Imperial
Autocracy in U.S.
Occupied Iraq
Peter Baofu, Ph.D.
pbaofu@yahoo.com
President Bush claimed on numerous occasions that one main objective of the
U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is to liberate the Iraqi people from
Saddam Hussein and to set up a democracy for them. But the U.S.
administration who now rules Iraq has little to do with democracy. Perhaps
three reasons suffice to clarify this point.
1.
RULING LIKE AN AUTHORITARIAN
Mr. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, is more concerned
with security and stability for a pro-American post-Hussein government than
the establishment of a government by the Iraqi people, for the Iraqi people,
and of the Iraqi people. A good instance is his plan to have an unelected
council draft Iraq's constitution and to form a political council whose
appointments he would control, as reported by Charles Clover and Roula
Khalaf (in the July 5th & 6th 2003 issues of The Financial Times).
Bremer also opposes any elements in the interim government which are not
pro-American, and obvious examples include the Baath party, the Ansar
al-Islam group, the Sunni radicals, the Fedayeen militia and military
units, and any others who are critical to the U.S. invasion and occupation
(as reported by Brian Knowlton in the July 06, 2003 edition of The New York Times).
But the most influential opposition to the U.S. occupation and
administration in Iraq comes from the most senior cleric of Iraq's Shia
majority, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who recently issued a religious ruling
called fatwa (which is rather rare but highly symbolic), opposing the U.S.
occupation and plan to set up a pro-American ruling council; instead, he
called for a general election to choose representatives of the Iraqi people
(as reported in the June, 2003 issue of The Muslim News). But Mr. Bremer has
no desire for a general election, because it may lead to an Islamic Iraq.
The point here is that Mr. Bremer's plan is essentially anti-democratic,
since a democracy, by definition, cannot be genuine unless it incorporates
opposition groups. But his plan for Iraq's future is to set up a
pro-American puppet. If Hussein did not allow opposition groups critical to
his administration, Mr. Bremer does the same in not allowing opposition
groups critical to his version of a post-Hussein pro-American
administration. It is no wonder that there slowly emerges a well-organized
resistance
movement against the U.S. occupation in the country (just as similar
resistance movements emerged in Nazi occupied territories of Europe during
WWII).
2.
ENFORCING LIKE A BULLY
Perhaps his autocratic rule can be illustrated better by the bullying law
enforcement undertaken by U.S. troops on a daily basis. Ordinary Iraqis can
be searched, detained, and interrogated without due process, whenever called
for in the name of security and stability. Surely, in light of the growing
resistance movement in the country and its attacks on U.S. troops, this
tactic has some merit. Yet, all so often, the U.S. troops are too willing to
engage in rough measures, whenever there is any intelligence tip, however
small, for any alleged resistance fighters or hidden weapons.
Some alternative news on different occasions showed some ordinary Iraqis
having tears in their eyes and being in a state of shock, when searched,
detained, or interrogated by U.S. troops for alleged hidden weapons
and suspected fighters, both in their homes and the streets. And some were
hurt and even died in the process in some incidents. There is fear that some
rough techniques (which were used against detainees in the invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan) might have likewise been used in Iraq, and they
include depriving prisoners of sleep, withholding medicine and forcing them
to stand at length in painful positions, and softening up (e.g., beating and
hooding), as reported by Matthew Happold in the April 11, 2003 issue of The
Guardian and Peter Slevin in the June 27, 2003 issue of The Washington Post.
For instance, alleged illegal vendors were seen being
hooded by U.S. troops in Baghdad, as reported by Jane Arraf and others in
the July 10, 2003 issue of CNN.com.
If all of that were to occur to American citizens, there would be total
outrage. But Iraqis are not Americans (or British, for that matter); it is
no wonder that they are bullied like that, without concerns of their civil
rights. Many ordinary Iraqi folks therefore live in fear too, under U.S.
occupation, and if many of them do not speak out, it is because of this fear
of heavily armed foreigners in their own country.
Stability like this does not mean legitimacy, since these poor ordinary
folks have little choice but to yield to the foreign conquerors for their
own
individual survival.
As an Iraqi resident in Baghdad, Ihsarim Hassan, angrily said, "When we see
[the American troops] in the streets, we feel mad, our hearts ache because
they came here as invaders and occupiers," as reported by Hector Tobar in the
July 08 issue of The Los Angeles Times.
3.
LIVING LIKE A KING
Even more embarrassingly, Bush liked to ridicule
Hussein's rich lifestyle, but one of the first things
the U.S. troops did when occupying Iraq was to take
over the best hotels and palaces formerly occupied by
Hussein for the their own comfort. For
instance, the beautiful Palestine Hotel in downtown
Baghdad is now occupied by U.S. troops as their headquarters (as reported in the March 15 issue of The
New York Times).
And other palaces are major targets for the U.S.
troops as well. Molly Moore wrote an article entitled, "Holiday
in a Hussein Palace" in the July 5, 2003 issue of The
Washington Post and reported that the U.S. troops even
organized a huge party on the Fourth of July at the
palace complex formerly occupied by Hussein. When
questioned about the appropriateness of this way of
lifestyle when the real mission of American occupation
is supposed to build Iraqi democracy and not to repeat
the excess of Hussein's lifestyle, "military
officials discounted concerns that local Iraqis, who
still cannot visit the [palace] complex, might view
the U.S. presence as being just as imperious as that
of Hussein."
This imperial way does not just reflect the thoughts of many top U.S.
military officials. Even ordinary U.S. soldiers have
no scruples about living like that. Staff Sgt. Isaac
Day, for instance, even joked in an email to his
daughter Doe back home that "I'm not a king. I'm a
soldier living in a palace," while Spec. Michael Chap
said, "It's like watching `Lifestyles of the Rich and
Famous'. You watch that and you know how we're
living."
The U.S. troops commit the same sin against the
ordinary Iraqis as Saddam Hussein before them. I
wonder what the ordinary Iraqi folks would think if
they were allowed to enter these fanciful hotels and
palaces and discover what the U.S. troops have been
doing there, as the so-called liberators of their
own country.
CONCLUSION
Bush's speech on the Fourth of July compared the
so-called U.S. liberation of Iraq from Hussein in
2003 with the U.S. fight for independence from the
British Crown in 1776. It is more correct to say,
however, that, for many Iraqis, what they need now is
an Iraqi liberation from the U.S. occupation (or the
Iraqi fight for independence from the U.S.
occupation). Bush's rhetoric aside, a major lesson to
be learned here is that one of the major functions of
government is lying.
George Orwell, author of the influential novel titled
1984, wrote in Politics and the English Language
that "[p]olitical language is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity
to pure wind." Remember this.
Note: More about this global immorality in the name of
morality is in Peter Baofu's book titled
THE FUTURE OF
CAPITALISM AND DEMOCRACY (Maryland: The University
Press of America, 2002).
