American Intervention in Iraq: The Appalling Mess
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By Pascal Bruckner
Le Figaro
Tuesday 11 May 2004
After the Abu Ghraib scandal, the White House is in a storm.
In Iraq, America bites the dust and exhausts an already diminished moral credit. Whatever it does, America has lost the image battle and its present leaders will have successfully pulled off the exploit of making their country hateful to the whole world, including to its own friends, allies, and neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Those who supported the principle of intervention in the Gulf a year ago in the name of the right of interference must recognize that it has failed with respect to its publicly asserted ambitions: the establishment of an oasis of democracy in a totalitarian environment and making the world safer.
The pleasure of seeing a horrible dictator overthrown was quickly tarnished by subsequent setbacks, including the nauseating disclosure of the systematic tortures, which could well constitute real war crimes, practiced by American soldiers in Iraqi and Afghan prisons. Of course, the highest authorities rather quickly denounced these mistreatments and offered their apologies, but the harm has been done. A historic opportunity for this region has just been ruined and the defeat far exceeds any hoped for by America's enemies, who savor it with a malicious joy.
How has the liberator become the occupier; how has a super-powerful army, welcomed relatively well by a populace relieved at the tyrant's fall, succeeded in making itself hated and in federating Sunni and Shiite fraternal enemies against it within a few months?
The serious mistakes committed after the fall of Baghdad must be mentioned, of course: the free field left to looters, with the exception of the disastrous symbol of the Oil Ministry, the inability to assure security and essential services, the dissolution of the military apparatus and Baathist police thereby delivering the country to anarchy, the criminal indulgence of the factious imam, Moktada al-Sadr, not forgetting the brutality of the troops towards civilians, reported by most correspondents.
However, these blunders spring directly from the mentality of the team in power in Washington, blinded by their democratic Messianism, their stainless steel consciences, their conviction that America is the homeland of The Good and that "we are fundamentally good", as Georges W. Bush said ingenuously one day. In Iraq even less than elsewhere, the United States had no right to a fiasco. Having set out on a false pretext- the famous weapons of mass destruction- without UN approval and without having sought to convince other nations of their enterprise's soundness, they owed it to themselves to be irreproachable.
However, by a surprising paradox, the Pentagon and State Department hawks launched a discount war, a botched war: sending only 140,000 men there, where Georges Bush senior had sent 500,000 in 1991, lacking any solid political plan, exhibiting unbelievable thoughtlessness in peace planning and in the recruitment of elites to lead the new republic. In short, they disdained one of the Pentagon's most fundamental doctrines, "hope for the best and plan for the worst", and they are paying for it dearly.
One can reproach the Republican administration not so much its bellicosity, as its cavalier attitude, or rather this singular mix of bulging chests and negligence that one observes also in the handling of the Israeli-Palestinian dossier where understanding of the implications remains minimal. This administration has not given itself the means to succeed, as though the war in Mesopotamia constituted nothing more than a formality, planned above all for reasons of personal vanity and electoral marketing. Moreover, the present disaster follows from the fancy of a too easily achieved victory.
Georges W. Bush's United States strangely recalls those Marxist regimes that used to challenge bourgeois legality in the name of a superior proletarian reality. Hence, the hateful manner in which it has attempted the last few years to put itself above the common laws of humanity in the name of the fight against terrorism. The tortures inflicted on Iraqi prisoners only extend and confirm the Guantanamo system, this legal shame and sham created offshore in the name of national security, which makes a mockery of the spirit of the Geneva conventions. Moreover, the whole American penal system should be reviewed in the light of these events, when the extreme violence it exerts on those detained within its national borders is known.
The danger in this kind of undertaking is to wed the enemy's logic in order to destroy him; it's to destroy democracy all the better to save it and to excessively militarize society at the risk of weakening the Constitutional structure forged by the founding fathers. The fact of having been attacked does not give America the right to put itself above the law. The Abu Ghraib torturers have reduced their country to the level of the worst dictatorships on the globe, and their abuses constitute Bin Laden's most perfect revenge on Lincoln's homeland. Defending "civilization" does not authorize recourse to the methods of barbarism, except to blot out all distinctions.
Three lessons may be drawn from this sad affair. The first is that the hour for a new Europe has tolled. Since America has lost its moral mastery for a long time, it's up to us Old World citizens to take up the torch, overcome our divisions and our permafrost, and give ourselves some real political ambition.
The second lesson, which flows from the first, is that America must not be left alone. Drunk on its economic, cultural, and military power, it drifts into hubris, the vertigo of facile triumph, and creates a plethora of little Doctors Strangelove who, with their excesses and their stupidity discredit the very cause they defend. All empires die one day of overreach.
The Iraqi episode argues more than ever for a reinforcement of the transatlantic partnership: Europe and the United States need one another to moderate each other, contain each other, give one another advice and encouragement.
We are indispensable to "the indispensable nation" (Madeleine Albright), as it is for us. Let's bet that, alerted by these setbacks, the most chauvinist elites on the other side of the Atlantic will cut back a little on their arrogance and understand that you can't save the world by treating those who live in it with contempt, by trampling international institutions, however imperfect they may be.
The third lesson is that Iraq has become the affair of us all and there can be no question of abandoning it: defining a new strategy associating the UN and NATO, favoring a more harmonious transition to sovereignty have come to constitute emergencies. If, indeed, it's not too late- because no scenario should be excluded- this could begin with a rout of the coalition, driven away, as in Somalia, to universal booing.
A victory for extremists, either religious or "secular" would have heavy consequences for Europe and the Middle East. It's in our most selfish interest to wish for a successful normalization in Baghdad.
In any case, one thing is certain. In the fight against terrorism, incompetence is unforgivable. Therefore, the start has to be a change of White House resident.
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Pascal Bruckner's latest books are: "Misère de la prospérité" and "L'Euphorie perpétuelle" (Grasset).
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