2005-10-04,+Iraq+Withdrawal+Symptoms,+Tom+Engelhardt,+extract

= **Last One to Leave, Please Turn On the Lights** =


 * By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com**

(Thomas Friedman’s) visit to the exceedingly modest 1,000-man Iraqi Navy, being trained at the port by the Brits, led to the observation (regularly made by Americans about every aspect of the Iraqi military) that "progress is slow. One day last week a boatload of Iraqi sailors decided to take a long lunch break and blew off the afternoon training. Too hot." The problem is that "middle-management Iraqis" won't "take the initiative." To correct this, it seems, would require "a huge cultural shift. Saddam's tyrannical rule over nearly three decades conditioned people here never to assume responsibility."

That certainly explains it; and it's pretty typical of American explanations, all of which might make sense, if those fiendishly clever insurgents weren't just down that road, exercising their ingenuity, taking the initiative like mad, upgrading their skills constantly, and fighting fiercely without the help of American trainers. I guess they just underwent a huge cultural shift that our reporters and pundits have somehow missed.

This stuff would, of course, be priceless and completely comic, if it weren't quite so tragic; if it weren't leading down desperate roads; if so many weren't dying in Iraq…

… What if the "huge cultural shift" Friedman mentions was us? What if we turned out the lights and smashed the switch. What if we invaded a country under false pretenses; occupied it; began building huge, permanent military bases on its territory; let its capital and provincial cities be looted; disbanded its military; provided no services essential to modern life; couldn't even produce oil for gas tanks in an oil-rich land; bombed some of its cities, destroyed parts or all of others; put tens of thousands of its inhabitants in U.S. military-controlled jails (where prisoners would be subjected to barbaric tortures and humiliations); provided next to no jobs; opened the economy to every kind of depredation; set foreign corporations to loot the country; invited in tens of thousands of private "security contractors," heavily armed and under no legal constraints; and then asked large numbers of Iraqis, desperate for jobs that could be found nowhere else, to join a new "Iraqi" military force meant to defend a "government" that could hardly leave an American fortified enclave in its own capital. After that, our military trainers, our generals, our politicians, our reporters, and our pundits all began fretting about this force for not fighting fiercely, being independent, taking the initiative, or "standing up." The question should be, but isn't: Standing up for what? …

This phenomenon -- two sides that seem to come from different planets: our natives who just don't or can't or won't fight, who need years and vast sums of money and equipment, and then hardly stand up without an American "backbone" nearby; and theirs, who fight willingly, eagerly, fiercely, bravely, and with initiative -- was also a phenomenon of the Vietnam War era. Then, American officers regularly spoke admiringly of the other side, the Vietcong, the NVA, "Charlie," as brave, resourceful fighters and had scorn for "our" Vietnamese. But generally, even when, as in Friedman's piece, the descriptions of Iraqis who fight and those who don't can be found side by side, no comparisons are made, and the farce of attempting to "stand up" an Iraqi Army simply goes on.

Redacted extract from: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=26174