Whose war is it anyway?

“I can relate,” thinks the Star Tribune’s caricatured American. Finally Americans can relate. Finally, when it means seeing a cathartic shoe thrown at the man who started this war (a war so many call “Bush’s war”), Americans stand in solidarity with Iraqis.

And what of the feminists? Can they yet relate to the teenaged girls lured into Uday Hussein’s lair with promises of modeling gigs, only to be forced to walk the catwalk naked, watch their unwilling peers be shot, and then face honor-killings by their own families upon disclosing Uday’s deeds?

And what of the environmentalists? Can they relate to the marsh Arabs, whose wetlands Saddam dried up, constituting an environmental disaster so devastating it could be seen from space, until “Bush’s war” allowed one of the most effective restoration projects in history to commence?

And what of the enemies of apartheid? Can they relate to the Middle-East’s largest stateless minority, the Kurds? Can they relate to the Kurdish mothers, forced by Saddam to applaud the execution of their sons five feet away?

For the Star Tribune, relating to Iraqis means regretting the violence of “Bush’s war.” But it’s not just Bush’s war, of course. And it was never just eenie miney moe, pick a dictator to overthrow. America has been complicit in Iraq’s suffering since the CIA helped the Baath Party seize power, since Kissinger abandoned the Kurds in the 70s, since Jimmy Carter gave the green light to an Iran-Iraq war that ravished the Shiite and Kurdish ranks, since Bush senior abandoned the Shiites, and since Bill Clinton perpetuated crippling sanctions.

Bush didn’t invent our imperial history with Iraq. We’ve always fiddled with Iraqis, but we’ve never been able to relate to them. Not until 2007, when the US for once refused to abandon Iraqis for its own short-term imperial interests, and instead revamped its commitment. Bush owes no apology to the Arabs and Iraqi Sunnis for disrupting their apartheid.

It’s the Star Tribune that owes an apology to Iraqis, for if they had had their way, the Iraqi people would still be treated like state-owned livestock, Saddam would still be applauding 9/11 with his hands and kicking back money to Oil-for-Food prostitutes like Jacques Chirac with his feet. All the while Uday and Qusay would be positioning to bequeath Saddam’s prison known as Iraq. The Star Tribune owes an apology for consenting to the status quo and the horrors that would swallow the nation upon that family feud.

It’s quite a bold claim, I can relate to the Iraqis. One might think you’d need to witness, say, a Sunni Republican Guardsman force a conscripted Kurd to take off his gas mask to test the toxic air in “Saddam’s war” against Iran. But for the Star Tribune, witnessing a shoe thrown at Bush will suffice.