by H. PATRICIA HYNES
In the third week of December 2011, a confluence of political events profoundly affecting Iraqi and American women took place.
In that week, the remaining occupying US troops in Iraq were withdrawn, unceremoniously in a fortified concrete courtyard, with only a small band playing as the US flag was furled. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta avowed that the price was high, but the US invasion and occupation “gave birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq.” Iraq President Maliki did not attend.
By contrast to the discreet exit, President Obama welcomed returning US troops at Fort Bragg with big braggadocios. The war was “one of the most extraordinary chapters in American military history.” Having sacrificed so much for “people they never met,” the returning soldiers are part of what makes “us special as Americans.” Unlike other empires, which wage war for resources and territory, “We do it because it’s right.”
The same week, Yanar Mohammed, founding director of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), was interviewed on the state of Iraq as the American occupation ends. She described Iraqi cities full of destroyed buildings and broken streets, with intermittent electricity and unsafe drinking water. Iraq, she said, is now a country of 99% poor and 1% rich living in the Green Zone, burdened with the most corrupt government in the world that is giving control of oil resources to multinational oil companies.
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