The Confusion Of George Galloway

[faceless]

The Confusion of George Galloway
by Sami Ramadani (source: CASMII)
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
www.campaigniran.org

Editorial Note: Sami Ramadani was a political exile from Saddam's regime and is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.

George Galloway has been tireless in supporting the Iraqi people and opposing US wars of aggression. For that valiant effort he should be commended, but he is unfortunately badly misinformed on the extent of Iran's influence in Iraq, and his broadcast is being used and abused to feed into the escalating propaganda and justifying aggression against Iran. The "facts" he cites against Iran are unproven allegations, initially generated by various anti-Iranian sources, including the US-occupation machine in Iraq.

Iran's leaders would be unbelievably naive not to realise that breaking up Iraq and causing civil war are not in Iran's interest. Iran has its own ethnic differences and sects and has already accused the US of being behind some of the armed groups in the Kurdish and Arabic speaking regions. While any imposition on the Iraqi people must be condemned, it is evidently in the occupation's interest to divide the Iraqi people and divert their precious efforts from the main cause of their tragedies today: US tanks, chemical weapons, death squads and divisive policies.

I would venture to add that, under the umbrella of the US occupation, Israel has been playing a bigger role than Iran (See Seymour Hersh on training US death squads in Israel and by Israeli experts at Fort Bragg in North Carolina [and for the details of Israeli arming and training of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia]).

Some of the allegations are based on a simplistic analysis of the political forces in Iraq. Many political groups are in a state of flux, including the group which had the closest links with Iran: Hakim's forces (the Badr Brigade). Though Badr were originally trained in Iran, most of this group's leaders, and the social class of rich merchants that they mostly represent, are more in tune with US policies than Iran's. US close links with the Hakim family date back to 1958-63 and the anti-communist crusade. The US nurtured similar links with some of the Iranian clergy (hostile to Mossadaq, Tudeh, other anti-Shah regime groups, and later to Khomeini's line and successors).

Though by no means guaranteed, the US hopes that most of the Badr Brigade will take the side of the occupation forces in any showdown with Sadr's Mahdi Army and any anti-occupation force in the south and Baghdad. Though some contradictions persist, the occupation is pulling the main strings (a combination of threats and bribes) of all the groups in the green-zone government.

It is absolute nonsense to suggest that Iran is capable of a "take-over" of Iraq. This idea was strongly advocated after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah, and is based on portraying most people in the southern Iraq, Baghdad and Diyala as Iran's fifth column. It reminds me of the 1980's Iraqi government racist campaign against "the Persians" and the 1991 campaign against the uprising. In the 80's, for example, the state distributed millions of copies of a nasty booklet, written by the then Governor of Baghdad, entitled "Why God should not have created the Persians, Jews and flies".

Aside from the daily propaganda, that extremely racist campaign poisoned the entire Iraqi educational system, from nurseries to universities, for quarter of a century. [The current code words in the racist campaign revolve around the mythical "role of the Saffawis" and the "Persian origins" of millions of Iraqis. A similar campaign is directed at the Shia of Lebanon, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.]

I think that much of the activities of the sectarian death squads and torture chambers are not controlled by Iran but by the occupation's intelligence and military command. Much like they did in Vietnam and the Phoenix Operation. Similarly, the terrorist atrocities of the Wahhabi and Takfiri sectarians have been channelled into serving the US occupation.

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It's an interesting article, but it's a bit cheeky of the author to title the piece in relation to Galloway, then not even say what his supposed inaccuracies were. He has reinforced a negative stereotype while complaining against that very concept.

[Mandy]

[Salim201]

Surely you make a distinction between an Iraqi exile pushing for war, and a seemingly disinterested exile with no interest in either country? He's an academic and he's trying to set the record straight, furthermore he's largely spot on. I have no doubt at all that these bombings of mosques after Friday prayers weren't carried out by sectarian Muslim tribes. As Fisk keeps saying, "someone" wants a civil war in Iraq, and he doesn't think its Iraqi's as its unprecedented. We'll surely start to see things coming out over the course of this invasion as it gets worse and worse and some elite interests start to become affected.

[Mandy]

I agree with you Salim that you have to look at each exile's position on its merit. Though my assumption now is that I have to be a lot more critical about exiles.

I also agree with you that it is outsiders formenting the civil war, and NOT Iran which has actually helped pacify the south -- recall the British soldiers caught dressed as arabs with bomb making equipment in Basra. British Troops then attacked their supposed "allies" :(Iraqi Policemen) to free them.

The old line "divide and conquor".

There is also the Mossad involvement with the torture scandals, and their deep involvement in the North of Iraq.

Maybe it is the title of the article, which seems to blame George Galloway, when in the article it says "his broadcast is being used and abused " --> You can't blame George for abuse which others do with his broadcast. I also recall the broadcasts, and there was some heavy debate about them at the time, and even a few threads on the couch and elsewhere on it.

Maybe the writer should reference where George's broadcasts are being used and abused so we see the context of the argument.


p.s. Maybe the writer should have given more information about his own background, and where he stood and now stands on the issue of the invasion itself. That way we could better put his position in context, e.g. was he a supporter (or a member) of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1224075,00.html
"US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war"

And no, I don't believe the Iranians did dupe the US. The US invaded Iraq as part of the PNAC project, which has Iran in its cross-hairs.

[Salim201]

Agreed, I think he mentioned galloway simply to get exposure on sites like these! There's a lot more culpability to be found all over the place regarding the obfuscation of Iran's role in the region.

I'm just finding that the invasion of Iraq was just a huge imperialist adventure gone wrong, but they're desperate to salvage it, and there's no real talk of withdrawal amongst leading candidates of both parties, because they no the party line, and they're for preservation of empire. PNAC is a factor, but its part of a foreign policy running through the post-war decades. There are fears that Saudi Arabia is on the brink of serious civil unrest, and that jepeordises oil, also the rise of China and its own deals with the Saudi's. These are reasons for the invasion, there are some others and I think we'll find out more detail in the thinking of this war as time goes on, because there was a lot more opposition that we thought within the political classes at the time. The Blair Years on BBC was quite pathetic and cringey at times, Blair pulled out a Bush line by saying "the problem with Iraq isn't the invasion, its that they fought back!".

That isn't a joke, check it out for yourself!

[Mandy]

Related to this thread, George covers Iran and Iran in the video on thread :
http://couchtripper.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=6236

[mickyv]

Recently I’ve heard GG more than once, express his condemnation for both Ahmadinejad alleged denial of the Holocaust, and for his hosting of that conference, the stated aim of was “to assess the magnitude of the Holocaust”. I find it strange that GG was relatively quick to jump on the mistranslation of the “wiping Isreal off the map” (it was actually being debunked almost as soon as it was made, so GG was a little slow really), yet he still hasn’t realised or considered why the Holocaust Conference was ever held; it was held during the storm of Muslim outrage over the publication of the Prophet cartoons, and it was held directly as a direct response to Western “Free Speech” justifications for the publishing. Ahmadinejad openly stated his motivation, and sole reason for hosting the Conference (as well as a Holocaust cartoon competition), was explicitly to highlight the hypocrisy of the “Freedom of Speech” excuse, as denying/questioning the Holocaust was forbidden in the West. In short, if there was no Western publication of the cartoons, there would not have been an Iranian Holocaust Conference.

Another point that hardly ever gets mentioned, is that Ahmadinejad expressly does acknowledge that the Holocaust actually happened, whenever he says “Why should the Palestinians paid for what others did to the Jews ?”