Iraqi bishop says U.S. betrayed country, Christians suffer most

[Cojuanco]

The only Chaldean Catholic Church in Basra, Iraq requires 24/7 security. Is there any mosque in the good US of A that equires that much security? Islam tolerance at its finest.

It has probably little to do with Islam and everything to do with being a Third World, corrupt and reeling from the impact of civil war.

 

[Zeemeermin]

I don’t agree that Iraq is worse off now than it was under Hussein, but for Iraqi Catholics, the Bush Administration let them down in a big way. They have been targeted by extremists and have been harassed, demonized, injured and killed with impunity.

It’s like someone hits you in the knee with the little hammer, isn’t it? People just cannot stop blaming Bush for everything. If Bush were still President, we would not be pulling out of Iraq prematurely! Iraq’s commanding general said a couple weeks ago that it is too soon and we should not be leaving yet! The decision to pull out all direct combat troops now, and the rest next year, is OBAMA’s and has nothing to do with Bush. Barry is pandering to his radical left base, whom he has to appease in order to have anyone left supporting him. That is why, regardless of what the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan say, publicly no less, about how they are not ready for us to leave, he will keep us on schedule to leave and pull our troops out, ready or not. And the wholesale slaughter and chaos that happens afterward will be blood on HIS hands. And the lives of our soldiers who died for a mission Obama will not allow us to complete… that’s blood on his hands too. You do NOT waste the sacrifices of American servicemembers! Or the allies who fight with us.

 

[Dale_M]

It’s like someone hits you in the knee with the little hammer, isn’t it? People just cannot stop blaming Bush for everything.

If you by this you mean discuss his record, then yes. As a democracy, I think it is acceptable, even advisable, to review a president’s decisions, both good and bad, while he was in office.

If Bush were still President, we would not be pulling out of Iraq prematurely!

What are you basing that claim on? President Bush signed a treat with Iraq in 2008 which set the deadline of a total withdrawal of US forces by the end of 2011. President Obama isn’t moving any quicker than that.

Iraq’s commanding general said a couple weeks ago that it is too soon and we should not be leaving yet!

And he is probably right. I certainly worry about what will happen in Iraq during the next two to three years. However, if he is really concerned, he needs to get Iraqi politicians on his side, because Iraqi politics are the main cause behind the ousting of US forces.

The decision to pull out all direct combat troops now, and the rest next year, is OBAMA’s and has nothing to do with Bush.

You are uninformed. Here is a copy of the treaty which the US administration, under Bush, signed.
graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20081119_SOFA_FINAL_AGREED_TEXT.pdf

The key dates are in Article 24:

1. All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than
   December 31, 2011.
2. All United States combat forces shall withdraw from Iraqi cities, villages, and
   localities no later than the time at which Iraqi Security Forces assume full responsibility
   for security in an Iraqi province, provided that such withdrawal is completed no later than
   June 30, 2009.

Now, the treaty is for three years, so presumably a new treaty could be drafted and signed allowing US troops to stay longer. However, Iraqi political opposition to such an extension is just as fierce, if not stronger, than it was two years ago.
csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0827/Iraq-road-map-the-new-US-ambassador-explains-hurdles

The roadblock to a continued US presence is not US politicians or US politics. Iraqi politicians and politics are the main causes of this withdrawal.

 

[JW10631]

It’s like someone hits you in the knee with the little hammer, isn’t it? People just cannot stop blaming Bush for everything. If Bush were still President, we would not be pulling out of Iraq prematurely! Iraq’s commanding general said a couple weeks ago that it is too soon and we should not be leaving yet! The decision to pull out all direct combat troops now, and the rest next year, is OBAMA’s and has nothing to do with Bush. Barry is pandering to his radical left base, whom he has to appease in order to have anyone left supporting him. That is why, regardless of what the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan say, publicly no less, about how they are not ready for us to leave, he will keep us on schedule to leave and pull our troops out, ready or not. And the wholesale slaughter and chaos that happens afterward will be blood on HIS hands. And the lives of our soldiers who died for a mission Obama will not allow us to complete… that’s blood on his hands too. You do NOT waste the sacrifices of American servicemembers! Or the allies who fight with us.

Let me be clear to you. Get things straight or get out.

I voted for Bush twice.

In Iraq, the US military did little or nothing to protect the Iraqi Christians that anyone knows of. The US Army took a Chaldean Catholic seminary and used it as an operations base.

The Iraqi Catholics should have been allowed to come to the US. They should have been allowed to come here - all of them if they wanted to come.

Where were Bush, Cheney, and the rest when all of this went on?

I have no love or respect for Barack Obama. I consider him to be a dullard, an incompetent fool, a blowhard, a golddigger and a sympathizer of Marxists and Muslim radicals. He was able to read speeches and that along with the financial crisis and McCain’s incompetence, got Obama elected.

 

[gus]

This is going very off-topic, but…

Anger at U.S. support of authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, at least for me, derives from a desire not to see U.S. financial and moral support go to any party made unworthy of it by reprehensible conduct, whether the regime be pro-Western or Marxist in orientation. Being an accessory to or aider and abeter of murder is quite distasteful no matter how many actually die. And is it really possible to know for certain in most cases that any authoritarian regime the U.S. backed was actually less vicious than a hypothetical communist substitute? (One counterexample that comes to mind, however, is that of 1940s China–Chang-Kai Chek would have been infinitely preferable to the bloodthirsty Mao Zedong.)

And it’s ironic you bring up Pol Pot and his henchmen to make your point. It was full-scale U.S. military intervention in Vietnam–and more specifically, the huge bombing campaign over Cambodia that followed–which eventually set the stage for the Khmer Rouge to come to power in 1975.

Ironicaliy it was the communist Hanoi regime that overtrew POL POT
while NIxon and Kissenger where buddying up tp POl’s benifactor China

remember China actually invaded Viet Nam

 

[Trebor135]

It’s like someone hits you in the knee with the little hammer, isn’t it? People just cannot stop blaming Bush for everything. If Bush were still President, we would not be pulling out of Iraq prematurely! Iraq’s commanding general said a couple weeks ago that it is too soon and we should not be leaving yet! The decision to pull out all direct combat troops now, and the rest next year, is OBAMA’s and has nothing to do with Bush. Barry is pandering to his radical left base, whom he has to appease in order to have anyone left supporting him. That is why, regardless of what the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan say, publicly no less, about how they are not ready for us to leave, he will keep us on schedule to leave and pull our troops out, ready or not. And the wholesale slaughter and chaos that happens afterward will be blood on HIS hands. And the lives of our soldiers who died for a mission Obama will not allow us to complete… that’s blood on his hands too. You do NOT waste the sacrifices of American servicemembers! Or the allies who fight with us.

There are so many misconceptions in this post, I don’t even know where to begin!

1. “It’s like someone hits you in the knee with the little hammer, isn’t it? People just cannot stop blaming Bush for everything.”

If he deserves all the blame for the disaster that Iraq has become, this shouldn’t be swept under the rug just because it makes you feel uncomfortable. Cherishing and seeking after the truth. Accepting responsibility for the actions of oneself or another. These are important attributes for a Catholic or Christian to pursue, right?

George Bush and his officials made the case for the war of aggression they launched against Iraq in March 2003, on the pretext that Baghdad was rebuilding its WMD stockpiles and had links to al-Qaida. The country subsequently (and consequently) fell into anarchy over the course of the next five years–the remainder of the Bush administration. Barack Obama (of whom I am no partisan) was inaugurated in January 2009. Please explain how, despite his many faults, Obama is responsible for what has befallen the nation his predecessor invaded and helped destroy.

1. “If Bush were still President, we would not be pulling out of Iraq prematurely!”

Are you not aware of the Status of Forces Agreement to which Bush himself agreed with Iraq’s puppet government under Nouri al-Maliki in 2008 stipulating all U.S. troops be withdrawn by the end of 2011? Obama is just adhering to an agreement reached by his predecessor!

1. “Iraq’s commanding general said a couple weeks ago that it is too soon and we should not be leaving yet!”

This general to which you refer, Babakir Zebari, happens to be Kurdish. His ethnic group represents about fifteen to twenty percent of the Iraqi population, concentrated in the north of the country–where few U.S. troops were stationed and where little of the mass violence endured and witnessed by most of his compatriots took place. Of course a Kurd would want U.S. forces to remain in the country whose central government’s troops are refused entry into his region: Zebari’s people would then have a very strong ally backing them against Arab Iraqis who don’t want Kurdistan to officially secede from Baghdad and gobble up more of the north than their autonomous ethnic zone already controls.

1. “The decision to pull out all direct combat troops now, and the rest next year, is OBAMA’s and has nothing to do with Bush.”

Completely false.

1. “Barry is pandering to his radical left base, whom he has to appease in order to have anyone left supporting him. That is why, regardless of what the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan say, publicly no less, about how they are not ready for us to leave, he will keep us on schedule to leave and pull our troops out, ready or not.”

Of course these governments could conceivably want the U.S. to stay. They are regimes installed into power and propped up by Washington’s military might and financial aid. Who knows how long they would last otherwise?

1. “And the wholesale slaughter and chaos that happens afterward will be blood on HIS hands.”

The past five years have been peaceful, tranquile, and serene for Iraqis all the way from Basra to Najaf and Baghdad to Mosul. Military and civilian casualties among Iraqi and American Shi’as, Sunnis, Kurds, Yazidis, Chaldean Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, and evangelical Christians have numbered in the hundreds. The vast majority of these unfortunate violent incidents occurred during the first few weeks of U.S. involvement in the country.

Something sounds a bit off about the last paragraph to me, and probably to you as well. Why is this?

Because even with fifty, a hundred, or a hundred and fifty thousand U.S. troops in the country, criminals and Islamists and shady characters of all stripes managed to slaughter, kidnap, torture, and intimidate countless Iraqis. Whether Washington remains on the ground or not, the Pandora’s box ripped open by the 2003 invasion can’t be forced shut again. Whether the American forces stay or leave, Iraq will remain a violent place for the foreseeable future. Thomas “Nasty, Brutish, and Short” Hobbes would be proud.

Continued in the next post…

 

[Trebor135]

1. “And the lives of our soldiers who died for a mission Obama will not allow us to complete… that’s blood on his hands too.”

What mission? Washington invaded Iraq in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist and hadn’t existed for about a decade. Washington invaded to oust a regime friendly to al-Qaida which somehow still found the time to persecute Islamists but leave Catholics alone to go to Mass and drink alcohol. The invasion of Iraq was a crime of enormous proportions; if a burglar breaks and enters into a house, the only right thing for him to do is get out immediately, not continue engaging in the crime by remaining!

1. “You do NOT waste the sacrifices of American servicemembers!”

No, most certainly do you not waste the lives of American servicemembers! This laudable goal is best realized by not sending them off to invade, conquer, and help devastate a foreign land on the other side of the world which had neither attacked the U.S. nor posed an imminent threat to the country! You do not order them to march off into a war in which many will lose their life, a limb, an eye, or their sanity! Again I ask: what purpose has all this human suffering served, and to what end have the lives and limbs of Americans and Iraqis been “sacrificed”? A secular, democratic, transparent Iraq? Islam and Shari’a law are enshrined in the new Iraqi constitution as the official religion of state and a fundamental source of legislation! The country may hold elections from time to time, but a functioning democracy can’t be expected to survive in such an anarchic environment. And Transparency International ranks Iraq–which last year placed 176 out of 180 considered–among the most corrupt nations on earth! Tell me, how would a prolonged U.S. occupation of this battered land alleviate its plight when the U.S. got the ball rolling in the first place?

1. “Or the allies who fight with us.”

Allies? Which allies? Britain has gotten out of Iraq already. And if you consider to be genuine, dependable U.S. allies the tens of other fifth-rate powers that tagged along to curry favour with the warlords of Washington–Poland and El Salvador are famous for their military prowess and global influence, aren’t they?–think again!

None of these countries would have even dreamed of attacking Iraq had Washington not taken the initiative and persuaded them to join in. None of them would have lost anything had Iraq’s Ba’ath Party remained ensconced in Baghdad, and nor would the U.S. For the U.S. to get out of Iraq would not mean betraying the work of their soldiers–it would mean an acknowledgement that their work, and that of American troops, was for naught, indeed was criminal, and should thus be ended at once!

 

[fons_vitae]

I found some relevant remarks by the man once known as Cardinal Ratzinger that might be germane to this subject. From the Italian journal 30Days:

Q: Your Eminence, a question about current events, in some way connected to the Catechism. Does the coalition war on the Iraq come within the canons of the “just war”?

RATZINGER: The Pope [Ven. John Paul II] has very clearly expressed his thoughts, not only as the thoughts of an individual, but as the thoughts of a man of conscience occupying the highest functions in the Catholic Church. Of course, he has not imposed this position as a doctrine of the Church, but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by the faith. This judgment of the Holy Father is convincing from a rational point of view also: reasons sufficient for unleashing a war against Iraq did not exist. First of all it was clear from the very beginning that proportion between the possible positive consequences and the sure negative effect of the conflict was not guaranteed. On the contrary, it seems clear that the negative consequences will be greater than anything positive that might be obtained. Without considering then that we must begin asking ourselves whether as things stand, with new weapons that cause destruction that goes well beyond the groups involved in the fight, it is still licit to allow that a “just war” might exist.

 

[Ridgerunner]

And it’s ironic you bring up Pol Pot and his henchmen to make your point. It was full-scale U.S. military intervention in Vietnam–and more specifically, the huge bombing campaign over Cambodia that followed–which eventually set the stage for the Khmer Rouge to come to power in 1975.

Maybe. Just because an article says this, it doesn’t make it so. Oftentimes, one is put to wonder at “blowback” opinions (like those of Ron Paul) that seem to suggest that every nasty group in the world is somehow the creation of U.S. policy just because the group uses some aspect of the policy as a propaganda vehicle. This kind of thinking, in my opinion, skews causation perceptions and assumes that somehow local groups of nasties are incapable of having their own motivations.

One is reminded of those who maintain that, e.g., the U.S. is “complicit” in the 911 attack. This argument completely ignores the possibility that people like Bin Ladin might have their own motivations and methods, and a following or potential following with motivations and goals that have absolutely nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy other than that U.S. policies oppose their goals.

 

[Trebor135]

Maybe. Just because an article says this, it doesn’t make it so. Oftentimes, one is put to wonder at “blowback” opinions (like those of Ron Paul) that seem to suggest that every nasty group in the world is somehow the creation of U.S. policy just because the group uses some aspect of the policy as a propaganda vehicle. This kind of thinking, in my opinion, skews causation perceptions and assumes that somehow local groups of nasties are incapable of having their own motivations.

One is reminded of those who maintain that, e.g., the U.S. is “complicit” in the 911 attack. This argument completely ignores the possibility that people like Bin Ladin might have their own motivations and methods, and a following or potential following with motivations and goals that have absolutely nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy other than that U.S. policies oppose their goals.

I don’t know if Ron Paul and noninterventionists feel the U.S. government is entirely responsible for certain groups that conduct themselves atrociously. Clearly, the Khmer Rouge would have existed as an autonomous entity in Cambodian society with or without the U.S. bombing campaign. But if U.S. policies inadvertently assist the cause of these groups and exacerbate the situation on the ground, is it not wise to reconsider these policies? Especially since these policies will place severe strain on the U.S. military and treasury, not to mention possibly imperil the lives and well-being of the civilian population?

Let’s suppose that noninterventionist critics of U.S. foreign policy have gotten it all wrong. The bombing campaign over Cambodia would then have played no role in greatly increasing popular support for Pol Pot’s faction and thus its chances of gaining power, by hook or by crook. The presence of American troops in the Middle East, Washington’s support of despotic regimes in the region, its very close ties to the state of Israel, and the like, would then have not motivated al-Qaida to perpetrate September 11. (On this note, what do you believe led Osama bin Laden and his henchmen to painstakingly plan and execute these attacks?) Ought not the price of U.S. foreign wars since 1945 in blood and treasure to be so evidently steep and lacking in positive effects that Washington’s approach to interacting with the rest of the world might appear to merit a very sober reassessment?

 

[sidbrown]

NCR (John Allen) …The Americans leave behind “an Iraq worse off than the one they found seven years ago,” …:

What a waste! 700 billion dollars wasted in Iraq with the result that Iraq is much worse off now than before the immoral invasion by the USA?
In the end, since this 700 billion dollars did not help Iraq, may we ask, who profitted from this war?