Letters to the Editor
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@thingswesaid
What you have pointed out is not "imaginary." It is a fine and noble thing, especially considering the fact the hospital went out of commission about the time US forces rolled into town. It's a great thing, and way overdue, for the people in and around Salman Pak who have gone without this vital service for the past nearly five years. That it was possible for this to happen may be attributable to a lull in the violence. It is a great thing for the soldiers and leaders from 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, and Team 915 of Company A, 489th Civil Affairs Battalion, from Knoxville, Tenn., attached to 1-15th Infantry Regiment, who visited there and presumably did a lot of the rehab work on the facility (I am assuming they did as much and didn't simply pay a visit). It seems fair, since the place wouldn't have been out of commission had we not invaded the country.
The question is not "Is anything anywhere in Iraq returning to a semblance of normal?" but rather "Is this war ever going to end?" There is no sign of that. If I'm wrong, correct me now. Is the reclamation of the hospital a sign that the war is nearing an end? Is it still a war? Was it ever a war? If so, when does it stop being a war?
Another pertinent question might be "How many Iraqi locals died for lack of local medical care during the time the police were "forced" to use it as a HQ?
One other question comes to mind: Prior to the war did any one of us even care about the citizens of podunk Salman Pak and their healthcare? Whether anyone did or not (and the answer to that is abundantly clear), five years is a long time to allow the police to be "forced" to usurp the facility.
But then, there was a war going on, and as we were told, "War is messy." That was the One True Thing we were told.
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The beneficial effects of the "surge" are hard to see clearly in the presence of the mass internal and external
migration of citizens, from Baghdad and elsewhere, some "voluntary" but largely a result of "ethnic cleansing" by Shiia forces which apparently accelerated in anticipation of "the surge" and continued under our watch.
As the Patrick Cockburn story illustrates, many of these displaced Iraqis are now destitute ... the homes they left behind have been commandeered ... the assets they sold to pay for traveling/accomodations are gone forever ... their future is bleak. The central government has no mechanism to restore these people to their homes or offer reparations for their losses.
I have not seen numbers as to just what percentage of the displaced/refugees are Sunni, but I imagine it is significant majority. To illustrate, prior to the seige of Fallujah, the town had approximate 200,000 citizen. The seige largely emptied the city to internal refugee camps until the city was "secured" and then very very gradually, citizens in good standing were allowed to return. Currently, I have read Fallujah's population (despite it still being largely deficient in employment and ammenities such as clean water, sewers, electricity, is 300,000, largely as a result of influx of Sunnis fleeing Shiia persecution in Baghdad.
Iraq's population was listed at 27 million ... 20% Sunni or 5.5 million ... consider that there are over 2 million Iraqis displaced, certainly likely most Sunni ... Although hope springs eternal, it's staggering to imagine a "unified" much less peaceful Iraq.
Prior to the 1992 war and the sanctions that followed, Iraq had very good medical services ... I cannot imagine why hospital supply shelves remain empty throughout Iraq ... hampering the caregivers who remain... but the story of the Fallujah hospitals, how they then (and other hospitals since) became political pawns in the sectarian violence makes the rehabilitiation of any one hospital (like the hopeful fresh coat of paint on the schools) less "symbolic" and less meaningful ... the country is too unstable for children to safely go to school, the hospitals have been commandeered as sectarian strongholds and from what I have read people fear the vulnerability that comes from seeking care except in dire emergencies.
I very much wish David Petraeus had been given the command 5 years ago ... I think it might well have made a difference. I find Clinton's (and other's) plans to retreat behind the fortified walls of our "enduring" (I gather that's the new preferred term) bases ironic in that it was JUST THAT STRATEGY that permitted Iraq to go to hell in a handbasket in the first year of our occupation -- that and our repeated disproportionate military response and our truly lousy public relations skills.
It's a genie that can't be put back in the bottle ... we can't go back ... we can only go forward. I believe we must decamp entirely. Iraq for the Iraqis. We have blood on our hands that cannot be cleansed by our self-interested "good intentions."
As far as I can tell, with regard to "policy", the well-being of the Iraqis counts not at all.
Chomsky has a new essay up at Z-Net that's a worthy refresher, imho.
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@jpincus
There are those of us, yes, even of the Republican persuasion, who believe those 55 years in Korea and the 63 in Germany, are about enough. It doesn't matter what falls or who won't take care of themselves. If we continue to assume repsonsibility for occupying forces in random countries around the globe we will, eventually, be everywhere, and your "One World" nightmare will have come true.
John McCain, as I said in my initial post in this thread, needs to clarify, for the masses, his often flippant remarks such as the one about possibly spending 100 years in Iraq. Despite scholarly types like you, plenty of people will take it at face value and others will jump on it just as you have pointed out. The wise leader doesn't make statements like that and leave them to people such as you and me (or those looney liberals) to interpret them for the stupid, be they willfully so or otherwise.
There is also the very vocal group which is opposed to war in general and this war in particular, and don't believe we can afford to randomly attack other sovereign states and then use the pretext that we already did that to justify staying indefinitely.
My father, god rest his soul, made it loud and clear many times during his lifetime (and in his advance directive papers) that he did not ever want, under any circumstances, to be placed on life support should it become an option. Then he wound up in a hospital with a terrible acute pulmonary disease that could not be diagnosed in time. Although I was serving as my father's advocate, and while he believed his doctor was his true friend, the doctor convinced my father "a few days" on a respirator would allow his lungs to "rest" and buy them some time to figure out how to diagnose and combat the disease. (The doctor was convinced there was an infection and the fact that the lab could grow no cultures, and that in the end there was no infection, no germs, present, was lost in the ensuing drama). I was not present at that time. My father acquiesced, and after a week I asked the doctor just when he proposed to wean my father from the repsirator. His answer was not satisfactory. He said: "We put him on it to give his lungs a break, but now he is dependent on it to breathe, so we cannot take him off it." The issue was taken directly to the Ethics Committee, which ruled in favor of my father's express wish not to be on life support and the respirator was discontinued. The doctor was not happy with me, and, ultimately, although not without a remarkable fight, my father died.
We have placed Iraq on a respirator and now the argument is that the patient cannot live without it and there is no way of knowing when it can be withdrawn.
It might make more sense to you if I told you the doctor was a Muslim. Perhaps that is why the appeal to the Ethics Committee offended him.