Iraq War: 4,000 US deaths vs the Flip Side

Today marks the day that the number of US deaths in Iraq exceeds 4,000. But there is also a flip side to this tragedy on the Iraqi side as outlined in the article by Faruq Zaida, a former Iraqi ambassador. We do not hear this reportage from any of the US media outlets. Excerpts from Faruq’s article are reproduced below.

Saddam Hussein was a dictator, and Iraqis did want true democracy, a good life, and a change that would elevate and advance their country, which once had great wealth and thousands of highly-qualified professionals.

But the line that US soldiers are in Iraq to save the Iraqis from dictatorship, liberate the country, and propel it forward is a big lie. They are there to protect US greed for oil and for establishing strategic military bases. They are not there for the Iraqi people.

The real reason for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, as cited by Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, was to secure and control Iraq's oil. The actions of the US government under the Bush administration have resulted in genocide; their greed to steal Iraq's oil has led to the country's destruction.

US actions and imposed sectarian policies have created the "killing fields of Iraq." More than 1.2 million non-combatant civilians have been killed, according to British polling agency ORB. In what the UN has called the biggest civilian displacement catastrophe in both the 20th and 21st centuries, 2.5 million Iraqi civilians, including the majority of the educated middle class, have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, while two million have become refugees inside Iraq.

Prompted by a political process that was introduced and enforced by the Bush administration, Iraq has become a war-torn nation with a society that has been ripped apart by sectarian fighting.

Women's rights, which were the most protected among developing countries, have severely deteriorated to such an extent that most can no longer leave their houses. They are forced to wear a veil - even Christian women - and have stopped working in government offices or attending schools and colleges.

The Iraqi education system, which comprised advanced university and college levels, was among the best in developing countries. Now, it is one of the worst. Most teachers have fled the country; those who remain are constantly under the threat of student abuse, according to the UN. Many students do not attend for fear of kidnapping and they shun religious rituals which are now carried out on campus grounds during study hours.

The US embassy in Baghdad's report on corruption, issued last September, concluded that "currently, Iraq is not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws." Compared to other developing countries, Iraq had one of the best and finest professional civil service staffs. These professionals were able to keep the country from collapsing during the 13 years of harsh economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. Most of these qualified people have now fled to neighbouring countries. Hundreds others have been assassinated.

The medical services sector is perhaps one of the most harmed by the invasion and occupation. Before the war, hospitals and doctors, though impeded by the imposed sanctions since 1991, provided a better health system than those of other developing countries. Now, the medical system is completely shattered. According to the Ministry of Health's 2007 official report, more than 18,000 doctors have fled the country since 2003.

When electricity, water and sanitation infrastructure were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War, they were completely restored in less than one year. Today, after five years of war, the public services are nearly non–existent, although more than $140 Billion have entered the Iraqi government's coffers since 2003.

Most of the destruction was caused immediately after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, when the US army allowed rioters to loot and burn government buildings.

Five years ago, Iraq was free from drugs. Iraq today is rampant with drugs and drug addicts.

As my cousin Ranganath pointed out, this begs the question:

“Where is the national and international outrage on this catastrophic humanitarian crisis? How can any religious person tolerate this?”

War on Economy

In the orchestrated prelude to the war in Iraq, here are some of the statements that were made as part of the misinformation campaign by the current Administration.

Dick Cheney, Aug 2002: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

George Bush, Sept 2002: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.”

George Bush, Jan 2003: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

George Bush, May 2003 (in an interview given to Polish TV): “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.”

George Bush, March 2008: “Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision–––and this is a fight America can and must win. Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely we will face this enemy here at home.”

A similar misinformation campaign has been started on the economy by viewing it through ideologically tinted glasses.

George Bush, Jan 2008: “There is a lot of uncertainty in the economy. I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs . . . because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we have built too many houses and the economy’s adjusting.”

George Bush, Feb 2008: “I don’t think we’re headed to a recession, but no question we’re in a slowdown. . . . I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” Bush said as he joked his way through an address given to the country’s top bankers at the Economic Club of New York.

George Bush, March 2008: “One thing is for certain –– we’re in challenging times. But another thing is for certain –– that we’ve taken strong and decisive action. . . . Right now we’re dealing with a difficult situation.”

As the steady drumbeat of alarming economic news increases the possibility of global financial havoc, how much longer do we have to wait before the White House and its Panglossian Press Corps unleash the “War on Economy” on an unsuspecting public? At the very least, the President can claim that this war will “increase jobs and spending, and ensure that the markets are functioning efficiently and effectively.”

End of the Monarchy

With all the furor last week over Eliot Spitzer’s indiscretions and Geraldine Ferraro’s comments, another piece of news went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media. That was the comment made by Representative Steve King of Iowa who said that if Barack Obama was elected president, there would be “dancing in the streets of the Islamic world” because of his middle name, Hussein.

Would that all of us could be so prescient.

Rep. King should go back and read U.S. history. The country’s founders fought and bled to death to obtain freedom from the domination of European monarchies. The Representative’s last name is a stark reminder of these atrocities, and would encourage monarchist extremists to “dance in the streets all over the world.”

May I recommend asking Rep. King to change his last name, to Freeland perhaps? Other suggestions are welcome.

The Presidential Change Savants

One of Mahatma Gandhi’s oft-quoted sayings is:

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

According to Gandhiji, truth was both relative and absolute. Relative truth, according to him, was not a rigid thing and could change as his perception of a problem changed. As the fable goes apropos the above quotation, a mother had brought her young son to see the Mahatma because the boy had become obsessed about eating sugar. Gandhiji told them to return the following week. At that time he told the lad, “You must stop eating sugar.” The mother was puzzled and asked Gandhiji why he had not said this the previous week. Bapu replied, “You see, last week I, too, was eating a lot of sugar. I had to change myself before I could ask someone else to change.”

This anecdote illustrates why Mahatma Gandhi was different from other leaders. He was able to seek truth and change his own thought process if needed. In doing so, he made mistakes but that did not deter him. He was an effective leader who earned the credibility and respect of the people because he was able to walk the talk.

In this year’s US Presidential elections we have seen and heard so much from “change savants” that it may even be causing great concern to our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy M31. I have culled some information from each of their positions for comparison with Gandhi’s ideals of leadership.

Change Agent: John Sidney McCain

John McCain needs your vote because he is a Change Agent in 2008. In fact, he is the Greatest Change Agent of the Republican Party. He recently changed his stance from liking the New York Times when they endorsed him, to it currently being “not my favorite newspaper.” Instead of admitting mistakes and changing his perception, McCranky exhibits temper tantrums and changes his story. He was angry with Elisabeth Bumiller (also of the New York Times) who caught him in a lie in 2004. In that year, McCain’s staff approached John Kerry about potentially filling the Vice President slot on the Democratic ticket (yes, the Democratic ticket). Elisabeth broke the story and now McCain doesn’t want to talk about it. Need I say more as to why John McCain is hated by Rush Limbaugh and the dittohead kingdom? Many people associate the $12 billion per month being spent in Iraq to the current economic crisis (this is the recent estimate by Professor Joseph Stiglitz, co-author of “The Three Trillion Dollar War”). If the Straight-Talk Express runs on less taxes and more war, its wheels will go squeaky well before November.

Agent of Change: Barack Hussein Obama

He is touted as the Agent of Change in what many have called “the political phenomenon of the century.” George Bush said in 2000, “Vote for me, I’m an agent of change,” and proceeded to change the economy for the worse. Obama’s supporters are urged to avoid talking about policy and instead tell how they are inspired by him. When pressed for details on his policies and plans, we are offered evasiveness and distortions. Central to his message of change is the claim that he is free of lobbyist influence, except when convenient. Instead of being humble enough to admit mistakes and learning to change direction, he will be a leader who is “right from day one.” Obama likes to play by the rules with respect to the delegates in Florida and Michigan, but Agent of Change Obama wants to change the rules with respect to whom the super delegates should cast their votes for. His mantra, Sí se puede (Yes, we can), is carefully orchestrated political rhetoric that is in the business of selling an image. He needs to quickly recruit retired mailman, Karl Malone, and start delivering substance.

Positive Change Agent: Hillary Rodham Clinton

At a speech in Ames, Iowa, in December 2007, Bill Clinton introduced Hillary as a Positive Change Agent. He described her as a work-a-day leader who would work on behalf of ordinary Americans. “Over the past 14 years I’ve learned that when you want big changes, you need to build a big consensus,” Hillary says, adding, “Even a president has to get 60 votes in the Senate to pass a law, and that is a painstaking, roll-up-your-sleeves process that involves a lot of preparation and just plain perspiration.” But given their prior history in the White House, the Clintons’ tactics are somewhat questionable. Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power of Harvard University described her as a “monster who would do anything to win.” Unlike John Edwards, Hillary has not admitted that her vote for the Iraq war was a mistake. On the one hand, Hillary can bill herself as a change agent, and on the other, to those who don’t like change, she can “hit the ground running on day one because I have been there before.” Talking through both sides of your mouth does not go over well with voters.¹

Can these agents change their “thought processes if needed”? Can these agents “walk the talk”? Can these agents “be the change they wish to see in the world”?

Sólo podemos esperar (We can only hope).

Notes

1. This is an evolutionary survival mechanism which I will leave to more illuminating minds like Richard Dawkins to answer, i.e., why is it that only politicians and administrators amongst our species develop the trait of talking through both sides of their mouths? Is this the goal of evolution? Is there hope for ordinary folks to achieve this goal in the present life?

Winning Big States Is Important

If you listened last night to the “best political team in the country” you may have obtained an incorrect picture of the presidential elections. The total number of delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination this year is 2,025. However, the manner in which one accomplishes such a majority will be crucial in November.

This is because, in the general election for President, the number of Electoral College votes for each state is apportioned on a “winner-take-all” system, and not based on the proportion of votes as is the case in many Democratic caucuses and primaries. Winning by a majority in big states that are electoral-college rich is important to reach the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes to secure the presidency.

The record so far of the two candidates in the race for the Democratic nomination is given below. This is based on state-wide victories and adding up the Electoral College votes assigned to each state.

Hillary Clinton: 263 Electoral College votes

Barack Obama: 196 Electoral College votes

Counting victories by states at this stage of the nomination and counting the number of delegates are good mathematical exercises that provide fodder for the political pundits. However, too much stock should not be placed in such numbers because if a candidate cannot carry the majority in enough large states in November, the spin meisters themselves may have their wickets taken down by Chinamen (a left-arm leg spinner’s googly in the game of cricket).

No Country for Old Men

Last May I found myself close to the grassy knoll at the Hyatt Regency in Dallas. I was a parent chaperone for a high school mock trial team which had made it to the national championship. A bunch of mock-trialers from Kentucky along with their coach were waiting with me to ride an elevator. When the elevator arrived, a young kid named Kevin stepped out and told his coach and team mates who were about to board the elevator, “I’ve left a little present for you. Enjoy.” The entire group scampered away, leaving me somewhat surprised and alone on the elevator going up. Nine floors later I realized that a pair of nose plugs would have been handy to deal with Kevin’s not-so-little present. Then it dawned on me that I needed a refresher course in the semantics of language.

There are many, including some of my good friends, who would argue that my education is sorely lacking. Not because I did not attend school or college, but because I ask the dumbest questions about some of the phrases in language that are widely disseminated by journalists (a.k.a. “infotainment-ists”) today. What others find crystal clear and easy to grasp, I find to be an assault on my senses (and sensibilities). I was chewed out a few years ago for not understanding that “wardrobe malfunction” actually meant “nipple exposé.” Although Kevin’s present is easy to handle with nose plugs, I am unable to find similar widgets to handle brain farts in print and broadcast media.

Take for example President Johnson’s “war on poverty.” Of course Johnson wanted to end the conditions that caused people to starve to death; but this is accomplished by giving to others, not fighting them. The very phrase runs counter to the idea of war.

President Nixon’s “war on drugs” created a significant rise in the number of African-American men in prison though white people were using the most drugs. It also provided the Reagan-Bush administration the military justification to fund and support the Contras in Nicaragua and the mujahideen in Afghanistan. The war on drugs is a war that is being waged against US citizens by funding covert operations in other countries and passively facilitating them in trafficking drugs destined for the US market.

The post-9/11 “war on terror” or “war on terrorism” are phrases with no well-defined meaning. The reality is that terrorist groups and illicit drug producers tend to emerge in any area where there is abject poverty. In their book, “Collateral Language: A User’s Guide to America’s New War,” John Collins and Ross Glover write:

The United States constantly disregards the demands of impoverished countries, enforces its will on people with less ability to fight, and brutalizes the impoverished both at home and abroad . . . . The war on poverty has been operationalized through the war on drugs and the newly articulated war on terror (ism).

Another area where brain farts are freely distributed by presidential hopefuls and inhaled by journalists and media outlets is education reform. Candidates want everybody to receive the best possible education. But I am not sure what their intent really is. Yes, they would like you to receive an education to be able to guarantee that once every four years you would be gullible enough to understand and believe their rhetoric. But no, they would not like you to be so well educated that you would be able to think for yourself, or question what they say, or challenge the infotainment-speak of the best political team in the country. Unlike Collins and Glover, they do not want you to stand up and say, “Language is a terrorist organization, and we stand united against terrorism.” They want you to stand “with them” in the “war on BLANK” which elicits the customary fulsome fawning from the media (Note to Press Corps: “war on clean water” will be quite apt for the 21^st century).

Unfortunately for me, my friends are right about my education. My parents could only give me the best education possible, not the best possible education. Which is why I do not fully comprehend the nuances of language.

Admittedly this is no country for old men like moi. I wait unwearyingly for Javier Bardem to take me out. I only hope the end occurs on the lower floors of an elevator in Dallas.

A Vote for Huckabee: Is it really scary?

On a cold January night in Iowa, Mike Huckabee surprised the pundits by handsomely winning the Republican caucuses. His victory was analyzed ad nauseam by the “best political team in the country” and the nugget of wisdom which emerged was that Huckabee had won on the strength of the “evangelical vote.” It didn’t scare anybody in the media, but it did scare many in higher education.

Those who work in institutions of higher learning believe that we are a country at war with ourselves in science education, notwithstanding the fact that scientific advances are what drive the economy. A majority of the evangelical population believes that evolution is not the process by which “we got to where we are” as a species and that creationism also ought to be taught in high schools and colleges. This group recites heavily from scripture and bases its beliefs on concepts that are unverifiable through scientific experiments. If these “scary Huckabee” voters have a say in how public universities and schools are funded, then that becomes a source of worry for many administrators.

It has been widely claimed that public perception of the value of science is terribly lacking, but after Carl Sagan no one has been able to fire up the public’s imagination on scientific endeavors. Is the public’s perception of science and technology really lacking? Have scientists and technologists carved an elitist niche for themselves and ignored the more practical problems of society, thereby fostering “evangelical” beliefs? Let’s take a closer look.

Our tax dollars are funneled through funding agencies for research in science and technology that is supposed to improve the quality of our lives. Over the last three decades there have been virtually no advances in fundamental physics, despite the fact that a lot of federally funded dollars have been poured into research (for more details, please read “The Trouble with Physics” by Prof. Lee Smolin). Smolin argues that string theory makes no new predictions because it comes in an infinite number of versions. Thus, no matter what an experimental result shows, string theory cannot be disproved. But no experiment will ever be able to prove that it is true.

The paradox is succinctly stated by Smolin: “Those string theories we know how to study are known to be wrong. Those we cannot study are thought to exist in such vast numbers that no conceivable experiment could ever disagree with all of them.”

And how did this effort go on for such a long time? A small group of “evangelical physicists,” who utter hymns about “theories of everything,” or “ten-dimensional worlds and worm holes” have succeeded in controlling the purse strings of the federal funding agencies to such an extent that string theorists have turned into a cult, and newcomers with ideas in other areas are forced to work in string theory and publish (or perish if they choose to do something else more valuable and practical for society). The research in this area, which is unverifiable by experiment, would make Galileo and Kepler turn in their graves.

So it is not only the “evangelical Huckabee-ites” who are scary; the “evangelical physicists” are equally scary, if not even more so.

We live in an age where technological advances and the ubiquitous Internet are supposed to “simplify our lives and make us more productive.” These so-called advances do anything but what they are supposed to do in simplifying our lives. I’ll give you just one example; there are several others out there.

Let’s say you purchase a brand new IBM ThinkPad Laptop computer which has built-in hardware to support Bluetooth technology. What is supposed to happen is that you get a Bluetooth compatible headset, pair the headset with the computer, and possibly do a “Restart” to make everything hunky-dory. I guarantee that you will upchuck twice on the way to hell and back before you get this to work successfully on your computer. Try calling the so-called “Customer-Relationship-Management” CRM support line for some help, and they will bob you like a yo-yo before transferring you to a friendly consultant who demands a hefty hourly charge to help you with problems that were not supposed to be there in the first place!

The “evangelical technologists” who design these gizmos and chant mantras like “plug-and-play,” or “interoperability,” or various utterances meant to make things sound simple and easy will have their own scary day in hell to reckon with when the time for redemption arrives.

So who really are the evangelicals that we ought to be scared of: the Huckabee-ites, or the scientists, or the technologists?

I’ll leave you to figure out your own answer. My sensei, the late Mr. Natarajan of IIT Kanpur, would have been no help at all – he would have just replied “Mu,” which basically meant – unask the question.