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Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, and the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power, and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.
In an interview with Real News CEO Paul Jay, Bennis talks about the impact of US presence and the eventual departure from Iraq, and notes that although at some point US Troops will have to be withdrawn from Iraq and Iraqis are going to have a right to determine their own future, after years of occupation and the destruction and damage inflicted on Iraq and the country’s peoples the US owes reparations and more, but this can only be acted on after military occupation is ended.
Real News – March 13, 2009
Don’t cut and run, but get out of Iraq now
By most estimates, more than a million Iraqis have been killed as a direct consequence of the invasion and occupation, and many millions have been displaced and become refugees.
Is there any amount of reparation that can make up for what has been done to Iraqis? Has anyone thought to ask Iraqis that question? Would reparations equaling the more than a trillion dollars spent to kill them and destroy their country be enough?
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had been done to America, how much would be enough?
Yes, the country can be rebuilt and we should provide the wherewithal for the Iraqis to rebuild it. And, yes, we should pay reparations to the people, whose losses cannot ever be adequately replaced. And then there are the hopelessly maimed and those dying from cancer (DU) and the tragedy is endless.
Everything you can possibly think of has been done to Iraq and its people — an all out attempt to obliterate their country and take control of it.
Just Foreign Policy estimates the Iraqi deaths at 1,311,696.
As of this report, dated August 15, 2008, by CRC (Congressional Research Center),
The situation is and has been dire. Some families have been so impoverished that they are resorting to “selling” their children for child labor — imagine!
The Iraqi Red Crescent has an appeal for help here.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre speaks of the strifes confronting internally displaced persons.
More conditions here and here.
All this to a country and a people that did NOTHING to us!
Why don’t we have a Special Prosecutor already?
whats coming out of our new regime, they are going to stand by the same mantra of Iraqis need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Or their too unstable for withdrawal, or we need to protect our interests. Rachael Maddow asked how can we protect our troops in Afghanistan, how ass backwards is that? Meanwhile the military machine sits around trying to define what our mission is, what that means is what bs can they cook up to sell their aggression?
The Iraqis and the Afghans don’t have a say as they are the enemy, the bad bad guys who seek to harm us. The ‘strategic interests’ of the US Empire is another word for endless war. The people and countries we destroy, torture and occupy for security and democracy are somehow to blame. Weapons are the one business that is still profitable. Accountability to international law for the damage done to the Iraqis would require that we adhere to laws, we won’t even adhere to our own laws. Were too big to fall, we decide.
for war, bombs, and prisons.
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