Iraq

America is trying to get more out of its relationship with Iraq

You have to hear it to believe it. Iraqi political leaders seriously believe they have blessed the Iraqi people with the benefits of freedom and chide them for not appreciating the value of this freedom and for not knowing that many countries in the region are envious of their freedom.

Like doting, loving fathers imparting their wisdom to their innocent children, Iraqi leaders advise Iraqis to cling to their freedom and protect it from extinction.

Turbaned Humam Hamoudi, Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq president and one of the major leaders of the political process in the country, appeared in a television interview on “Alhurra Iraq” to talk about freedom in Iraq, boast about it and demand its perenniality.

Here is the most important thing he said: “No country in the region is like yours… Oh, Iraqis, you must be worthy of this blessing for you are living in the ultimate blessing. Mind that you don’t lose it if you ignore it or are not thankful for it.”

Yes, we in Iraq have a unique type of freedom that can be found nowhere else in the region; no boundaries and no restrictions. The only problem is that this freedom is the freedom to live in total chaos.

This is not the type of freedom that the Iraqi people have dreamt of for decades. This is not the freedom that Iraqis trusted their turbaned leaders and rulers in Iraq’s new era of democracy or even its “Westernised” leaders and rulers who carry their turbans inside their heads and souls, to provide. Yes, Iraqis had fallen for their leaders’ hollow promises of freedom, justice and unadulterated democracy.

We need to acknowledge that the primary cause that gave birth to the type of freedom currently in Iraq is the existence of rulers and leaders of Hamoudi’s ilk. These people say the freedom accorded to the people should stop at the feet of the ruler’s freedom to dispose of his subjects or the feet of the imam’s freedom to manage the affairs of his mosque.

All of this talk about the principles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is nonsense, a heresy imported from the world of infidels and global arrogance. Since “every heresy is the work of the devil,” as the saying goes, those who advocate these human rights and strive to promote them would be waging war against Allah, His Messenger and the whole of the believers.

The widespread chaos in Iraq, which the rulers of the Green Zone call freedom, is a natural and predictable product of the quota system that gave the parties and figures sharing authority in the country the absolute power to use state institutions and authority to pile up fortunes and weapons. They used these fortunes and weapons to ensure their survival and their continued monopolisation of power.

Naturally, the interests of these noble figures require that they hire gangs to carry their weapons, intimidate their opponents, extort money and, if needed, go to war to guarantee their survival in power as long as Allah wills it.

Equally naturally, these great gentlemen will turn a blind eye on what their guards, parties and militias are doing to ordinary citizens. Consider the kidnapping, torture and killing of peaceful protesters in Basra, Liberation Square in Baghdad and in other provinces in Iraq. This must be the kind of freedom Hamoudi was talking about, their freedom to break the law and commit unspeakable crimes.

Should you have the misfortune of arguing with them about their definition of freedom, their preachers and mouthpieces would rebut that they have been “elected by the masses in fair and democratic elections recognised by countless governments and especially by the quintessential champions of freedom, the United States and Iran.”

These poor fellows do not know that democracy is not just elections, even if the elections are genuine and fair. In any case, what they are used to are elections that they themselves decide, either by intimidating voters through violence, misleading fatwas and co-opted judiciary or by buying votes with money looted from the public treasury or flowing from across the border.

The fact of the matter is that the Iranian occupation of Iraq has had a crucial role in sowing chaos in Iraq and in nurturing it to the point of making it an integral part of Iraq’s new culture. Iran nurtures this chaos by jealously guarding Iraq’s new class of mercenaries and bloodsuckers.

Our people in Iraq will never taste real freedom until these bloodsuckers are expelled of their political, social and economic lives. That can happen if Iraqis operate a complete and final separation between religion and the state or when a free and sovereign Iraq joins the ranks of secular, democratic nations that guarantee equal rights and duties for all of their citizens without distinction of race, ethnicity, religion or sect.