Watching President Bush deliver his awkward remarks about Iraq–yet another Internet video clip of a man being pilloried for his brutal rule in Iraq–I could not help but think: “Where is Saddam now that we need him?” To hear Bush describe the front lines, the United States and its allies are confronting civil war, although here it is defined with words like “sectarian violence” (a phrase that might also have worked for Gettysburg). In other words, the center has not held around Baghdad. The response of the Bush administration, which has invested $359 billion dollars in the concept of a democratic Iraq, is to send in 20,000 more American troops and lure suicide bombers away from their missions with offers of on-the-job training. Sadly, neither embedding American forces in Iraqi patrols nor stuffing ballot boxes in the provinces will alter the reality that to keep Iraq together as one country, you have to adopt Saddam’s methods and brutality. Judging by the 34,000 civilian Iraqi deaths in 2006, it might be concluded that the U.S. is at least giving it a try.

The reason the President has become Saddam’s surrogate is because he believes that Iraq is an important domino in his War on Terror. In his address the President states that, should Iraq fall, “radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.” He believes the U.S. is fighting enemies that have “declared their intention to destroy our way of life.” According to the President, the politics of the Middle East constitute “the decisive ideological struggle of our time.” The Great Game between Islam and the West looks and sounds a lot like the old Cold War.

Not since the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon has the domino theory had such an advocate as it now finds in President Bush. By his logic, the war in Iraq–like Vietnam to an earlier generation–is a test case of America’s resolve. Win in Iraq, and you will have broken the will of terrorism. Admit defeat and withdraw, and Iraq will slide into the terrorist camp from which attacks will be launched against the U.S. Cutting and running from Iraq will also embolden Iran to continue with its nuclear research, give al-Qaida access to oil revenue, and strengthen Syria–all at the expense of American interests.

The original pretext for the American-led invasion of Iraq was to dislodge weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam might use on his neighbors, and to remove the Ba’athist regime. (“We’re taking out that fucker,” is how the President summarized his war aims to his then National Security advisor, Condoleezza Rice.) Previously, the front lines in the War on Terror were further east, near the Hindu Kush, where the followers of Osama bin Laden were in mountainous caves hatching plans against the West. In his speech, Mr. Bush tiptoes bravely past that graveyard–”America’s men and women in uniform took away al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan – and we will not allow them to re-establish it in Iraq”–although from all accounts the Taliban has recently made inroads in recapturing large parts of Afghanistan. Nor was there any mention of Osama being wanted ‘dead or alive’. Instead the President is betting the ranch on winning the battle for Baghdad, on the theory that winning in Iraq will make “success in the War on Terror much easier.” He seems unfamiliar with the military maxim, “never reinforce failure.”

Oddly, given the stakes (“our way of life—”) in such a professed global struggle, the President’s tactics fail to rise above the defeatist posture of Vietnamization, President Nixon’s strategy to dump the war in Vietnam on Saigon. In Iraq, President Bush speaks of embedding American forces (as if they were television reporters) in Iraqi brigades and holding the Baghdad government accountable to “benchmarks” (as if it were an illiquid hedge fund). Under this logic, the administration says the U.S. is fighting a mortal enemy, one that threatens American society to the core; in response to this grave threat, our plan is to order American soldiers out on joint patrols with Iraqi police (who may or may not show up for work).

One of the dirty secrets in the War on Terror is that the U.S. is running short of front-line soldiers, which may explain the decision to outsource to the Iraqi police. Despite a Homeland Security and defense budget of nearly half a trillion dollars, for the U.S. to do battle in Iraq it has had to rotate the same Army and Marine Corps divisions in and out of the country. Some regiments of these elite divisions (First Marines, 82nd Airborne) have done five or six tours of duty. In his speech, the President pleads: “We can begin by working together to increase the size of the active Army and Maine Corps, so that America has the Armed Forces we need for the 21st century.” At the same time weekend warriors from the National Guard find themselves forgotten in Iraq, stranded at bases scattered around the country as if forming a Muslim Maginot Line.
All the “surge” in American forces accomplishes is to bring up the troop numbers, in country, to what they were in May 2003. It tops up with Americans those soldiers withdrawn from the coalition of the increasingly unwilling. Using the ratio of five supports troops for every soldier in combat, the numbers of those doing the actual fighting in Iraq would be about 30,000. More likely only about 15,000 American soldiers are at the sharp end, in a country geographically larger than France. Even Alexander the Great came to Mesopotamia with more men.

I would be entirely persuaded by Derghan’s analysis, her way of thinking, if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t accept her basic unspoken premise (indeed, the unspoken premise of all realpolitik) that the players involved (nation states) have moral legitimacy. Of course, realpolitik wants to argue that we have no choice but to accept its premises because—they’re real. But it seems to me that a real interest in the real would first want to unpack the fiction that there is something called a nation that has strategic purposes and national “interests” (as a certain class of murderer likes to put it). It would be more “realistic” to look at the situation our strategic thinking has produced and say, as Dostoevsky said of his prison in Siberia, “This is the House of the Dead.”

What if we looked at the war as a relation of human bodies and not of nation states? On this side we have bodies that live through machines. TV, computers, cell phones, etc. Our bodies have become the ghost in the machine, while our real bodies come increasingly to look like the fatted animals we breed to eat. Genetic mutants with no real capability for life in the natural world. Nothing else in the world gets as fat as we do without being eaten. To maintain this charming state of affairs (often referred to as our “lifestyle”) we need the carbon energy compressed over eons and then discharged in an instant by us as if we were children letting the air out of balloons just for the thrill of watching it zoom recklessly around the living room. But we don’t have much of this carbon based stuff of our own (or not enough for all of the balloons we intend to launch), so we have to control the stuff of others. 85% I think is the figure for Iraq. That is their tribute to our Empire: 85% of their oil at our price.

But what of the bodies of the Iraqis? Their reality is not mediated by cell phones. Their reality is mediated by shrapnel and what their body might run into on its way to buy groceries. It is as Pablo Neruda put it:

“Bandits with planes and Moors,
—
Came through the sky to kill children
And the blood of children ran through the street
Without fuss, like children’s blood.”

The Democrats, who control Congress, do not want that victory the Republican President is referring to; a victor that will not look like the one known to our fathers and grandfathers, as he said. The Democrats want to produce and manage the ‘victory’ which ensures a kind and gradual withdrawal from Iraq. That is why they oppose the increase of troops because reinforcing the forces on the ground undermines the chances for a soft and kind withdrawal accomplished through hidden messages and quasi-deals with players such as Syria and Iran.

What the Democrats say, in short, as expressed by Democrat Senator Dick Durbin following Bush’s speech Wednesday night, is this: that “America has paid with a heavy price” and “gave the Iraqis so much” since it “delivered them from a despot dictator” and helped them “setting out a Constitution” and conducting “elections” while also “protecting” Iraq. Now, after four years, “It is time for Iraqis to stand up and defend their own nation. The Iraqi government must “disband the militias” and begin to assume responsibility.

What Durbin also said is that the time has come to put an end to the pattern of calling for a rescue and a bailout; not every time the Iraqi government calls the 911 emergency number — it will get some 20,000 additional US troops.

He said that what is taking place in Iraq is a civil and sectarian war, hinting that it did not result from the US invasion and occupation, but that it is a sectarian war with roots stemming from the sixth century; it not a product of today. He added that “20,000 additional troops are not enough to end a civil war” and centuries of sectarian wars.

This statement is important, not only because it reflects political outbidding and a fundamental difference with the Republican president, but also because it involves deep-rooted differences over Iraq and the nature of the American mission in Iraq and in the region.

The Democrats of today are isolationists, whereas the Republicans are traditionally the bastions of isolationism. After all, a great many of them in the Senate supported the decision to go to war with Iraq, among them the former candidate for the presidency, Senator John Kerry, and the potential candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton. Today, they want to disown this failed war, pack up and leave honorably from Iraq.

Bush is telling them that there is no honorable way of withdrawing from Iraq. He is saying that withdrawal in itself is not honorable for the US. He is telling them that withdrawal means defeat for America and victory for the terrorists. He is right about that. But some immediately reply to him: ‘this is of your doing, and the country no longer trusts you.’

Admitting that he made mistakes in the Iraq War and that he bears the responsibility for these mistakes personally, as he did in this speech, will not help George W. Bush when it comes to those opposed to the war, or when it comes to the political opposition. His political reputation is tied to dragging the US into this war under false pretenses and justifications. His personal reputation is marred by his characteristics, namely, his stubbornness and his belief that he was chosen by God to spread freedom and democracy. But there are many Americans, Democrats and Republicans among them, who believe that a cabal of neo-conservatives hijacked and held the American President hostage and embroiled the US in the Iraq War for their own narrow political and financial interests.

Even those who agree with Bush on the need to combat terrorism, at least in the wake of September 11, 2001, really hate him and are furious because they believed that if the Afghanistan War had been completed, then the al-Qaeda network would have been dealt a deathblow. But the neo-cons convinced Bush to invade Iraq, and therefore transformed it into a major front in the war on terror. This is an unforgivable sin for the vast majority of Americans angered by the Iraq War.

The mistakes of the Iraq War are catastrophic, beginning with the summoning of terrorism to the Iraqi arena to somehow contain it there, passing through the slippery and deceitful excuses made to trick the American people and the world, and ending with the cataclysmic failure of the only remaining superpower in Iraq. This does not, however, mean that the war in Iraq has ended in an American defeat in the war on terror. It does not mean that the Iraq War has ended decisively in the dissolution or division of Iraq. The jury is still undecided on that one.

The American president swore to protect the “territorial integrity” of Iraq in his speech, and this is quite reassuring at this juncture, if not reassuring enough. What is more important is that there is still no victorious or defeated party in the Iraq War. It is true that a brief glance at the current situation would indicate that the US has been defeated in Iraq because it still is not victorious, though it is the superpower. What is also the case is that the other powers have not won a decisive victory in Iraq – not powers like al-Qaeda or the forces pledging allegiance to the former tyrant, Saddam Hussein, and not the small or large militias such as Muqtada al-Sadr’s, and not even Iran, at the end of the day.

Iran has benefited from the Iraq War and remains now a benefactor from the continued presence of US forces in Iraq. But Iran is not victorious over the United States nor is it at all secure if the US decides to pull its troops out from Iraq. Even the Baker-Hamilton report talks about this aspect; that an American withdrawal from Iraq could ignite sectarian and ethnic strife within Iran. This is in addition to another important aspect: that an American withdrawal would leave Iran to inherit its miserable investments in Iraq and fight the likes of al-Qaeda as in its immediate neighborhood.

In other words, one of America’s most potent weapons against Iran is the weapon of immediate withdrawal from Iraq. This was part of the primary message that was delivered to Tehran by offering its friend, Nouri al-Maliki, one last opportunity- along with an ultimatum- to take up clear and detailed tasks within an implied time schedule.

The other most important weapon is the aircraft carriers which can more than intercept supply lines; they can close off the Straits of Hormuz in the event of a military confrontation with Iran. The US excels in this field, and Iran understands the language of superiority, when it is forced to.

The American Administration’s new strategy sent this stern message to Tehran just as it sent it to Damascus. The message is clear enough: there is no reward for blackmail nor will there be forgiveness for what has passed; no dialogue to win the good favor of some and no room for bargaining. George W. Bush substituted the recommendation to provide incentives for Iran and Syria to cooperate with the US for the sake of an honorable withdrawal from Iraq with explicitly holding them both responsible for supporting the militias who are killing Americans in Iraq. This is a refusal to bow before dictated necessities and circumstances in Iraq and it is an important barometer of US policy toward the other issues related to Syria and Iran in the region, starting with Iraq and ending in Palestine and Lebanon.

The American policy, as Bush sees it, is based on an indispensable US victory in Iraq because failure would be a disaster for the US and a victory for the terrorists, the Islamists and for chaos.

What Bush hinted at, when he alluded to the States in the region, was the pivotal roles that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf must play in supporting the Iraqi unity government and their role in preventing the region from becoming a sanctuary for extremism and terrorism. He talked about the “ideological struggle”, making it clear that the States and the peoples of the region must decide what they actually want then work for it themselves. He admitted to his mistakes as a prelude to turning a new page in the aftermath of the lessons of these errors. He said that the new military, political and economic strategy focused on shifting the responsibility to the Iraqi government but supported with new tactics and the momentum of additional soldiers. He spoke of a strategy of two parts: one is centered on Baghdad, where the burden on the government is countering the Shiite militias; and the other is in al-Anbar, where the burden is on the Sunni leadership to counter al-Qaeda and its likes. Both efforts will involve an essential role for the US forces. He set objectives, alluded to a timeframe, and warned the Iraqi government.

Making do with just 21,000 troops means either that the American President is making yet another blunder to be added to the chain of mistakes he has made in Iraq intentionally or not or that the Administration is planning a military escalation as a cover for withdrawal. And this is a classic technique in the art of war. Either that, or George W. Bush has another hidden secret plan he is mobilizing and preparing for while the world is distracted by the very publicly declared strategy that the President revealed in the speech which put his presidency and legacy at risk.

Bush’s adventure is in his betting on extracting Maliki from Iran. It is a bet similar to that some Americans, such as James Baker, are waging on Damascus; that it actually could be peeled off Tehran by the temptation of a deal with Israel for the Golan Heights. Some of those readings are utterly wrong and some are excessively optimistic or woefully ignorant of the patterns of alliance in the Arab region.

This does not deny at all, however, the responsibility of the Iraqis because four years have passed since the war which brought down Saddam Hussein, as perceived by Iraqi government. And the United States is right to refuse to apologize to the Iraqi government-which came to office thanks to the US invasion. This does not deny that the sectarian war is an Iraqi war regardless of whether there are any foreign powers behind it. This does not deny that Iraq is broken and shattered and that it will not be repaired except through an Iraqi decision, governmental and by the people of Iraq.

It is not true that Iraq is an exclusive American responsibility any more than it is true that the US is the only wrongful doer in Iraq. The truth is that admitting errors has begun and the stage of holding accountable those who erred, whether oneself or others, has begun, and that choices are by no means limited, contrary to the insinuations, analyses and the wrong assumptions.

http://www.raghidadergham.com

A short annimated history of this occupation created by Deep Dish TV as part of its 12 part series on Iraq can be seen at
http://www.blip.tv/file/130725

The League of Nations handed Britain “official” colonial rule over Palestine and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) after the conclusion of the war. By 1920 the peoples of the Tigris and Euphrates valley were in open revolt. Winston Churchill ordered the use of poison gas against the uprising. Then in 1921, at a conference in Cairo, Egypt at which several hundred Brits and 2 Iraqis were present, the British established the modern state of Iraq, after carefully detaching the oil rich area of Kuwait from the province of Basra. They appointed Faisal ibn Husayn, son of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali former Sharif of Mecca as Iraq’s first King. They made his brother the king of Jordan. The British military band played “God Save the King” at his coronation. The new king was then forced to sign a 75 year oil concession pact that gave the British all profits from Iraii oil. 82 years later the British returned once again as occupiers of Iraq, this time in the pocket of the Americans.

There is a mounting level of panic in the American government and foreign policy establishment as Iraq seems to spin out of control and perhaps out of the U.S. grasp.

The U.S. now faces a “defeat” that could have immense consequences for its global dominance, with serious ramifications on the American economy and political stature. “Failure in Iraq,” said Bush, “would be a disaster for the United States.” Sharp splits have emerged in previously unified and confident American elites as they scramble to find a workable strategy to salvage U.S.objectives in the region and avoid wounds that might prove fatal to its imperial primacy.

The spectre of a “radical Islamic empire” that Bush conjures is a totem for the real threat of the emergence of a rival Chinese or European or resurgent Russian empire. These are complex and long term political tectonics. But potential global rivals smirk from the sidelines as the U.S. sinks into the quagmire of its efforts to crush the reactionary fundamentalists networks it has spawned and defeat nationalist resistance to occupation.. America’s mighty military machine stumbles in the face of Lilliputian assaults that seem to proliferate and strengthen with every mention of “the war on terror.”

The spectre of “Vietnam” is also raised by pundits and politicians. Bush blames too few troops and too many restrictions for the current debacle and proposes a major increase of men with guns freed from pesky restraints. Iraq is not Vietnam. The stakes now are much higher and the risk of wider conflagration much greater. But Bush’s New Plan for dealing with resistance and sectarian slaughter stirs memories of “search and destroy” missions and the’ “snuff and snatch” (kidnap, torture, kill) counterinsurgency efforts of Operation Phoenix. In Iraq the light at the end of this tunnel seems blocked by the resistance and the patriot missiles and flotillas of warships Bush is waving at Iran and Syria.

Most alternative “deciders” see the Bush “escape forward” strategy as lunacy. Those neocons still hanging around the White House challenge critics to “put an alternative on the table.” They have. But none of the congressional or “elder statesmen” plans calls for abandoning the mission or relinquishing U.S. military control of the region.

The leading alternatives all include:

1. “Redeployment.” – Pull U.S. troops back to Kuwait and Kurdistan and let the Shias and Sunis fight it out. (The Murtha Plan) Or pull U.S.troops out of the cities and put them on the boarders to seal the country from supplies and fighters from Iran, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc. (The Chuck Hagel suggestion).

2. “Reconfigure”, “Repurpose” and Redeploy: The Baker Hamilton Plan argues to reconfigure U.S. forces and scale back the number of combat troops. It argues for embedding U.S. troops with Iraqi batallions to train, provide intelligence and logistics support. Baker and Hamilton also assert that:

“Even after the United States has moved all combat brigades out of Iraq, we would maintain a considerable military presence in the region, with our still significant force in Iraq and with our powerful air, ground, and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, as well as an increased presence in Afghanistan. These forces would be sufficiently robust to permit the United States, working with the Iraqi government, to accomplish four missions:
*Provide political reassurance to the Iraqi government in order to avoid its collapse and the disintegration of the country.
*Fight al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq using special operations teams.
*Train, equip, and support the Iraqi security forces.
*Deter even more destructive interference in Iraq by Syria and Iran.

These four missions are the visible face of the fundamental mission: to ensure the protection of American “interests” i.e control of the resources and people of the region. All global powers understand this to be the key to top dog status and the ability to exercise global hegemony. There is agreement among Bush planners and critics on the continued validity of the 1948 State Department assessment that the Middle East represents “the greatest strategic prize in history.” Neither Bush or his loyal opposition is willing to throw that prize away.

All the contending plans nod to another Vietnam era cliche: the necessity to win the hearts and minds of the people, this time supposedly by providing security, electricity, water, food, jobs, perhaps even a slot on American Idol: cruel opposites of the living hell 12 years of sanctions and 4 years of war have brought down on the people of Iraq.

There a continuing refusal by the administration and its congressional and think tank critics a to admit the unspeakable suffering that the U.S. invasion and occupation have caused. The carnage by murderous Shia and Sunni militias (set in motion by the invasion) is used to deflect attention from the murderous barbarity of the occupation itself. The invasion of Iraq was an illegal act of aggression, a war crime. The torture and murder of innocent civilians compounds that crime. The debate should not be about a better way to carry out the crime, to make the victims feel better about it. The crime should stop. Now. It’s purpatrators should be punished, not debated.

Bush, Baker & Hamilton, Murtha, Hagel, Clinton et. al seem like Dr. Frankenstein and his now disloyal Igors rushing into the village shouting “I’ll save you, I’ll save you,” from the monster they have created and unleashed. It would be quite foolish to put faith in people whose only real plan is to preserve their investment and safeguard the laboratory that churns out these monsters.