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3 Everlasting US pyramids in Iraqi
sands By Tom Engelhardt
Finally, the great American disconnect may
be ending. Only four years after the invasion of
Iraq, the crucial facts on the ground might
finally be coming into sight in the United States.
We are not talking about the carnage or
the mayhem; not the suicide car bombs or the
chlorine truck bombs; not the massive flight of
middle-class professionals, the assassination
campaign against academics, or the collapse of the
best health-care service
in
the region. This is not about the spiking US and
Iraqi casualties, the lack of electricity, the
growth of Shi'ite militias, the crumbling of the
"coalition of the willing", or the uprooting of
15% or more of Iraq's population.
It is
not even about the sharp increase in
fundamentalism and extremism, the rise of al-Qaeda
in Mesopotamia, the swelling of sectarian
killings, or the inability of the Iraqi government
to get oil out of the ground, or an oil law,
designed in Washington and meant to turn the clock
back decades in the Middle East, passed inside
Baghdad's fortified Green Zone - no, none of that.
What's finally coming into view is just
what US President George W Bush, Vice President
Dick Cheney, the top officials of their
administration, the civilian leadership at the
Pentagon, and their neo-conservative followers had
in mind when they invaded and occupied Iraq in
2003.
But let me approach this issue
another way. For the past week, news jockeys have
been plunged into a debate about the "Korea
model", which, according to the New York Times and
other media outlets, Bush is suddenly considering
as the model for Iraq. ("Mr Bush has told recent
visitors to the White House that he was seeking a
model similar to the American presence in South
Korea.")
You know, a limited number of
major US bases tucked away out of urban areas; a
limited number of US troops (say, 30,000-40,000),
largely confined to those bases but ready to
strike at any moment; a friendly government in
Baghdad; and (as in South Korea, where US troops
have been for six decades) maybe another
half-century-plus of quiet garrisoning. In other
words, this is the time equivalent of a geographic
"over the horizon redeployment" of US troops. In
this case, "over the horizon" would mean through
2057 and beyond.
This, we are now told, is
a new stage in Bush administration thinking. White
House spokesman Tony Snow seconded the "Korea
model": "You have the United States there in what
has been described as an over-the-horizon support
role ... as we have in South Korea, where for many
years there have been American forces stationed
there as a way of maintaining stability and
assurance on the part of the South Korean people
against a North Korean neighbor that is a menace."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates threw his
weight behind it as a way of reassuring Iraqis
that the US "will not withdraw from Iraq as it did
from Vietnam, 'lock, stock and barrel'," as did
"surge" plan second-in-command in Baghdad,
Lieutenant-General Ray Odierno.
Question: Do you agree
that we will likely have a South Korean-style
force there for years to come?
General Odierno: Well, I
think that's a strategic decision, and I think
that's between us - the government of the United
States and the government of Iraq. I think it's
a great idea.
David Sanger of the New
York Times recently summed up this "new" thinking
in the following fashion:
Administration officials and top
military leaders declined to talk on the record
about their long-term plans in Iraq. But when
speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, they
describe a fairly detailed concept. It calls for
maintaining three or four major bases in the
country, all well outside of the crowded urban
areas where casualties have soared. They would
include the base at al-Asad in Anbar province,
Balad Air Base about 50 miles north of Baghdad,
and Tallil Air Base in the
south.
Critics - left, right and
center - promptly attacked the relevance of the
South Korean analogy for all the obvious
historical reasons. Time headlined its piece "Why
Iraq isn't Korea"; Fred Kaplan of Slate waded in
this way: "In other words, in no meaningful way
are these two wars, or these two countries,
remotely similar. In no way does one experience,
or set of lessons, shed light on the other. In
Iraq, no border divides friend from foe; no clear
concept defines who is friend and foe. To say that
Iraq might follow 'a Korean model' - if the word
model means anything - is absurd."
At his
Informed Comment website, Juan Cole wrote, "So
what confuses me is the terms of the comparison.
Who is playing the role of the communists and of
North Korea?" Inter Press Service's Jim Lobe
quoted retired Lieutenant-General Donald Kerrick,
a former US deputy national security adviser who
served two tours of duty in South Korea this way:
"[The analogy] is either a gross
oversimplification to try to reassure people [the
Bush administration] has a long-term plan, or it's
just silly" (see Bush's Korea specter in
Iraq, June 5).
None of these
critiques are anything but on target. Nonetheless,
the "Korea model" should not be dismissed simply
for gross historical inaccuracy. There's a far
more important reason to attend to it, confirmed
by four years of facts on the ground in Iraq - and
by a little history that, it seems, no one, not
even the New York Times, which helped record it,
remembers.
How enduring are those
'enduring camps'? At the moment, the Korea
model is being presented as breaking news, as the
next step in the Bush administration's desperately
evolving thinking as its "surge" plan surges into
disaster.
However, the most basic fact of
our present "Korea" moment is that this is the
oldest news of all. As the Bush administration
launched its invasion in March 2003, it imagined
itself entering a "South Korean" Iraq (though that
analogy was never used).
While Americans,
including administration officials, would argue
endlessly over whether the US was in Tokyo or
Berlin, 1945, Algeria of the 1950s, Vietnam of the
1960s and 1970s, civil-war-torn Beirut of the
1980s, or numerous other historically distant
places, when it came to the facts on the ground,
the administration's actual planning remained
obdurately in "South Korea".
The problem
was that, thanks largely to terrible media
coverage, the American people knew little or
nothing about those developing facts on the
ground, and that disconnect has made all the
difference for years.
Let's review a
little basic history.
You remember, of
course, the flap over then-US Army chief of staff
Eric Shinseki's February 2003 claim before a
congressional committee that "several hundred
thousand troops" would be
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