The maladroit US Iraq policy and the misinformed public opinion

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
This article serves through contrasts and comparisons; it contains the discussion generated following the earlier re-publication of an article of mine (initially published in Buzzle: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/us-iraq-policy-mistake-disaster.html) in a blog of a Times online editor; a reader criticized, and here are included both his attack and its refutation. The contrast helps the reader realize how far from the historical truth the misguided public opinion has gone. Iraq is to some extent a problem of misconceptions and Western conventionalism!

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

The original article was republished (http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2006/11/get_ready_for_a.html#comment-25166180) and reads as follows:

US Iraq policy: from mistake to disaster?

The US Iraq policy was not bad; if anything, it was badly conceived and lamentably implemented. Current discussions and rumours about a forthcoming partition of Iraq to Shia, Sunni and Kurds reveal that, misguided, the US Middle East policy has become a major threat to the US global interests.

Partition without any reference to Philosophical Principles will be disastrous.

More voices have recently suggested the partition of Iraq as the last chance of America for a triumphant exit in Iraq. To suggest related bibliography would be a matter of hundreds of references, suffice it that we mention here the seemingly lucid approach "Think the Unthinkable: Partition Iraq" by Ivan Eland in http://www.independent.org/newsroom/arti...p?id=1310.

The suggestion has all relative charcateristics of proposals that do not emanate but from practical observation carried out on the spur of the moment - only. Yet, the US encounters in Iraq thorny problems, complex issues, and ethnic, religious and linguistic groups (or peoples) that antedate Islam and even Christianity. At a moment of difficulty, it is always wise to draw back for a short time, re-think of matters related to one's identity and originality, reassess what one represents in this world, and re-estimate the value and the significance of the ideals and the principles one stands for.

What is the point of America being in Iraq, if in doing it America loses its soul?

Like every nation, America hinges on and represents its own principles and values that are nothing more and nothing less than the Ideals of the Founding Fathers, namely Freedom, Equity, Equality, Fraternity, Justice, Lights, Independence (national self-determination), Respect of Human Rights, Democracy, Representativeness, and all the other values that made of America the most attractive pole in the Modern World.

Now, America must apply these Principles in Iraq. Since this involves Justice, a preliminary examination of what happened in that area over the past centuries (with a certain focus on the last decades) must take place.

Suggesting immediate partition of Iraq to those who stand accused for exterminating other peoples who peacefully lived there for centuries and millennia is not Justice; it is Political Amoralism of the worst kind.

Political Realism contradicts America's Founding Principles, and there is nothing about it in any Historical American National Document that relates to these Principles. Realpolitik may be useful for a moment when it does not enter into contrast with the nation's Moral Philosophical Foundations, but these are its limits.

America rose to Supremacy over all the other nations, the remnants of the defunct Soviet Union, and the old colonial empires of France and England, Japan, Spain and Portugal. The rising powers of China, India and Brazil will need time to catch up, even if this - according to some - may be a matter of a decade or two.

Accepted as the only Superpower, America finds itself in the role of the Prince in the famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Acting in Iraq is for America the ultimate test, the corroboration of a foreign policy that applies the aforementioned Principles. What America was standing for, what made of America the reason of so many people moving to, must now be exported to and applied in Iraq.

America must finally listen to the Voice of History that louds like that of Lady Capulet (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1):

I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give.

Romeo slew Tybalt. Romeo must not live.

Partition without problem conceptualization and historical understanding will be ominous!

How can one dare suggest that Iraq must be divided into three federal states, the Kurdish, the Sunni and the Shia?

How much Saudi oil income has been paid within the States to diffuse these immoral idea that makes of the butcher a respectable partner?

How an idea like this can be even allowed within the US, when its diffusion consists in flagrant violation of all the Founding Fathers' Principles, and its application will bring total destruction to America?

The simple sentence that 'the Sunni criminals of Iraq can be given an inch of the Mesopotamian soil' is a lethal bullet deep into the Heart of America.

The Sunnis were the only supporters of the Saddam Hussein thug-state; they absorbed almost the entire national income, they were given undeserved privileges, they were the recipient of property usurped from people belonging to all the different oppressed ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. The Sunni criminal population of Iraq may now represent 15% of the entire population but this is due to the fact they have been the reason of many Aramaeans (also named Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldaean) emigrateing to various continents, fleeing from an oppression far worse than that of Hitler.

The Aramaeans, either Christian or Mandaean (Gnosticists whose religion antedates the times of Jesus), represent the most authentic group in Mesopotamia, a country that must be named after them. It is with the Aramaeans of the Late Antiquity that the indigenous Babylonians were assimilated. When Islam was diffused in the area, it is the local Aramaeans who became Muslims, and the only way to understand the identity of the Shia and Sunni Arabic speaking populations of Iraq is to realize that they are Aramaeans who got linguistically Arabized because they accepted Islam.

Only the Aramaeans can give an authentic, fair, and historically just name in the area called by the Ancient Greeks as Mesopotamia: Aram Nahrain is the real name of the country, and this is the only way for America to start having a success there. Iraq was a colonial term that was never in use, even during the last moments of the Ottoman rule.

The Colonial British introduced the term 'Iraq' - in flagrant opposition to the Principles of the Founding Fathers. The reason is simple: Divide and Rule is not part of the American Founding Fathers' Ideals, it is a Colonial, British practice and amoral approach.

Aramaeans must receive recompense, Aramaeans must be given the largest part of Iraq, all the country in the West of Tigris until Hillah, Hindiyah and Nukhayb on the Saudi border, plus Baghdad, must be given to them, as Justice for what they suffered because of Ottoman unfair treatment, British (bogus-, if not anti-)Christian indifference, Arab nationalist / royalist oppression and criminality, and Sunni Baathist Saddam flagrant and unprecedented torture.

The very simple 1850 - 2003 reality is this: in the small local circle of a town or village with civilized Aramaeans and with semi-barbaric Sunni inhabitants, it was well known that if the Sunni thugs attack and kill an Aramaean, they would have successively the Ottoman support, the British high treason (of the Christian realm) and indifference, the Arab nationalist mass criminality (involving fights of families and killings of hundreds of Aramaeans), and the Saddam promotion to high positions with Baath.

Thus, the criminal Sunni thugs knew that they would not need to get civilized in order to have a proper and clean house: all they needed to do was usurp it from the Aramaeans. They did it on purpose, they did it repeatedly, they did it extensively, and they never repented; the proof is that when they lost their privileges they were immediately versed into this criminal acts against Aramaean Christian priests, Shia mosques., and US soldiers.

They do not regret and they do not repent. And they will never...


The reason is simple: regret and repentance need a civilized background that the murderous Sunni thugs (principal cause of the Anti-American, Anti-Iranian, Anti-Christian, Anti-Aramaean, Anti-Shia, Anti-Kurdish, Anti-Turkmen, Anti-Turkish, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Israeli hatred and hysteria in Mesopotamia) do not have.

The only way for US success in Iraq is to name the country Aram Nahrain, and to divide the entire area into Aramaean, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Shia federal states, relocating populations wherever need be.

The entire Sunni population must be deprived from its possessions, declared criminal in its entirety, relocated to an area at the east of Baghdad, accommodated in tents, and be engaged into forced works, and educational seminars.

The national income of the entire country Aram Nahrain (not Iraq anymore) must be divided into four equal parts for the main groups (Aramaean, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Shia) after an earlier deduction of 30% that will be offered to all Aramaeans who fled from the area over the past 150 years, and who must return there with American moral and material support. Justice is the Sign of Victory for the US, and if America does not play the role of Shakespeare's Prince in Romeo and Juliet, America will not be a power anymore....

Do it America!

Amin Chowdhury commented as following:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2006/11/get_ready_for_a.html#comment-25166180

Prof. Meglommatis? Who is this professor? His ideas are total madness! There has been movement of population in what is modern Iraq over last ten thousand years and a thorough mixing of them. Bringing in old terms like Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldaean or Turkic, Shia or Kurdish etc does not help either to understand the present problems or to resolve them. You can not divide each village or town into parts in proportion of the supposed population mixes existing today. They will change again tomorrow with population movement. In this age of mass migration we should have better ideas to solve conflicts among human groups than dividing territories. We should rather think of enlarging co-operation among existing neighbouring states instead dividing each one into mini states. However, there may be argument for dividing states into more self governing administrative units but not on the basis of religion or ethnicity. That is a receipe for disaster. Does this professor belong to a stone age? He seems to have a lot of hate in his heart.

My answer reads as following:

And who is Amin Chowdhury?

His words are the most flagrant violation of Human Rights!

His approach is a veritable colonial insult thrown at the face of 6000 years of Mesopotamian History to which most of the world’s nations, particularly in the West, are indebted.

Movements and mixture of populations is not the only thing that happened in History, and by itself it means nothing.

What matters for people able to understand notions of Justice and Humanism is

the Historical Right of a People,

the thousands of daily, Antihuman, Realities of a Persecution that lasted decades and centuries,

the diachronic Cultural Identity of a People that spread civilization to Iran, India, and Central Asia, and last but not least

the Role of the Great American Nation to bring a Dead End to the Murderous Colonial Rule of England and France that monstrously disfigured the Historical Middle East.

How a person like Amin Chowdhury dare in our times reduce Historical Peoples to funny – and academically irrelevant and inconsistent – expressions about ‘historical movements’?

Would this guy have been left like that, if he had spoken about the Jews in Nazi Germany under these terms?

Or can we accept that a Jew’s life has greater value than that of an Aramaean?

Shall we suppose that this is true in the same way criminal bogus-democratic leaders care to cash reparations to the Lebanese, while they let the Darfuris be slaughtered by the gangsters of the Amr Moussa and his neo-Nazi Arab League?

Enough with this murderous, antihuman hypocrisy!

Is there anyone who would dare say that the ‘Jews’ are a (sic) ‘old term’?

What about the Scots? Are they an ‘old term’ for this criminal person who still circulates free?

In addition, this ‘murderer of peoples’ viciously alters my own text’s terms; I did not speak of ‘Assyrians’, and there are no ‘Assyrians’ in today’s Middle East; those who call themselves ‘Assyrians’ (misled by French colonial infiltration) are part of the Glorious People of the Aramaeans, who diffused their own writing system among the Jews (Square Aramaic / Arameen carré), the Persians, the Indians, the Sogdians, and later the Central Asiatic Manichaeans and the Arabs (in Hedjaz).

In fact, this totalitarian person that cultivates a total disregard of either History or Human Rights arrives up to the madness of saying that the quasi-totality of the peoples and the groups in today’s Iraq (Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldaean or Turkic, Shia or Kurdish, as he says) are not enough to let us understand the present problems.

It is as if you dare say that the Germans, the French, the British, the Italians, the Spaniards, the Poles and the Dutch do not let us “understand the present problems” of Europe!

Who does then? The Cypriots and the Maltese – for Europe?

And in the case of Iraq, the barbaric, murderous Sunni thugs who support Saddam Hussein? The criminals who are responsible for all the bloodshed in Mesopotamia over the past century?

Further on, this ‘murderer of peoples’, who viciously misinterprets almost every line of my article, says that “You can not divide each village or town into parts in proportion of the supposed population mixes existing today”.

I do not call for partition at the municipal level, and I do not ask for proportional dimensions in that partition. It should be a proper renaming of the country (Aram Nahrain instead of the fallacious no-name ‘iraq’), and the partition must be at the national level into four con-federal states: Aramaean, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Shia. No Sunni involved!

The quintessence of my article goes to the very core of the American values on which President was based, when he declared war on Saddam’s criminal gangsters: Justice.

Someone must pay for the terrible atrocities who happened in Mesopotamia over the past 150 years, and this must be the guilty group of the outrageous Sunni thugs.

Either they will be punished, stripped of their properties, forced to live in camps condemned for serial crimes against the Mankind or America will lose the war, Israel will be abandoned to disappear, and Europe will face the abominable eventuality of an Islamic Revolution.

Apart from that, Amin Chowdhury lives in his dreamy world: the “existing neighbouring states”, the likes of Iran, Syria, Jordan and ….Saudi Arabia, are to be abolished and disintegrated – all of them, and according to the most genuine and deep wish of the numerous peoples who lived oppressed for decades in these realms of merciless and antihuman hatred. They have no role to play in Iraq; instead, they should respect the rights of the peoples who lived oppressed in their own dictatorial countries.

It is at times funny to see how people dare support the most paranoiac of the concepts; Amin Chowdhury, in full agreement with Ossama Bin Laden, says that in general the states must not be divided into self governing units “on the basis of religion or ethnicity. That is a receipe for disaster”. Then, we will all live on the basis of absurdity!

Disregarding religion and ethnicity, one can suggest anything that would please Mr. Chowdhury’s fancy! One could say that the Estonians should rule England and – never forget – Muslims should rule Europe and America.

These false Muslims who call Allah and mean Satan in their prayers; the followers of Qaeadawi, Mullah Omar, Shaarawi and many other bogus-Muslim sheikhs of fallacy and illiteracy. If this is not absolute hatred in the heart of Amin Chowdhury, it is certainly expression of obedience to the International of Satan: Al Qaeda.
Print Email
Bookmark and Share

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Orientalist, Historian, Political Scientist, Dr. Megalommatis, 54, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages. He refuted Greek nationalism, supported Martin Bernal´s Black Athena, and rejected the Greco-Romano-centric version of History. He pleaded for the European History by J. B. Duroselle, and defended the rights of the Turkish, Pomak, Macedonian, Vlachian, Arvanitic, Latin Catholic, and Jewish minorities of Greece.

Born Christian Orthodox, he adhered to Islam when 36, devoted to ideas of Muhyieldin Ibn al Arabi. Greek citizen of Turkish origin, Prof. Megalommatis studied and/or worked in Turkey, Greece, France, England, Belgium, Germany, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Russia, and carried out research trips throughout the Middle East, Northeastern Africa and Central Asia. His career extended from Research & Education, Journalism, Publications, Photography, and Translation to Website Development, Human Rights Advocacy, Marketing, Sales & Brokerage. He traveled in more than 80 countries in 5 continents.

He defends the Human and Civil Rights of Yazidis, Aramaeans, Turkmen, Oromos, Ogadenis, Sidamas, Berbers, Afars, Anuak, Furis (Darfur), Bejas, Balochs, Tibetans, and their Right to National Independence, demands international recognition for Kosovo, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Transnistria, calls for National Unity in Somalia, and denounces Islamic Terrorism.

Freedom and National Independence for Catalonia, Scotland, Corsica, Euskadi (Bask Land), and (illegally French) Polynesia!

Break Down the Persian Tyranny of the Ayatullahs of Iran!

Freedom for 25 million Azeris in Southern Azerbaijan!

Selected links to online editions of Prof. M. S. Megalommatis´ books and articles: http://community.webshots.com/user/hannoedmegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/wenamunedmegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/redseamegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/tudelamegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/megalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/turkeygreecemegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/greeceturkeymegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/seapeoplesmegalommatis; http://community.webshots.com/user/megalommatisegyptaegean; http://community.webshots.com/user/christianitymegalommatis;
http://community.webshots.com/user/megalommatisinarabic;
http://community.webshots.com/user/megalommatisvaria

Got Debt?  Get Debt Wise.