Imagine what it would be like to wake up tomorrow morning and find out that Catholics and Protestants had taken to fighting each other on the streets of the United States, and that one group of Catholics had set off a bomb, killing Sonny Perdue, the Protestant governor of Georgia, on his way to work.
That’s the political reality that Iraqis are facing over half a year after George W. Bush declared his plan to end the violent chaos in Iraq with a military surge. The purpose of the military surge was to stop the violence wracking Iraq, so that political leaders would have the opportunity to develop peaceful solutions to the problems fueling the disintegration of the country.
Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, the governor of Muthanna, which lies in the south of Iraq between Basrah and Najaf provinces, was killed by a roadside bomb as he travelled to work this morning. His assassination comes just nine days after the assassination of the governor of Qadasiyah, the province directly to the north of Muthanna.
Al-Hassani’s assassination is just the latest of many indications that the surge strategy of military escalation in Iraq is not bringing about the peaceful respite that President Bush had promised. Yet, Bush and his right wing allies continue to insist that the escalation has been effective, and should be allowed to continue.
All indications are that the next President will inherit the Iraq mess from George W. Bush. We need to make sure that we have a President who, in January 2009, will be ready to establish a new direction of American strategy for dealing with Iraq that is based upon a recognition of the severity of the problems there, not upon a stubborn insistence that everything is under control.
Progressives understand that country where governors are being assassinated is not a peaceful and safe place to live. Right wing politicians, on the other hand, continue to insist that progress is being made in Iraq, in spite of the fact that its top officials are turning up dead.
(Source: Associated Press, August 20, 2007)
The surge strategy, as an extension of Bush foreign policy, failed long before this latest assassination, since the entire “war” has benefitted only the military-industrial complex at the expense of American soldier and contractor lives, and the lives of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. It’s directly responsible for INCREASING the numbers of Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and those other “enemies” who now hate the U.S. for what it “stands for”.