Those that learn the easy way, those that learn the hard way, and those that never learn.
The lesson the Americans are failing to learn in Iraq
John Kampfner
Don't be taken in. Tony Blair and George W Bush will smile for the cameras today and talk the talk, but theirs will be a council of despair. The two leaders of the English-speaking world have met in many times of crisis. But never have their fortunes appeared so perilous. And never has the future of the country they had pledged to save – Iraq – appeared so bleak.
A year since Saddam Hussein's statue fell, Iraq is descending into near anarchy. Foreign civilian contractors are being kidnapped at an alarming rate. Soldiers are being engaged in battle on a number of fronts. One form of fear – tyranny – has been replaced by another – lawlessness.
The only response of president and prime minister alike is to shout "no surrender", to declare that they are building a "democracy". The Americans have amassed thousands of troops outside the holy city of Najaf, where the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr has taken refuge. Reinforcements are being called for. And yet many of those countries that agreed to join the so-called coalition are desperate to disengage from the mess.
Heavy bombardment of Iraq might have won the original war last March. But it can never win the peace, and this is the lesson the Americans have refused to learn. Forget the rights and wrongs of the decision to go to war. Blair has said he is prepared to face his critics not on his integrity but on his judgment. So what about that judgment?
From the moment their forces swept into Baghdad, the American strategy in Iraq has been fundamentally flawed. The British knew it, said it privately, but despite his boasts of influence, Blair has been unable to change it. The chief representative in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, has barely concealed his disdain for his US counterpart, Paul Bremer. Now Greenstock has left in frustration and is not being replaced.
The Pentagon, which has been running the show, has little understanding of the complexities of Iraqi life. The American neo-Conservatives believed, literally, that Iraqis would greet them with open arms. When that did not happen they always blamed someone else. First it was the fear of Saddam. When first his two sons and then the tyrant himself were captured, and there was no let-up in the insurgency, they blamed "outside" militants "flooding" over the border from Iran and Syria. Now they blame al Sadr, a small-time junior Muslim cleric they have elevated into a cult figure, first by closing down his newspaper and then issuing a warrant for his arrest.
The Americans convinced themselves that the 25-strong Iraq Governing Council (IGC) – much of it drawn up from exiles with little understanding of the place – would be accepted as the legitimate leadership after the "handover" on June 30. I put the word in inverted commas, because it is not really a transfer of power. The US will seek, through what will be the world's largest foreign embassy and through more than 100,000 weary and dispirited forces, to maintain control by proxy. So many curbs have been written in to the interim constitution that Iraqis will have only nominal authority.
Nothing has more frustrated and angered moderate Iraqis than the upsurge in fighting. The IGC was not consulted about the American assault on the city of Falluja, or about the decision to strafe other towns with helicopter gunships and heavy artillery. Several council members have either resigned or threatened to. One called the American operation against Sunni militants "genocide".
The unhappy fact is that the Americans have alienated almost everyone – Shia as well as Sunni. They were efficient at disbanding what existed before, including the entire army and police, a decision they accept now was counter-productive, but they have performed woefully in rebuilding.
The unemployment rate is desperately high. The restoration of public services is patchy at best. Perhaps worst of all, Iraqi pride has been further dented by the arrogance of the heads of the occupation forces. You cannot hunker down in your hide-out – in many cases the same palaces as Saddam used – shoot at people from afar and hope they will accept it is in a good cause.
Take the views of one Iraqi woman I spoke to. She needs no lessons from foreign leaders about the evils of Saddam. One of her brothers was tortured by his secret police. But she cannot see what good could have come from a war waged without international approval and from an occupation conducted with so little local support.
The "handover" deadline is still fixed for June 30. Rather than seeming too soon, as many had wondered, that date now feels a terribly long way off given how quickly the violence has increased. The Americans will be hoping for a period of relative calm ahead of the transfer, but they are unlikely to get it.
They have still to put in place an effective political plan. They have still to put in place an effective diplomatic plan. The reluctance of the United Nations to get involved more fully is understandable, given the Americans' insistence on controlling any multinational force and given the Americans' very public contempt for the UN after it refused to back a second resolution a year ago endorsing the war. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, greeted Blair in New York last night with the usual courtesies, but he is furious about the damage that has been done.
Blair's position is arguably even less tenable than Bush's. At least with this very hardline Republican White House the world knows where it stands. Our prime minister, however, has made himself hostage to the president, forced to support him even against his gut instincts. How else could Blair's sanguine response to the US decision to rip up decades of understanding on the Israeli-Palestinian problem be interpreted? What better way to inflame tensions in the Middle East than for the US and UK to agree to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank?
Blair speaks of Iraq as a "historic struggle". Invoking Biblical language with alarming ease, he says: "The weaker we are, the more they will come after us. There is a battle we have to fight." Through Blair's myopic vision in supporting the Americans come what may, and through Bush's myopic vision for the Middle East, both leaders are considerably weakened, failing at each turn to extricate themselves from an Iraqi crisis largely of their making. If it were only the electoral fates of these two men in question, the situation would not be so alarming. The stakes, however, are much higher than that.
theherald.co.uk
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