Iraq: An Outsider's Perspective

As an Indian living in Bombay, I can perhaps take a less emotional look at what is probably the most controversial political issue in the USA today - Iraq. This was probably the most important and divisive issue in the 2006 United Stated Congressional election. The Democrats portrayed it as a political and military misadventure of gigantic proportions. For the Republicans, it's a moral crusade ordained by God's representative on earth - who sometimes goes by the name of George W Bush. Oh yeah, it's also about democracy and all that jazz. Both are wrong. The war in Iraq is about what wars have always been about since the dawn of history - conquest of territory and its wealth.

Or it should have been. Before and just after the invasion of Iraq, cynics declared that it was all about Iraq's oil. Well, if it had been, maybe US would not have found itself in the mess it is in today. The Bush administration did not heed the lessons of history. It had to go back just two centuries to the heyday of the British Empire. The imperial British conquered a good portion of the world in the 19^th Century - and they made so bones about it. They invaded - or connived their way into- an "uncivilized" country, in Asia, Africa or the Middle East, with the sole purpose of exploiting that country's wealth - and cheap labour - and repatriating the profits back to their homeland. Everything else was incidental. Take the current situation in Iraq. The so-called civil war would not have bothered the British too much. They would probably have been content to let the "natives" fight amongst themselves, while they stood on the sidelines and just made sure things didn't get out of hand. Less bother for them in the long run. It's probably what Cheney and Rumsfeld would do too.