A Sovereign and Independent U.S. Puppet by Jacob Hornberger

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Jacob Hornberger’s Blog [Blog Archives]

A Sovereign and Independent U.S. Puppet
by Jacob G. Hornberger

President Bush and members of Congress have become frustrated and exasperated with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They say he’s not meeting their deadlines. Bush even says that if Maliki doesn’t straighten up, the Iraqi people will oust him from office.

But wait a minute! I thought Iraq was now a sovereign and independent country. I thought that that was what the invasion of Iraq four years ago was all about — well, at least after those infamous and scary WMDs failed to materialize.

The fact is that Bush’s and Congress’s attitude reflects what U.S. foreign policy has long been based upon, especially in Iraq — the installation of a puppet regime that will do the bidding of U.S. officials.

In fact, the great offense committed by Saddam Hussein, the offense that cost him his job, was simply that he didn’t kneel and obey the dictates of U.S. officials, especially after U.S. officials had furnished him with those WMDs so that he could kill Iranians with them. (The reason that it was considered okay to kill Iranians was because the Iranian people had ousted their U.S.-installed puppet, the shah of Iran, without U.S. permission).

When President Bush invaded Iraq, the goal was the same as it had been throughout the period of the brutal sanctions, which year after year had contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. The goal was the ouster of Saddam and the installation of a U.S.-installed puppet, such as CIA or Pentagon favorites Iyad Alawi or Ahmad Chalabi.

Such regime change has long been a core element of U.S. foreign policy. Just ask the people of Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Vietnam, Haiti, Afghanistan, and countless others.

What happened in Iraq, however, was something that U.S. officials never expected: The Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Sistani outsmarted and outmaneuvered President Bush by demanding nationwide elections rather than allow Bush to implement some type of electoral caucus plan that was obviously designed to get a U.S. puppet into power.

The result is something that I suspect most Americans still don’t realize, which we have long been pointing out here at FFF. President Bush’s invasion of Iraq brought into existence a radical Islamic regime that early on aligned itself with Iran. Yes, I said Iran — you know, the nation that Bush calls evil and that Bush is still threatening to invade.

For his part, Maliki hasn’t taken kindly to the subtle threats issued by President Bush and the members of Congress. Lashing out against them, he pointed out that no one has the right to impose deadlines on his elected government and that his country “can find friends elsewhere.”

Hey, you can’t really find fault with what the guy is saying, can you? After all, didn’t President Bush and the Pentagon tell the guy that Iraq was now a sovereign and independent country? And isn’t Maliki’s response exactly what President Bush would say if a foreign regime imposed deadlines on the U.S. government?

What undoubtedly set Bush off is that Maliki visited Tehran on August 8-9, after which he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Iraq, an invitation that has now been accepted. Oh, did I mention that Maliki just returned from visiting Syria, which Bush also says is a terrorist nation (even though the CIA uses Syria to torture suspected terrorists on its behalf).

Thus, the Iraq adventure gets crazier and crazier as each day passes. Hopefully, as the craziness continues, along with the continuous stream of dead bodies, the American people will do some deep reflecting on the moral bankruptcy of the U.S. government’s pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy and come to the realization that the only genuine solution is a restoration of non-interventionist, pro-republic foreign policy to our land.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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