The People of Iraq Are Stuck Between Jihadist Madmen And Shia Maniacs

 

 Iraq, who do you want to be ruled by? The madmen on the left or the maniacs on the right?

"That is when you start looking to the core of what the Prophet Mohammad reveals in these revelations, especially during that initial decade in Mecca. And the core of that message is as clear as it gets: it is a message of social justice for the weak, for the poor, for the dispossessed, the orphans, the widows, and those without protection. It is a message of condemnation and judgement for those who accumulated power and wealth." - Reza Aslan, from, "The Sociology of Islam" interview by Jahanzeb Hussain, Ricochet Media, July 15.

The men who most loudly proclaim that they're fighting to spread their Prophet Muhammad's religion and the message of Islam are committing the biggest crimes in Iraq and across the region.

Members of the Islamic State in Iraq, and the men in the extremist Shia militias, backed by the Islamic Republic, are not targeting and killing corrupt politicians or businessmen in Iraq, but instead they're going after helpless people, persecuted minorities, whores, refugees, delinquent youth, and every other marginalized social group.

The madmen in Western Iraq are destroying ancient artifacts, shrines, mosques, and other glorious architecture, while the maniacs in Eastern and Southern Iraq are imposing their rule by attacking brothel houses. How big of them.

II.

1. An excerpt from, "Who’s Murdering Baghdad’s Prostitutes?" by Jacob Siegel, The Daily Beast, July 15:

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which means “League of the Righteous,” began as an arm of the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s largest Shia militia led by the militant religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr, but it split from the group in 2008. Since the U.S. military’s withdrawal in 2011, Asaib Ahl al-Haq has become a powerful force in Iraq, with a small but dangerous army of devoted fighters and influence inside the national government. In neighborhoods like Zayouna, Iraqis live under the authority and at the whim of such men. And few are more vulnerable than women sex workers.

“Everyone knew it was prostitutes there; the militia killed them,” said one Iraqi vendor selling water on the street only a block from where the massacre took place. He could or would not say what militia was responsible for the crime and asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety. “The same ones who killed them used to visit,” the vendor said. How he would know this is unclear, but it’s a common view of what happened.

Qain Zuhair, a teacher who has worked with many young Iraqis, also believes that a militia was responsible for the killing and that the group’s morality police take a selective approach to enforcement. “They are conflicted,” he said. “The same men who killed the prostitutes also went to visit them. They love the prostitutes, then they kill them.”

2. An excerpt from, "In Iraq, Islamic State jihadists destroy ancient mosques, shrines" The Times of India, July 5:

The jihadists who overran Mosul last month have demolished ancient shrines and mosques in and around the historic northern Iraqi city, residents and social media posts said on Saturday.

III.

Both of these criminal groups of madmen and maniacs who commit abuses in the name of God were brought to power in Iraq, either directly or indirectly, by Washington. The U.S. backed the Islamic State when it was fighting against Assad during its infancy, and it looked the other way in the aftermath of its invasion of Iraq when sectarian Shia militiamen infiltrated the Iraqi security system and military. The motive is clear to all. The U.S. has always wanted a Sunni-Shiite slaughter in Iraq and across the Middle East. And it seems to be getting it with every passing day.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN envoy to Syria, said in an interview on Democracy Now last month that Washington deliberately imposed a sectarian political system on Iraq after the invasion. He said:

I have told my American friends several times, of course, I am not privy to what was taking place in the Pentagon, where responsibility lied for Iraq. President Bush had given full, total responsibility to the Pentagon over Iraq. What was discussed there and what they did there, I don’t know. But as somebody from the region just looking at what was actually taking place, it was extremely hard not to believe that sectarianism was being promoted and that the people that were being put in charge were—I mean, of course the Kurdish region was given to Kurds 100 percent, and no—the rest of the Iraqis had no part in it. But in the rest of Iraq, the impression one had was that the people that were preferred by the occupying powers were the most sectarian Shia and the most pro-Iranian Shia, so, you know, that Iran—that Iraq is now very, very close to Iran. Again, from the point of view of somebody who looks at things from outside, I have absolutely no knowledge of what went on in the high spheres of power in Washington. The impression we had is that these people were put in charge either out of total ignorance—and that is extremely difficult to accept—or intentionally. But the fact is, you know, that the system that was established was very sectarian.

The Iraqi people have had to live with the disastrous choices made in Washington for generations now. From the CIA's backing of Saddam Hussein in the 1960s and 1970s to the CIA's backing of the Islamic State terrorists in this decade, the victims have always been ordinary Iraqis.

The U.S. overthrew the dictator it brought to power in an invasion in 2003, and now there are voices in Washington who believe the U.S. should attack Iraq again, this time to take down the very same Islamic State terrorists that the CIA has propped up for many years, most recently in Syria.

Washington's cycle of cover actions, sanctions, interventions, invasions, and air assaults in Iraq never seems to end.