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Why withdrawal is
possible
By Mark LeVine
As calls to set a timetable for
withdrawing American troops from Iraq grow with
each new casualty, President George W Bush and
other critics of such a move argue vigorously that
announcing such a deadline would grant the
insurgents a major political and strategic
victory: the former by vindicating the violent,
even terroristic methodology of the insurgency
itself, the latter by allowing rebels to bide
their time and overwhelm government troops once
American forces depart.
However convincing
at face value, these arguments raise the question:
are the only options in Iraq maintaining an
unpopular and costly occupation, or handing the
country over to "former members of Saddam
Hussein's regime, criminal elements and foreign
terrorists" (as Bush describes them)?
The
answer is manifestly no, and the fact so few
people within the corridors of power can imagine
an alternative policy reveals a powerful yet
fallacious line of reasoning at the heart of
arguments to "stay the course" in Iraq: that a US
troop withdrawal would automatically leave a
security vacuum in its place.
But such an
outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion; the
problem is that few Americans, especially
politicians, are willing to consider the
alternative: apologize to the Iraqi people for an
invasion and occupation that (whatever our
intentions) has gone terribly wrong; ask the
United Nations to take over the management of the
country's security, lead negotiations to end the
insurgency, and oversee redevelopment aid; and
leave as soon as a sufficient number of
replacement forces are in place.
There are
four reasons why such a development, however
distasteful to the Bush administration and many
Americans, is the best hope for achieving the
peace and democracy most everyone wants to bring
to Iraq.
First, it
is increasingly clear that the insurgency is
unwinnable as long as the US remains in Iraq. Even
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld now admits that
it could take a dozen years to defeat it. Given
such a forecast, he explains that "Coalition
forces, foreign forces are not going to repress
that insurgency. We're going to create an
environment that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi
security forces can win against that insurgency."
Is this our gift to the Iraqi people, what
1,700 American soldiers have died for - a
cancerous insurgency that will devour the energy,
revenue and personnel of the Iraqi government for
the foreseeable future? In most any other country,
such an admission by one of the war's chief
architects would lead to his resignation, or even
indictment for what former senior Iraqi Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) official Larry Diamond
describes (in his new book Squandered
Victory) as the "criminal negligence" of the
US-led occupation.
The fact that US
diplomats have had secret talks with insurgents
confirms that the Bush administration is worried
that it cannot defeat the insurgency and is
exploring the option of a "peace with honor" to
extricate America from what even the president
(jokingly, no doubt) calls the Iraqi "quagmire".
Must we repeat rather than learn from the
disastrous history of our withdrawal from Vietnam
a generation ago?
Indeed, if the US is
talking to insurgents, others can too -
particularly others who haven't been involved in
the occupation of Iraq and all the disastrous
consequences it has led to in so many areas of
life in the country. While some elements of the
insurgency (particularly the criminals, Ba'athists
and foreign jihadis cited by the president) want
to transform Iraq into some sort of neo-Taliban
state, the clear majority of insurgents are
ordinary Iraqis who see themselves as patriots
defending their country and will lay down their
arms once coalition forces have left, as long as
their leaders are involved in negotiating the
temporary presence of peacekeeping forces
necessary to maintain order.
Second, while
Republicans have rightly criticized systematic
corruption at the United Nations, the oil-for-food
scandal pales in comparison with the level of
corruption in post-invasion Iraq. Whether it's $9
billion in cash literally gone missing from CPA
offices, repeated no-bid contracts to Halliburton
and even the managers of the Abu Ghraib prison, or
the smaller-scale but ubiquitous corruption
infecting every sector of the Iraqi economy under
our tutelage, the US has proven itself incapable
of managing the reconstruction and development of
the country or supporting an environment in which
Iraqis can do it themselves.
A new
international regime, which separates the
management of the country's security from its
reconstruction and the immense profits (and
potential for malfeasance) tied to both is the
sine qua non for establishing a democratic
future for the country. The UN system can't do it
alone, but with a sufficient level of supervision
and expertise by donor countries and Iraqi
professionals, it can help Iraqis rebuild the
country with their own skill, labor and resources.
In such a scenario it will be much easier to
persuade countries such as France, Germany and
others who largely stayed clear of involvement in
the invasion and occupation to contribute the
necessary funds and personnel to enable Iraq's
stability and reconstruction. More important, it
will give Iraqis a working stake in the peaceful
development of their country.
Third, most Iraqis
and other critics of the occupation believe the US
has no intention of withdrawing its troops from
Iraq or relinquishing its de facto control of the
country's all-important petroleum resources. Bush
declared in his speech on Tuesday night that "as
Iraqis stand up, we will stand down", but such
blithe declarations are belied by the massive
construction going on at US bases across the
country and remarks by senior US officials, who
have admitted that we intend (with Iraq's
"permission" of course) to station tens of
thousands of troops in more or less permanent
bases across the country for the foreseeable
future.
All that's needed is a Status of
Forces Agreement signed by an Iraqi government
that could not survive without a continued US
presence - or in lieu of that, a security
situation which makes asking us to leave
practically impossible in the foreseeable future -
to realize the grandest aspirations of
neo-conservatives and security hawks alike: a
large and long-term US presence in the heart of
the world's major oil producing region as we enter
the age of peak oil.
Such a situation
might seem ideal in the context of a new cold war
with an energy-hungry China, but it would likely
fuel a much hotter war against a mushrooming
pan-Islamic insurgency across the Muslim world.
The US would be much more secure if it took the
hundreds of billions of dollars being spent in
Iraq and devoted them to developing sustainable
alternative energy technologies and transforming
the global economic system so that our standard of
living no longer depends on billions of people
living on $2 a day or less, and entire world
regions such as Africa and the Middle East
structurally marginalized from the formal flows of
money and goods in the globalized economy.
Fourth, an
insurmountable collection of evidence is emerging
that American forces have systematically committed
war crimes in Iraq and continue to violate
international law in their actions across the
country. The longer the US remains, the greater
the chances that senior officials will face
criminal charges, or at least international
censure, for the conduct of the invasion and
occupation of the country.
While it is
perhaps unlikely that senior officials will ever
stand trial for their actions in an international
venue, the loss of American prestige and respect
across the world that our actions have brought on
is incalculable. Moreover, when tied - quite
naturally - by people across the global south to
our support for the policies associated with the
dominant neo-liberal model of globalization, the
Iraqi occupation and the increasingly open
imperial endeavor it represents has contributed to
the victories of populist anti-American candidates
across Latin America, and now Iran.
Even
those who support a timetable for withdrawing
American troops might respond negatively to the
suggestion that America apologize for its invasion
and occupation of Iraq. Certainly, the president's
speech before the troops at Fort Bragg offered no
hint of remorse for the pain and suffering the
invasion brought to Iraq.
Such knee-jerk
patriotism disappears, however, when you actually
visit Iraq, as I did (that is, without a massive
security detail and living with Iraqis), and see
the disaster that the occupation has produced
first-hand. Observed close up, without the filter
of an obsequious news media, the overwhelmingly
negative consequences of the occupation become
impossible to ignore: the 100,000 dead (the
majority of them civilians); wide-scale violations
of human, political and civil rights; the
destruction of the country's health, education and
other crucial social systems; the massive
unemployment; a violent and destabilizing
insurgency that is likely to last a generation or
more; the rending of a delicate social fabric that
managed to survive a bloody British occupation,
several wars, and the even bloodier rule of Saddam
Hussein (which we should never forget was made
possible in good measure by decades of support
from administrations as far back as President John
F Kennedy).
In Alcoholics Anonymous,
apologizing and making amends for the hurt one has
done to others are among the most important steps
in the long path toward sobriety. Clearly, Bush,
who believes Iraqis should "put the past behind
them", isn't about to engage in soul searching
about the mission and consequences of our Iraq
adventure. But if Americans can admit to - and in
doing so, comprehend - the damage our government
has wrought in Iraq in our name and with our
consent, we will take an important first step in
ending our addiction to an unsustainable
corporate-led, consumer-driven culture, and the
wars and systematic violence, oppression and
exploitation it requires world-wide. In doing so
we will begin the long but necessary task of
building a sustainable and peaceful future, for
Iraq, for ourselves, and for the world at large.
Mark LeVine, professor of modern
Middle Eastern history, culture, and Islamic
studies at the University of California, Irvine,
and author of Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting
the Veil on the Axis of Evil, Oneworld
Publications, 2005.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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