Bush's Fantasy of 'Progress' in Iraq ..... Robert Scheer

What is he thinking?

On a day when Shiite vigilantes conducted hangings in Sadr City in reprisal for the killing of scores of their co-religionists in a market bombing, President Bush continued to insist that progress in Iraq justified staying the course.

“By their response over the past two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world that they want a future of freedom and peace,” he said Monday. “We’re helping Iraqis build a strong democracy so that old resentments will be eased and the insurgency marginalized.”

Contrast that fantasy with the same day’s harsh news: “In Sadr City, the Shiite section in Baghdad where the terrorist suspects were executed, government forces vanished,” reported the New York Times. “The streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and machine guns. They set up roadblocks and poke their heads into cars and detain whomever they want. Mosques blare warnings on loudspeakers for American troops to stay out. Increasingly, the Americans have been doing just that.”

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If such constant mayhem is taken as a sign of progress, three years after the U.S. invasion, then Bush surely will be thrilled by what the future holds. The British, on the other hand, have seen the handwriting on the wall and once again have begun to flee an imperial disappointment in Mesopotamia, announcing they are reducing their forces by 10%. Clearly, London has grasped what Bush cannot: The three-year occupation by Western armies is an incitement to guerrilla violence, not an impediment.

Of course, Bush would have us believe this expanding civil war is the work of insidious foreigners rather than of competing agendas arising from within an Iraq society long stunted by colonialism and dictatorship. It does not occur to him that he is the foreigner whom the majority of Iraqis hold responsible for the country’s despair, and whose occupation immeasurably strengthens the hand of extremists on all sides. Bush’s neoconservative Svengalis apparently failed to alert him to the possibility that religious, ethnic and nationalist sentiments might trump his plans for a Western-imposed “democracy,” subservient to U.S. interests. Or that U.S.-engineered elections would be won by allies and disciples of the radical Shiite government in the “evil axis” capital of Tehran.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/20060314_robert_scheer_iraq