Dirk Adriaensens (Member Executive Committee BRussells Tribunal, 12 May 2010)

The Iraq war is illegal under International Law 

In the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 several reasons were given to justify an invasion. However: 

A) There were no WMD, be it nuclear, chemical or biological, in contrast to the empty claims of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell at the UN Security Council in February 2003[1], allegations which he afterwards called "the lowest point in my life "[2]. 

B) There was no link with Al-Qaeda terrorists. 

C) Finally, it was said that the war would bring "democracy" in Iraq, an example for the entire Middle East. The "dictator" Saddam had to be be removed. This justification is still given by Tony Blair in the Chilcot Inquiry as the main reason for invading Iraq.[3] 

So there was no "smoking gun", no casus belli. This was an illegal war of aggression, there was no approval of the Security Council. The invasion could not be justified by chapter seven of the Charter of the UN and qualified as self-defense, because Iraq had not attacked the United States and Iraq was no imminent threat. There was no justification for this so called "preventive war". Leading international personalities, officials and lawyers have said so very clearly. A.o. Kofi Annan [4]- former UN Secretary-General - and Hans Blix [5]- head of the weapons inspection commission of the UN - have openly declared that the Iraq invasion was illegal under international law. More recently the report by the Dutch CommissionDavids[6] concluded, that there was "no adequate international legal mandate for the invasion of Iraq." 

Ex-chief of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Mohamed ElBaradei: "Sure, there are dictators, but are you ready every time you want to get rid of a dictator to sacrifice a million innocent civilians? All the indications coming out of [the Chilcot inquiry] are that Iraq was not really about weapons of mass destruction but rather about regime change, and I keep asking the same question – where do you find this regime change in international law? And if it is a violation of international law, who is accountable for that?" "ElBaradei added, "Western policy towards this part of the world has been a total failure, in my view. It has not been based on dialogue, understanding, supporting civil society and empowering people, but rather it's been based on supporting authoritarian systems as long as the oil keeps pumping."[7] 

Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials: "A prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case: "The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States, formulated by the United States, in fact, after World War II. It says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."[8]

The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."[1] Article 39 of the United Nations Charter provides that the UN Security Council shall determine the existence of any act of aggression and "shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security".

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court refers to the crime of aggression as one of the “most serious crimes of concern to the international community”, and provides that the crime falls within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).[9] 

The aggression against Iraq is not just immoral, it is properly illegal. 

From the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648[10], up until 1945, when the United Nations was created, sovereign states in the West had the right to declare war. There were certain limits which they set themselves as to how war might be conducted, but the right itself was never contested. 

It was precisely because this principle eventually led to WWII, and all the dramas associated with it, that the world body decided to ban war. That is, one state is not allowed to attack another. It is only allowed to defend itself. 

Iraq had not yet attacked the United States when it was invaded. And even if it had, the only body that is authorised in international law to respond to such an act of aggression is the United Nations. Moreover, the UN cannot wage war as such, rather, it is authorised to intervene but only using means which are proportionate to the end, and in a temporary manner.[11]

This principle is the fundamental principle of polycentrism: of a global system in which nations' and people's fundamental rights can be respected. And it is precisely this principle which has been blankly rejected in the policies of the Project for the New American Century[12]. Unfortunately, such a rejection calls forth unfortunate comparisons, whether we like it or not: for the last person who blatantly rejected the idea that international relations should be regulated by law was a man called Adolf Hitler. Like the PNAC, he began by writing down his position in Mein Kampf, before going on to put them into practice. So what we are seeing today is a repetition of this pattern: first international law is negated in theory, and then that theory is put into practice. This is an extremely dangerous sequence of events. 

This is a crime which cannot be accepted. Let us recall the debate on the Iraq war that took place in the UN Security Council, when the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominique de Villepin[13], insisted that the law must be respected, and therefore that since there had been no act of aggression, no war could be conducted against Iraq in the circumstances which then held. Colin Powell's response was to tell de Villepin: You belong to the past. But Powell was wrong. Villepin belongs to the present, and to the future. It is Colin Powell who belongs to the past -- to the world before 1945, the world that produced Hitler. It is the position of the United States which is driving history into reverse. So now we find ourselves facing a fundamental political question: Do we want the world to be ruled by the absence of rules, as it was in the past? Or do we want the world to be ruled by rules?[14] 

Of course, those rules can be changed and adapted, and the institutions which have the responsibility of enforcing them may need to be reformed. But the central issue which is now under debate is the fundamental principle of whether we have any rules at all. Do we want there to be such a thing as international law? Or do we want the pax americana to become the lex americana : that is, a world in which there are no laws except those which the United States accepts as such? If so, this will entail the total disregard of the rights of all the peoples of the planet. And we will all, Europeans included, find we have become redskins. We will have the right to survive only to the extent that we do not come into conflict with so-called "American interests", which are not, in my opinion, the interests of the people of the United States, but of a minority of dominant economic corporations. That is the fundamental political choice facing us today.[15]

What were the real reasons of the Bush administration for invading Iraq and occupying the country? Five possible objectives for the invasion of Iraq can be identified: 

1. Because of strategic geopolitical reasons.[16] 

2. To lay hands on the oil reserves of the country's second proven oil reserves in the world (what Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve has fully acknowledged[17]). 

3. To ensure the safety and advance the regional aspirations of Israel.[18] 

4. To protect the dollar, the "oil currency" for international transactions.[19] 

5. To escape a domestic economic crisis through mass production and use of weapons and military equipment.[20] 

Dismantling the Iraqi state  

Just days after the devastating attacks of 9/11Deputy Defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared that a major focus of US foreign policy would be “ending states that sponsor terrorism”[21]. Iraq was labelled a “terrorist state” and targeted for ending. President Bush went on to declare Iraq the major front of the global war on terror. US forces invaded with the express aim to dismantling the Iraqi state. After WWII focus of social sciences was on state-building and development model. Little has been written on state-destruction and de-development. We can now, after 7 years of war and occupation, state for certain that state-ending was a deliberate policy objective. 

The consequences in human and cultural terms of the destruction of the Iraqi state have been enormous: notably the death of over 1,3 million civilians[22]; the degradation in social infrastructure, including electricity, potable water and sewage systems; the targeting of academics and professionals, the displacement of minimum 2.5 million refugees and 2.764.000 internally displaced people as to end 2009[23]. All these terrible losses are compounded by unprecedented levels of cultural devastation, attacks on national archives and monuments that represent the historical identity of the Iraqi people. Rampant chaos and violence hamper efforts at reconstruction, leaving the foundations of the Iraqi state in ruins. The majority of Western journalists, academics and political figures have refused to recognise the loss of life on such a massive scale and the cultural destruction that accompanied it as the fully predictable consequences of American occupation policy. The very idea is considered unthinkable, despite the openness with which this objective was pursued. 

It is time to think the unthinkable. The American-led assault on Iraq forces us to consider the meaning and consequences of state-destruction as a policy objective. The architects of the Iraq policy never made explicit what deconstructing and reconstructing the Iraqi state would entail; their actions, however, make the meaning clear. From those actions in Iraq, a fairly precise definition of state-ending can now be read. The campaign to destroy the state of Iraq involved first the removal and execution of the legal head of state Saddam Hussein and the capture and expulsion of Baath figures. However, state destruction went beyond regime change. It also entailed the purposeful dismantling of major state institutions and the launching of a prolonged process of political reshaping. 

Contemporary Iraq represents a fragmented pastiche of sectarian forces with the formal trappings of liberal democracy and neo-liberal economic structures. We call this the divide and rule technique, used to fracture and subdue culturally cohesive regions. The regime installed by occupation forces in Iraq reshaped the country along divisive sectarian lines, dissolving the hard-won unity of a long state-building project.  This  resulted in a policy of ethnic cleansing. 

On sectarianism 

Arabs make up 80% of the Iraqi population, and 95% of those are Muslims. Since the independence of Iraq in 1920 until 2003, Iraq never had any sectarian conflict, unlike Lebanon or other countries that have sectarian difficulties. Of the different prime ministers who took office between 1920 and 2003, 8 were Shia and 4 were Kurds. Out of 18 military chiefs of staff, 8 were Kurds. As for the Baath party itself, the majority of the members were Shia. Out of 55 people on the wanted list that the occupying authority published, 31 were Shia. So what the occupying authority was practicing in Iraq was something new:  Ethnic cleansing. They started supporting Shia against Sunnis, and Sunnis against Shia, and now they are harvesting what they have planted. 

"Although the Shias had been underrepresented in government posts in the period of the monarchy, they made substantial progress in the educational, business, and legal fields. Their advancement in other areas, such as the opposition parties, was such that in the years from 1952 to 1963, before the Baath Party came to power, Shias held the majority of party leadership posts. Observers believed that in the late 1980s Shias were represented at all levels of the party roughly in proportion to government estimates of their numbers in the population. For example, of the eight top Iraqi leaders who in early 1988 sat with Hussein on the Revolutionary Command Council--Iraq's highest governing body-- three were Arab Shias (of whom one had served as Minister of Interior), three were Arab Sunnis, one was an Arab Christian, and one a Kurd. On the Regional Command Council--the ruling body of the party--Shias actually predominated. During the war, a number of highly competent Shia officers have been promoted to corps commanders. The general who turned back the initial Iranian invasions of Iraq in 1982 was a Shia."[24]

Iraq commentator Reidar Visser refers to the "selective de-Ba'athification" process being pursued in Iraq, given that historically, he notes, the Shias and Sunnis alike co-operated with the old regime in their millions.
"More fundamentally, the question of “selective de-Baathification” comes on the agenda here in a big way. It is a historical fact that Shiites and Sunnis alike cooperated with the old regime in their millions, and it was for example Shiite tribes that cracked down on the “Shiite” rebellion in the south in 1991. Nonetheless, the exiles who returned to Iraq after 2003 have tried to impose an artificial narrative in which the legacy of pragmatic cooperation with the Baathist regime is not dealt with in a systematic and neutral fashion as such; instead one singles out political opponents (often Sunnis) as “Baathists” and silently co-opt political friends (especially if they happen to be Shiites) without mentioning their Baathist ties at all. The result is a hypocritical and sectarian approach to the whole question of de-Baathification that will create a new Iraq on shaky foundations. (For example, the Sadrists have been in the lead in the aggressive de-Baathification campaign, yet it is well known that many Sadrists in fact had Baathist ties in the past.)"[25]  

State destruction as war aim 

In parallel fashion the occupiers have redesigned the nationalistic and state-centered economy to conform to an extreme neo-liberal market model marked by privatization and the opening of the fragile market to foreign capital, especially American. Nowhere is this more evident than in the dismantling of Iraq’s national industries.[26] But that’s not all. The horrors of cultural destruction and targeted assassinations in Iraq are still seen for the most part as a mere consequence of war and social disorder. The mainstream narrative bemoans the loss of world class cultural treasures and views the murders of individuals through the prism of human rights as “collateral damage”. 

Such views obscure more than they reveal. Few would question that state-building has an integral cultural and human dimension. So too does state-destruction. To be remade, a state must be rendered malleable. Obstacles to this goal in Iraq included an impressive intelligentsia committed to a different societal model and the unifying culture they shared. The deliberate policy of state-ending had particularly devastating cultural and human consequences. Ending and remaking are inherently violent processes. Nation-building implies a prior process of nation-destroying.

The actions of the occupiers indicate that they understood that the emergence of the new Iraq would require liberation from the grip of the inherited intelligentsia and culture of a unified Iraq. Iraq under occupation would see both human and cultural erasures that advanced these goals. Thus, state destruction in Iraq entailed more than regime change and more than political and economical restructuring. It also required cultural cleansing: the degrading of a unifying culture and the depletion of an intelligentsia tied to the old order. How did they achieve this? In large part by inaction. The occupiers fostered and legitimated a climate of lawlessness with the whole predictable consequence of weakening a unifying culture and eliminating an intelligentsia that has staffed Iraq’s public institutions. 

Talk of incompetent planning and “collateral damage” in the context of a global war against terrorism persuades many precisely the very idea of deliberate cultural destruction and targeted murders on so wide a scale is so unthinkable to the mainstream. 

But at the time, political leaders of the invading powers promised a fresh start for Iraqi society. Prior to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, several Bush administration officials promised a complete remaking of Iraqi society in the interests of spreading democracy, freedoms, liberty[27] and a “New Middle East”[28]. Not surprisingly, the creation of something new necessarily entails the destruction of what preceded it. The more ambitious the creation, the more extreme the destruction.  Michael Ledeen, one of the driving philosophical forces behind the neoconservative movement, wrote in an influential essay in the National Review Online: “Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically… it is time once again to export the democratic revolution”[29]. Quotes from this fellow of the conservative American Enterprise Institute’s work reveal a peculiar set of beliefs about American attitudes toward violence: “Change – above all violent change – is the essence of human history”[30], “We wage total war because we fight in the name of an idea, and ideas either triumph or fail… totally”. "the only way to achieve peace is through total war". "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business". "We are a warlike people (Americans)...we love war"[31] 

According to William Kristol, another one of the PNAC ideologists, there’s only reason to be optimistic for the US[32]. Almost all the goals that were planned, have been achieved: Iraq destroyed, total control over the country, permanent military bases, the biggest US embassy in the world, massive privatizations  - even the agriculture has been given to Monsanto[33] -, a new constitution was drafted[34], supervised by the US and the oil law has been approved[35]. 

Ironically, the unembarrassed ideological context within which Iraq was invaded makes it easier to challenge effectively the mainstream inclination to disregard cultural destruction as willed policy. State-ending in Iraq was explicitly intended to have an instructive effect. The invasion of Iraq had the larger purpose of demonstrating precisely how unchallengeable and unrestrained the shock and awe of American power would be to all those that stood in its way[36]. "the level of casualties (in Iraq) is secondary"[37]. "We don't do body counts," said Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the Iraq invasion[38]. Massive loss of life and cultural devastation were acceptable, if not outright desired. For the demonstration of the power of the sole superpower the deaths and depredations were in many ways the most chilling remarkers. At the same time, ideological forces that set and defined these objectives of state-ending in Iraq stepped out of the shadows and took center stage. To be sure, the real motives behind the assault were covered by the useful talk of “terror” and liberation. However, it was important for the demonstration effect that the assault itself and the havoc it caused be screened as fully as possible. Consequently, there could be no doubt as to what these forces were, no matter the dissimulations that screened their purposes. The ideologically driven aim of state-ending derived from a confluence of influences that included US neo- conservatism and its imperial ambitions, Israeli expansionism and its drive for regional domination, and Western multinationals and their relentless quest to regain control of Iraqi oil. 

Jay Garner, Sergio Vieira de Mello and Paul Bremer III 

In 2003, Jay Garner was appointed to the post-war reconstruction in Iraq. When Garner was replaced on May 11, 2003 by pro-consul Paul Bremer III, the former Director of Kissinger Associates, there were quite a few speculations about his sudden replacement. It was suggested that Garner was put aside because he disagreed with the White House over who should lead the reconstruction. He immediately wanted early elections - 90 days after the fall of Baghdad, and a new government to decide how the country should be run. Garner said: "I do not think the Iraqis will be guided by the U.S. plans, I think we have a freely elected Iraqi government need, which represents the will of the people. It is their country ... their oil. "[39] 

Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed on August 19, 2003, after a bombtruck exploded just outside his office at the UN headquarters in Baghdad. De Mello was appointed as UN Secretary-General for Iraq to ensure a quick end of the U.S. occupation. He didn’t supported the war and was planning a statement that condemned the coalition for using excessive force. He had sent away all the protection of tanks and soldiers on the gate of his headquarters at the Canal Hotel because he said their presence looked like American control of the United Nations, something he strongly protested. [40]. He was a staunch opponent of the infamous Bremer's orders[41]  that would change the entire political and economic structures of the country under the occupation. 

Modification of fundamental laws in an occupied country is illegal under international law. It violates all international conventions on the conduct of the occupier as required by The Hague Regulations van1907 (the predecessor of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and ratified by the United States) and the U.S. Army's own code, as stated in the Army field manual "The Law of Land Warfare." Article 43 of The Hague Regulations provides that an occupying power " has to restore as much as possible public order and ensure safety, and should respect applicable laws in the country unless it is prevented." Resolution 1483 of the UN Security Council of May 2003 calls on the occupying powers to respect The Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions in Iraq. "[42] 

These examples show that the U.S. had well outlined plans for Iraq and that anyone who opposed those plans was put aside. 

The looting of Iraqi cultural heritage 

With an understanding of the ideologically-driven goal of dismantling the Iraqi state, an overview can be made of the cultural and human costs of the policy as they are reflected in the facts on the ground. The magnitude of the destruction and its systematic character cannot possibly be explained as a series of unforeseen, and / or tragic mishaps. In our view, the killings and destruction flowed from the inherently violent policy objective of remaking rather than reforming Iraq.  

With the protective shield of the state and the educated middle class removed, Iraq’s incomparable cultural riches were an easy target. The military onslaught of US-led forces against the Iraqi state and society already weakened by twelve years of economic sanctions coincided with a multi-dimensional pattern of cultural cleansing. Such cleansing began in the very early days of the invasion, with the wide-scale looting of all of the symbols of Iraqi and cultural identity. Museums, archaeological sites, palaces, monuments, mosques, libraries and social centers all suffered looting and devastation. They did so under the very watchful eyes of the occupation troops. American forces in Baghdad guarded only, and very carefully, the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which securely kept all oil data, as well as the Ministry of Interior, where the potentially compromising files of Saddam’s security apparatus were housed. 

On America’s watch we now know that thousands of cultural artifacts disappeared during “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. These objects included no less that 15.000 invaluable Mesopotamian artifacts from the National Museum in Baghdad, and many others from the 12.000 archaeological sites that the occupation forces left unguarded. While the Museum was robbed of its historical collection, the National Library that preserved the continuity and pride of Iraqi history was deliberately destroyed. Occupation authorities took no effective measures to protect important cultural sites, despite warnings of international specialists. According to a recent update on the number of stolen artifacts by Francis Deblauwe, an expert archaeologist on Iraq[43], it appears that no less than 8.500 objects are still truly missing, in addition to 4.000 artifacts said to be recovered abroad but not yet returned to Iraq. 

The attitude of the US-led forces to this pillage was, at best, indifference and worse.  

The failure of the US to carry out its responsibilities under international law to take positive and protective actions was compounded by egregious direct actions taken that severely damaged the Iraqi cultural heritage. Since the invasion in March 2003, the US-led forces have transformed at least seven historical sites into bases or camps for the military, including UR, one of the most ancient cities of the world and birthplace of Abraham[44], including the mythical Babylon where a US military camp has irreparably damaged the ancient city. [45] 

Erasure of collective memory 

Such massive cultural destruction has a devastating impact on two distinct levels. The first pertains to all humanity because of Iraq’s unique provenance of artifacts and monuments that record in a well-documented, material way an unmatched sense of the continuity of human civilizations in this unique site. The second level is crucial to the Iraqi people and their distinctive historical identity, shaped by the way they understand their own history. Memory in all its forms, personal, cognitive, and social, provides the imaginative infrastructure of identity, whether of the individual or group, national or sub-national. Memory evokes emotionally charged images as well as desires, which link one’s past to the future through the present interpreted in light of recollection. However, memory is mortal in two senses: first it dies with the body; second, it changes through forgetfulness. Hence, memory, particularly people’s or social memory, needs to be preserved actively to supply the continuity of social meaning from the past to the future. The preservation of memory is the function of museums and historical monuments. The Baghdad Museum was memory-objectified, not only of the Mesopotamian cradle of civilization, but also for the Iraqi people. The Baghdad Museum enacted the permanence and continuity of a culture and a nation since time immemorial, to which archaeological sites and monuments bear witness. Without a framework of collective memory, there is no mode of articulation for individual memory. Individual memory requires the context of group identity which is inseparable from the history and cultural artifacts that the Baghdad Museum, the National Library and the monument sites once preserved. However questions of intent on the part of the occupiers are eventually resolved, the actual consequences of policies pursued in post-invasion Iraq can fairly be characterized as the destruction of cultural memory. 

This desecration of the past and undermining of contemporary social gains is now giving way in occupied Iraq to the destruction of a meaningful future. Iraq is being handed over to the disintegrative forces of sectarianism and regionalism. Iraqis, stripped of their shared heritage and living today in the ruins of contemporary social institutions that sustained a coherent and unified society, are now bombarded by the forces of civil war, social and religious atavism and widespread criminality. Iraqi nationalism that had emerged through a prolonged process of state-building and social interaction is now routinely disparaged. Dominant narratives now falsely claim that sectarianism and ethnic chauvinism have always been the basis of Iraqi society, recycling yet again the persistent and destructive myth of age-old conflicts with no resolution and for which the conquerors bear no responsibility. 

Destruction of Social Institutions 

Concomitant with the ruination of so many of Iraq’s historical treasures has been the rampant destruction of Iraq’s social and cultural institutions. Iraq’s education system, once vaunted as the most advantaged in the region, [46] has suffered a patterned process of degradation and dismantling. Under the occupation, according to a report by the United Nations University International Leadership Institute in Jordan, some 84% of Iraq’s institutions of higher education have been burned, looted, or destroyed[47]. Some 2.000 labaratories need to be re-equipped and 30.000 computers need to be procured and installed nationwide. [48] 

On 11 April 2003, a number of Iraqi scientists and university professors sent an SOS e-mail complaining that American occupation forces were threatening their lives. The appeal stated that looting and robberies were taking place under the watchful eye of occupation soldiers. [49] 

These soldiers, the e-mail added, were transporting mobs to the scientific institutions, such as Mosul University and different educational institutions, to destroy scientific research centres and confiscate all papers and documents to nip in the bud any Iraqi scientific renaissance. 

The e-mail also noted that occupation forces had drawn up lists of the names, addresses and research areas of the Iraqi scientists to assist them in their harassment tasks in light of the chaos and anarchy that existed after the toppling of the Iraqi regime on 9 April.  

“Like most higher education institutions across Iraq, Baghdad University escaped almost unscathed from the bombing. In the subsequent looting and burning, 20 of the capital's colleges were destroyed. No institution escaped: the faculty of education in Waziriyya was raided daily for two weeks; the veterinary college in Abu Ghraib lost all its equipment; two buildings in the faculty of fine arts stand smoke-blackened against the skyline. In every college, in every classroom, you could write "education" in the dust on the tables.” [50].  

Ongoing violence has destroyed school buildings and around a quarter of all Iraq’s primary schools need major rehabilitation. Since March 2003, more than 700 primary schools have been bombed, 200 have been burnt and over 3,000 looted. [51] 

Between March 2003 and October 2008, 31,598 violent attacks against educational institutions were reported in Iraq, according to the Ministry of Education (MoE). UNESCO – Education Under Attack (10 Feb 2010) [52] 

John Agresto, in charge of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in 2003-2004, initially believed that the looting of Iraq’s universities was a positive act in that it would allow such institutions to begin again with a clean slate, with the newest equipment as well as a brand new curriculum. This curriculum removed any criticism to the US policy in the Middle East, as well as any reference to either the 1991 war or to Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territories. [53] 

Iraqi academic institutions, once leaders among universities and research centers in the rest of the Arab World, were instrumental in creating a strong Iraqi national identity after years of colonization. The virtual collapse of Iraq’s educational infrastructure has gutted the vehicle that has served to cement a unifying history in the public mind. 

From the outset, something more ominous than displacement by the chaos of war was at work in Iraq. The mind of a unified Iraq is being killed in what has all the earmarks of a systematic campaign of targeted assassinations. The decimation of professional ranks took place in the context of a generalized assault on Iraq’s professional middle class, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, judges as well as political and religious leaders.

The modern Iraqi educated middle class, vital now and in the future to run the state, the economy, and build Iraqi culture, has been decimated. Following systematic assassinations, imprisonment, military raids and sieges, threats and discrimination, most of what remained of that class left the country. The absence of this middle class has resulted in the breakdown of all public services for the entirety of Iraqi society[54]. 

The New York Times reported On the 7th of February 2004 that hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators had been assassinated since May 2003 in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class, according to Iraqi officials. [55]

"They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."

American and Iraqi officials say there is no tally of all the professionals assassinated. But Lt. Akmad Mahmoud, of the Baghdad police, said there had been "hundreds" of professionals killed in Baghdad. Mr. Saadi, the Baghdad city council member who works closely with the police, estimated the number at from 500 to 1,000.

The Independent stated on 7 Dec 2006 that more than 470 academics had been killed. “Buildings have been burnt and looted in what appears to be a random spree of violence aimed at Iraqi academia.” [56] 

On March 15, 2007, Minister of Higher Education Abduldhiyab al-Aujaili said that since the 2003 U.S. invasion more than 100 university professors had been abducted. [57]  He said the ministry has almost lost hope for the return of those who had been abducted and the violence targeting Iraqi universities has terrorized faculty members. “Houses of hundreds of professors have been stormed and hundreds of them have been arrested though later most of them were released,” he said. The rising violence has forced ‘thousands’ of Iraqi professors to flee the country, he said.  An estimated 331 schoolteachers were slain in the first four months of 2006, according to Human Rights Watch, and at least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped since the 2003 U.S. invasion, and 180 teachers were killed between February and November 2006, according to the Brookings Institute in Washington. [58]  The International Medical Corps reports that populations of teachers in Baghdad have fallen by 80% and medical personnel seem to have left in disproportionate numbers. Roughly 40 percent of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled by the end of 2006, the U.N. said. [59] Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. Of the 34,000 medical doctors in Iraq, 18.000 have fled the country and 2.000 have been killed. [60] At least 324 Iraqi and 30 non-Iraqi media professionals have died under US occupation. [61] On the 20th of March 2008, Reporters Without Borders reported that hundreds of journalists were forced into exile since the start of US-led invasion. Up to 75 percent of Iraq's doctors, pharmacists and nurses have left their jobs since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. More than half of those have emigrated, according to a Medact report of 16 Jan 2008. [62] 

The number of prominent Iraqi academics and professionals who fled the country are approaching 20,000. Of the 6700 Iraqi professors who have fled since 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported in October 2008 that only 150 of them had returned[63]. 

The Iraqi minister of education said that 296 members of education staff were killed in 2005 alone. [64]  According to the UN office for humanitarian affairs 180 teachers have been killed since 2006 until March 2007, up to 100 have been kidnapped and over 3,250 have fled the country. The BRussells Tribunal’s list of murdered Iraqi academics contains 442 names until 01 September 2010. [65] 

Hundreds of legal workers have left the country. At least 210 lawyers and judges killed since the US-led invasion in 2003, in addition to dozens injured in attacks against them.[66] 

Since 2007 bombings at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad have killed or maimed more than 335 students and staff members, according to a 19 Oct 2009 NYT article, and a 12-foot-high blast wall has been built around the campus. [67] 

These are just a few examples showing the extent of the problem. 

The effort to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, including schools and higher education institutions, have been plagued by shoddy construction, corruption and diverting funds to “security”. The rapidly deteriorating conditions and a complete failure to establish a functioning education system has produced a spiralling dropout rate of almost 50%.

Violence since the U.S.-led invasion has driven thousands of students away, with enrolment off by more than half at some universities in 2006 alone, officials said. Universities in other parts of the country are open, but have become deserted. (Washington Post 18/01/2007) 

Omar Al Hajj, a professor at the University of Technology said: "Death squads accused of killing Iraqi professionals and scientists are the same forces that invaded Iraq, looted its museums and stole its banks."

"They are also the same parties, which abduct businessmen and foreigners for high ransoms." [68] 

To this date, there has been no systematic investigation of this phenomenon by the occupation authorities. Not a single arrest has been reported in regard to this terrorization of the intellectuals. The inclination to treat this systematic assault on Iraqi professionals as somehow inconsequential is consistent with the occupation powers’ more general role in the decapitation of Iraqi society. That aspect of post-invasion Iraq is best exemplified by the Bremer de-Baathification policy that had the effect of removing professional leadership cadres in the political, economic and military spheres. It is less often remembered that this bureaucratic purging extended to the educational and cultural spheres with alarming consequences. The end result of the purge of Baathists has been the almost complete and quite deliberate deconstruction of Iraq’s human capital. 

Massive out-emigration in the wake of the foreign invasion has undermined national coherence in even more and direct and devastating ways. Between January and October 2007, the war in Iraq has displaced 1 million Iraqis to Syria, in addition to the nearly 450.000 that had fled Iraq in 2006. The refugees come disproportionally from the educated middle class, who embodied this hard-won sense of national coherence. The literacy of refugee children is falling precipitously, which bodes ill for the next generation. Iraqi young women and girls are being forced by the destitution of their families into survival sex and organized prostitution.[69] 

Iraq’s pro-consul Paul Bremer’s raft of 97 edicts in total disembowelled the middle class that cemented Iraqi society, and thrust some 15.500 researchers, scientists, teachers and professors into unemployment. The order to disband the army created approximately 500.000 jobless people with military experience. Predictably, a huge human pool of angry, pauperized Iraqis turned to the rising insurgency for redress. The occupation forces dampened down the emerging resistance with indiscriminate collective punishment that took on the character of yet another “shock and awe” that overwhelmed Iraqis and left them helpless and desperate. With the protective shield of the state removed, criminal elements of all descriptions moved to prey on the defenseless and disorientated population. The Iraqi people and their extraordinary heritage were left unprotected and vulnerable. 

Successive Iraqi states and regimes, whatever their shortcomings and limitations, had nevertheless held together a layered and culturally rich nation. Iraq was an incredibly complex but fragile mosaic. It was formed not only by the 3 major ethnic groups but also of countless minority communities. In conditions of engineered chaos that intricate fabric that had persisted for thousands of years in embracing astonishing diversity was rent and perhaps destroyed forever. The major ethno-religious groups were deliberately separated out. With the bonds of national unity weakened, they were played one against the other. The small and vulnerable minorities were swallowed up in the turmoil. 

Several of Iraq's minorities risk being wiped out as they face unprecedented levels of violence, according to Minority Rights Group International. [70]

Some of Iraq's religious and ethnic minorities have lived in the region for two millennia.

Minority groups are being targeted and killed simply because of their ethnic or religious affiliations.

For the Christians, still speaking in Aramaic, the language of the Bible, the numbers leaving Iraq are disproportionately high. The Assyrian Church of the East is one of the Churches most affected. Other Churches under extreme duress are the Syrian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Chaldean. In 2006, the United Nations refugee agency has recorded that 44 percent of Iraqi asylum seekers to Syria are Christian. Christians were also the largest group of refugees arriving in the Jordanian capital Amman. What about Mandaeans, followers of John the Baptist, whose faith is pre-Christian? They are unable to protect themselves as others in Iraq have been forced to, because their faith forbids them to take up arms.

Yazidis too are under attack. Their figure of worship is Maluk Ta'us, the fallen angel - the Yazidis believe he was forgiven by God. Their faith has led to them being accused of "devil worship" and they are being slaughtered for their beliefs. Both the Mandaeans and Yazidis have had fatwas issued against them.

Other minorities include Bahai’s, Faili Kurds, Jews, Palestinians, Shabaks and Turkomans. Together they make up 10 percent of Iraq's population. [71] 

The occupying powers and the post-invasion governments that they installed have consistently shown no interest at all in keeping decent records of people killed and displaced, cultural artifacts destroyed, archaeological sites damaged and intellectuals murdered. They have shown even less inclination to investigate the crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. This calculated disinterest is itself revealing. And even worse, official spokespersons give overt expression to the pervasive inclination of the occupiers to view chaos and lawlessness as “creative” in the sense of providing opportunities to wipe the state clean, to create new beginnings, or start over from scratch. In the context of engineered chaos, the wanton degradation of Iraq’s once vaunted educational and health systems represents an opportunity to begin again. 

Civil war or counter-insurgency? 

According to several polls, the majority of the Iraqis are convinced that sectarian tensions will diminish when the occupation troops leave. According to most Iraqis there is no civil war in Iraq and sectarian tensions are created and encouraged by the occupiers. According to all statistics, the Iraqis are convinced that the sectarian violence is caused by the U.S. and thus will be lessened if the occupier withdraws [72]

The popular resistance remains out of view in our media, only the bombings can be viewed daily. But who is responsible for the kidnappings, the bombings, sectarian killings? Is that the popular resistance?

Who are the different actors who destabilize the country? Who creates the conditions for a civil strife? Who is involved in death squad activities? Let’s try to find out. 

A. Militias. 

Long before the invasion, the US and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators. The most conspicuous of these militia groups are:

1. The Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmed Chalabi. 

2. The Iraqi National Accord (INA) led by Iyad Allawi, the U.S./Britain most preferred ‘strongman’. 

Both groups constitute of Iraqi expatriates (including ex-Ba’athists), trained and armed by the U.S. and Britain. 

3. The Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Da’awa/SCIRI religious 'parties' led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Nuri al-Maliki. This group constitutes of thousands of Iraqi expatriates and illegal Iranian immigrants expelled from Iraq in the 1980’s. The group is trained and heavily armed by Iran and the U.S. 

4. The Kurdish militia (the Peshmerga) led by warlords were trained and armed by the U.S. and Israel. [73] 

5. The Sadr movement (known as the Mehdi Army), led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The movement has been accused of many crimes and sectarian killings since the Sadr movement entered the political process. 

Since the invasion, each militia group has mutated into several groups of death squads and criminal gangs such as the Wolf Brigade, the Karar Brigade, the Falcon Brigade, the Amarah Brigade, the Muthana Brigade and the Defenders of Kadhimiyah,. They are armed and financed by the U.S. and its allies, and fully integrated into the Occupation. Each group is carefully used by the occupying forces for terrorising the Iraqi civilian population in a campaign designed to erode the civilian population’s support for the Iraqi Resistance against the Occupation. U.S. military sources have openly admitted that the population, where support for the Resistance is high, “is paying no price for the support it is giving to the [Resistance] … We have to change that equation”, (Newsweek, 14 January 2004). In other words, Iraqis civilians are deliberately targeted for rejecting the Occupation. The U.S. military relies on the militias because their performance in counterinsurgency war is comparatively better than the paper-tiger Iraqi police and military, but the militias are heavily dependent on the Pentagon for logistics and support and owe little allegiance to the Iraqi state. 

In 2006 some of these groups have been incorporated in the Special Police Commando’s, while the Peshmerga serve wholesale in the new Iraqi army. (see further)

John Pace, special UN envoy in Baghdad, reached the following conclusion: "Some militias are integrated into the police and wear police uniforms. The Badr Brigade are mainly those who carry out the killings. They are the most notorious. "(Source: Guardian, March 2, 2006). 

Dyncorp and the Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp (US security Companies) employees, known as International Police Liaison Officers, were supervising training SWAT teams (special weapons and tactics). The SWAT teams don’t appear to be directly linked to the police commandos, but were established as elite police units, as were the commandos. Both were formed at the same time. The Hillah SWAT team’s size in 2006, about 800 men, was about the same as a commando battalion. While it’s referred to as a SWAT team, the Hillah unit is distinct from a separate U.S. initiative to create 20 provincial SWAT teams of 27 men each. The Hillah SWAT team by itself is larger than the entire SWAT program. By January 2005, it already had 500 men under arms. The SWAT team has been used extensively in counter-insurgency operations. In a period of 6 months, the 24th Marines conducted “58 joint raids” with the team. Using helicopters for raids indicates that the units are being trained as a high-end force. The Hillah SWAT team was described as being “94 percent” Shia. [74]

B. British terrorists in Iraq. 

An article in the Sunday Telegraph[75] points towards clear evidence British special forces are recruiting, training terrorists to heighten ethnic tensions. An elite SAS wing with bloody past in Northern Ireland operates with immunity and provides advanced explosives[76]. Some attacks are being blamed on Iranians, Sunni insurgents or shadowy terrorist cells such as "Al Qaeda”. It is led by Lt. Col. Gordon Kerr, heading the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), a large counter-terrorism force made up of unnamed "existing assets" from the glory days in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.  And America's covert soldiers are right there with them, working side-by-side with their British comrades in the aptly named "Task Force Black," the UK's Sunday Telegraph reported. [77]  

This confirms what many have speculated for a long time, that Britain and the US are deeply involved in bombings and attacks inside Iraq. 

C. Facilities Protection Services (FPS). 

There is also the claim of  Iraq's interior minister Jawad al-Bolani, speaking to a small group of reporters in Baghdad on October 12 2006, who blamed the Facilities Protection Service, or FPS, a massive but unregulated government guard force, including foreign “contractors”, aka mercenaries, whose numbers he put at about 150,000.  "Whenever we capture someone, we rarely find anyone is an employee of the government ministries," Bolani said. “When they are, they've turned out to be mostly from the FPS, with very few individual, actual incidents involving anyone from the Ministry of Interior or Ministry of Defense."  

Private US and UK security firms are closely allied to Mr. Bremer’s ‘Facilities Protection Service’ programme in Iraq. Newsweek (24.04.06) suggested 146,000 belong to this ‘security’ force. More recent figures (2007) put the number at 200.000. The former Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, associated the FPS with the endemic ‘death squads’ operating inside the police forces, which are hastening the disintegration of Iraq. So definitely these mercenaries are involved in covert operations. The most recent figures (2009) put the number at 100.000.

 This reinforces the suspicion of many observers that the British and American soldiers on their ears engaged in bombings and attacks in Iraq, which are then attributed to Sunni insurgents, Iran, or some other terrorist group like Al Qaeda. [78] 

D. Special police commandos. 

According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the “special police commandos” are being used throughout Iraq and have been conducting criminal assassinations known as the “Salvador option” with the full knowledge of U.S. forces.  At the end of 2003, when it became clear that the US would face tough resistance against their occupation, part of a secret $3 billion in funds—tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November 2003—went toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts said in 2003 already that this could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists—up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq. According to an article published in New York Times Magazine in September 2004, Counsellor to the US Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces James Steele was assigned to work with a new elite Iraqi counter-insurgency unit known as the Special Police Commandos, formed under the operational control of Iraq’s Interior Ministry. 

From 1984 to 1986 then Col. Steele had led the US Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, where he was responsible for developing special operating forces at brigade level during the height of the conflict (…) The Police Commandos are in large part the brainchild of another US counter-insurgency veteran, Steven Casteel, a former top DEA man who has been acting as the senior advisor in the Ministry of the Interior. Casteel was involved in the hunt for Colombia’s notorious cocaine baron Pablo Escobar, during which the DEA collaborated with a paramilitary organization known as Los Pepes, which later transformed itself into the AUC, an umbrella organization covering all of Colombia’s paramilitary death squads.  

John Pace, human rights chief for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), told the Independent, when he left Baghdad in February 2006, that up to three-quarters of the corpses stacked in the city's mortuary show evidence of gunshot wounds to the head or injuries caused by drill-bits or burning cigarettes. Much of the killing, he said, was carried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. Many of the policemen and police commandos under the ministry's control are suspected of being former members of the Badr Brigade. Not only counter-insurgency units such as the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpions and the Tigers, but the commandos and even the highway patrol police have been accused of acting as death squads. 

On April 30 2006, the Organisation for Follow-up and Monitoring wrote: “After exact counting and documenting, the Iraqi Organisation for Follow-up and Monitoring has confirmed that 92 % of the 3.498 bodies found in different regions of Iraq have been arrested by officials of the Ministry of Interior.  Nothing was known about the arrestees’ fate until their riddled bodies were found with marks of horrible torture.  It’s regrettable and shameful that these crimes are being suppressed and that several states receive government officials, who fail to investigate these crimes.” 

E. The occupation forces. 

The British medical journal The Lancet reported on 11 October 2006 that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has led to the deaths of between 426,000 and 794,000 Iraqis.  “While precision about such figures is difficult, we can be confident that the excess deaths were above 390,000, and may in fact be as high as 940,000. The vast majority (92 per cent) of the excess deaths were due to direct violence. (…)”. 31 percent of those killed were actually slain by U.S. and "coalition" forces. 

Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy. 

Harassment from U.S. forces is a greater threat to the work of the Iraqi Red Crescent than insurgent attacks, a senior official of the Red Cross-linked humanitarian organization said. 

Obama appointed the most despicable creature, General McChrystal, as head of military operations in Afghanistan after this McChrystal created havoc in Iraq between 2003-2008.

“In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.” (And as we know, the Iraqi resistance are the terrorists)

“Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/world/asia/13commander.html  

McChrystal is the dark knight who organized the counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and created civil war and oversaw and organized the death squads. That’s OK with Mr. Obama: “Obama administration officials have described the shakeup as a way to bring a bolder and more creative approach to the faltering war in Afghanistan.” 

Moreover, Occupation forces have incarcerated tens of thousands of innocent people in order to defeat the resistance of the Iraqi people against their imperial plans.

It was reported on 10 March 2010 that the USA occupying forces in Iraq have locked-up more than 162,000 Iraqi citizens in more than 50 prisons and detention camps including 28 camps run by US occupying forces, in addition to many undisclosed investigation and incarceration centers over Iraq.  

The number of detainees registered in International Red Cross records is around 71,000, the other detainees are not recorded with the IRC because they are arrested at US detaining centers where visits by the Red-Cross representatives are denied by the occupying forces and thousands of war prisoners and old age detainees have been imprisoned and detained for more than six years suffering from unbearable and painful living and health conditions. 

As to the number of forces that have to provide security and stability, here are some recent figures (April 2010 – Brookings Institution Washington)

The number of  Iraqi security forces is 664.000; US forces: 98.000; Contractors: 100.000 

So the occupation forces certainly aren’t in Iraq to protect the Iraqi people. Much to the contrary. They’re terrorizing the population through their death squads and trained militia’s. In a poll conducted in 2008 for a consortium of news outlets led by ABC News, 73 percent said they oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq. Sixty-one percent said that the presence of US forces in Iraq is making the security situation in Iraq worse; only about a third said that the surge had a positive effect on security. 

F. Al Qaeda in Iraq.  

If we believe the mainstream media, The US and Iraqi military are fighting this organisation because it is responsible not for the major bulk of attacks against the military and the bombing attacks against the civilian population. But Military officials told the New York Times that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800—about 7 percent—claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August 2007, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals—slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates. 

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. In 2007 the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number." 

How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization." 

G. Criminal gangs. 

The last group in this list are the ordinary criminal gangs, who do f.i. kidnappings for ransom money. They play a marginal, but instrumental role in the current instability in Iraq. Because none of the crimes committed are investigated, the victims have the impression that law and order are non-existent in the “new Iraq”. So most of them flee the country with their families.  I mention ordinary criminality at the end of this list because ordinary criminals – and there are a lot of them in Iraq - are the only group that is not structurally linked to the occupation and its stooges. But these bandits can do their crimes with impunity, under the eyes of 750.000 security forces, without fear of being caught or prosecuted. This feeds the suspicion among the Iraqis that the occupier at least tolerates these crimes in order to create as much chaos as possible, in order to encourage the process of cultural cleansing. 

All these actors help to destroy the Republic of Iraq, kill and expel its people, annihilate its middle class, all this with the active (or tacid) support of the US occupation authorities, in a campaign of counter-insurgency that resembles the many “dirty wars” of the US during the past 50 years.

So instead of bringing stability to Iraq, the US occupation is doing everything it possibly can to create chaos and terror, to incite civil war and sectarian strife, to break the aspirations of the Iraqi people to live in a sovereign state and decide its own future. 

Meanwhile, it is already clear that the American mission in Iraq, designed to create pro-American model for the region and a bulwark against anti-American militancy, has achieved precisely the opposite. The defeat of Iraq was supposed to illustrate how instructional violence could intimidate and de-legitimate the region’s so-called “rogue states”. Instead, the policies driven by neo-conservatism, Israel and the oil conglomerates ironically served to empower Iran, the only regional power to resist all of those pressures and now the “rogue state” of choice. Iran’s regional status has risen in ways unimaginable without this backdrop of failed imperial policies. Mr. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the Iranian President’s deputy for legal and parliamentary affairs (during the “Gulf and future challenges Conference”, organized in Abu Dhabi, January 2004 by Emirate Center for Strategic Researches and Studies) pointed out the role of Iran in the occupation of Iraq. “The fall of Kabul and Baghdad would not have happened easily without the assist of Iran”, Abtahi said clearly indicating the role of Iranian militias and intelligence department in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iranian threat is now on the table and pro-American authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have helped put it there.

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