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Sunday, September 09, 2007

Bush Must Accept Bloody Reality and Follow our Fumbling Retreat--Brit Reporter

I keep hearing Robert Fisk repeating, "The Americans must leave Iraq, yet they can't leave Iraq." Here, Brit Simon Jenkins in the Independent, shows here why they will. Also interesting is his quote near the end of the article: "It [Iraq] validates the remark of the philosopher John Gray that “modern politics is really a chapter in the history of religion”. Linda

Portion of article below; whole thing here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/simon_jenkins/article2414611.ece
via Palestinian Pundit

"The resolution in Iraq can start only when the state of denial in the White House and Downing Street ends. This hurdle was well illustrated by the false parallel drawn by Bush last month with Vietnam, from which he believed America withdrew too soon.

"In Vietnam America was aiding an ally against an external foe who sought to conquer and enslave it. The American occupation of Iraq has been utterly different. It was doomed not just by its cruelty and ineptitude but because its neoconservative objective - a pro-western, pro-Israeli, capitalist democracy - was ludicrously utopian. Occupation spurred insurgency and destroyed order. The only real parallel was that in both Vietnam and Iraq intervention led to the outcome America least wanted. In the former it expanded communist influence in southeast Asia. In Iraq it is likely to replace a secular, antiIranian regime with a clerical, pro-Iranian one.

"Meanwhile, the degradation of Iraq has made it the most desperate and dangerous country in the world. A once-rich nation is as poor, chaotic and devoid of hope as the worst in sub-Saharan Africa. Two million people have fled their homes. More than half the professional class has disappeared. Those who have been turned back at the borders face famine, disease and murder in camps disowned by the Americans and the British. Utilities are not repaired and operate at or below their level under Saddam Hussein. Cholera has appeared and child mortality is worse than during sanctions in the 1990s. Iraq’s heritage and its ancient Mesopotamian sites are looted.

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