All Sweetness and Light posted by Richard Seymour

You'd think that after killing over 1.2 million people, driving 4 million of them out of their country, and destroying said country in every respect, it would take a little bit more before they started bragging again. Yet, here we are. The worst year of a disastrous occupation, every sordid criminal aspect of a sordid epic crime peaking in the first half of the year - and they're bragging. 20,000 refugees are said (by the puppet government) to have retured, doubtless a staggering success. (Actually, it turns out even these figures are massively exaggerated). US deaths have decreased in the latter half of the year (in part due to a horrendous increase in the use of aerial attacks - who knows with what effect on the civilian population), and so we are once again in happyland, with happy shining Iraqis holding hands and bold US troops smoking out the remaining lurkers and riff-raff. Watching some of the news reports is like being exposed to the Laughing Policeman for half an hour. The laughing gas is pumped into every sitting room in the land, not to reverse the polls (can't do that), nor to get the GOP in again (have to rig the elections for that), nor even to get the flags waving again (who's got the energy after a day of overwork?). No, it's to soften the blow when the airstrikes hit Iran - well, we pulled Iraq back together, despite the ingratitude and intransigence of its population, why not Iran? In this light, it's worth considering the laboratory of repression that is Iraq: collective punishment, mass imprisonment, sniper terrorism, the usual. To which, Iraqis respond with increasing opposition to the occupation. All sweetness and light, a joy soon to be seen in Tehran and then - ooh, Damascus, Beirut, Pyongyang, wherever the liberation train takes a stop.

Labels: iraq, iraqi resistance, occupation, US imperialism