But this is stale news. The American losses in Iraq had been on the rise. Its reliance on the Shiite population had been shaken by their fierce patriotism and demands that the Americans end the occupation of their country.

The US had also relied on the Kurd population which has grown critical of American sanction of Turkey’s massacre of Kurds in Iraq .

Since it could not defeat the Iraqi resistance, the Americans turned to massacre of civilians as reprisals against attacks. This drew international criticism, and the Americans reluctantly had to “investigate” some of these mindless bloodletting.

To free itself from international criticism, the US had privatized a lot of its “security” operations by leaving the job of carrying out massacres to private American mercenary companies like Black water.

But this further incensed the Iraqis, so it reverted to a tactics it had used in the Latin America of the 1980s; set up, train, arm and pay local death squads to massacre anti-American opponents.

So U.S. turned to some of its greatest opponents in Iraq, Sadam Hussein’s Sunni populace. The US identified some of the “tribal leaders” and youths, bought their loyalty with dollars, hired some as paid mercenaries, armed them and gave them immunity to carry out massacres of other known anti-American resistance fighters. But the Americans went a step further than their tactics in Latin America .

In this case, they grouped the murder squads into open, rather than secret murder squads and called them the “Awakening Councils”. For sometime these “Awakening” groups have been kidnapping, torturing and executing perceived enemies of the American invasion. Sometimes, whole families are wiped out by these terror gangs who are paid monthly by the American government.

This might sound surprising to some; that the leader of the “Free World” would use terror as a major foreign policy. But if such people cast their minds back to the American bombing of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and recently Pakistan, they would realize that this is no new brain wave.

In fact, to assassinate a man, the US can wipe out a whole community. This was what it did on March 8,1985 in Beirut, Lebanon.  Sheikh Mohammed Hussain Fadlallah, a grandfather was a leader of the Shitte movement, Hizbollah in Lebanon.

The Americans accused the movement of kidnapping William Buckley its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Station chief in Lebanon . Since it found it difficult to kidnap Fadlallah, it decided to blow up his entire community. 

When it was certain that Fadlallah was in his high rise building, the murder squad drove and packed a car full of explosives fifty years from the house, which meant Fadlahah’s neigbours including children were targeted.

Woodward in his 1987 book “Veil: The  Secret Wars of the CIA 1981 — 1987” reported what happened next

“The car exploded, killing eighty people and wounding two hundred, leaving devastation, fires and collapsed buildings. Anyone who had happened to be in the immediate neighbourhood was killed, hurt or terrorized, but Fadlallah escaped without injury. His followers strung a huge “MADE IN USA” banner in front of a building that had been blown out”.

This American mass murder of innocent civilian was sixteen years before 9/11! Of course, the use of death squads means that at least in Iraq, the US will not need to kidnap opponents, fly them to Guatanamo, feed them for years and be in a dilemma what to do since evidence against such people are unlikely to stick in court. It is cheaper to simply get them wasted.

With the massacre project, levels of “violence” has been brought down in Iraq prompting President George Bush to proclaim “troop withdrawals” from Iraq. Under this policy, 9,000 American soldiers are to be withdrawn from Iraq by February 2009 when Bush would have left office.

But this is more a propaganda and political stunt than a genuine change of policy in Iraq. First, the Bush government wants to proclaim that peace is returning to Iraq so the huge numbers of troops are no longer necessary. 

Secondly, troop reduction in Iraq is a major policy objective of the Barack Obama campaigns in the US presidential elections. In reality, Bush’s “withdrawal” targets are insignificant; assuming there are no new deployments, if in the next six months, 8,000 soldiers are withdrawn, that reduces the number of American troops in Iraq to 138,000; a mere 5.5 percent reduction.

The Americans need to come up with viable alternatives in Iraq. The cold fact is that, as it was in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the U S is stuck in Iraq. That country is like a bone in the American throat; it cannot swallow it, so it needs to spit it out.

The American dilemma is worsened by the fact that its closest ally in the invasion, Britain has reassessed its priority is desperately looking for an escape route; it has begun by withdrawing from Basra its main area of operation.

Some other allies in the “Coalition of the willing” which invaded Iraq are also looking for escape routes; even Japan that has non combatant presence is talking about withdrawing.

Things are not looking brighter in Afghanistan where the Talibans have become stronger rather than getting weaker after years of American – led attacks and bombardment.

Increasingly, the puppet Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan is grumbling against American bombing and massacre of Afghan civilians.  Across the border, with General Pervez Musarraf gone, the U  might be weaker in Pakistan.

Ultimately, the US must learn that massacre and terror cannot be viable foreign policy options in an increasingly cohesive world.

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