POLICING
MUTUAL GENOCIDE:
NOT A WAR ON TERRORISM,
NOT A CIVIL WAR
The occupation of the nation of Iraq by the military
forces of the USA
was not a meaningful way to combat Islamic terrorism
and it was not a civil war that one side would win and another lose.
Rather, U.S. soldiers were attempting to control mutual genocide.
Because politicians choose their rhetoric
to
support whatever position they take,
it is important to describe the situation in Iraq as accurately
as possible.
Several of the commonly-used terms miss that mark:
1.
U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ WERE NOT
FIGHTING ISLAMIC TERRORISM.
2.
U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ WERE NOT
TAKING SIDES IN A CIVIL WAR.
3. "MUTUAL GENOCIDE" MIGHT BE THE BEST DESCRIPTION.
4.
POLICING MUTUAL GENOCIDE IN IRAQ.
5.
HISTORIC EXAMPLE OF MUTUAL GENOCIDE: INDIA IN 1947.
6. MUTUAL GENOCIDE IN IRAQ HAS
CONTINUED
AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF U.S. TROOPS.
POLICING
MUTUAL GENOCIDE:
NOT
A WAR ON TERRORISM,
NOT
A CIVIL WAR
by James Leonard Park
1. U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ WERE NOT
FIGHTING
ISLAMIC TERRORISM.
Islamic terrorism is well exemplified by the attacks
on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City
and the Pentagon in Washington, DC on September 11, 2001.
Altho some politicians kept confusing such terrorism with Iraq,
there is no evidence that
the 9-11 terrorists came from Iraq
or were meaningfully supported by any group in Iraq in 2001.
Only since the 9-11 terrorism
has a new group been created in Iraq
calling itself "Al-Queda in Iraq".
Most of the 9-11 Islamic terrorists came from Saudi Arabia
and they were trained by Al-Queda in Afghanistan.
The 'war on terrorism' should be continued,
but Afghanistan and Pakistan are the places
where Al-Queda will be
found, not in Iraq.
One argument put forward by those
who favored
continuing our occupation of Iraq
was that withdrawal would make Iraq a new center for terrorism.
This has not happened.
Rather, the various factions in Iraq have continued to kill 'the
enemy',
by which they mean any groups other than my own.
Fighting terrorism means finding individual
terrorists wherever they are,
including terrorists now living in the United States of America.
Whatever happens in Iraq,
individual terrorists everywhere will continue to be a threat.
Withdrawing our troops has made little difference
in the war on 'Islamic' terrorism.
And now that the U.S. military occupation of Iraq has ended,
there is one less reason for Muslims to become terrorists.
2. U.S. FORCES IN IRAQ WERE
NOT
TAKING SIDES IN A CIVIL WAR.
What is a civil war?
In all examples of real
civil wars in world history,
there were at least two sides, with military forces battling one
another.
They fought over land, political power, or religion.
In the United
States our Civil War arose because the
South
wanted to separate itself from the rest of the USA
in order to continue the institution of slavery.
Soldiers from the North wore blue uniforms.
Soldiers from the South wore gray uniforms.
The military forces of the North had to defeat the military forces of
the South
in order to prevent the Confederate states from seceding from the USA.
And a slave-free USA has prospered since the end of our Civil War.
In Vietnam
the civil war arose because North Vietnam
wanted to re-unite all of Vietnam into one country
and South Vietnam wanted to continue to be a separate country.
France and later the United States
fought on the side of the various governments of South Vietnam
to prevent the re-unification of the country.
It was said to be an anti-Communist war,
but nationalism was much stronger
than the desire of the North Vietnamese Communists to rule the world.
When the U.S. military forces finally withdrew in 1975, that civil war
ended.
One side lost and the other side won.
And a unified Vietnam has prospered since the end of that civil war.
The violence in Iraq is much more complex
than
either of these real civil wars.
There are two main kinds of 'Muslims' who want to kill each other.
But there are also many factions within each major group,
which will continue to struggle for some kind of dominance
now that the U.S soldiers are gone.
There is no fighting over territory, no front-line with battling armies.
There is no combat in
the ordinary senses of that word.
Rather, there are isolated bombings and killings in many parts of Iraq.
These murderous efforts are directed mainly at rival groups,
attempting to kill 'infidels' whenever that is possible or convenient.
And some bombings were directed at the occupying
U.S.
military forces.
All factions of the Iraqi mutual genocide agreed on killing U.S.
soldiers
whenever that was possible or convenient.
The United States of America had no ideological,
political, or religious reasons
for supporting one faction of 'Muslims' over another.
We do not care which group will ultimately rule Iraq.
And if Iraq divides itself into a few smaller countries,
each with a dominant ethnic-religious group,
that would not be a vital American interest either.
Such are entirely the internal affairs of Iraq.
And no other countries ought to interfere to assure who gets what.
Sometimes the conflict in Iraq was identified
as a fight between U.S. troops and "insurgents".
But those "insurgents" were mainly focused on expelling the U.S.
occupiers.
Now that the foreign occupiers paid by the U.S. taxpayers are finally
gone,
the "insurgents" can turn their wrath on one another.
3. "MUTUAL GENOCIDE" MIGHT
BE THE
BEST DESCRIPTION.
When the situation in Iraq was described as any kind
of war,
then we naturally assumed that one side would achieve 'victory'
and another side would be 'defeated'.
But the deepest roots of Iraqi violence are
religious and
sectarian,
not political, economic, or geographic.
The most violent Iraqis want to kill one another
simply because the ones who deserve to die are 'infidels'.
This is very hard for civilized societies to
understand.
But we can remind ourselves of similar violence in Northern Ireland.
Both violent Protestants and violent Catholics believed they were
Christians.
But whenever law-and-order broke down,
the most violent of these 'Christians'
took that opportunity to kill some members of the "opposite religion".
The Irish Republican Army had some vain hope
that if they could get the upper hand in Northern Ireland,
they could take those northern counties out of the United Kingdom
and re-unite them
with the rest of Ireland.
Outsiders cannot hope to understand the religious
differences
among the various kinds of Muslims in Iraq.
And probably these Muslims themselves do not understand
their automatic hatred of the other groups.
They have just grown up knowing their ethnic identities,
which are defined against the ethnic identities of the other groups.
They know which family they belonged to.
And they know which religious leaders to follow.
When members of another group are defined as 'infidels',
then it is not sinful to kill them.
(The present writer might have been the first on the
Internet
to apply the expression "mutual genocide" to the violence in Iraq.
This appeared in an earlier on-line essay entitled:
Exit
Strategy
for Iraq:
Arabic-Speaking Peace-Keepers,
which was published on the Internet on July 8, 2006.)
4. POLICING MUTUAL GENOCIDE
IN
IRAQ.
The basic function of the U.S. military forces in
Iraq
was to police the large populations centers of Iraq
(most notable Baghdad, where 25% of the people live)
in a mostly-futile attempt to prevent various groups from killing one
another.
It
was extremely
difficult for U.S. soldiers
to police Baghdad,
since most U.S. soldiers did not speak the language of Iraq—Arabic.
Thus, there are numerous occasions when the U.S. soldiers
must shoot first and ask questions afterwards
—if
there are any
survivors.
All sides of the mutual genocide in Iraq hated the
U.S.
soldiers,
except when this foreign army could be used to further their own causes.
The violent 'Muslims' knew that the U.S. soldiers would eventually be
gone.
Partisans hoped that their own private armies would be strong enough
when the U.S. soldiers withdrew to eliminate their enemies
and thereafter be able to control large portions of Iraq.
They especially hoped to control those parts where the money comes from
—the
oil-producing regions of Iraq.
This is similar to gang violence in the USA:
Various gangs fight each other over the money—the
drug trade.
The most likely resolution of mutual genocide in Iraq
will happen after the U.S. troops are withdrawn.
Then the various private armies
(some trying to control the established police and military forces)
will fight it out among
themselves.
Thousands more Iraqis will die.
And this killing will eliminate some violent of 'Muslims' on all
sides.
Eventually reason
will prevail
(as it sometimes does in gang warfare in the USA),
and the wiser heads will establish some new order
in which it is no longer acceptable to kill the 'others'
simply because they belong to another group.
Mutual genocide is a self-limiting phenomenon:
After enough of the violent people on all sides are dead,
then those who remain alive will see the futility of further killing.
And they will establish some form of law-and-order,
perhaps enforced by a neutral police force that all sides trust.
The soldiers of the United States of America
will not be this police force, preventing sectarian killing in Baghdad.
This is because of the U.S. soldiers were regarded as
'enemies'
by all sides in the mutual genocide.
The most violent people in Iraq want to kill not only the 'infidels'
but also any foreign troop trying to occupy their country.
Foreign soldiers were easy to identify.
(They had uniforms, guns, bases, convoys, etc.)
And everyone in Iraq automatically knew that U.S. troops were infidels.
It is difficult to predict how many Iraqis will have
to die
before reason will prevail and establish a new law-and-order for Iraq.
At best, a few months of mutual genocide should be enough.
At worse, the mutual genocide will continue for some years
after the U.S. occupiers are withdrawn.
("The troubles" in Northern Ireland lasted for 30 years.)
This will be a deep tragedy for Iraq.
And we must admit that we got it started
by overthrowing the government that existed in 2003.
We are sorry that we caused so many needless deaths.
And we mourn also for our own dead in this foolish occupation.
We can only hope that we have learned some important
lessons
from our misadventures in Iraq.
5. HISTORIC EXAMPLE OF
MUTUAL
GENOCIDE: INDIA IN 1947.
Seven decades ago, the British who had been
ruling
India for 200 years,
finally agreed with the demands of the Indians to grant them
independence.
There were two major ethnic-and-religious groups: Hindus and Muslims.
Two corners of India were carved out to form the new nation of Pakistan,
which would be the homeland for Muslims.
What remained of India was assumed to be a Hindu nation.
The new borders were hastily drawn by the colonial power,
not giving the people in mixed areas any advance information
about which nation they would find themselves living in.
Ten to fifteen million people became instant
refugees,
fleeing to the other side of the boundary,
which was drawn by Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer,
who used out-dated maps and census data.
The result was mutual genocide when the
British left:
About one million Hindus and Muslims killed one another.
Whichever group was in the minority in the new countries
was most subject to being slaughtered by the new ethnic majority there.
Eventually law-and-order was established by the new governments.
But since independence, India and Pakistan have fought a few wars
over disputed boundary lines.
And one region of the former India
(Kashmir, which had been a quasi-independent princely state)
is still disputed by India and Pakistan many years after partition.
In retrospect, the partition of India should have
taken 5 or 10 years.
If reasonable time had been allowed for the final details to be settled,
many fewer people would have died
and more reasonable borders might have been established.
This would have allowed everyone who wanted to move
plenty of time to sell homes and businesses
to members of the majority population,
some of whom would be moving
in from the other country.
Giving additional time for independence
would also have allowed the population some voice
in the exact location of the boundary between Pakistan and India.
A peaceful separation could have saved most of those million lives
of Muslims and Hindus who were killed because of their ethnic
identity.
6. MUTUAL GENOCIDE IN IRAQ
HAS CONTINUED AFTER THE DEPARTURE OF U.S. TROOPS.
Because the United States occupied Iraq for only 10
years,
we had no legitimate role in the future of Iraq.
We did not attempt to sub-divide Iraq.
Ethnic violence has continued periodically,
which still might be resolved by dividing Iraq into ethnic enclaves.
Because of the mutual genocide,
about 2.5 million Iraqis have moved
within Iraq.
This is 10% of the population.
An equal number of Iraqis have fled the country.
What kind of Iraq will emerge remains to be seen.
One way or another the mutual genocide will end
and some new forms of government of that area of the Earth will emerge.
Created
October 5, 2007; Revised 10-6-2007; 11-4-2007; 11-11-2007; 11-16-2007;
1-24-2008; 3-22-2008; 4-11-2008; 7-23-2008; 6-19-2011; 5-12-2013;
8-30-2014; 1-23-2015;
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent existential philosopher,
living and writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Much more will be learned about him from his website:
SEE RELATED ON-LINE ESSAYS:
How
a World
Peace Force Would Handle Situations Like Iraq
Better than the United States as Policeman.
Peaceful
Muslims & Violent Muslims.
Deprogramming
Former Members of Al-Qaeda.
Holy
War
Against Terrorism.
Exit
Strategy
for Iraq: Arabic-Speaking Peace-Keepers.
Policing
Mutual Genocide: Not a War on Terrorism, Not a Civil War.
Iraq
after
Occupaton.
Lessons
from
Iraq.