Your passion has its weaknesses -I was opposed to regime change in Iraq along with many other people here in the UK -the demonstration in London against intervention in 2003 was one of the largest in recent years.
You are the one who refers to 'Iraqis' as if that country was united -surely the point about the
National Council for the Awakening of Iraq is that it represented people -mostly Sunni Arabs- who felt threatened by the growth of Shi'a representation, whose sons were being encouraged into insurgent violence that was undermining their own position in the country. Had they been as hostile to the US as you claim, why did they take the money and change their position? It had more to do with the protection of their communities from opportunists inside and outside Iraq, protecting their land, and creating -or trying to create- a more unified Sunni body in view of any elections that were planned. It was the combination of this
Council, and the
Surge which signficantly reduced the violence in Iraq, which is not to undermine the grim situation which still pertains in that country.
But even the independent
Iraq Body Count puts civilian deaths at between 108,824-118,910 which is a markedly different figure from your Million. The link is here:
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
You and everyone else is glad that Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party apparatus has been dismantled in Iraq, anyone with a knowledge of Iraq expected the place to erupt, and yes, the 'liberators' of Iraq behaved disgracefully -Abu Ghraib is one example, the British in Basra another-because like Blair and Bush they did not understand the country they were entering. There have been elections in Iraq, I don't think the electoral roll was accurate, and right now we still don't know what Iraq will look like in five or ten years time, given the difficult situation that exists in the predominantly Kurdish north.
But there is one simple fact about Iraq -
it was Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athists who failed the people of Iraq. By 1979 Iraq had nationalised its oil industry, at a time when the oil price had quadrupled in the previous six years. Iraq could have used the revenues from oil to develop the best state oil company in the Middle East; it could have used oil revenue to invest in agriculture and industry, to create the conditions for economic prosperity which engage people in business regardless of religious differences. He did none of those things, instead, he used the money to line the pockets of his relatives and friends, to acquire the instruments of death and torture to harass and murder political opponents, above all, he engaged in two wars which he could not win and which bankrupted what should have been one of the richest countries in the world.
I had an interesting talk with an Iraqi exile in the Gulf a few years ago -
look around, he said, this is the legacy of Zayed. What is Saddam's legacy for us? Destruction. Sheikh Zayed was no democrat, all the Gulf states are family businesses; Oman is not that different, the oddities of Qaboos being entirely his own -but which of these states has used oil revenue to develop a modern state, and which lies in ruins?
Iraq with its rich heritage of ancient civilisations, ought to have been one of the great tourist destinations in the world, instead tourists go to Dubai. Work that one out!
The situation in Afghanistan that you describe is profoundly more complex; and has more to do with local politics than with the NATO forces. It is a sad fact that the Afghan security forces killing their US and British trainers do not match the slaughter that has been going on in Afghanistan for decades. The Taiban you refer to is no longer a single body, taking directions from Mullah Omar. The group has split with moderate Taliban -so-called- who want to stop fighting and build the country with what they call an 'Islamic Government'; those Taliban who are in effect being led by Pakistan in order to maintain the violence and prevent a 'solution' that does not include Pakistan; and other Taliban fighters who don't want to be told what to do by anyone. The NATO intervention in Afghanistan, like the previous intervention by the USSR aggaravated existing divisions within Afghanistan, and by militarising age-old grievances with more sophisticated weaponry than the average Afghan had possessed before, it is a grim fact that the death toll is so shockingly high.
But so too is the level of corruption in central government -and if you can't see how crucial it is for the average Afghan to have confidence in its government, then you can't see a way out of this situation when the NATO forces leave.
As in Iraq, a thoroughly corrupt government undermines faith in politics, so people take their energies elsewhere, into religion, into anything that will make money -growing poppies, for example- and until they get a government that works for the benefit of the country, the Afghans will decline to be involved in nationwide politics, and do their own thing.
Thus, in Syria, you find the same record, of decades of corruption at the heart of the country; decades of under-achievement in what in 1914 was with Egypt the richest and most developed country in the Middle East. Syrians do talk about their health and education systems, they do talk about jobs -but for decades they have had to talk about it in whispers because of the spies that Hafez al-Asad created, many of them your own neighbours. Syrians do not want to live in a society where you have to pay for a service three times over -once to the service provider, once to the 'official' without whom you cannot get to the provider, and once to the
Wastah who can walk into the office of official to grease his palm on your behalf.
Four decades of dictatorship and the country is in ruins. Not much of a record to defend, is it? And for you to suggest it is all the cause of the US is bizarre, as Syria has been a mystery to successive American administrations for all this time, the one country with which it has never had a dialogue.
Again, you need to make a distinction between Israel and the Occupied Territories. There was a radical change in Israeli politics in the 1970s, the country politically has never been the same as it was when the old Labour Party was in power, but that is the price Israel has paid for the demographic changes that have favoured the nationalist parties in the last four decades. There are elections in Israel, and you can criticise the list system they use which produces coalition governments with tiny parties holding the balance of power; but the elections do take place, politicians do lose power. Israel has a lot of problems, environmental degradation, immigration problems, it is not immune to them, but you need to understand that resentment is a poisonous emotion that does not produce good politics.
Fundamentally, dictatorship is the problem. It can often start out as a military response to political disorder, but then becomes a substitute for democray, because democracy is messy, it doesn't always produce a winner, it involves lots of people all claiming to have the right solution; but dictatorship can only produce order for a short term before it eats into the economy, giving privileges to people who don't deserve them. You can't expect any of the Arab Countries being convulsed by change to change quickly, old habits, old alliances remain important; but change cannot be stopped, and you can either try to stop it, as Bashar al-Asad is doing, or try to influence it for the better.
