Forget About Liberation

We are told that, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the media was full of lies because it was state-run. In the United States, however, the media are free to censor themselves.

Perhaps that is why we saw the statue of Saddam Hussein topple 5,000 times on CNN and saw the images of jubilant Iraqis--but did not see what happened just a few minutes before that scene, when a U.S. Marine clambered up the statue and hung an American flag over Saddam's face, an unmistakable gesture of conquest.

The United States government and its propaganda department, the United States media, are trying very hard to make occupation look like liberation. Perhaps they believe that if they show the cheering Iraqis often enough, we will forget that they are frolicking in a city without power and water.

Look at the happy, dancing Iraqis and forget about their dead brothers and sisters, dismembered by U.S. bombs. Forget about their ruined cities, where even the hospitals are being looted. Forget about the food aid that hasn't arrived. Forget about the sanctions still in place. Forget about the United States tanks, the checkpoints, and the fact that U.S. and British forces conveniently control all the oil fields.

You can't quite forget, can you? Neither can the Iraqis.

The United States government always counts on us to forget the brutality of their wars and the sick reasons for which they were waged. If we didn't forget some of the time, the government couldn't continue to get away with it. But the war does not magically become justified now that the U.S. has won.

On Monday, someone set fire to the National Archives and the Koranic library in Baghdad. In a matter of minutes, tens of thousands of pages of Iraq's history were turned to ashes. British journalist Robert Fisk saw the blaze at the Koranic library and rushed to the seat of power at the U.S. Marines' Civil Affairs Bureau. He gave the exact name and map coordinates of the building, a five-minute drive away. The Marines did nothing.

In this horrific situation, it would be easy to argue that the job of the United States occupation is to "restore order." The U.S. got Iraq into this mess, the argument goes, and therefore it is our duty to help the Iraqis repair their shattered country. The problem is that the "order" the U.S. plans to install has nothing to do with protecting ordinary Iraqis and everything to do with securing maximum profits for U.S. corporations.

The northern city of Mosul has been wracked by looting and fighting between native Arabs and Kurdish troops. But instead of trying to quell the violence, most of the United States forces in the north were busy securing the Kirkuk oilfields. In Baghdad, U.S. troops sat back while looters ransacked the Ministry of Planning, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Irrigation, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry of Information. But they protected the Ministry of the Interior--home to Hussein's vast collection of domestic intelligence records--and the Ministry of Oil.

The United States will rebuild Iraq, but not because it cares about the Iraqis. It will do so because rebuilding is profitable. Now that U.S. bombs have smashed Iraq to bits, the country can be rebuilt in an image of the United States's choosing: fully privatized, foreign-owned, and open for business.

The carve-up is already underway. While the craters were still cooling in Umm Qasr, the United States government awarded a $4.8 million contract to Stevedoring Services of America to run the city's deep-water port. A subsidiary of the Halliburton company, of which Vice President Dick Cheney is a former CEO, has also secured a contract to extinguish oil fires and repair Iraq's oil infrastructure. Jay Garner, a retired general and the new U.S.-appointed "civilian administrator" of Iraq, would like to see Iraqi oil revenues "managed by a neutral agency, like the World Bank." Just ask the people of Argentina if they think the World Bank is a neutral body.

Who are the real looters in this situation? Iraqis may be pilfering television sets and chandeliers, but U.S. corporations are gleefully making off with the biggest prize of all.

The best thing the United States can possibly do for the people of Iraq is to get out of their country. Iraqis have all the wealth they need to rebuild their nation--they are standing on the most valuable commodity in the world.

There is no guarantee that democracy would flourish in Iraq if the United States left tomorrow. One cannot go from 20 years of war, sanctions, and dictatorship to a fully free and democratic society overnight. But one cannot get there at all under the presence of an occupying army and the colonial carve-up of one's national resources. Democracy in Iraq would mean democratic control of Iraq's resources by Iraqis, and that is something the United States is currently doing everything in its power to prevent.

Laura Durkay is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.