By Hank Stram, May 2008

Lost in the discussion of how successful the glorious Surge has been is a serious examination of life in an occupied country from the perspective of the occupied. Regardless of our perception that pre-invasion Iraq was a lawless failed state with no functioning institutions, it really wasn’t.

 They were a relatively poor country suffering from crippling sanctions and ruled by a tyrant, but society functioned – water flowed, sewage worked, electricity was on, banks were open, consumer goods were available, and schools were open. Thanks to the invasion and occupation, Iraq now really is a failed state, racked with violence, with no functioning institutions.

While I’m not comparing the Bush regime to Saddam Hussein’s, the puzzled American who can’t understand why the Iraqis can’t get their act together would do well to perform a simple thought experiment. Let’s forget about the purported reasons for US intervention in Iraq and look at matters from the perspective of the rank-and-file (previously) apolitical Iraqi. Imagine if you will that Saudi Arabia has been attacked by a rogue band of Mexican terrorists and, claiming that all of North America is a monolithic culture that acts as one, decides that the US had to have been involved in the attack and has become an intolerable threat to their vital interests. Sending a message to the Americas, the Saudis launch an invasion, remove Bush from power, disband the Congress and all state and local governments and their affiliated agencies, and render the Constitution null and void.

In the process, they destroy all the schools, turn off the power, stop the flow of water and sewage, shutter all media, close the stock market, wipe out the banks, and declare our currency invalid. In the initial chaos, the Smithsonian is sacked, the liberty bell stolen, and all the treasures in the MoMA and the Met are stolen. Mount Rushmore is detonated and Saudi forces destroy the Washington Monument and Arlington National Cemetery, then drive a tank up to the Lincoln Memorial and drape a Saudi Flag over Abraham Lincoln’s head. Ronald Reagan Airport is renamed King Abdullah Airport.

Meanwhile, Saudi troops are quartered at Mount Vernon, Monticello, the Empire State Building, St. Patrick’s cathedral, the Grand Ole Opry, and the Mormon Tabernacle, and a designated Saudi proconsul has moved into the White House. The proconsul has orders from Riyadh to undertake a sweeping reform of all American institutions and his first action is disbanding the US military. He sends each US troop member home with a severance check for $40, but lets them return to their hometowns with their M4 carbines and RPGs in their possession. He has orders to build a provisional military force to maintain order; the new troops are drawn from the ranks of newly unemployed shopping-mall security guards and high-school ROTC students. The new “troops” are viewed by the US populace as turncoats. The proconsul has announced that the familiar US form of government will be replaced by clerical rule and each US governor is replaced with a Muslim-American who they determine will be sympathetic to Saudi interests. Americans despise and distrust the new governors.

The Saudis have decided that they will restructure the US economy by selling off US corporations to interests in Middle-East nations that didn’t oppose the Saudi occupation. The proceeds are skimmed by corrupt care-takers and what little profits are actually generated are sent to Islamic charities rather than spent on reconstruction of vital infrastructures that were destroyed during the combat operations preceding the occupation. In the ensuing chaos, unemployment soars to 70 percent and the economy collapses. Food and medicine are difficult to find and, predictably, there is violence in the streets. Before long there are retribution killings, with neighbors murdering neighbors they suspect have been collaborating with the new Saudi overlords. Saudi forces respond by battering down doors in the middle of the night and rounding up and imprisoning men they believe have been resisting Saudi rule. It is soon revealed that the prisoners have been subjected to torture and sexual humiliation and that Saudi prison guards have been urinating on prisoners’ Bibles.

The Saudis contend that they are benevolent because they haven’t imposed their religious strictures on the Americans; people are still free to worship as they choose and women aren’t required to wear veils. This is perhaps the only consolation as conditions continue to deteriorate and nearly every person in the country loses either a friend or family-member to violence. Daily car-bomb attacks make public assembly impractical and by the end of the fifth year of the occupation, most of the upper- and middle-income Americans, included among their ranks the entire technical and professional class, have used their wealth and/or influence to move to Canada or Mexico. Five percent of the population – 15 million people – has perished from either violence or illness.

If you’ve followed along and the parallels between this nightmare scenario and the US’s occupation of Iraq seem evident, try to answer the following questions for yourself. Are Americans who takes up arms against the Saudi occupiers nihilistic terrorists?  Would you be surprised if Canada or Mexico got involved in the conflict? What is the likelihood that the America that remains can ever return to normalcy? To the occupied, the prevailing political considerations that led to the invasion and subsequent occupation are irrelevant; all that matters is the suffering in the here and now. Despite what Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would have you believe, even the most strident Bush-haters among us would not be happy with our new Saudi overlords, even though they overthrew our idiot king. The continued Saudi presence would be an affront to our dignity and our sovereignty and it’s highly likely we would all fight to remove the Saudi occupiers with even more vigor than the Iraqis are exhibiting in their efforts to drive the Americans from their homeland.