May 06, 2016 Breaching Iraq’s green Zone’s barricades was clash of imaginations “I went to the West and saw Islam, but

May 06, 2016

Breaching Iraq’s green Zone’s barricades was clash of imaginations

“I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam.” – Muhammad Abduh

اقتباس :: The construction and defense of barricades, along with the imaginative and symbolic functions they perform in violent political and religious confrontations,1 was clearly evident last week when Iraqis of the Mahdi Army, under the spiritual guidance of Muqtada al-Sadr, breached Iraq’s Green and Red Zones barricades.
But make no mistake. Not only was the Mahdi’s imminent and revelatory return clashing with America’s imaginary Global Pacification System (GPS), but with the resourceful aspirations of many Americans, aspirations tied-up in the multibillion-dollar military obstacle.
U.S. Preemptive Invasion Reassured Return of Mahdi Messiah
From the imaginative standpoint of the Mahdi Army and their imam, Muqtada al-Sadr, the U.S. preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq was another reassurance that prophecy was being fulfilled.
Indeed, the Mahdi’s “rightly guided” and messianic return will be heralded by invasions and civil wars, false prophets and bogus political leaders and the adulteration of Islamic law by foreign occupiers.
Consequently, the breach and “You are not staying here! This is your last day in the Green Zone” chants expressed their dreams of purifying “modernized” Islam in the name of Islam while ousting nonbelievers.
Current Global Pacification System Is Threatened
The storming of the Barricade was caused by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s vision to replace party-affiliated ministers with Western technocrats and corporatists, including America’s inventive GPS starting in Iraq and then spreading across the Middle East. The U.S. certainly lies at the “core of this world system that depends on violence, exploitation, marginality, impoverishment and dislocation,1 and is symbolized by the U.S.-constructed Green Zone Barricade-accumulation of resources, flow of markets and financing, and capital and profits by some comes at the expense of many others.
Because of the failures of a propped-up political and corporate class to provide basic services, like clean water and electricity, or unite a fractured society based on ethnic and religious lines; America’s inventive GPS is unraveling.
Indeed, a state of emergency was declared as Mahdi revivalists breached the Green Zone and imagined a different society, one of many anti-globalization movements which still challenges “barricades of pacification.” Meanwhile, the GPS’s projection of power continued to retaliate. Along with the deaths of 4,000 Iraqis in April, a blast targeting Shi’a pilgrims killed 23 people.
Barricades of Dis-Imagination, Hypocrisy, and Pacification
Iraq’s Green and Red Zones are the ultimate in “barricade” dis-imagination and hypocrisy. Indeed, what was once sudden, unforeseen and collective defensive action brought about by the poor and oppressed, such as the French Revolutions, has been transformed into an offensive military-capitalist-complex that is notorious for its preemptive conquests, spirit of accumulation by dispossession, robbery and murder through inner and intrastate wars, and eventual totalizing pacification.2 Enforcing such norms is the hidden hand of structural and market-place violence.
For now, these Americanized multibillion-dollar barriers around the world are starting to devour their own, primarily through imaginary quests for absolute security.
To be certain, many Americans are willing to forgo bridges, highways, electrical grids, clean drinking water, medical services, schools, job training programs and other necessities in the name of building more GPS barricades like the Green Zone.
Moreover, due to barricades “over there,” some U.S. cities are becoming similar to a “planet of slums,”3 also suffering from rising unemployment rates, homelessness, hunger, sicknesses and death rates.
Will Americans Breach Homegrown Barricades of Pacification
Like the Mahdi protesters, who stormed and breached the GPS’s Green Zone barriers with their own imaginative social order, some Americans are imagining a different political, economic and social order too.
No wonder primary races have experienced political social unrest. It remains to be seen, though, if the same inventive Americans will be able to see how Iraq is becoming Americanized through the management of a transnational corporate class and its global military machine, but with no “true” Americans; and how the U.S. has Americans, but not with the “essence” of Americanism.

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