U.S. Empire gall is manifesting itself once again in Iraq. President Bush is telling Turkish officials to “show restraint.” Turkey is threatening to send troops into northern Iraq to suppress cross-border raids that Iraqi Kurds have been inflicting on Turkey.
“Show restraint?” These people are something else. Exactly how much restraint did the U.S. Empire exercise before it invaded and occupied a country that had never attacked the United States, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, none of whom had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks? Indeed, how much restraint did the U.S. Empire exercise when it contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of the brutal sanctions that the Empire enforced against Iraq for more than 10 years? How much restraint was exercised when the Empire’s ambassador to the UN said that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children had been “worth it”?
Moreover, let’s not forget that the U.S. Empire is now threatening to attack Iran, supposedly because Iran is furnishing armaments to Iraqi insurgents who are trying to oust the U.S. Empire from Iraq. Never mind that the U.S. Empire did the same thing when it was furnishing armaments to Osama bin Laden and other insurgents when they were trying to oust the Soviet Empire from Afghanistan.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the Iraqis that “we all have an interest in a stable Iraq.”
“Stable?”
Yeah, we wouldn’t want Turkey interfering with all that stability that the U.S. invasion and occupation have brought to Iraq in the hope of installing a pro-U.S. regime in a country with the world’s third-largest oil reserves.
Oh well, at least Empire officials are no longer speaking that “democracy-spreading” or “liberation” claptrap as a rationale for invading and occupying a country that never attacked the United States.
Pardon me for asking an indelicate question, but wasn’t Iraq “stable” under Saddam Hussein?
