where is the marshall plan for iraq? part I

NSS Staff

NSS had shown in our piece our piece titled “East vs West: Who are the enlightened ones?,” that the US bases its foreign policies on an ideology reflecting the radical Enlightenment school that gave rise to the bloody French Revolution and the murderous rampaging of Bonaparte that almost destroyed Europe and Russia. This ideology – like all ideologies really – far from solving problems, did nothing but create chaos. It denied and even punished traditional thinking, common sense and nature while purporting to adopt science as its basis. Human compassion was not rewarded, it was punished.
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What the US did to Iraq is a perfect example of this same ideology in action today having survived the centuries intact. Only time separates Americans from receiving the same kind of abuse themselves that they tolerated in faraway places against people of a different culture, language and religion. Where was the outrage of pro-life groups? Where were the mass marches on Washington? Clearly Christian love and compassion only extended from sea to shining sea.

Recently Rex Tillerson told the Iraqi government that the PMF (Popular Mobilization Force) should “go home” now that IS is under control in the country.

The irony of this was not lost on those who know the history of Iraq and of the PMF. Firstly, in 2015 the US had swung into Iraq to launch combat light against ISIS, allowing the terrorists to take over much of the country before taking this decision, allowing the terrorists to mingle with the civilian population and indirectly causing countless subsequent civilian deaths in the effort to extricate them. When it was Trump’s turn, he bombed Mosul almost into total oblivion, inspiring an article titled Trump's anti-ISIS war keeps killing huge numbers of civilians. Trump then insensitively claimed he had “liberated” the city. PM Al-Badi took the precaution to demand no US boots on the ground. Tillerson therefore had no authority to issue orders there. The pretext for Tillerson’s brash statement was that the PMF is supposedly Iran-backed. Now it can be assumed that Iran has clout in the PMF, as it does everywhere in the Shiite world and in Palestine, but this – originally volunteer – force is largely an eclectic group comprising Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites, Yazidis and Christians, among others. It is not an Iranian force, at variance with Neocon propaganda.

The point is, the US Establishment has created another of its famous myths designed for the express purpose of shoving another war down the public throat. This time the myth is supercharged by the fact that Donald Trump himself insists, absurdly, that Iran – which we know played a decisive role in defeating ISIS in both Syria and Iraq – is the “biggest state sponsor of terror” (despite the fact that all terrorist entities operating, for example, in Europe, are Sunni Wahhabists while Iran is Shiite-dominated) and that Trump enjoys the questionable reputation of being the president who is anti-Establishment and wants to “drain the swamp.”

The thing is, much of Trump’s support was also from Americans who were sick and tired of war, and yet his anti-Iran rhetoric sounds a lot like war mongering. Further, his chumminess with the Saudi dictators looks like the same old kowtowing to these supporters of Al-Qaeda and other terrorists that we have come to expect from US presidents. Yet, while nothing substantive has changed under Trump, we are assured that Trump has nothing to do with any of this warlike behavior. “They” have “got something on him” and “his hands are tied.” But that is not far from what we used to hear about GW Bush – until the disastrous results of the Afghan and Iraqi wars became too apparent to hide the stench any longer.

Speaking of Iraqi history, we need to keep in mind that for several decades now, it’s been dominated by Washington, DC, something that was not lost on the Iraqis.

The shapers of US war policies (under color of “fighting terror”) have firmly established a reputation of being heartless, having no reverence for life, for history and antiquity, for the intricacies of foreign cultures and traditions, for beauty and the achievements of the peoples whose homes it invades, and for their welfare. One of the first mishaps after the US “won” the Iraq war was the large-scale sack of a famous Baghdad museum, where priceless art treasures were lost forever. No effort was made the invaders to stop, apprehend or deter the authors of this senseless ransacking. Washington’s obtuse callousness was jolting.

However, none of this should come as a surprise, as recent leaked government documents show that the US and the Saudis were, as has long been expected, behind the terror that the US is now “fighting” in Iraq and Syria. Here are 3 examples of official statements and leaked official documents illustrating this:

A leaked NSA memo showing US-Saudi complicity with and prior knowledge of a terror attack on Damascus international airport.

Diplomatic flight records leaked to a Bulgarian reporter reveal arms shipments to terrorists from the US and Gulf countries.

The testimony of an ex Qatari prime minister indicates that the Saudis, Turkey and the US colluded to fund Al-Qaeda and destroy Syria.

The skullduggery had already started when the US supported Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran back in the early 80s, in the first attempt to avenge the US for the seizure of the Tehran US embassy and staff during the Islamic Revolution. One might say the US was justified in seeking revenge. But one would be forgetting the CIA’s obtuse meddling that led to the ouster of popular president Mosaddeq in 1954 and subsequent US backing of the unpopular Shah, whose repressive policies led to the brutal murder of many anti-regime protesters.

This US-backed invasion of Iran by Iraq and ensuing 8 years of war led to a debilitation of the Iraqi economy, which never recovered and was further exacerbated by the US occupation starting in 2003 at the end of the US-Iraq war.

At this point Bush appointed Paul Bremer to head the Coalition Provisional Authority. Estimated civilian war casualties of at least 200,000 civilians were small change for Washington policy makers. They dreamed of a country populated by the living dead, and Bremer was their go-to man.

Now whenever older people think of how America treats defeated nations, many of them immediately think of the leniency and generosity of US economic policy toward Germany and Japan after WW II. The Marshall Plan awarded postwar Germany the wherewithal not only to pick itself up but also to quickly become a booming economy, which, as a result, is now the no. 1 economy in Europe and the no. 2 exporter in the world after China. Japan recovered more slowly with US assistance but eventually became a leading powerhouse in Asia.
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Those days of US largesse toward defeated enemies are most definitely over. Ironically, the US had shown its past leniency to countries that had in fact attacked US interests and allies. Ironically, now that the US has been attacking countries unprovoked, its generosity is gone, replaced by an irrational meanness that looks a lot like hate, and not just toward the leaders who refused to bow before the Washington and Wall Street elite – for their sin in each case was to run their economies and their public policies without consulting with Big Brother in Washington – but toward the hapless little people who by and large had nothing to do with the waywardness of their leaders vis-à-vis the US. This vengefulness is the MO of the people we have come to identify as Neoconservatives.