There is a
growing chorus in and around Washington, DC, these days
that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should resign,
so soon after he accepted a "request" by President
George W Bush to stay on for his second term. Why this
increasing clamor for his resignation? After all, he was
one of the top civilian brains behind the US military
campaign of "shock and awe" that toppled Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein, and in the making of Iraq as America's
next satellite state. Several decades ago, president
John F Kennedy best explained the type of trouble that
Rumsfeld is currently embroiled in by observing,
"Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan." Not
many want to say it out loud, but America's continued
presence in Iraq is already being perceived globally as
heading toward failure. No one in Washington is yet
ready to categorize America's involvement in Iraq along
that line publicly, but the increasingly voluble blame
game makes it clear that such thinking is evolving
steadily, and Rumsfeld has become the current chief
target of it.
The US invasion of Iraq, in the
final analysis, was the decision of Bush. Rumsfeld was
one of the chief architects of the military campaign to
carry it out. He combined his zealotry regarding the
transformation of the US military with his conviction
that ousting Saddam was a right decision. The upside of
those sentiments enabled Rumsfeld to construct a potent
strategy of winning the war with a smaller-than-usual
application of ground forces, and by focusing on the
lethal use of force, which had become the forte of
America's military since the Gulf War of 1991. However,
he failed to pay attention to the fact that no war is
over even when the substantial part of hostilities comes
to an end. The losing side never regards itself as such
unless its capacity to conduct guerrilla warfare is also
wiped out. For that development to take effect, the
winning side must also transform itself into an
effective occupying force, by not only enforcing law and
order, but also by ensuring that basic governmental
services are restored in the shortest possible period of
time after the cessation of hostilities. The failure of
the US forces to carry out all of that was only a
partial explanation of the making of the resultant
quagmire in Iraq.
Moreover, the United States
did not go into Iraq merely to oust Saddam. There was a
huge and not so latent agenda of making Iraq a "shining
example" of the transformation of the Muslim Middle East
into a democratic region. The two examples that
America's neo-conservatives - the then emerging true
believers in the possible emergence of Pax Americana -
bandied about to make their case for the US invasion of
Iraq was by making regular references to America's
success in transforming Germany and Japan into
democracies. Considering what the United Sates had
brought about in an earlier era, they argued, repeating
a similar performance in Iraq and the Middle East would
be considerably easy. The use of history to make
arguments of that magnitude is dangerous because the
users, almost invariably, are carried away by their zeal
to simplify enormously complex realities. In so doing,
they also become victims of groupthink in comparing
apples and oranges. The case of Japan and Germany was
the product a world war. Both were aggressors and both
were pretty much destroyed during that war. If one were
to be even approximately correct about explaining the
transformation of Germany and Japan into democracies, it
should be pointed out that the United States stayed in
those countries for 50 years to implement democracy.
Another important fact to remember is that the
post-World War II environment was entirely different
from the one that prevailed when the United States
invaded Iraq.
The invasion of Iraq was a matter
of choice by the Bush administration. Iraq did not
invade the United States, nor was it in any position to
do so. The US invasion of Iraq took place in an
environment when the Islamists had already initiated
their global information war by describing the United
States' "war on terrorism" as a war against Islam.
Consequently, the atmosphere in the world of Islam was
becoming more anti-American with the passage of each
day. One had to add to these variables two other
developments that were occurring simultaneously when the
US decided to topple Saddam: the Palestinian intifada
and the brutal Israeli crushing of it. The coverage of
these developments in the world of Islam further proved
the argument of al-Qaeda Inc that the United States was
in Iraq and Afghanistan only to subjugate Muslims.
Israel's treatment of the Palestinians was generally
perceived in that region as something that was integral
to America's overall objective of enslaving Muslims.
The events after the ouster of Saddam did not
help the United States either. The looting of Iraq, the
thoughtless, indeed foolhardy, decision to dissolve the
Iraq army by decree, and de-Ba'athification of that
country primarily on the basis of self-serving advice
from the neo-cons' then golden boy, Ahmad Chalabi. No
one bothered to consider the fact that Chalabi had not
lived in Iraq since 1958, and was chiefly motivated by
the personal desire to emerge as a successor to Saddam.
That was perfectly okay by the neo-cons. All these
variables made substantial contributions to the
transformation of Iraq as a place where the insurgents
and Islamists were going to have a field day in the
following months.
Then came the Abu Ghraib
prison abuse fiasco, which will always remain as a
primary example of infamy related to the United States'
occupation of Iraq. Future historians are likely to
present the picture of a hooded Iraqi prisoner from Abu
Ghraib as the mascot of the humiliation the Iraqi nation
experienced under those who claimed to be its
"liberators" more frequently than they would present the
fall of the statue of Saddam Hussein as a symbol of
Iraqi freedom. The most significant aspect of this still
evolving ignominy is that there has never been a massive
self-exorcism of Washington's soul, by removing and
punishing the alleged perpetrators from top to bottom.
No one wants to admit it, but a great body of American
decision-makers is responsible for it - some by being
direct party to it, but a whole lot of others by either
remaining silent or by tepidly criticizing it. The
punishment of the soldiers at the lowest level is a
gross under-implementation of justice, and a sorry
example of ensuring that the "big enchiladas" largely
remain free of blame. In this instance, the denial of
justice has also become a wholesale commitment of
injustice.
Rumsfeld was one of the foremost US
officials who should be blamed for the entire Iraqi
quagmire, but not any more than George Bush. But the
American people last month re-elected Bush for four more
years. Why go after Rumsfeld, especially when the chief
architect of that policy will not only remain in the
White House for four more years, but will unabashedly
pursue that failed policy, without any regard to its
cost to the global prestige of the United States and to
its most precious asset, its youth?
Iraq is a
failure in the making. The upcoming elections there are
not likely to make that much of a difference, especially
if the Sunnis don't participate, either on their own or
as a result of insurgents' attempts to create conditions
aimed at bringing about their exclusion.
The
Republican senators who are criticizing Rumsfeld, or
wanting his resignation are right about criticizing him,
but are wrong in putting the entire blame on him. He, in
the final analysis, is only an implementer of a policy
made in the White House. The neo-cons want him to resign
because they currently envisage their contentious notion
of Pax Americana as a doomed proposition.
Rumsfeld should stay put, and play a major role
in paving conditions for America's eventual withdrawal
from Iraq. Hounding him out of office is likely to
create a bitter debate - if Iraq indeed ends up as a
failure of America's foreign policy - that such a
reality emerged largely because Rummy was not allowed to
remain in office and finish his job.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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