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Occupation enters critical
phase
By Erich Marquardt
In
many respects, the current political conditions in Iraq
are very similar to those of Vietnam 40 years ago.
In Vietnam, one of the major goals of the
various US administrations, from Harry Truman's to
Gerald Ford's, was to create a viable government in
South Vietnam that had the support of the Vietnamese
people but which would also be a proponent of US
interests in Southeast Asia. In order to achieve this
goal, Washington supported a handful of South Vietnamese
leaders, from Bao Dai to Nguyen Van Thieu. Yet all of
these leaders were corrupt and did not represent the
interests of the Vietnamese people.
In Iraq, the
administration of President George W Bush faces similar
political concerns that successive US administrations
faced in Vietnam, while at the same time suffering from
what many Americans feel is an unacceptable casualty
rate that was only seen in the later years of US
involvement in Vietnam.
There is growing concern
in the US over the Bush administration's policy in Iraq;
according to an ABC/Washington Post opinion poll
released on November 2, for the first time a majority of
Americans disapprove of the administration's handling of
the conflict in Iraq. Additionally, the poll indicated
that 60 percent of the US population find the current
casualty rate unacceptable. Subsequently, continued US
casualties have prompted the administration to pursue
quickly a policy that has already been labeled
"Iraqification", eerily similar to the failed
"Vietnamization" policy of the 1960s and 1970s.
The policy of "Iraqification" involves training
Iraqi military and security forces in order to have them
replace US forces; the intent is that Iraqis will
eventually fight Iraqis for the interests of the US
government. Yet there is no reason to believe that this
policy will be any more successful than it was in
Vietnam. As in Vietnam, the type of individual who is
willing to fight his own population in the interests of
a foreign power is often corrupt and fails to make an
effective fighter. The success of this policy relies on
whether the Bush administration can marginalize Iraqi
guerrilla forces and prevent them from gaining support
among the civilian population.
At present, it is
not clear whether the Bush administration is achieving
this goal. While Washington has succeeded in
establishing a central bank, circulating a new currency,
restoring some essential services, and appointing a
governing council made up of Iraqis, resistance to the
US presence has been growing. The attacks by insurgent
fighters have also become more deadly, culminating in
the November 2 attack on a US Chinook helicopter that
killed 16 US soldiers and wounded 21 more. The first
week of November was the deadliest week for US soldiers
since early in the war, with 36 soldiers losing their
lives. And just this Wednesday, a truck bomb suicide
explosion outside the camp headquarters of the Italian
military police in Nasiriyah in southern Iraq killed 17
Italian personnel and at least eight Iraqis.
In
the past month, US officials admit, attacks on the some
130,000 US troops in Iraq have grown to three dozen a
day. Contradicting Bush's claim that the "desperation of
resistance is proof we are winning", the continued and
now increased resistance speaks to a different theory:
that Washington thus far has failed to root out
Ba'athist elements and independent resistance groups,
and has also been unable to prevent certain segments of
Iraqi society from actively sympathizing with these
fighters.
The clashes between resistance
fighters and US forces in the streets of Iraq continue
to anger the Iraqi population, who blame the US for the
current instability in the country. Recent polls from
Iraq show that much of society now views US forces as
occupiers rather than as liberators. These feelings of
distrust can be expected to intensify the longer US and
guerrilla fighters continue to battle in the cities of
Iraq.
The source of many Iraqis' anger is the
overwhelming force frequently used by US soldiers in
response to attacks and civil disruptions. While this
strategy is effective in large, open terrain such as the
desert and when dealing with regular military units, it
is typically ineffectual when used in dense urban
environments filled with people carrying out their daily
lives. Instead, this policy may virtually guarantee
otherwise avoidable losses of civilian life and also add
to an increasingly negative image of the US presence.
The more Iraqis who have a negative image of the
US presence, the greater the risk that otherwise
uninvolved Iraqis will either cooperate, support or
sympathize with anti-US guerrillas. This is already
evident in cases of resistance by Iraqi civilians; for
example, in the Sunni triangle city of Abu Ghraib, US
troops have been consistently fighting both residents
and guerrillas. Unless US forces are willing to lock
down these cities completely, conducting operations in
places such as Abu Ghraib seems counterproductive and
may only embolden the guerrillas.
In addition to
stimulating resistance, operations in cities such as Abu
Ghraib, along with the use of overwhelming force, hurt
the image of US involvement in Iraq. For instance, New
York Times reporter Alex Berenson recently reported that
in Abu Ghraib US troops "fired on a photographer trying
to cover the fighting and barred reporters from viewing
the scene". While such controversial images may be
suppressed in the US, they are not elsewhere; as well as
on Arab television, European news networks frequently
show videos of US troops responding with overwhelming
force in the middle of busy market streets. Instead of
attempting to prevent these images from reaching the
outside world, greater peacekeeping training must be
given to US forces to prevent their fighting methods
from turning off not only Iraqi society, but also the
wider world.
The continued inability to pacify
Iraq will lead to a failure of US objectives in the
country and in the region as a whole. One of the main US
objectives in Iraq is to create a viable Iraqi
government that has the support of the Iraqi people, but
that will also be congruent with US interests in the
Middle East. It is not clear whether this objective is
still possible. Noah Feldman, a New York University law
professor who served as a consultant to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Iraq, warned London's Daily
Telegraph that "any democratically elected Iraqi
government is unlikely to be secular, unlikely to be
pro-Israel, and frankly, moderately unlikely to be
pro-American".
Feldman's statement points to one
of the most fundamental dilemmas the Bush administration
faces: that a democratic Iraq may be an Iraq unfriendly
to the US. Furthermore, it highlights the difficulty
that Washington is discovering in finding an Iraqi
government that supports US interests while also
garnering the support of the Iraqi people - a situation
that Washington never managed to accomplish in Vietnam.
In fact, even Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the governing
council who is close to the Pentagon, stated, "The
Americans, their methods, their operations, their
procedures, are singularly unsuited to deal with this
kind of problem."
But the US cannot leave Iraq
unless Washington is willing to face a loss of influence
in the region and the world. If the US were to pull out
of Iraq without establishing a strong authority there,
the country would likely fall into civil war that could
result in territorial fragmentation. The Kurds in the
north, Sunnis in the center and Shi'ites in the south
could easily plunge into internecine conflict; this
perhaps explains why, since Iraq's creation, the country
has been largely run by authoritarian leaders who have
repressed political dissent, thus securing the stability
of the state. Furthermore, outside powers would
inevitably become involved in any Iraqi civil war,
creating the possibility of Iraq's Shi'ite south
becoming enveloped in the affairs of Iran - a bordering
Shi'ite Islamic republic - or the Kurds of the north
attempting to create a greater Kurdistan. These outcomes
would be considered setbacks to US interests.
The continued inability to pacify Iraq reflects
the larger problem faced by Washington of successfully
interacting with Arab and Muslim societies. Facing
countries with values quite contrary to the United
States's, Washington has failed to provide these
societies with a desirable cultural model to follow.
Attempts to do so have only enraged Muslim societies and
have resulted in a major polarization between the
interests of Washington and the interests of these
societies.
In light of this, Vice President Dick
Cheney's claim that "we are rolling back the terrorist
threat at the very heart of its power in the Middle
East" could not seem further from the truth. Subsequent
surveys by various groups, such as the Pew Research
Center, show that hatred toward the US has been rapidly
growing in almost all countries throughout the world,
especially Arab and Muslim ones that feel that the "war
on terror" is simply a "war on Islam".
This
polarization will result in more attacks on US interests
abroad and possibly at home. Even individuals such as
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are beginning to
question official rhetoric. He admitted in his recent
leaked memo that the US "lack[s] the metrics to know
whether we are winning or losing the global war on
terror". Because the US is too powerful for any state
actor to attack, and because hatred for the US is
spreading across the planet, individuals in a position
of relative weakness will use the most effective means
of damaging US interests: engaging in terrorist tactics.
Published with permission of the
http://www.pinr.com Power and Interest News Report,
an analysis-based publication that seeks to provide
insight into various conflicts, regions and points of
interest around the globe. All comments should be
directed to content@pinr.com.
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