The Fatal Contradiction in Iraq Policy
William Pfaff -- 2007/7/11 17:00:00
williampfaff.com
Paris, July 10, 2007 – The crisis over western policy on Iraq results from the inability or unwillingness of the governments concerned to confront the internal contradiction in their positions.
Both Washington and London want a peaceful withdrawal of combat forces. Both also want long-term advantages as a result of their interventions in Iraq. Washington wants a permanent strategic base structure. Both Washington and London (and Canberra, as an Australian official has recently reminded the world) want assured access to Iraq’s oil.
These are the advantages that come with victory. There has been no victory. These goals and ambitions sent Washington and London into Iraq. Now the two want to withdraw, leaving some version of representative government that could justify the commitments made by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to bring democracy to Iraq.
The Iraq government that currently exists has reportedly failed to meet any of the benchmarks and political criteria set for it by the Bush administration. Its police and army are incapable of enforcing its laws. Senior members declare that Iraq must continue to have foreign troops to protect the government from the sectarian struggle and social chaos that prevail.
The political ambitions Washington had for its invasion of Iraq, and for the regional radiation of democracy that was supposed to follow, are unmentionable in Republican party circles. In London, Mr. Blair has departed, leaving behind his war.
Tony Blair’s reasoning remains mysterious, in that even if one believes his desire to do good, which I do, it is impossible to see how he can conclude, as he leaves office, that anything at all has happened during the past four years that either improved the lot of the Iraqis or served any honorable British interest.
Iraq is in desperate condition. The former prime minister had no discernable influence on Washington policy concerning Iraq or the Palestine-Israel issue -- an avowed concern. If Washington made commercial or trade concessions to Britain in thanks for London’s support in Iraq, these have not been made public, and the probability of Britain’s securing postwar access to Iraq oil and privileged investments in the new Iraq requires the arrival of a new Iraq, as yet unforeseen and unforeseeable.
Washington itself avowed long-term strategic and material interests in Iraq that now clearly are incompatible with the demands for troop withdrawal now intense in political Washington and loud elsewhere in the United States.
The original White House and Pentagon goals included construction of a major, permanent strategic military and political base complex in Iraq. Permanent bases presuppose a pacified Iraq, which does not exist -- and probably will not for many years. At a minimum they suppose permanently cleared and secured regions of Iraq reliably controlled by a stable and competent Iraqi political authority willing to defend those bases. These do not exist either, except in what the Kurds expect to become Kurdistan. There is no reason whatever to think that order will prevail elsewhere in the country within a period of time realistically related to mounting domestic American and British political pressures for withdrawal.
Without order, permanent foreign bases would require permanent foreign military intervention in Iraq to defend the bases and their lines of supply. Much could be supplied by air but the U.S. Air Force has acknowledged that overland truck convoys would still be essential, and would have to be defended. The insurgents, significantly, have yet to deploy advanced ground to air missiles, which made the Russian position in Afghanistan untenable. The Green Zone is already under rocket and mortar attack.
The hypothesis of maintaining permanent bases in a country in continuing civil struggle means permanent military occupation of the country, a program for which there is no American or British popular support -- nor would I think it a mission military commanders of either country would be eager to undertake, nor the international community to condone.
So what are we to do in Iraq? American strategic objectives, permanent bases and assured access to Iraqi oil, require military and political solutions beyond our present means, which already are stretched to the full, and for which American popular support is vanishing.
A permanent and operational structure of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq is possible only if the United States should win that “victory” over the insurrection that George W. Bush plaintively calls for, but which few in responsible Washington circles now think possible.
The Washington debate thus deals in hypothetical solutions that have no realistic foundation. There is hazy talk about a retreat -- for as long as 50 years -- to isolated bases that would somehow function in disregard of the political and military turmoil in Iraq.
Irrelevant comparisons are made with the half-century-long (and today, increasingly uneasy and unpopular) U.S. presence in secure and prosperous South Korea. This, as few today recall, was the result of a war in which a U.S.-led United Nations Coalition drove out North Korean and Chinese invaders in a war lasting from 1950 to 1953. It has not the remotest connection to the circumstances of Iraq today.
All of this serves to divert public attention from the “unacceptable” solution, which is to accept reality and leave under the best conditions possible -- which is to say (at best) without actually having to fight our way out. The current debate pits the impossible against the “unacceptable.” It is therefore a waste of time, as will become evident when a new American administration takes office in 2009. |
