It has been interesting to hear the complaints of George W. Bush, in connection with the aggrieved Baltic States of the former Soviet Empire that little recognition has been given to the subjugation of those states by the Soviets after World War II. Is Bush any different than Stalin? Stalin did not invent a major war in order to invade and control Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, but Bush has concocted a war against Iraq under false pretexts and contrived "intelligence" in order to control Iraq and ultimately its strategic resources.
Even today, after Iraq has supposedly become a democracy under an American-designed and vetted electoral process, American military forces not only occupy Iraq, but also operate in open warfare within Iraq against Iraqis. The current offensive against "insurgents" by the multi-service task force of the U.S. military is proof that Iraq is not sovereign. Iraq’s new puppet regime does not only direct the U.S. Army in Iraq but also bows to it.
All the talk over the past few months about rebuilding Iraq’s defense forces and police forces is more about creating images and perhaps supplying low-paid jobs to Iraqis than it is about exercise of sovereignty by the Iraqi government.
No government of Iraq will be sovereign as long as American military forces control Iraq. No Iraqi government will be sovereign as long as its own survival depends on protection by entrenched American forces. No Iraqi government will be sovereign as long as America maintains permanent military bases in Iraq, as long as America maintains a massive embassy from which to pull the strings of the puppet government in Iraq, and as long as Iraq freedom fighters say the puppet government is illegitimate.
CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC and BBC can tell the world public that Iraq has a sovereign government, but that does not make it so. All these sources used to tell the world that Iraq’s prior government had not only weapons of mass destruction program but also posed a real threat to world security. Saying something and repeating something endlessly does not make it so. Iraq does not have a sovereign government, and without American military support, its current government might not survive a week. However, if the current government took the initiative to tell the Iraqi people that American forces must leave Iraq and set a prompt timetable to accomplish this, the Iraqi government, illegitimate as it is, could begin to gain legitimacy and ultimately to gain sovereignty as well. Sovereignty is not an frame of mind, it is a course of action.