New Iraq: DOA

TomDispatch.com has this piece by Dahr Jamail. If there ever was a bleaker, more heartbreaking picture of the disintegration of Iraq, I haven't seen it.

Everything in Iraq is set against the backdrop of shattered infrastructure and a nearly complete lack of reconstruction. What the Americans turn out to be best at is, once again, promises - and propaganda. During the period when the Coalition Provisional Authority ruled Iraq from Baghdad's Green Zone, their handouts often read like this one released on May 21, 2004: "The Coalition Provisional Authority has recently given out hundreds of soccer balls to Iraqi children in Ramadi, Kerbala, and Hilla. Iraqi women from Hilla sewed the soccer balls, which are emblazoned with the phrase 'All of Us Participate in a NewIraq.'"

This would be merely pathetic except for the fact that we're turning the "New Iraq" into a hellhole. No clean water (therefore rampant disease) or electricity; no security; no dignity; no work. Would we tolerate such living conditions? Not to put too fine a point on it, would we expect any Western (read white) people to tolerate such living conditions? And yet we expect the Iraqis to be--what? Grateful? Cooperative? How is this not racism?