War on Iraq: Rethinking Iraq

Rethinking Iraq
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet
Posted on January 6, 2005, Printed on January 7, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/20902/

A month before the elections, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh predicted the consequences of a Bush victory for Iraq. "If Bush wins re-election, he will bomb and bomb and bomb," he said. "Civilian targets, civilian neighborhoods." He was right.

Within a week after the election, the administration launched a no-holds barred offensive against Fallujah. Unlike the first assault in 2003, this time around no building was out of bounds in a strategy that was summed by Capt. Paul Fowler in the Boston Globe: "The only way to root them out is to destroy everything in your path." When the first air strike targeted the city's sole hospital, The New York Times explained – without comment – the Pentagon's rationale: "The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties."

No one knows how many died in the attack, civilian or otherwise. No one cared to ask – not the mainstream media, not the Democrats, not the American public. Iraq was also absent from the extensive electoral post-mortem as pundits, leaders, and opinionmakers publicly argued vociferously on every subject – morals, economics, the Democratic party leadership, political strategy, race – but the one issue that drove progressive politics in 2004. The unprecedented level of grassroots organizing that characterized the campaign of John Kerry would not have been possible without the anti-war movement. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 galvanized progressives of all stripes and brought them out on the streets. The anti-war demonstrations marked a level of passion and energy that surpassed even many of the Vietnam-era protests.



AlterNet: War on Iraq: Rethinking Iraq