Cause and Effect

"On November 8, 2002, the same day that the U.N. Security Council approved its pivotal resolution about Iraq, National Public Radio's All Things Considered aired a story by longtime correspondent Tom Gjelten. 'A war against Iraq would begin with a bombing campaign, and the resources for that phase of action are largely in place already', he reported. The tone was reassuring: 'Defense officials are confident the U.N. timeline will not get in their way. For one thing, they're going ahead in the meantime with war preparations. Says one senior military officer, 'When the order does come, we have to be ready to rock 'n roll.''
"When war appears on the horizon, and especially after it begins, a heightened affliction seizes most American news outlets. The media spectacle becomes little more than the steady regurgitation of what's being fed from on high. The nation's media diet is stuffed with intensifying righteousness. Anchors, generals, Washington officials, reporters, and pundits fill television screens with analyses of tactics and strategies. The computer-simulated graphics push technical boundaries of dissimulation while the Pentagon tries out its latest war-fighting technologies."
"Live satellite feeds have seemed to make war immediate, with viewers encouraged to ohh-and-ah while watching missiles strike Baghdad as though they were a fireworks display. The foremost mechanisms of numbing are commonly touted as the most enlightening. Television promises to bring war into our living rooms, but even as the blood flows and the agonies are endured far away, the coverage functions to make us more emotionally obtuse than ever. We're not only anesthetized; we may also be convinced that our awareness is being made more acute. With war, television accentuates myths of connectedness even as it further removes us from actual human connection."
Target Iraq: What the news media didn't tell you by Norman Solomon and Reese Erlich

Smoke covers the presidential palace compound in Baghdad on March 21, 2003 during a massive US-led air raid on the Iraqi capital. Smoke billowed from a number of targeted sites, including one of President Saddam Hussein's palaces, an AFP correspondent said. AFP Photo/Ramzi Haidar 

Well, there's a dose in retrospect of the lefty-American news media flagellating itself and its war-mongering government. In point of actual fact, there was no real compelling reason for the United States to assemble its righteous Coalition of the Willing and bamboozling the UN for its blessing to attack Iraq. It was the result of a swaggering George W. Bush to prove he was the leader of the most powerful country on Earth capable of punishing any who dared defile American soil.

Anti-war protesters gather in London at the start of a demonstration against war on Iraq, February 15, 2003. Millions of people were expected to take to the streets of towns and cities across the globe to demonstrate against the looming U.S.-led war on Iraq in the biggest protests since the Vietnam war. REUTERS/Peter Macdiarmid 

Iraq, and its dictator in fact had nothing to do with 9/11 other than celebrate its occurrence. Mr. Bush did, in the process, as many who both did and did not support his decision, rid the world of a brutal tyrant. One of many. And many remain. But this was his target and in the onslaught to unseat the unsavoury butcher many Iraqis were no doubt killed. And was it not ever thus? The country, ruled by a minority religious sect, has now reversed itself, and it is ruled by the majority religious sect that once the minority had been pleased to have under its thumb.

The country's Kurds were pleased at their liberation from the ongoing threat of Saddam Hussein's murderous reign of terror. At last a safe and secure autonomous region for the Kurds that they could self-administer was possible. And, sitting on a geography of vast oil reserves, and having a Kurd in the government that was guided by the U.S. to accept an equal division of authority between Sunni, Shia and Kurd the future looked promising.

The future was temporarily interrupted during the occupation by largely American and British forces with the decidedly unpleasant eruption of viciously violent sectarian violence. When, at night, Sunni marauders would embark on a mission of destroying the homes and lives of Shia Iraqis, and the Shi'ites saw the reasonableness of executing a similar fate on enclaves of Sunni civilians. The bloodshed and gore were mindboggling, depleting Iraq of many thousands of its citizens.

And into this free-for-all flooded Islamist jihadis through the long border between Syria and Iraq. Al-Qaeda in particular saw an advantage for its presence in war-torn Iraq, and it targeted Shia and Sunni tribespeople in a spirit of generous equality, killing them all mercilessly, thus fulfilling their destiny to kill or be killed. Sunni tribal chiefs offended by the killing spree of al-Qaeda, responded with their "Awakening" militias.

And now that the United States and Britain have vacated the country at the urging of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who then took it upon himself to squeeze out the Sunnis and monopolize the government with Shi'ites once again marginalizing the Sunni minority just as they had themselves been summarily dealt with by the departed Baathist Sunni government. Re-awakening slumbering resentment

The result of which has been a wild free-for-all of attacks across Iraq with blood-curdling results. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has indulged itself in a surfeit of suicide bombings for which they have become infamously dreaded. And there can be little doubt that the Iraqi Sunni, having been once again ignored by the Shia-led government actively act out their resentment in attacking Shi'ite areas, exacting revenge.

Iraqi men clean the rubble at the site of a blast that took place the previous day outside a cafe in Baghdad's Bayaa neighborhood on November 21, 2013 (AFP, Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

Weekly, almost daily atrocities occur in towns and cities in Iraq, with Baghdad the centre of many of them. Mr. al-Maliki, once glad to see the backs of departing U.S. troops and dignitaries, returned to Washington for help to rectify the problem he has helped create. It has been pointed out to him that this is indeed his problem, and he did usher it in. That does not appear to have made much of an impression upon him, however.

AFP Photo / Ahmad Al-Rubaye

So, is the fact that Iraqis are extremely involved in extinguishing one another's lives -- and we can add in there foreign Islamists as well, since all worship the same faith and adhere presumably to similar religious precepts, all believing in the felicity of jihad -- the fault of an American-led invasion to remove a blood tyrant in an error of history? Or is it remotely possible that those living in countries of the Middle East whose lives are inextricably bound to Islam have failed to read those suras properly?

Mourners stand near the coffins victims killed in a bomb attack, during their funeral in Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, November 14, 2013. (Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani)

Their ferocious slaughter campaigns, one upon the other, with no end in sight, from the Middle East across North Africa distinguish the tribal mentalities and the religion with its historical divisions which grips every facet of their lives as somehow failing to remind worshippers that they are human beings and not exoplanetary creatures bent on destroying life on Earth.

An Iraqi walks on the rubble of the Al-Hussein mosque following an explosion in the district of al-Musayyib, south of Baghdad, on September 30, 2013 (AFP Photo / Ahmad Al-Rubaye)

Is there a cure for the Islamist death cult?

Ahmed Saad/Reuters    Baghdad residents at the site of one of several blasts in the city on Wednesday. Car bombs went off between 9 and 10:15 a.m.  Published: November 20, 2013