A Response to a Comment About Iraq

A commenter, Al Iraq Awalan, wrote this:

What right do you have to complain about the "sheep" when you a Palestinian not only stands by and watches the Iraqis get massacred by Iranians but also cheer on the Iranians. We have no time for you. Iranians killed more of us in 6 years than the Zionists killed of you in 60.

Here is my response:

My position on Iran's role in Iraq has been clear and consistent all along. Iran has played an opportunistic and unprincipled role in Iraq. It is a shortsighted policy, to ensure Shia dominance in Iraq, which gave the occupation time to consolidate itself, instead of fighting it. Most recently, Iran used its considerable leverage with Muqtada Sadr to force him not to fight the occupation or the puppet Maliki government.

I strongly criticized and ridiculed Ahmadinejad's visit to the American Green Zone in Baghdad and his cordial meetings with his (and US) puppet, Maliki.

Having said all of that, and at the end of the day, they were not Iranians who killed Iraqis. Unfortunately, and this is a major indictment of the backward nature of the sectarian and tribal Iraqi society, Iraqis were the ones killing other Iraqis.

I am deeply disappointed, that after the total destruction of their country, the Iraqis seem incapable of drawing the right lessons. It is so ironic that the "Sunni" resistance that did the bulk of the fighting against the occupation is now dependent on that occupation. In fact, the "Sunnis" are now the ones who want to delay the withdrawal of the occupying US troops, for fear of the Shiites!

Don't you see the extent of the US success in all of this? Now you are forced to seek protection from those who destroyed your country!

What has taken place in Iraq is even beyond divide-and-conquer. In a classical divide-and-conquer, the enemy prevails by having the "natives" fight each other. Now, the "natives" are taking turns fighting for and with the occupier!

I really had hopes that the Iraqis would be at least as successful as the Algerians in forming their common national liberation movement and ending the occupation. Alas, due to sectarianism and tribalism, that has not happened and does not appear to even be on the horizon.

The ultimate copout and the testimony to the US success is for people like you to repeat the line that the US and its puppets throughout the region are now espousing. Namely, that the enemy in Iraq is not the US occupation, but Iran! A twin of that policy is that Israel is not the enemy of the Arabs, but Iran is! It is divide-and-conquer on a much larger and more destructive scale.

What will it take for the Iraqis and the rest of the Arabs to learn? A new Salahuddin does not just appear from the sky one day. It is the people, through their political awareness and a sense of nation and common destiny, who create a movement and produce a new Salahuddin.

If Iraqis worked together, neither Iran nor the US would have succeeded the way both did.