"On a day when oil hit $112 a barrel for the first time, lawmakers said that energy-rich Iraq should be footing more of its own bills. 'We've put about $45 billion into Iraq's reconstruction . . . and they have not spent their own resources. They have got to have some skin in the game.' "
That's Rep. Rahm Emanuel last week, parroting an increasingly popular criticism of the situation in Iraq -- that Iraqis themselves are to blame for the chaos in their country. For war supporters turned critics like Emanuel, it's a convenient way to deflect blame from one's role in enabling this disaster. Republicans have used the talking point consistently since the invasion, and some Democrats have been quick to join them.
But putting "skin in the game"? I guess the 90,000 civilian deaths (some put the figure much higher) and 5 million displaced don't count. And we better not mention our own actions that facilitated the breakdown of Iraqi civil society: the “shock and awe” bombing campaign, our decisions to promote de-Baathification, disband the Iraqi military, and close massive amounts of state-owned industries, and our utter ignorance about Iraqi history and culture. If only those darn Iraqis would put in some extra effort!
This week's lead editorial in The Nation, behind a sub-wall but posted graciously by D.C. editor Chris Hayes, says all that needs to be said:
Why, they asked, won’t the people we’re occupying do what we want? They aimed some of their most heated rhetoric at Iraqis who refuse to “take responsibility” for the future of their country. Criticism of the Maliki government is legitimate and warranted. But these criticisms slid all too easily from the government to the Iraqis themselves, creating a bizarre and unjust framing of the war’s victims as its beneficiaries. “We’ve done a lot for the Iraqis in terms of just the numbers themselves,” said Barbara Boxer. “And we are losing our sons and daughters every single day for the Iraqis to be free.”
You would almost think that in 2003 Washington dispatched 160,000 caterers to Iraq to wait on the population hand and foot, with the US taxpayer picking up the check. It couldn’t help but call to mind an earlier era: “Take up the White Man’s burden—/Send forth the best ye breed—/Go bind your sons to exile/To serve your captives’ need.” Despite an estimated million civilians killed, 5 million displaced and the country hollowed and destroyed by sanctions and bombs, too many of our Congressional representatives seem to conceive of the war as something we did for the Iraqis, not something we did to them.
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