Occupation highlights superpower
limits Opinion by Henry C K Liu
Since the dissolution of the USSR in the early
1990s, the United States has been the world's sole
remaining superpower, with the richest economy and the
most powerful military. The presidency of the US is the
most powerful political office in the world, with direct
command of overwhelming force projection capability to
all corners of the world on short notice, unhampered by
dwindling Congressional restraint, as originally defined
by the US constitution.
It is an imperial
presidency by all measures. The Bush administration,
hijacked by neo-conservatives, embraces a "neo-Reaganite
foreign policy of national strength and moral
assertiveness abroad", as defined by the editors of The
Weekly Standard, mouthpiece of US neo-conservatism.
National strength is twisted to mean the indiscriminate
application of overwhelming force and moral
assertiveness abroad is carried out with coercive regime
changes in small nations for narrow dynastic vengeance.
It is a policy of national weakness and moral bankruptcy
that has left the US divided at home and isolated
abroad. It is a policy, as Democratic candidate John
Kerry suggests, gridlocked by flawed ideology and
misplaced arrogance. It has reduced superpower status to
the equivalent of powerlessness towards high purpose.
While defeating an outdated military of a small
nation one tenth its size, such as Iraq, is hardly a
conclusive validation of superpower prowess, the
problems of occupation of a country the size of
California are apparently overwhelming the superpower.
No power, however super, can be the policeman of the
world, a lesson the US had painfully learned that
subsequently led to the age of detente in the last phase
of the Cold War. A new policy of detente towards
militant Islam by dealing directly with the root causes
of Islamic terrorism now needs to be considered. Law
enforcement will remain ineffective if laws derived from
historical imperialism and cultural bias remain unjust.
With the US definition of terrorism, the "war on
terrorism" cannot be won. With blatant injustice
condoned as bogus freedom, it would be easier to hunt
down and sweep clean all mushrooms in a rain forest than
to root out terrorists around the world.
The
invasion and occupation of Iraq, the centerpiece of the
US "war on terrorism", serves to illustrate the
dysfunctionality of superpower geopolitics. The war was
waged first on a pretext of policing
government-supported terrorism, and then of preemptive
removal of weapons of mass destruction, both in
hindsight having been found wanting in reality. Now the
high-minded final objective of bringing democracy to a
tribal nation is turning out to be a disastrous
geopolitical blowback, as a democratic government of the
Shi'ite majority is far from what Washington had in mind
for Iraq. Unlike the brief invasion phase of the Iraqi
war, leaving alone the controversial official pretexts
of the invasion, in which anticipated urban warfare from
a defending army failed to materialize, in the
open-ended occupation phase, unexpected urban warfare
between a professional US army and a popular militia has
emerged in occupied Iraq.
Historical
lesson The historical lesson of the US War of
Independence is that a popular militia, armed with
passion for independence, sympathy from the people and
familiarity with the land, commands insurmountable
advantage over a militarily superior foreign occupation
force. As American independence fighters learned two
centuries ago, popular resistance, melting into the
populace like fish in water, could not be contained by
British occupational forces without slaughtering
innocent civilians. British burnings of American
churches with civilians locked inside for sympathizing
with the independence struggle failed to stop the
insurgents. British general Thomas Cage, in the Battle
of Bunker Hill, by labeling the independence movement a
loose collection of thugs and tax evaders, much like the
way US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld labeled the
Iraqi resistance "a handful of thugs", only highlighted
the incompetence of his command by his failure to
recognize reality, violating the first rule of
successful war-making.
Though the British
technically won the battle, the high casualties suffered
by British forces caused the resignation of Cage. Bunker
Hill signaled the futility of British war aims of
defeating a popular uprising. The more innocent
civilians are slaughtered, the stronger the resistance
will be reinforced by such atrocious killings. Such is
the natural law against foreign occupation by force.
Rumsfeld called the ongoing battles in Iraq "a test of
will". The question is which side is fighting for
freedom from occupation and which side for occupation of
a foreign nation. Or is it a test of will between
civilizations? In that case, a century-long occupation
will still not win the test. With much of popular will
around the world turning against ill-considered US
policies of unilateralism, democracy may not turn out to
be a friend of the world's superpower gone mad with
self-indulgence.
Fighting
escalates The killing and mutilation on April 2
in Fallujah, a Sunni stronghold 50 kilometers west of
Baghdad, of four US contract security personnel,
mercenaries in all but name, testified to the hate and
rage of an occupied people. More than 30,000 mercenaries
serve as armed security guards for foreign private
contractors engaged in the rebuilding of Iraq for
profit, taking over from the military the responsibility
of providing security and maintaining order in a war
zone. Even US civilian administrator L Paul Bremer seeks
protection from contract security personnel, not US
soldiers. These armed mercenaries are officially not
engaged in offensive operations and are authorized to
use their weapons only defensively if fired on. The
distinction is only technical, since invaders can hardly
claim self defense against hostile fire from the
invaded. The very presence of invaders is itself an
offensive act that naturally draws hostile response from
the invaded. US personnel, both in or out of uniform,
instead of being welcomed in Iraq by women and children
with hugs and flowers, as predicted by US military
planners advised by so-called Mid-East experts and Iraqi
exiles, are greeted with slaughter and desecration,
while Iraqi children danced with glee in the streets
over the mutilated bodies of slain invaders like
exterminated rats. The use of mercenaries is nothing
more than the privatization of war, the ultimate
epidemic of neo-liberal market fundamentalism.
Mercenaries do not enjoy protection under the Geneva
Convention on war crimes and the mutilation was not
perpetrated by an enemy army but by an angry mob in a
country under occupation. The television images of of
the burnt remains of US mercenaries, brutal on one
level, was symbolic of failed US policy on another. It
represents violence against the crime of regime change
for profit.
Operation "Vigilant Reserve"
launched by US Marines on April 6 in response to the
Fallujah ambush led to the death of 13 Marines in its
second day of operation. US-led forces battled Sunni
guerrillas in two cities on April 7. At least 450 Iraqis
were killed and more than 1,000 wounded in fighting in
the city of Fallujah, according to the director of the
main hospital, Rafi Hayad, as a result of clashes with
US troops, which had blockaded the city a day earlier.
Further south, US-led forces clashed with a radical
Shi'ite uprising by the Mahdi Army, the militia of
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr estimated to number
several thousands, named after a 9th century Shi'ite
messiah, in a two-front war that has already killed
scores of coalition soldiers. The standoff continues.
Muqtada enjoys the status of a populist leader of the
poor and disenfranchised. Shi'ite anger over US
rejection of the obvious and natural prospect that
democracy in Iraq will decidedly produce an anti-US
polity along the line of Iran was the reason behind the
insurgence. Despite the claim that the underlying
purpose of the war was to spread democracy, a Shi'ite
majority rule is a possibility that will not be
tolerated by the US. The US toppled Saddam Hussein not
because he was a dictator, but because he ceased to be
the US's dictator. The US looked the other way when
Saddam deployed chemical weapons against Kurdish
separatists while Saddam was fighting US nemesis Iran as
a US proxy. Around the world, the US has repeatedly
toppled democratically elected governments not to its
liking. Apparently, like cholesterol, there are good and
bad democracies, categorized according to which better
serve narrow superpower geopolitical interests.
In the past few weeks the atmosphere in Iraq has
completely changed. A sporadic guerrilla war has
exploded into a widespread popular uprising, reports
Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times.
The
"Coalition of the Willing" turns out to be less willing
to fight. The Spanish are pulling out their 1,300
troops. In Kut, south of Baghdad, staunch Shi'ite
resistance forced Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the
city. The pullout effectively ceded control of the city
to Muqtada's supporters. Ukraine has about 1,650 troops
in Iraq that are part of a 9,000-strong Polish-led force
deployed south of Baghdad. Bulgaria has asked US troops
to reinforce a 450-strong Bulgarian battalion in the
southern Iraqi city of Karbala, where the Shi'ite
uprising has spread. Coalition troops are facing a tough
and bloody test of their resolve to implement an
American-backed blueprint for political transition in
Iraqi, highlighted by the transfer of sovereignty to an
Iraqi interim government on June 30. President George W
Bush, speaking on April 6, said he did not foresee
changing plans to turn over sovereignty to Iraq on June
30. The US cannot stay without suffering escalating
casualties and it cannot withdraw without leaving Iraq
in a state of full scale civil war.
In February,
Muqtada declared his militia as "the enemy of the
occupation". In late March, in a display of selective
democratic principles, US authorities shut down
Muqtada's newspaper, al-Hawza, after accusing it of
inciting violence. The closing, set to last 60 days,
began a week of protests that grew bigger and more
unruly at each turn. The newspaper was an important
symbol for Shi'ites. Al-Hawza took its name from a
loose-knit Shi'ite seminary with a history of more than
a thousand years. Its clerics played pivotal roles in
Middle Eastern history - and often militant ones. In
1920, Hawza clerics in Najaf instigated the revolt
against British rule in Iraq. In 1979, they played a
similar role in the Islamic revolution in Iran, which is
predominantly Shi'ite.
Violence in Iraq is
causing hesitation on the part of foreign companies
about attending the country's first trade expo since
Baghdad fell, an event aimed at bringing foreigners
together with local businesses and government officials
to undertake Iraq's post-war reconstruction. Destination
Baghdad Expo, which was supposed to start on April 5,
was postponed until the end of the month because of
security concerns. The event is expected to include the
Iraqi ministers of trade, industry, finance, agriculture
and planning, as well as local businesses and
international conglomerates. Although Iraqi oil is
expected to finance much of the reconstruction, Western
oil companies remain non-committal about attending.
London-based BP has no plans to attend. Statoil, the
Norwegian oil company, had offered to advise the Iraqi
oil ministry from Norway without coming to Iraq.
Popular disdain for the US-appointed Coalition
Provisional Authority and the 25-member Iraqi Governing
Council is uniting Iraqis against the occupation and the
pending interim government. The council is widely
condemned as being dominated by exiles such as Ahmed
Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader with little
popular support inside Iraq. US occupation strategy of
divide and rule, by creating tension between the revered
moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the militant
Muqtada is made inoperative by the clashes pitting
occupation forces in Baghdad and several southern cities
against militiamen who claim to be fighting in the name
of a common faith and for national liberation.
Muqtada vows that the resistance will continue
until occupation troops are withdrawn from populated
areas and political prisoners are released. "This
insurrection shows that the Iraqi people are not
satisfied with the occupation and they will not accept
oppression," a statement from Muqtada read. Muqtada
called on all countries with forces in Iraq to withdraw
their troops. "I direct my words to the great evil,
Bush, and I ask who is against democracy? Is it the one
who is advocating peaceful resistance or the one who is
bombing the nation and shedding blood?" he was reported
to have said.
To keep order, US forces have to
occupy all police stations in Sadr City, renamed from
Saddam City, the impoverished district of more than 2
million people in Baghdad. In addition, US officials are
investigating whether members of the Iraqi Civil Defense
Corps lured the four US security contractors into the
ambush in Fallujah that ended in their mutilation, a
possibility reported by The New York Times. The Civil
Defense Corps, which trains with US troops, had been
regarded by many occupation officials as more reliable
than the Iraqi police.
The pattern of resistance
and scale of casualties are expected to escalate in the
coming months until at least June 30, the date of
sovereignty transfer to the interim government. There is
no indication that the US-installed new government can
hold Iraq together after that date, or survive the test
of democracy in time.
Regional
fallout With the fall of Saddam and the
marginalization of the Ba'ath Party in Iraqi politics,
the balance of power in the Perisan Gulf region and
indeed the whole Middle East is fundamentally altered. A
rise of Iraq's Shi'ites will be felt by the entire
Middle East - particularly states with their own sizable
Shi'ite populations - and Iraq's immediate neighbors,
which include Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan
and Turkey. Iranian theocratic influence is now dominant
in the Iraqi political milieu through the venue of
democracy.
In the long perspective that governs
national diplomatic priorities, the role of the US in
the region remains transient, while the rise of Iranian
theo-politics is a very serious long-term development
for many counties in the region and the world,
particularly the Sunni countries. Iran's 1979 theocratic
revolution was not only a shock to the West, but to the
entire Middle East and the Islamic nations of Asia. The
US will go to any lengths to prevent the Iranian
theocratic model from sweeping the region. The Ba'ath
Party of Iraq, the history of which predates Saddam's
rise to power, until its ill-advised marginalization by
the US invasion authorities, had been the main bulwark
against the Iranian model of Shi'ism in Iraq.
By
the regime change carried out with the invasion of Iraq,
the US has demolished that bulwark for no discernable
geopolitical purpose. Sunnis in the region are now torn
between their fear of a rise of the Shi'ites in Iraq and
their commitment to Arab nationalism stimulated by
foreign occupation. Neither option has any room for US
superpower dominance. The abuse of superpower, and
indeed the foolish squandering of superpower resources,
appears to have rendered the world's sole superpower
powerless to shape a new world order of peace, harmony
and justice, diluting the sole justification for
superpower existence.
Henry C K Liu is
chairman of the New York-based Liu Investment Group
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