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Who Brought Us to the Iraq Abyss?
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
Domestically, Bush acted as a virtual dictator: choosing what laws to ignore, authorizing clandestine eavesdropping on American citizens, moving suspects around the world for torture, arresting U.S. citizens and popping them into secret prisons on military bases, neutering the Democratic opposition in Congress, effectively controlling the mass-media, etc.
In Iraq, there was no Plan B for winning the peace, therefore the post-"Mission Accomplished" honeymoon didn't last very long. The Iraqi populace realized it was at the mercy of an Occupation regime. The leftover Iraqi Army remnants quickly figured out that the U.S. had no Plan B, offerred little if any employment scheme other than serving the U.S. master as police, and had left all the armament dumps unguarded. Bingo! The "insurgency," at first mainly Sunni in nature, began operating big time.
A number of Occupation administrations came and went, leaving incompetency and massive corruption in their wake. Young GOP political appointees, there for patronage reasons rather than out of any expertise in nation-building, just added fuel to the fire of a bungling colonialist mentality. The widespread torture and abuse of Iraqi citizens by the U.S. and its client-state police forces added fuel to this speading fire of resentment and anger, at times even melding the Sh'ia and Sunni hatred of America.
Perhaps if the Occupation authorities could have provided enough jobs and electricity and clean running water, the Iraqi population might have hung in there with the Americans. But, almost from the beginning, it was clear that wasn't going to happen and that the Iraqi civilian population was in for hard, dangerous times, in significant ways worse than what they had to endure under the dictator Saddam. Various polls indicate that the number of Iraqis who want the U.S. to leave is now in the 70-90% range. The Iraqi people clearly believe that the American presence only makes the situation worse.
BUMBLING INTO LATE RESPONSES
Domestically, there was no major problem for the Administration as long as the illegalities and power-grabbing remained secret. But more and more traditional conservatives inside the administration, especially in the higher reaches of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, began leaking data about a wide range of White House horrors and Iraqi corruptions. These conservatives were appalled at the extremists who had taken over the GOP and Administration and, perhaps even moreso, at the wholesale greed and incompetence that were doing great damage to the military, the intel profession, and America's reputation abroad.
Having no real post-war strategic planning to rely on when the military and political situations started to fall apart in Iraq, the U.S. was always late in responding to changing conditions on the ground. It took the Bushies several years to admit that they were engaging a "guerrilla" enemy, for example, and even to this day they still refuse to concede that the situation has deteriorated into a Sunni/Sh'ia civil war.
And the ultimate "whoops-we're-late sign": After not encouraging or permitting a full-scale debate on the war in the Congress, and denigrating and insulting those who pointed out how bad the situation had deteriorated on Bush's watch, now, at least four years late, the "wise men" were assembled by the White House to think long and hard about the war and what can be done at this late stage.
The recommendations of that Baker-Hamilton Commission, based on preliminary leaks, amount to a tepid bi-partisan compromise that remains mostly unattached to the realities on the ground. Even so, Bush seems destined to refuse any of their major recommendations. Were he to accept them, he would be implicitly conceding he'd made mistakes.
THE DANGEROUS ILLUSION OF CONTROL
The Bush Administration and the Baker-Hamilton commission are proceeding under the assumption that the United States these days still has great leverage in Iraq; indeed, their likely strategies seem to rest on the dangerously incorrect premise that the U.S. can pretty much control the situation through its will and political/military power. But so badly has the war been bungled by CheneyRumsfeld and their lackeys that the U.S. is faced not with a number of viable options but with choosing among a small number of terrible alternatives.
1. Bush and the neocons undergirding him, especially those in the rightwing mass-media, continue to behave as if a miracle will occur and Bush will get his "victory"; it's stay-the-course with hope for godly intervention. The "gods" might even include asking arch-enemies Syria and Iran to help out the U.S.! Yeah, sure.
This option rests on the belief that the Maliki government will suddenly produce several hundred thousand dedicated, well-trained soldiers loyal to the central government and willing to fight and die for it. The truth is that the fledgling Iraqi army is thoroughly infiltrated with insurgent agents and militia brigades, and their first loyalty is not to the weak central government.
(Late flash: Apparently, judging from this weekend's leaked memo, ( www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03mtext.html ) even Rumsfeld had great qualms about continuing the Administration's stale, ineffective Iraq policies. I am suspicious of the timing of the Rumsfeld-memo leak; it could be CYA for Rummy and/or a planted memo to demonstrate that the impetus of major policy change in Iraq is really coming from inside the Administration, rather than being forced on them by outsiders.)
2. Another bad option is to put another 20,000 or 30,000 U.S. troops into the Baghdad mix to stop the military/political hemorrhaging, at the least buying some time to figure out something better down the line.
www.crisispapers.org
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by John Henry Colls
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Publisher: by Mess. Longman and Rees ... ; and by Dingle, Bury; Rawe, Ipswich; Dighton, Cambridge; Keymer, Colchester; Pigge, Lynn; Bush, Yarmouth; Sudbury, Swaffham; Lubbock, Thetford; Parslee, Holt; Miller, Bungay; Barker, Dereham; Stewartson, Fakenham; and Mindham, Wells
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