The Iraq Occupation and John McCain

Having backed himself into a corner with his support of the so-called security "surge" in Iraq, Presidential hopeful Senator John McCain has spent time on publicity stunts and various attempts to verbally weasel out of totally off base remarks concerning "progress" in Iraq. Not surprisingly, his most recent speech was no exception, and illustrates just how wrong and dishonest he is being about the Iraq occupation.

In his speech before the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), McCain spun together a mix of false and illogical statements to support his case for continuing the unpopular, brutal and fruitless occupation of Iraq.

McCain stated that "For the first time in my visits to Iraq, our delegation was able to drive - not fly by helicopter - from the airport to downtown Baghdad." A few sentences later, McCain stated that US forces are now able to "maintain a presence in a neighborhood cleared of militias and terrorists, and hold the ground they have retaken rather than return to base, after which the enemy returns to impose its will again on a defenseless population."

McCain also said the following:

"America has a vital interest in preventing the emergence of Iraq as a Wild West for terrorists, similar to Afghanistan before 9/11. By leaving Iraq before there is a stable Iraqi governing authority we risk precisely this, and the potential consequence of allowing terrorists sanctuary in Iraq is another 9/11 or worse."

If you thought that McCain didn't have time to baselessly smear Democrats, you would be wrong. McCain said:

"Democrats who voted to authorize this war, and criticized the failed strategy that has led us to this perilous moment, have the same responsibility I do, to offer support when that failure is recognized and the right strategy is proposed and the right commanders take the field to implement it or, at the least, to offer an alternative strategy that has some relationship to reality."

McCain then derided Democrats for their satisfaction at having passed the latest Iraq supplemental spending bill with dates for withdrawal included-McCain said, "What were they celebrating? Defeat? Surrender?"

Maybe someone should remind the 70 year old McCain that it is already like the "wild west" in Iraq, and that being able to drive from the airport rather than fly is almost meaningless. For that matter, temporarily clearing out insurgents from neighborhoods will not make the violence suddenly disappear either, nor will the increased US troop numbers. After all, people tend not to like foreign occupiers, and polls suggest that Iraqi opposition to the US occupation is rather high.

Also, McCain's dishonesty and hypocrisy in accusing Democratic proposals as having "no relationship to reality", is astounding when one considers his recent comments and activities. This is the same McCain who made the ridiculous assertion on CNN two weeks ago that things in Iraq had improved so much that the commanding US general in Iraq travels in an unarmed vehicle through Baghdad-arguably the most dangerous city in the world, especially for the commander of an unpopular occupying power. After McCain's comments were widely debunked, he then attempted to convince us of all the amazing progress, by traveling to Iraq, surrounding himself with 100 US troops and air cover, and going on a shopping trip through a marketplace just outside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Contrary to McCain's fantasy of progress in Iraq and his belief that more violence is the answer, the Democrats in Congress have proposed a completely legitimate, reality based "alternative strategy" that is the closest we have come to a real solution to this failed occupation - that is to send a message to the president that support has run out, and that in fact, the best course of action is to end the occupation in one years time.

Despite the accusations of McCain, a phased withdrawal from Iraq, which is what Democrats are proposing, does not mean that greater chaos will necessarily ensue, and certainly does not constitute and sort of "surrender". A stronger effort at promoting diplomacy between Iraq's competing groups, coinciding with a phased withdrawal of the US occupation offers the best possible chance at achieving a peaceful solution to the strife in Iraq. Furthermore, International cooperation, especially from Iraq's neighbors, can help the diplomatic process, as well as assist in policing the situation on the ground.

McCain has gone to great lengths to literally scare American's toward his point of view by exaggerating al Qaeda's role in Iraq He claimed in his speech that, "It is impossible to separate sectarian violence from the war against al Qaeda.", and that "al Qaeda is following an explicit strategy to foment civil war in Iraq." McCain believes that the "only way to reduce and finally end sectarian violence is to provide greater security to the population than we have in the past, as we are doing now in Baghdad; to encourage Iraqis to abandon their reliance on local militias, and to destroy al Qaeda and other truly irreconcilable enemies of the United States and the Iraqi people,".

The above statements highlight another "reality" that Senator McCain chooses to not see and/or admit - that the US occupation is what drives the majority of the violence in Iraq. It is entirely possible, in fact likely, that US troops leaving will alone result in a dramatic decrease in sectarian violence and a purging of al Qaeda-type elements. Going a step further, Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi exile and former prisoner of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, has been suggesting that sectarian violence in Iraq has been literally manufactured, not by al Qaeda, but rather by the US occupation, which from the onset chose to emphasize sectarian division in forming Iraq's new government, in the process fostering the struggle for power we see today. Zangana recounts in a Democracy Now interview on March 9^th of last year, that when she was growing up in Iraq, there was not an emphasis on whether people were Sunni of Shia. In fact, she states that she was completely unaware of the religious persuasion of her longtime good friend and childhood next door neighbor, until discovering he was a Christian just last year while arguing over the US occupation, which her Christian friend supports.

In her most recent article, Zangana eloquently describes the situation today, writing that the "Occupation has left no room for any initiative independent of the officially sanctioned political process; for a peaceful opposition or civil society that could create networks to bridge the politically manufactured divide." She states that mosques are the only means of maintaining these "networks" in the absence of a strong government, and that all such efforts are "regularly crushed" by US forces. She describes one such instance in the article:

"On Tuesday, troops from the Iraqi army, supported by US helicopters, raided a mosque in the heart of old Baghdad. The well-respected Muazzin Abu Saif and another civilian were executed in public. Local people were outraged and attacked the troops. At the end of the day, 34 people had been killed, including a number of women and children. As usual, the summary execution and the massacre that followed were blamed on insurgents. The military statement said US and Iraqi forces were continuing to "locate, identify, and engage and kill insurgents targeting coalition and Iraqi security forces in the area"."

Zangana asserts that the insurgency is not only driven by "ideological, religious and patriotic convictions", but in large part by the brutal US occupation. It is indeed hard to ignore this, although men like Senator McCain continue to insist that the US occupation is the best hope for security in Iraq. In fact, the only way to believe that the US presence in Iraq is positive is to ignore the thousands of raids on innocent Iraqi homes, the thousands who have been arrested and sometimes tortured for crimes not committed, and the thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of innocents killed as a direct result of the US invasion and ill-conceived occupation.

Following this line of logic, the US occupation is the stumbling block to progress in Iraq, despite John McCain's scare mongering about terrorists following us home, as well as the many Democrats who frame this as merely a civil war that US forces became tangled up in. The reality we must all accept is that the only path to true peace and stability in Iraq is for the US occupation to end.