Iraq seems to be back in the news again. Too bad it took nearly 3,500 Iraqis to be murdered until US media remembered the military was waging a losing war which will haunt it like the plague for generations to come.
Yes, up to 3,500 Iraqis killed in Iraq in July alone. And here I was thinking the World Cup and the summer heat would put people in a daze.
Hell, Muqtada Sadr, Iran's point man in Iraq outlawed football, remember? And other sports like tennis. And wearing shorts. Next if you don't wear a beard you will be cast down to Hell where the local imams will fry your soul.
He he he, sorry, couldn't help myself.
But let us get serious for a bit. Generations to come? Yes. See, I predicted two fundamental things four years ago as I watched dozens of Iraqi "dissidents" cry on the telly begging the US to invade Iraq and save its people.
As I watched all the talking heads insist, persist, and demand an invasion because Iraq was the next superpower in the region, I predicted two things which I am more convinced than ever will come to pass.
When US media went into hysterics over Saddam, his several lookalikes (this turned out to be yet another fable) and the stockpiles of weapons, I stayed steadfast in my predictions.
And they are:
1) Thirty, maybe forty years from now a mother and her daughter will walk by a gravestone. The daughter will point at the grave and asks who lies there. Her mom wil spit on the grave and walk away. The grave will belong to a George W. Bush.
2) Thirty, maybe forty years into the future when Iraqis have been separated over dozens of countries and no longer have a country to call their home, some among them will erect a statue to deposed president Saddam Hussein.
What do these predictions mean?
Well, Bush, and his cronies, will be more responsible than any other leadership for systematically uprooting the very foundations which made America a great nation.
The post-1950s era and the rebuilding of American confidence in the wake of the disastrous Vietnam War, in addition to the "golden age" of the 1990s under President Clinton, will be completely unraveled. Undone.

Unwound. Until the US is a non-superpower. His policies have shamed a once mighty and proud nation into the most hated and feared country in the world.
And that is very unfortunate. What is it that makes a nation powerful? Because it has power? Or the way it chooses to wield that power?
What makes a nation rich? Because it has much wealth? Or the way it chooses to distribute and use that wealth?
I said it before and I will say it again, Iraq will break America. Three years ago we heard much of the birth of the American empire. Now, anyone speaking along those lines would become a laughing stock.

Even Neocons like Fukuyama and Will have abandoned the so-called legacy of Bushco.
As for Saddam Hussein. A brutal, ruthless dictator who instituted a nearly merciless mukhabarat to rule by fear.
(This is how America rules the world now, by the way. Fear.)
He was poised to take Iraq into an age unrivaled and unsurpassed in the Arab World. Dubai and all those concrete jungles in the harsh desert confines would have paled in comparison.
But Saddam never elevated himself beyond the tribal thinking that is prevalent in Iraq today. I am not saying tribalism is necessarily detrimental to Iraq's development, but he couldn't think in any other way.
I never regarded him as a great statesman.
But ... and this is crucial. Despite the wars, despite his ruthless, murdering henchmen, Iraq was a viable entity. If sanctions had not plagued our society, Iraq could and would have prospered in the 1990s. Parents would not have had to worry about their children walking to school or shopping at the market or praying in Kadhmiya or Abu Hanifa mosque.
They would not have to live in tents as refugees or beg at the entrances of embassies for refugee status. There would not be 1.5 million Iraqis in Amman now or another 350,000 in Syria.
No matter how much I weigh the pros and cons of Saddam-era Iraq and post-Saddam-era Iraq, I always come to the conclusion that the former was better. Not the best. Not the optimal. Not the choice. But better. Safer. A country. One.
Not divided. Not ravaged.



Yes, Iraqi society was repressed under secular Saddam. Now, Iraqi society is far more repressed thanks to the fire and brimestone breathing Mullahs who vow that God will trip over his robe in Qum if our women do not don the Hijab. Or go to work. Or school or are employed.
Should Saddam have been deposed? I think I speak for many when I say that many of us were waiting for some Iraqi general or Qusay to off Saddam. And Qusay would have been too weak to consolidate power and someone would have taken him out, maybe a senior Iraqi general, a war hero from the Iraq-Iran war. There were many. Saddam killed or imprisoned some of them. The US the rest.
But that was back in the 1990s, when Iraqis dreamt of a free and stable Iraq free of repressive governance. But there is a difference between taking out the tough kid on the block and replacing him with an equally tough kid on the one hand, and taking out the tough kid and leaving everyone to fight over his turf.
The latter was the US approach to Iraq. Typical, ignorant, arrogant, hasty. So now, after the US experiment has failed (and it has failed - you can read as many blogs touting freedom and democracy as you want but the fact remains Iraq as created and fashioned in US vision is an utter failure) Saddam doesn't look so bad anymore.
He is the lesser of two evils.
Iraq is broken. Iraqi society is broken. Iraqis are broken. They are beggars now. Some moving to Amman, some to Aleppo or Damascus. Some to the US. Australia. Canada. Anywhere.
When you tell an Arab you are Iraqi they look at you in one of three ways 1) pity; 2)pride for the way the Iraqi resistance is fighting on; or 3) shame. The latter is because many Arabs believe the Iraqis to have sold out.
I spoke with one popular Iraqi blogger the other day. He told me all those who could leave Iraq have left. Another told me there were some still stubborn believing Iraq will be resuscitated. Revitalized. Reborn.
And there are some who stand behind the White House propaganda that Iraq is becoming a democracy and all the deaths are growing pains. Such racism, I tell you, dominates the mentality that can so quickly and frivolously swipe away the deaths of more than 200,000 Iraqis.
That is equivalent to the deaths of 2.8 million Americans. Is that a "growing pain" for you? If you can abide by the deaths of 2.8 million Americans for some greater cause or ideal, then I will tell you Iraq is on its way to bearing the fruits of liberty. But, I do not think so many deaths is worth anything. Sorry, not for freedom and not for dictatorship.
So now we have a country riddled by Shia or Sunni religious fundamentalism. Thanks America for showing us a zealot version of democracy.
And am not the only person saying so. Many are, privately, amongst each other. But many more fear voicing these sentiments because such reasoning is simply not the popular paradigm.

Popularity, unfortunately, did not save 3500 Iraqis in July.
Oh, one last thing. Remember those Iraqi dissidents I spoke of earlier. Yes, they are the ones ruling, slicing, and splicing Iraq's people, treasures, and economy for themsleves and the countries who back them.