Nir Rosen on Iraq’s Inheritance of Loss
September 2nd, 2010 § 1 Comment
Independent journalist and author of the soon to be released, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World, Nir Rosen, provides a sober analysis of the current state of Iraq and the US withdrawal on yesterday’s Democracy Now!.
According to Rosen:
[Obama] said that the US has paid a high price, a huge price. Not as huge as the Iraqis have paid. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed. Tens of thousands of Iraqis who were rendered in American detention, their lives ruined for years, children who didn’t know where their fathers were. A couple of million displaced internally and abroad. Iraq is a shattered country. He said we persevered because we share a vision with the Iraqi people. Most of the Iraqi people, their vision has been, for the last seven years, that the Americans would withdraw.
Now, really, nothing has changed, obviously, from one day to the next. You have 50,000 troops who remain here. When Iraq occupied Kuwait, the Americans said that as long as there’s one Iraqi soldier left in Kuwait, Kuwait remains occupied. So the presence of 50,000 troops in Iraq forecloses many options, precludes many options for the Iraqis, with the implied threat. At the same time, the Iraqi security forces, I think, would like to have a continued relationship. And while Iraq is sort of occupied, it’s also sort of sovereign. You don’t see—you haven’t seen really for the last year in most parts of the country American soldiers on the ground. So, nothing changed today. The big change, you could say, was a year ago, when the Americans withdrew from cities and mainly stayed on bases. And we’ve had a test since then of the Iraqi security forces in their ability to handle the situation. And I’d say they, more or less, can handle it. It’s not very pretty—
Find the transcript here and catch Rosen’s recent appearance on RT after the jump.
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