Al-Qaeda and possession of weapons of mass destruction, both of which were refuted by bipartisan committees investigating the war.

The war was bipartisan, initiated by a Republican administration but supported in Congress by both Democrats and Republicans alike. After their victory in 2006 Congressional elections, Democrats did not stop funding the war, as their constituents expected.

With regard to presidential candidates, there has been a difference. The Republican frontrunner, John McCain, pledged to continue the Iraq war for another 100 years. Democratic rivals, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, pledged to end the war in 2009.

The Winners:

No doubt the war has its own constituents and beneficiaries, who have been beating the drums of war since 1990. These are neither republicans nor democrats. Rather, they are the beneficiaries of the well-entrenched war industry in the US, and their representatives in government, media, and religious institutions.

The Bush administration has added about $5 trillion to the national debt. Almost one trillion dollars a year, happily approved by the rubber-stamp Democratic-Republican Congress. These were lucrative contracts accorded by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to members of the ruling capitalist class.

This class donates to religious institutions and to politicians from both parties. It also indoctrinates the public through its privately-owned corporate media, calming them down to be pro-war or at least to coexist with the war culture.

The second major group of beneficiaries is the oil industry, which has reaped hundreds of billions of dollars in the last five years. First, it destroyed the Iraq Oil Company and replaced it. Second, it has been looting the American people with continuous rising of gas prices, as they are paying now more than $3 per gallon out from less than $1 before.

Prices of crude oil are decided in the New York Merchandise Exchange, not in the Middle East or anywhere else, which is an arbitrary process to make fortunes for members of the ruling capitalist class, as Sean Hewitt put it.

The third major beneficiaries of the US invasions and wars in the Middle East, particularly on Iraq, are the Israelis and their Zionist supporters. The Israelis received tens of billions of dollars in direct assistance from the Bush administration. They had their strong adversary, the Iraqi Arab nationalist state, destroyed by the United States, without the loss of one Israeli soldier.

Zionist supporters of Israel, like Wolfowitz, Feith, and Pearl, have tightened their control on US foreign policy, to the extent of planning for the war and supervising its execution. After the war, they have been successful in leading a national and international effort to starve the Palestinian people and support the Israeli occupation government in its continuous war to subjugate Palestinians indefinitely.

Inside the US, they have imposed the Israeli vision of security on the American people, transforming the US into a police state, with a lot of spying on citizens and silencing of dissent. More important was the Bush administration "hands off" policy towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which gave successive Israeli governments a free hand to do whatever they wanted to the Palestinian people. This included systematic targeting of civilians, massacres, assassinations, kidnapping of citizens and elected officials, closures, annexation of land, demolishing of homes, and the siege of Gaza to starve Palestinians until they surrender.

The Bush administration not only funded these Israeli atrocities and crimes against humanity but also shielded the Israeli occupation Apartheid government from any criticism in the UN.

The Losers:

The first losers of the US invasion of Iraq have been the Iraqi people, whose state was destroyed, their cultural entity was looted and dismantled, and whose national unity has been blown up. Iraqis have been divided into two major camps, one fighting with the US occupation forces and the other fighting US forces and Iraqi forces fighting with them. Relentless efforts have been made to divide Iraqis into racial and ethnic enclaves and regions.

The outcome has been the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of millions, at least three millions of them have become refugees in other countries. Horrors of wars, like Abu Ghraib and ethnic cleansing attacks, will scar Iraqis for generations.

For other nations and peoples of the world, it has been a very sad news indeed. It has opened the door for powerful nations to invade and destroy smaller and less powerful nations and take over their resources. It has been a big blow to the hope of resolving world conflicts peacefully in the United Nations.

The second major losers have been the American people, who have been forced to be $5 trillion in debt to their ruling capitalist class. Their children and grandchildren will be paying for this debt and the enormous amounts of interests resulting from it. Many Americans also paid the ultimate price of this war, as about four thousand soldiers have been killed and about thirty thousands more have sustained serious injuries. Moreover, Americans have been subjected to a continuous state of insecurity in order to justify the continuation of the war. Last but not least, Americans have been manipulated to surrender their civil rights, various constitutional rights, and were made to tolerate violations of rights of fellow Americans.

Finally, the United States as a nation state has been a major loser in the permanent war strategy of the ruling elite, who have their own global agenda, not necessarily serving the United States. With this huge and unprecedented national debt of $9.6 trillion so far, the US national economy has been hit so hard that it may lead to financial collapse.

The US dollar is collapsing. It has lost about forty percent of its value and nobody knows when the sinking will stop. Apologists and propagandists try to tell us that this is good for the US exports. There is no evidence that this is happening. Otherwise, we would have a recovering economy by now. The stock market has been plunging too. There is no evidence whatsoever indicating any benefits from the war for the vast majority of the American people or for the US as a nation state.

A devalued dollar means devalued or even junk savings. This is a very dangerous possibility. It destroys the incentive to work hard, take risk, or innovate, which would expedite the process of the economic collapse.

The lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union EMPIRE is that when it happens the US forces in the 700 military basis overseas will not even be able to come back in a dignified way. Soviet troops stayed in Germany until the German government helped building apartments for them in Russia. All the Soviet arsenal of nuclear weapons could not prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union. People don't eat tanks or missiles.

So, yes there have been beneficiaries of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. They will continue planning, executing, and defending war now and in the future until they bankrupt the US, then they move with their families probably to China or Europe. The US invasion of Iraq and any other US invasion or war is good news and a great or even an astounding success for these war beneficiaries.

But the war has been horrendous in its effect on the losers, who have to wake up and do something about their own destiny. Otherwise, they have only themselves to blame.

The US middle and working classes need to get out to the streets demanding an immediate end to the war. Waiting until a democrat wins presidential elections may not be the right thing to do. God knows what tricks and manipulations may be applied in the coming months to prevent this from happening.

For those middle class and working class supporters of the war, who tolerate the violation of their fellow Americans' civil rights, wake up!

You're losers too, if wars continue.

Think about what's happening to America home and abroad.

Is this what you want to leave behind to your children?

Vote against war mongers!

PEACE!

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