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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (54795)	10/26/2002 7:19:41 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

NEW WAR, SAME AS THE LAST WAR Op/Ed By Ted Rall Nationally Sydicated Columnist Fri Oct 25, 8:02 PM ET story.news.yahoo.com Big Promises on Iraq Are Hype NEW YORK--Never mind that attacking Iraq without provocation is immoral. Forget that the Bush Administration has released no evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction" or that he intends to use them. Let's even ignore official Axis of Evil(TM) member North Korea's admission that it has developed nuclear weapons in a blatant violation of a 1994 agreement. "The reality of the United States using force unilaterally against North Korea is extremely difficult, if not impossible," notes Daniel Pinkston, a Korea specialist at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. "[North Korea] is a little bit on the back burner." And yet Iraq is probably less of a threat than North Korea. Iraq, however, possesses an estimated 112.5 billion barrels in proven oil reserves--the world's second-largest stash. North Korea has mud. And rocks. Guess who we're going to invade? Iraq After Saddam There's no point taking on Iraq unless we can establish a stable puppet regime in Baghdad after we win. An Iraqi civil war would cause those precious energy reserves to be split into Kurdish and non-Kurdish zones, which makes maintaining the country's territorial integrity after Saddam essential if we want to fully exploit all that oil and natural gas. Finally, a pro-American post-Saddam government won't stand a chance of garnering popular support unless the damage caused by and a decade of economic sanctions and the looming "liberation" is quickly repaired. "If the U.S. is going to take responsibility for removing the current leadership [of Iraq]," Middle East expert Phebe Marr told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August, "it should assume that it cannot get the results it wants on the cheap." Marr warned that there will be "retribution, score-settling and bloodletting" as a vengeful Shiite majority reacts to the end of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath regime. Turkey, worried that its own suppressed Kurds might revolt in an attempt to join their Iraqi brethren, might invade. A post-Saddam power vacuum will offer a tempting opportunity for Iran to influence--i.e., arm--fellow Shiites across the border. The U.S. will have to defend Iraq's borders against both Turkey and Iran. In short, to successfully execute this war and its messy aftermath will require lots of troops, money and time. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "inside out" strategy reportedly entails a plan to drop 50,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops directly into Baghdad. Career generals prefer a massive land invasion involving up to 220,000 soldiers. Either way, the manpower commitment would be enormous. Rebuilding would be even more costly. "A new study by the Army's Center of Military History has found that the U.S. military would have to commit 300,000 peacekeeping troops in Afghanistan (news - web sites) and 100,000 in Iraq if it were to occupy and reconstruct those nations on the scale that occurred in Japan and Germany after World War II," reported The Washington Post on Sept. 23. The Afghan Precedent Ah yes: Afghanistan. Any planning for invading Iraq must take into account the lessons of our last--and as yet unconcluded--war in Muslim Asia. Less than a year ago, the U.S. was promising not to abandon post-Taliban Afghanistan as it had after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal. "Chairman Karzai," Bush told the U.S.-installed Afghan president in January, "I reaffirm to you today that the United States will continue to be a friend to the Afghan people in all the challenges that lie ahead." Months later that pledge lies in tatters. Far from carrying out a "Marshall Plan for Afghanistan," crusade so loftily proposed during the heady days after the defeat of the Taliban, the U.S. has dedicated a piddling $296 million to rebuild the world's poorest, most war-torn nation. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) concedes that even an original cost estimate of $4.5 billion would not have been "nearly as good as it needs to be." Karzai's Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, warning that his government is on the verge of financial collapse, reports that Afghanistan needs at least $20 billion for rebuilding. As it is, Karzai hasn't even been able to pay Afghan government workers their salaries--on average a mere $20 per month. Not one inch of road has been paved. The U.N. food program estimates that 25 percent of Afghanistan's 16 million people will suffer from starvation this winter. Unsurprisingly, farmers are back in the heroin business. "We are growing poppies because of poverty, because the government pledged to pay us for destroying our harvests, but did not pay us anything," farmer Abdul Malik tells Reuters near the Helmandi provincial capital of Lashkargah. "We are growing it because not one school, or hospital, or road has been rehabilitated here as promised." Only 8,000 U.S. soldiers are currently stationed in Afghanistan--less than three percent of the 300,000 the Army says that it needs to properly "Marshall Plan" the country--and most of those are traipsing through the mountains near Khost in search of Al Qaedans who fled for Pakistan in 2001. Actual "peacekeeping" is limited to Kabul; the vast majority of Afghans live under the same feudal warlords whose brutality led to the rise of the Taliban in the mid `90s. Rape, robbery and violent clashes are routine. We did Afghanistan on the cheap, and it shows. The place is such a mess that the main objective of the American invasion--building a trans-Afghan pipeline to carry landlocked Caspian oil and gas to the Indian Ocean--will likely never be realized. We won the war but we lost the peace. Will we do the same thing in Iraq? Count on it. (Ted Rall's latest book, a graphic travelogue about his recent coverage of the Afghan war titled "To Afghanistan and Back," is now in its second edition. Ordering and review-copy information are available at nbmpub.com.) More about Ted Rall at: rall.com