A NO-WINNER
The first disastrous week of war foretells a dire future
by Justin Raimondo
Up until Saturday our "embedded" media was projecting images of
Iraqis dancing in the desert, delirious with joy at the arrival of their
"liberators," but by Sunday morning the edges were already beginning
to fray around the official story of a near-seamless "Operation Iraqi
Freedom."
The U.S. media kept showing feel-good agit-prop as long as they
could. We were treated to endless repetitions of that rather corny
image of a portly Iraqi and a bunch of kids bouncing up and down with
glee as a US soldier ripped down a portrait of Saddam in the border
town of Safwan. National Review's Jonah Goldberg was quick to
jump on it as evidence that he and his fellow laptop bombardiers had
been right all along:
"There's every reason to assume that such stories will be multiplied
a hundred, if not a thousand times over as U.S. forces approach the
capital of the Republic of Fear."
Not so fast. By Sunday, reality was breaking through the obscuring
mist of war propaganda, and Reuters was reporting the "liberation" of
Safwan somewhat differently:
"As the convoy of British tanks and trucks rolled by, the Iraqi boys
on the side of the road were all smiles and waves. But once it had
passed, leaving a trail of dust and grit in its wake, their smiles turned
to scowls. 'We don't want them here,' said 17-years-old Fouad,
looking angrily up at the plumes of gray smoke rising from the
embattled southern city of Basra, under attack from U.S. and British
forces for more than two days. He pulled a piece of paper from the
waistband of his trousers. Unfolding it, he held up a picture of
Saddam Hussein. 'Saddam is our leader. Saddam is good,' he said
defiantly, looking again at his well-worn picture showing the Iraqi
leader with a benign smile, sitting on a majestic throne."
This was in southern Iraq, near Basra, the scene of a Shi'ite rebellion
that was brutally crushed back in 1991,where the Americans expected
to be greeted as heroes: one can only imagine how many Fouads there
are in the north, closer to the seat of Saddam's power.
For the first few days, we saw only sanitized images of a clean,
hassle-free war, amid hints of a winged victory beckoning in the near
future. But that is fast giving way to the gritty reality of the quagmire
we are falling into. The "cakewalk" that Richard Perle and his fellow
chickenhawks confidently predicted, is turning into a forced march
into Hell.
The dilapidated remnants of the Iraqi armed forces, starved by
sanctions for spare parts and calories, consists mostly of conscripts:
their televised surrender fueled the War Party's premature
triumphalism. While thousands of Iraqis have thrown down their
arms and been taken prisoner, it's not nearly as many as in Gulf War I,
where entire divisions threw down their pathetic vintage rifles and
waved the white flag of surrender. Perhaps they remember what
happened last time around to tens of thousands of surrendering
Iraqis, as reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.
Refusing to be shocked and awed, the Iraqis are putting up a fight: as I
write, Basra, the fall of which was assumed as a foregone conclusion,
has yet to surrender. Umm Qasr, reported by Kuwait's state run
KUNA news agency to have fallen, appears to be holding out.
American forces are leaving these "pockets of resistance" in the dust,
however, as they race toward Baghdad, determined to decapitate the
regime.
But the road to Baghdad is not as smooth as we were led to believe in
the debate leading up to this war. The President's recent prophecy
that this was going to be a tougher battle than anyone ever imagined –
now he tells us! – came just in time to be fulfilled.
One hundred miles south of Baghdad, Iraqi civilian militia engaged the
invaders for more than seven hours, armed only with machineguns
mounted on pick-up trucks. "It wasn't even a fair fight. I don't know
why they don't just surrender," said U.S. Army Colonel Mark
Hildenbrand.
His bafflement is the reason why the Americans cannot, in the end,
win this war. Why do people fight against overwhelming odds, even
when they know it's hopeless? The Colonel can't figure it out, and
neither can his superiors. But any street-smart homie could tell them
to expect a fight to the death when attacking some else's turf.
This war was never a fair fight. Iraq is a fifth-rate power, shrunken in
military prowess by at least 30 percent since Gulf War I. But there are
millions of Fouads in Iraq, and they are fighting back. Not for
Saddam, or for the Baath Party, but due to the most basic of human
instincts: hatred of foreign invaders. No amount of "shock and awe"
will erase it from their hearts. Even after an American "victory," it will
smolder, and its smoke will rise up and make the very air
unbreathable for the occupiers.
In Nassiriyah, the American advance was stopped cold, as the
"coalition" (i.e. the Americans) took as many as dozens of casualties -
and at least five prisoners, including one woman. The Arabic
television network Al-Jazeera showed Iraqi footage of dead and
captive Americans. "I was just under orders," said one soldier, who
gave his name only as Miller. "I don't want to kill anybody." Another
prisoner, who gave his name as Joseph Hudson, and said he is from El
Paso, Texas, was asked what he was doing in Iraq. "I follow orders,"
he answered. South African television reports that "he was asked
repeatedly whether he was greeted by guns or flowers by Iraqis, but
appeared not to understand the question."
At Sunday's Pentagon briefing, reporters were told that the battle of
Nassiriyah was "successful," as the briefer recounted the losses of the
enemy. Yet he also admitted that the Americans had been ambushed
by a group of Iraqi "irregulars" who at first greeted the GIs as
"liberators" – and then opened fire. The losses suffered at Nassiriyah
are apparently the result of the Americans falling victim to their own
propaganda.
Hubris turns out to be the chief weakness of the Americans, who,
since 9/11, have seen events through the prism of a distorting
self-righteousness that has blinded them – until now – to the
consequences of this war. But the military setbacks are nothing
compared to the geopolitical repercussions.
We were counting on using Turkey as a launching pad for American
troops, but it looks like the Turks are launching an invasion of their
own: as many as 1,500 Turkish troops have crossed into northern
Iraq, which is under the de facto control of the Kurds, and a tense
stand-off is building up to an armed confrontation. Turkish troops are
striking deep into northern Iraq, as the [UK] Telegraph reports:
"The Turkish government pushed ahead with its troop deployment,
deeper into Iraq than at any time since the last Gulf war, despite
pleas from Washington to avoid confrontation with the Kurds. Until
this war began, Kurdish militia leaders had vowed retaliation if the
Turks pressed south. Last week, however, they placed themselves
under American command, and have to stand aside as the Turkish
military extends a cordon sanitare well beyond its borders."
The Turks, it appears, have adopted the Bushian doctrine of
preemptive attacks, as articulated by Turkish Foreign Minister
Abdullah Gul:
"'A vacuum was formed in northern Iraq and that vacuum became
practically a camp for terrorist activity,' Gul said. 'This time we do
not want such a vacuum,' Gul said in reference to the nearly
500,000 refugees who fled across Turkey's border during the 1991
Gulf War."
As Timothy Noah points out in his invaluable series, "Kurd Sell-out
Watch," in Slate, a deal of sorts has been struck:
"The United States has threatened to take the Kurds' side against a
Turkish incursion and, at the same time, has promised the Turks to
keep the Kurds out of the city of Kirkuk, which lies south of Iraqi
Kurdistan. The Kurds claim Kirkuk as their 'Jerusalem,' and, more to
the point, Kirkuk sits atop an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil."
Yet the Turks have come anyway, and more are on the way. Robert
Novak reports a meeting between the Turks and the Iranians for the
purpose of dividing up northern Iraq:
"Turkey has already moved 7,000 troops into that region, with
several thousand more on the Turkish side of the border. It also
indicates Iranian troops are working with their Kurdish allies. The
Turkish-Iranian partnership, though odd on its face, is possible and
points up the complexity of dealing with ''post-war'' Iraq's
problems."
The neocons, who once held up the Kurds as the noble victims of
Saddam the Tyrant, are now strangely silent about their fate, as Noah
dryly observes. The reason, he says, is that
"The Kurds are introducing unwelcome difficulties to a war that's
very dear to the neocon heart. Now conservative hawks have
launched a trial balloon affirmatively condemning the Kurds as
thugs. Talk about a sellout!"
Noah cites a piece by Melik Kaylan on the editorial page of the March
19 Wall Street Journal, who complains:
"The idyllic statelet-in-waiting we keep reading about is a venue for
well-oiled warlordism. Telephone calls are monitored. Armed
checkpoints pepper the roads. Property is easily confiscated.
Loyalties are bought and sold by the tribeful. Rights don't exist
except when forcibly backed by fellow tribesmen."
Gee, that sounds awfully familiar. Doesn't the "USA Patriot" Act
authorize telephonic eavesdropping and the easy confiscation of
private property? As for rights being nonexistent "except when
forcibly backed by fellow tribesmen," isn't that what "democracy" is
all about? In any case, as Noah points out, the Kurdish elections are at
least as legitimate and above-board as the Turkish electoral process:
self-governing Kurdistan is a model of democracy in the region, just
what the President called for in his famous speech to the American
Enterprise Institute – and it is being sold out by the War Party within
the first week of the conflict.
On the Kurdish question we have yet to hear from Christopher
Hitchens, who is to the Kurds what the Greeks were to Lord Byron:
Hitchens' conversion to the cause of neo-imperialism is often linked
to his concern for their fate. But there is little doubt that those
Turkish troops wouldn't be in northern Iraq but for the tacit
agreement of the Americans, who probably traded the Kurds for
overflight rights – and who can hardly be expected to take up arms
against their NATO allies.
The Turks are determined that their old enemies, the Kurds, will not
get their hands on oil-rich Kirkuk, and the Americans are moving
quickly to build up their forces in the region and secure the city. At
the same time, the city is surrounded by Kurdish peshmergas,
ostensibly under U.S. command. But what will happen when the Turks
enter the region in force, and the Americans are caught between their
Kurdish proxies and their good buddies in Ankara?
As the American casualty count mounts, and the real consequences of
this war come home to haunt a war-madden President and his cabal of
neoconservative Napoleons, they will be hard put to answer the
family of Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall Waters-Bey, one of a group of
Marines killed in a helicopter in Kuwait last week. "It's sad that this
war is going on and that we have to lose so many people over
nothing," one of his sisters said. Michael Bey, his father, was even
more emphatic in an interview with Baltimore's WBAL-TV, as he held
a picture of his son:
"'I want President Bush to get a good look at this, really good look
here. This is the only son I had, only son.' He then walked away in
tears, with his family behind him. Kenneth, the Marine's only son,
was with the family."
But this war is going to stay popular in some
quarters, no matter how many American casualties
are counted. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is delighted that
Uncle Sam is finally taking on his old enemies, the Iraqis: last
Friday,Sharon hailed the war as "the beginning of a new era."
Certainly that is the case as far as Israel is concerned. Sharon and his
American amen corner are hoping that the war will force Syria and
Iran to end their support for the Palestinians. More importantly,
however, the presence of an Iraq ruled over by a fulsomely pro-Israel
military viceroy, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, is bound to extend Israel's
influence in the region.
General Garner heads up the Pentagon's new Office of Reconstruction
and Humanitarian Assistance that will provide such governance as is
necessary in postwar Iraq: in 1998, he traveled to Israel under the
auspices of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)
in order to absorb, first-hand, the lessons learned by the Israelis in
successfully repressing the Palestinians. The General must have come
away impressed, because, as the Forward reports:
"In October 2000, shortly after the outbreak of the intifada, Garner
was one of 26 American military leaders to sign a staunchly
pro-Israel statement released by JINSA condemning the escalating
violence. The statement, titled 'Friends Don't Leave Friends on the
Battlefield,' lauded the Israeli army for exercising "remarkable
restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership
of a Palestinian Authority," and called into question the Palestinian
commitment to peace."
Sgt. Bey's sister thinks her brother died for "no good reason," but the
Israelis would not agree. They see this war as the dawn of a new day,
and who is she to contradict them? What is she, anyway – some kind
of paleo-conservative? Does David Frum know about this?
I see my good friend Pat Buchanan, in the name of "supporting the
troops" in wartime, has decided to withhold all criticism of this rotten
war for the duration. This is nonsense. Sgt. Bey's sister is right: her
brother died for no good reason, and that, my friend, is a crime that
cannot be covered up much longer. Patriots have not only the right
but the moral obligation to speak out against a war that is not in
American interests, and that will sacrifice many more brave American
soldiers – and Iraqis, both soldiers and civilians – before it is over.
The United States, Britain, and Australia must get out of the Iraqi
miasma – while they still can. A negotiated end to the war is possible if
the U.S. will re-open a dialogue with someone in Baghdad using the
Vatican as an intermediary. The United Nations – sorry, Ron – has a
key role to play. Now is the time for the French to introduce a UN
resolution calling for a cease-fire, and offering to broker negotiations
to end the slaughter. Let the Bushies veto it, and the world will be
treated to the supreme irony of the UN's great champion, a nation
that went to war in the name of a Security Council resolution, itself
rebuked and denounced by that body.
The War Party is whipping up a frenzy of hysteria around the five
prisoners, and claiming that the mere act of showing them on Iraqi
state television is a violation of the Geneva conventions, which
forbids exploitation and "public humiliation" of POWs, but also
demands protection against "public curiosity." Has anybody told
Robert Blake's lawyers about this provision? But, seriously, if the
mere display of prisoners is forbidden, how different is this from Fox
News showing all those close-ups of Iraqi prisoners, visually parading
them across the screen?
The War Party has no right to howl about Al Jazeera's broadcasts.
This is the war they wanted, and now they have it.
It is a war that cannot be won, even if "victory" is declared: in the long
run we will be driven out of the Middle East, just as the Marines were
driven out of Beirut, just as the British were driven out, and the
Crusaders before them. The quicksands of that volatile region will be
the graveyard of America's imperial ambition. The first week of this
war is a bitter preview of what lies in store for us into the indefinite
future.
But it isn't too late to change the course of history. The anti-war
movement must organize peaceful, legal, and massive rallies against
this war, calling for a negotiated settlement. Catholics and others must
appeal to the Holy Father to personally intervene. A campaign to
petition the UN is not out of order. Every candidate for office must be
pressured, relentlessly, and forced to take a stand one way or the
other.
No matter what one's view of the war, it is not impossible for both
sides to come together around a call for a cease-fire. The Bush
administration is convinced that the Ba'athist party regime is brittle
and ready to break. Why not let it implode with the least amount of
civilian casualties by calling a truce, and giving the Iraqis time to
think about it? The war, after all, is going disastrously for the U.S.,
and this might be a good time to pause and let the inevitable occur.
The alternative is a military "victory" that turns into a political defeat,
and a burden that American taxpayers will have to bear unto eternity.
Drawing in Turkey and Iran, and provoking the break-up of Iraq into
at least three parts, this war is turning into a no-winner for the U.S.: its
whole history is prefigured in the first few days. We have gone from
hubris to near humiliation in less than a week.
Defeatism? This defeat was handed to us by the War Party. In the
non-debate leading up to the Anglo-American attack, they reveled in
their "risky" and "bold" strategies, and trumpeted our alleged
invincibility. This is not going to be a three-week war, unfortunately,
as Pat Buchanan opined on Sunday's edition of The McLaughlin
Group. They may declare "victory" in three weeks, but the "mop-up"
operations will take decades. |
