The Eighth Pillar: Does the US ever feel guilty about Iraq?

Does the United States of America ever feel guilty? Do its politicians know that they were behind dragging Iraq into the labyrinth of sectarianism and were partners and witnesses of the big lie?

For a while I used to assume that the actual events on the ground are outside the control of the decision-makers at the White House, but it turned out these events are a daily testimony that those decision-makers were fully aware and conscious when they enabled particular politicians in Iraq to run the affairs of this country.

In utter frankness, we are continuously at extreme danger, and the flames raging in our country are expanding further and further so that they will reach everything. To sum up, the entire destiny of Iraq is hanging by a thin thread, and no one can predict when this thread will snap, or what will happen next?

Every day the Iraqis feel that they are going through the most difficult and dangerous era in the entire history of their land, an era that started with the major transition that took place back in 2003, when those same Iraqis who had lived for decades under dictatorship and tyranny became hopeful of new horizons and perspectives of a bright future. However, the new politicians erupted with their ugly faces, disintegrating the country, and turning it into an arena for warring sects and parties. We should be so grateful to those wise and skillful politicians who never fell short of advocating all kinds of fallacies and fabrications and of spreading rumors that promote a culture of violence and cruelty.

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As we are about to pass through the 19th year following that major transition, the overall situation seems even more gloomy and bleak. Some might accuse me of innovating an imaginative scenario, but the facts on the ground point to agendas launched by particular politicians that unequivocally prove how they have managed to skillfully orchestrate a drama which attracts people’s attention away from their real issues, namely through preoccupying them with the never-ending game of election boxes. This situation has become reminiscent of theatre of the absurd and its masterpiece ‘Waiting for Godot’ by the British playwright Samuel Becket, for people in Iraq are so deluded in their talk on vicious conspiracies that are interwoven in the dark, while the major tasks of construction, development, improvement of people’s competencies, and establishment of a genuine national state are silently put aside.

Following 2003, the Iraqis opted for a peaceful democratic transition that should have preserved security and stability in their country and protected it from various hazards and ordeals. However, the result has been quite the contrary, and the country never witnessed days of calm since the new politicians have started to launch wars of words against each other. The Iraqi people opted for democracy, but the Iraqi decision-makers opted for their own egoistic and greedy interests, blending them with some nationalist slogans. We all sought to build a new Iraq of fraternity and egality, but some wish to keep it a chained, sick, and corrupt Iraq where there is no chance for any genuine achievements, but nepotism and opportunism by entirely fraud, hypocrite, and corrupt politicians.

When some people today seek to interpret the terrible events in Iraq as being the result of a miscalculation by the US, or an erroneous decision by the Republicans or Democrats, they are indeed seeking to defend an illusion that somehow still finds credibility among many.

At last, but never least, the gravest danger is if we let ourselves be deluded by a new miscalculation that might lead to further tragedies and enormous suffering.

This article was originally published in, and translated from, Iraqi outlet al-Mada.

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