Cheney faction recaptures US Iraq policy
Leadership of the banned Arab Socialist Baath Party issued a statement commenting on the death-sentence for Saddam, the gist of which is reported by Al-Hayat this morning, (TuesdayNovember 7). The statement said "America and its ally Iran have detonated [with this action] a bomb whose shards will bring down each and every cooperator and agent of theirs in Iraq and outside of Iraq. Their (America and Iran's) idea is that this judgment will cause the Iraqi people to submit."
That's the prologue. There follow at least two main points. The first: "This judgment is nothing but a foolish attempt to halt the spread of the resistance, and to influence its national-liberating course". Specifically: "[This judgment comes just at the time when] there had crystalized a national Iraqi consensus that the return of president Saddam Hussein to the government was the quickest and surest way to restore order and stability and independence". The statement added: "The death-sentence is the result of the president's refusal to bargain with the occupation, and his refusal to return to government on conditions that would have infringed Iraqi sovereignty and national independence".
Let's not at this point try to assess this idea that there may have been a "Saddam card" in someone's deck in the run-up to US talks with the resistance, and move on to the second point.
The second point: If Saddam is in fact executed, then "America should know that there will be absolutely no further negotiations and no new contacts," and that the party will "concentrate its efforts on the support and victory of the policy-line within the party that says that the job of the resistance is the destruction of the American empire on Iraqi soil, by not permitting the American forces to withdraw, and by continuing [America's] economic and human attrition leading to destruction and collapse within America."
Al-Hayat, for its part, focuses its headline on the second point, heading this item as follows: "Baath: Execution of Saddam will cause the rejectionist view to predominate within the resistance."
Needless to say, this whole statement reflects the fact that there have been initial contacts between the resistance and the Americans in Amman, and that these contacts had gotten far enough for the resistance to plan the formation of a common-front committee to participate in them. The banned Baath party was a participant, but not the only participant, in these contacts. See the prior posts here, here and in various other recent posts.
In a seemingly unrelated development, the UK newspaper The Independent reports this morning that US ambassador Khalilzad will be leaving his post in a few months, citing a senior US administration official. Included in this report is the following observation: "While willing to open talks with some Sunni insurgent groups Mr Khalilzad found the most powerful ones wanted to expel the US, not negotiate."
In other words, the sequence of events was apparently this: Khalilzad supports talks with "some" resistance groups (but this would naturally have been opposed by the Cheney faction and others); Saddam is sentenced to hang two days before the Congressional elections in order to give the Republicans a bounce in the polls, but reducing the "some" willing to engage in talks to probably close to zero; Khalilzad resigns.
The conclusion seems inescapable: Recently there have been two US policies, not one, but now there is only one again.
The root cause of the silence of Western media on this whole issue is the following: It isn't permissible to talk about the Iraqi "resistance", it is one of those words we don't use. Hence the initial contacts weren't reported, and now, with superb timing, the question of contacts and negotiations doesn't matter anyway.
That's the prologue. There follow at least two main points. The first: "This judgment is nothing but a foolish attempt to halt the spread of the resistance, and to influence its national-liberating course". Specifically: "[This judgment comes just at the time when] there had crystalized a national Iraqi consensus that the return of president Saddam Hussein to the government was the quickest and surest way to restore order and stability and independence". The statement added: "The death-sentence is the result of the president's refusal to bargain with the occupation, and his refusal to return to government on conditions that would have infringed Iraqi sovereignty and national independence".
Let's not at this point try to assess this idea that there may have been a "Saddam card" in someone's deck in the run-up to US talks with the resistance, and move on to the second point.
The second point: If Saddam is in fact executed, then "America should know that there will be absolutely no further negotiations and no new contacts," and that the party will "concentrate its efforts on the support and victory of the policy-line within the party that says that the job of the resistance is the destruction of the American empire on Iraqi soil, by not permitting the American forces to withdraw, and by continuing [America's] economic and human attrition leading to destruction and collapse within America."
Al-Hayat, for its part, focuses its headline on the second point, heading this item as follows: "Baath: Execution of Saddam will cause the rejectionist view to predominate within the resistance."
Needless to say, this whole statement reflects the fact that there have been initial contacts between the resistance and the Americans in Amman, and that these contacts had gotten far enough for the resistance to plan the formation of a common-front committee to participate in them. The banned Baath party was a participant, but not the only participant, in these contacts. See the prior posts here, here and in various other recent posts.
In a seemingly unrelated development, the UK newspaper The Independent reports this morning that US ambassador Khalilzad will be leaving his post in a few months, citing a senior US administration official. Included in this report is the following observation: "While willing to open talks with some Sunni insurgent groups Mr Khalilzad found the most powerful ones wanted to expel the US, not negotiate."
In other words, the sequence of events was apparently this: Khalilzad supports talks with "some" resistance groups (but this would naturally have been opposed by the Cheney faction and others); Saddam is sentenced to hang two days before the Congressional elections in order to give the Republicans a bounce in the polls, but reducing the "some" willing to engage in talks to probably close to zero; Khalilzad resigns.
The conclusion seems inescapable: Recently there have been two US policies, not one, but now there is only one again.
The root cause of the silence of Western media on this whole issue is the following: It isn't permissible to talk about the Iraqi "resistance", it is one of those words we don't use. Hence the initial contacts weren't reported, and now, with superb timing, the question of contacts and negotiations doesn't matter anyway.
posted by badger at 3:17 AM
1 Comments:
I'll try to answer your last question, avid. I can't answer the earlier ones.
The U.S. does not want the separate groups to come together at all. It is the U.S. that is guilty of the sabotage of any progress in that direction. They use whatever means will work in the circumstances. They want to leave Iraq as weak as possible so there will be no strength there to resist the international oil interests.
Hence, the efforts to partition Iraq and forbidding the use of the word "resistance" in the American press. They want you to call them "insurgents." I see you are accommodating them.
That is the short answer. Read or re-read the materials that have been presented in this blog (at least a few of them).
If you are an "avid student" as you claim, you will do exactly that.
Then, you can get a discussion about your questions. No one is going to hold your hand and recite all of that for you.
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