From the Middle East: American Voters Must Not Reward Failure

[ck4829]

How critical is the situation in Iraq? It depends on who you ask and when. Common sense tells us that the situation there has always been critical. In fact, one could dare claim that the country has been stricken with political and social upheaval since the early 1990s, when the US led its ‘coalition of the willing’ to liberate Kuwait.

Unfortunately, since American intent was hardly freedom for Kuwait for its own sake, the violent episode didn’t end right there and then. The war established a completely different mood in the region where a permanent American military presence and subsequent built ups threatened a second, and much larger war.

Unlike the dominant narrative, however, the 1990-91 war never brought peace or tranquility to the region; rather, it agitated internal strife within Iraq, positioning the entire region through the barrel of a gun. Over the next decade, US-led UN economic sanctions wrought untold destruction to the very fabric of Iraqi society, as hundreds of thousands perished because of lack of medicine and food. The US government calculated that a weary Iraq could not withstand a future military action, and that ravished Iraqis would welcome the toppling of the Iraqi dictator.

Much of that came to fruition in March 2003. Although the televised statue toppling near the Palestine Hotel was at best cheesy military propaganda. In truth, many Iraqis were indeed content to see the end of the Saddam era, while some felt utterly uneasy about replacing an Iraqi dictator with an American one; literally.

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The Republicans are trailing in the polls and a deciding factor in that is their botched Iraq strategy; maybe a more pragmatic president who appreciates the intensity of the crisis and is doing his outmost to face it is the best image that Bush’s advisors can conjure up at such short notice. It’s anything but one of Karl Rove’s other ‘genius’ ideas, but is certainly worth the effort. On November 7, however, only the American voter has the power to decide: whether to reward failure or to gracefully search for a way out.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=18049