Op-ed: On the slippery slope in Iraq
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By Ahmad Faruqui
dailytimes.com.pk
Interviewed by a San Francisco paper, an Iraqi-American who had supported the war said he has turned sceptical. “What’s happening is a nuisance for US forces, but it is catastrophic for the Iraqi people”
The job approval rating of President George Bush is at an all-time low of 50 per cent but the White House continues to maintain that the war is going according to plan. National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice has stated that ‘setbacks are inevitable’ as the US tries to establish security and democracy in Iraq.
Contradicting his spin masters in Washington, who are asserting that attacks against US forces are decreasing, a senior military official in Iraq noted that the number has remained relatively consistent. US forces have endured an average of 12 to 15 attacks a day in Iraq since May 1, resulting in the death of a US soldier every other day and in the wounding of 4.5 troops every single day. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the US military commander in Iraq, warned last week that he does not have enough forces to contain a potential civil war.
Two retired four-star generals have concluded that something is rotting in Iraq. General Anthony Zinni, former head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Vietnam veteran who often advises the US State Department, blasted the administration’s handling of post-war Iraq while speaking at the respected US Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. He said, “There is no strategy for putting the pieces together... we’re in danger of failing.” Reminding his audience of uniformed officers about ‘the garbage and the lies’ that were dished out by the US government during that war in order to extract sacrifices from the troops, he asked, “Is it happening again?” Zinni also derided the administration’s decision in January to have the Pentagon oversee the reconstruction of Iraq.
General Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO, Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient and a potential presidential candidate, noted in an interview with Fortune magazine that the war against Iraq had no justification. In blunt general-speak, Clark questioned how could Iraq have posed an imminent threat to the US. “Was [Saddam] about to hit us? With what? A missile? He doesn’t have a missile that could hit us. An airplane? What, a Piper Club across the Atlantic? He was going to give [weapons of mass destruction] to al Qaeda? C’mon. We know Saddam Hussein. He wouldn’t give stuff to al Qaeda unless he had their mother, their children, and their ten wives in custody so that he could pull their teeth out if he didn’t like what they were doing.”
Challenging the assertion that the issue was human rights or chemical weapons, Clark said the West should then have acted 10 years ago when Saddam brutalised Shiite Muslims or 15 years ago when he used chemical weapons against the Kurds.
Thomas E White, a former secretary of the US Army, writes in his new book that the administration naively assumed that quick victory in war would ‘produce a pro-United States citizenry ready for economic and political rebirth’. As if confirming White’s scepticism, US Secretary of State Colin Powell has acknowledged that the US did not anticipate that ‘all the institutions would collapse. We didn’t realise how rotten the whole place was.’ This is a remarkable confession, since he knew quite well that Iraq was in the grip of a vile dictatorship since 1979 and under UN sanctions since 1991.
Faced with a difficult situation, Bush has asked Congress for $87 billion to help carry out the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan on top of the $79 billion that Congress approved earlier. This funding is about 40 per cent of all non-defence discretionary spending this year. Only $21 billion of the new funding will be spent on Iraqi reconstruction while the rest will go to the military. To place these figures in perspective, the US spends $59.4 billion on education, $28.6 billion on highways and $8.0 billion on protecting the environment.
While the funding bill is widely expected to pass, it is unlikely to sail through Congress. Senator Tom Harkin thundered on the Senate floor, “This may not be Vietnam, but boy it sure smells like it. And every time I see these bills coming down for the money, it’s costing like Vietnam, too.”
Calling the $87 billion a ‘bitter pill for the American people to swallow’, Senator Carl Levin said the money would cut into health care, education and other domestic services. He said US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz painted a rosy scenario in March when he said that Iraq would finance its own reconstruction.
Senator Chuck Hagel reminded the Bush administration that it has ‘treated many in the Congress like a nuisance’, and noted that victory over the terrorists will require ‘building a just and peaceful world, particularly in the Muslim world’, and not just dismantling terror networks.
Even in the face of such public misgivings, Wolfowitz continues to assert, ‘the battle to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terrorism’. General Abizaid, the head of CENTCOM, has declared, “If we can’t be successful in Iraq, we can’t be successful in the global war on terrorism.” The general has noted that the post-war campaign will be ‘long, hard and sometimes bloody’. But it is worth the cost, because in Iraq the people are ‘very, very talented and resources are abundant’.
It is not evident that his paternalistic sentiments have resonated with Iraqis. Their inchoate anxiety toward the US shows up in a recent Zogby poll. Half of the Iraqis said the US presence would hurt Iraq over the next five years while a third said it would help.
Interviewed by a San Francisco paper, an Iraqi-American who had supported the war said he has turned sceptical. “What’s happening is a nuisance for US forces, but it is catastrophic for the Iraqi people.” Another one said that six months after the US invasion, there was no peace or security for the common man in Iraq who has ‘no electricity, no gas, no jobs’, and ‘you have no support of the international community’.
University of Chicago’s John J Mearsheimer has assailed unilateralism in US foreign policy, saying that the US can’t run the world by itself. Recent US policy has damaged relations with Europe and no one is ‘terribly enthusiastic about helping us now’.
Even Princeton University’s Bernard Lewis, a supporter of the war, cautions the US against adopting an imperial role in Iraq. He says such a role is ‘blocked equally by moral and psychological constraints, and by international and more especially by domestic political calculations’.
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Dr Ahmad Faruqui is an economist and author of “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan”. He can be reached at faruqui@pacbell.net |
