by Charles Coughlin

Believe it or not neocons have decided that we don’t have an “insurgency” problem in Iraq; we have a “reporting” problem. Those darn journalists keep mentioning the almost daily car bombings with dozens of victims and they don’t focus on all the “good things” our military and Halliburton have been accomplishing such as schools, sanitation plants and electricity (which the Iraqis had BEFORE we bombed their country). One neocon windbag was bloviating that the casualty total in June was surpassed by a couple previous months so therefore things are just fine. If the best the neocons can do is compare the current disaster with the Ramadan offensive, then they’ve got nothing and they should quit insulting our intelligence with their attempts to spin a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

George Bush’s solution is the same as that of any colonial empire: He wants the local natives to fight his war for him. A puppet government that is suitably pro-West will be engineered one way or the other. We tried this in Vietnam. One corrupt regime after another ruled in Saigon until the communists finally overthrew them –replacing crooks with butchers. Certain nations can’t be successfully occupied such as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. If George Bush were an historical scholar instead of ignoramus, we could have avoided a highly predictable quagmire in Iraq. Ominously, the occupation of Afghanistan is beginning to deteriorate and we could easily have two quagmires on our hands.

If the natives in Iraq fail to elect a pro-West Chalabi clone, then electronic voting machines –just like the ones used in Ohio– will be shipped in and programmed so that a kosher candidate “wins.” Unfortunately for Bush and his neocon pals, the Iraqi rebels don’t accept the election results and violence has grown worse since the election. The Iraqi recruits are seen as unreliable. A large percentage is suspected of being rebel spies and another large percentage deserts when the shooting starts. The incredibly high unemployment in Iraq since the “liberation” is the main reason for most of the recruits. The new Iraqi army can’t defeat the rebels even with American help. They will collapse like a house of cards, much like the South Vietnamese government once the American troops leave. All the American casualties will be for nothing.

A recent article from antiwar.com quotes a correspondent who observed “I’ve been back one day, and the airport road was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We had to go around a fire-fight between mujahideen and Americans while Iraqi forces sat in the shade of date palms on the side of the road, their rifles resting across their laps.” The same article notes “There is so much in that paragraph that debunks the mindless talk of ‘victory’ and ’staying the course,’ starting with the alleged eagerness of the Iraqis to fight for their aspiring ‘democracy’: the part about them sitting in the shade of date palms, while Americans did the fighting, tells us all we need to know about how the Iraqis will ’stand up’ so we can ’stand down,’ as the president puts it.”

(Originally posted July 7th, 2005.)