Page 2 of
2 How the
US dream foundered in Iraq By
Michael Schwartz
They tried to meet,
however minimally, some of the basic needs of
their communities, supplying food baskets, housing
services, and serving a host of other functions
previously promised by the Ba'athist government,
but forsworn by the US occupation and the Iraqi
government that the US installed when "handing
over" sovereignty in June 2004.
The
American occupationaires expected that their plans
for the rapid privatization and transformation of
the state-driven economy would indeed generate
resistance, but they were convinced that this
would subside quickly once the new economy kicked
into gear. Instead, as the occupation wore on,
demands for relief grew
more strident and
insistent, while the country itself, in chaos and
near collapse, became visible evidence of the
failure of the Bush administration's "free market"
policies.
An Iraqi agenda for
withdrawal Occupation officials faced the
same dilemma in the political realm. The original
goal of the Bush administration was a stable,
pro-Washington government, stripped of its
economic and political dominance over Iraqi
society, but a bastion of resistance to Iranian
regional power. This vision, like its military and
economic cousins, has long since disappeared under
the weight of Iraqi resistance.
Take, for
example, the two high-profile Iraqi elections,
celebrated in the mainstream American media as a
unique Bush administration accomplishment in the
otherwise relentlessly autocratic Middle East.
Inside Iraq, however, they had quite a different
look.
It is important to remember that the
US initially planned to sustain its direct rule -
the CPA - until the country was fully pacified and
its economic reforms completed. When the CPA
became a hated symbol of an unwanted occupation,
planning shifted to the idea of installing an
appointed Iraqi government, based on community
meetings that only supporters of the occupation
could attend. Full-scale elections would be
postponed until winners fully supportive of the
Bush agenda were assured. An outpouring of protest
from the predominantly Shi'ite areas of the
country, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
forced CPA administrators to move on to an
election-based strategy.
The first
election in January 2005 delivered a sizeable
parliamentary majority voted in on platforms
calling for strict timetables for a full US
military withdrawal from the country. American
representatives then forcefully pressured the
newly installed cabinet to abandon this position.
The second parliamentary election in
December 2005 followed a similar pattern. This
time, the backroom bargaining was only partially
effective. The newly installed prime minister,
Nuri al-Maliki, reneged on his campaign promises
by publicly supporting an ongoing American
military presence, which caused deep fissures in
the ruling coalition.
After a year of
unproductive negotiations, the 30 Sadrists in
parliament, originally a key part of Maliki's
ruling coalition, withdrew from both that
coalition and the cabinet in protest over the
prime minister's refusal to set a date for the end
of the occupation. Subsequent parliamentary
demands for a date certain for withdrawal were
ignored by both the government and US officials.
While Maliki continued in office without a
parliamentary majority, the controversy
contributed to the soaring popularity of the
Sadrists and waning support for the other Shi'ite
governing parties.
By early 2008, with
provincial elections looming in November, there
was little doubt that the Sadrists would sweep to
power in many predominantly Shi'ite provinces,
most critically Basra, Iraq's second-largest city
and southern oil hub. To prevent this debacle,
Iraqi government troops, supported and advised by
the US military, sought to expel the Sadrists from
key areas of Basra.
This use of military
force to prevent electoral defeat was only one of
many indications that the Iraqi government was
feeling the pressure of public opinion. Another
was the reluctance of Maliki to maintain an
antagonistic stance toward Iran. Despite fervent
Bush administration efforts, his government has
promoted social, religious and economic
relationships between Iraqis and Iranians.
These included facilitating visits to the
holy cities of Karbala and Najaf by hundreds of
thousands of Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims, as well as
supporting extensive oil transactions between
Basra and Iranian firms, including distribution
and refining services that promised to integrate
the two energy economies. A formal military
relationship between the two countries was vetoed
by US authorities, but this did not reverse the
tide of cooperation.
The river of
resistance As the occupation wore on, the
Bush administration found itself swimming against
a tide of resistance of a previously unimaginable
sort, and ever further from its goals. Today,
cities and towns around the country are largely
under the sway of Shi'ite or Sunni militias which,
even when trained or paid by the occupation,
remain militantly opposed to the US presence.
Moreover, though the prostrate Iraqi economy has
been formally privatized, these local militias -
and the political leaders they worked with -
continue to raise demands for vast
government-funded reconstruction and economic
development programs.
The formal political
leadership of Iraq, locked inside the heavily
fortified, US-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad,
remains publicly compliant when it comes to Bush
administration plans to transform Iraq into a
Middle Eastern outpost - including the continued
presence of American troops on a series of
mega-bases in the heart of the country. The rest
of the government bureaucracy and the bulk of
Iraq's grass roots are increasingly insistent on
an early American departure date and a full-scale
reversal of the economic policies first introduced
by the occupation.
In Washington, for
Democratic as well as Republican politicians, the
outpost idea remains at the heart of the policy
agenda for Iraq in this election year, along with
a neo-liberal economy featuring a modernized oil
sector in which multinational firms are to use
state-of-the-art technology to maximize the
country's lagging oil production.
Iraqi
resistance of every kind and on every level has,
however, prevented this vision from becoming
reality. Because of the Iraqis, the glorious
sounding "war on terror" has been transformed into
an endless, hopeless actual war.
But the
Iraqis have paid a terrible price for resisting.
The invasion and the social and economic policies
that accompanied it have destroyed Iraq, leaving
its people essentially destitute. In the first
five years of this endless war, Iraqis have
suffered more for resisting than if they had
accepted and endured American military and
economic dominance. Whether consciously or not,
they have sacrificed themselves to halt
Washington's projected military and economic march
through the oil-rich Middle East on the path to a
new American century that now will never be.
It is past time for the rest of the world
to shoulder at least a small share of the burden
of resistance. Just as the worldwide protests
before the war were among the upstream sources of
the Iraqi resistance-to-come, so now others,
especially Americans, should resist the very idea
that Iraq could ever become the headquarters for a
permanent US presence that would, in the words of
Bush speechwriter David Frum, "Put America more
wholly in charge of the region than any power
since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."
Unlike the Iraqis, after all, the citizens of the
United States are uniquely positioned to bury this
imperial dream for all time.
Michael
Schwartz, professor of sociology at Stony
Brook University, has written extensively on
popular protest and insurgency. His forthcoming
Tomdispatch book,War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in
Context (Haymarket, June 2008) explores how
the militarized geopolitics of oil led the US to
dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while
fueling a sectarian civil war. His email address
is Ms42@optonline.net.
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