By NNN-WAM
Dubai : George Bush must see the writing on the wall and end the mess that he has made of Iraq, once the Middle East’s most advanced country. Leave Iraq to Iraqis and to its fate. It’s not your baby, anyway, wrote a UAE daily.
The Dubai-based ‘Khaleej Times’ said in its editorial today that four years ago, George Bush and his military came calling on Iraq with the stated objective of ending dictatorship and introducing real democracy. The hidden motives behind the expedition are a matter of heated debate even today.
The paper went on saying “What is clear though is that ordinary people, men, women and children, continue to be victimised as never before in Iraq’s history. It is a never-ending saga of death and destruction”.
“By latest count, as certified by Iraq Body Count, the number of documented civilian deaths there is edging closer to 100,000. The American air raids on Baghdad and the southern belts on Friday, that caused no less than 13 civilian deaths, have only added to this body count and further terrified the nation and its hapless people. Civilian deaths cannot be accepted as collateral damage as part of the war-on-terror,” the daily added.
The paper noted that there are those who say the “undocumented” deaths, in the ongoing war there, could be ten times more than this figure. The civil society is in a state of confusion. Institutions are withering away, due to lack of leadership and direction.
Economic installations are in a state of ruin, or are facing destruction, one after another. Post-Saddam, Iraq has lost its life and soul. So, who gained, and who lost, from this misadventure? “The question on many a lip is this: Are the Americans continuing in Iraq to solve a problem, or to further mess up the situation there? The argument that there will be deluge if the US withdraws has virtually very few takers. Iraqis are already in a state of total, absolute chaos. How worse can worse become?
The “surge” has proved to be yet another failure on Bush’s balance sheet. The real surge was in the level of violence; not in its containment. The US leadership, however, is in a different world. Bush continues to talk tough; but his body language betrays his troubled mind. No one should be more worried about the mess in Iraq than the US president himself,” the paper pointed out.
“Watching the Iraqis struggle this way is in itself an insensitivity of the highest order. What Bush can do, in these final months of his second and final term, is not to exacerbate the Iraq tragedy, if that were possible,” the daily concluded.