It has
been almost four years.
Back in January
2003, I voiced
this warning in my column in the Christian Science Monitor.
against Iraq is a terrible thing.
Everything we know about violence gives two clear lessons. First, the
use of force always has unintended – often quite unpredictable –
consequences. And second, war in the modern era always
disproportionately harms civilians.
For these two reasons, there is a strong presumption in international
law and international custom against any easy or voluntary recourse to
war. War is still allowed in international law, yes – but only for
self-defense, and only as a very last resort, after all avenues for
peaceful resolution of differences
have been exhausted.
Mr. President, you have no such justification for the war you now
threaten against Iraq. There is still time to stand down the huge US
expeditionary force and return to some version of the mix of
containment and deterrence that has proved successful against Iraq
until now – as it did against the much more threatening Soviet Union in
an earlier era. Turn back from this war before its consequences come
back to haunt you and the rest of the world.
And then, I
noted the consequences that followed the decision that Ariel Sharon had
made, when he was Israel’s Defense Minister in 1982, to invade Lebanon:
campaign had two key similarities to the one you now threaten against
Iraq. It was a war of “choice,” not one imposed on Israel by other
powers
like some of its other wars. Secondly, Mr. Sharon’s campaign aimed
explicitly
at bringing about “regime change” in Lebanon, as yours promises to do
in
Iraq.
At the military level, Sharon’s warriors succeeded. Within two months,
they controlled half of Lebanon including the capital Beirut. They
forced
Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian guerrillas to leave the country, and
“persuaded”
Lebanon’s parliament to vote in Israeli ally Bashir Gemayel as their
new
president.
Politically, however, Sharon’s campaign did not go well. The continued
presence of Israeli forces in the country catalyzed the birth of a new,
much
more militant Lebanese Muslim group called Hizbullah. Mr. Gemayel was
assassinated.
Before 1982 ended, Israel was seeking to reduce its footprint in
Lebanon. But it was unable to deal with the resistance that its
presence provoked, and ended up staying in Lebanon an additional 18
years.
Israel (and Lebanon) bled profusely for all those years. (And the
Palestinians? Their national movement simply changed its form. In 1987,
it launched its first serious uprising – “intifada” – inside Gaza and
the West Bank.)
No one in Israel today gives a favorable verdict to Sharon’s 1982
campaign. One can only wonder how Americans 20 years from now will
judge the results of a US war on Iraq.
In February
2003, I wrote this:
US launching what they see as a quite avoidable war against Iraq. (Most
non-Muslims worldwide seem to share this view, too.) With his latest
message, bin Laden seeks to insinuate himself into the leadership of
the sprawling collection of societies known loosely as the “world
Muslim community.”
If the US blindly goes ahead with the threatened attack on Iraq, will
that bring bin Laden closer to his goal, or further from it?
My judgment, based on more than 25 years of studying Muslim issues, is
that it will bring bin Laden much, much closer.
The tragic irony in this is that, just days before the airing of the
bin Laden tape, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his presentation at
the UN, significantly inflated the strength of the link between Saddam
Hussein’s regime
and bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Now, as in the Yiddish folktale “The Golem,”
bad
dreams seem to be taking on real substance.
In his Feb. 5 speech, Mr. Powell laid out the best evidence he had for
the existence of what he called, “the potentially … sinister nexus
between Iraq
and the Al Qaeda terrorist network.”
But the case he made at that time for the existence of this nexus was
thin and deeply unconvincing. To note this is not to stick up for
Saddam Hussein. He’s a very abusive ruler with a long record of
deception on significant weapons-related
issues. But prudence still dictates that the Bush administration needs
to
get its facts straight about the Baghdad-Al Qaeda nexus.
Finally,
as the drumbeats of the approaching war grew louder, on March 13, 2003,
I wrote this:
fight-to-the death that the
president is poised to launch against Saddam Hussein’s regime will send
a tsunami of destabilization throughout the Middle East. But beyond
that,
if this war is not authorized by the UN Security Council, it threatens
to unravel not just the 58-year-old UN system, but the whole web of
interstate
relations that has grown up through the past four centuries. We would
be
catapulted back to a Hobbesian world of “might makes right” in
international
affairs. In such a world, as Hobbes warned us, human life can only be
“nasty,
brutish, and short.”
The threat to the UN system is already dire. Yes, the UN has made
mistakes and still has many shortcomings. And yes, the US has sometimes
had rocky relations with the UN over the years. But for the vast
majority of the world’s people, the UN represents an ideal of national
equality, and embodies their desire that international conflicts be
resolved without war. In thousands of places around the world, the UN
delivers basic human services – nutrition, healthcare, water
management, shelter – that governments are too weak or
impoverished to provide. In explosive hot spots – including the
Kuwait-Iraq
border – UN peacekeepers help monitor and defuse otherwise deadly
tensions.
President Bush has repeatedly said, “When it comes to our security,
we don’t need anybody’s permission.” That can only mean he’s prepared
to
go to war against Iraq even without Security Council authorization.
Make
no mistake: If the president does that, he will start a cascade of
actions
and counteractions that could unravel the UN, all its good works and
the
ideals it represents, within months – not years.
… Many Americans remember a previous effort by a well-meaning
president to use the US military’s dominant position to forcibly impose
democracy
on another country. That was President Johnson, in 1968, in Vietnam.
In 2003, a similar effort to impose democracy on Iraq through force
can similarly be expected to fail. This time though, the cost to global
stability and human well-being would be much higher. Mr. President,
turn
back!
All of us
urging Bush to turn back failed, and on March 19-20, 2003 the first
waves of the US invasion force started pounding Iraq.
The carnage and social collapse that Iraq has seen since then have
exceeded even my worst expectations,which had previously been
‘seasoned’ by having experienced six years of Lebanon’s civil
war up close and very personal in the 1970s.
There a number of reasons for that, I think. One is that the
Lebanese have always, as a people relying on trade and on cultivation
in the valleys of inhospitable mountains, been deeply distrustful of
government, so many elements of their society never relied on the
existence of a central government for very much of anything.
Iraq, by contrast, is an ancient riverine culture in which central
government regulation of many aspects of economic life is deeply
engrained into the national culture. Add to that 30 years of
Baathist authoritarianism (and 12 years of tough international
sanctions), which between them deepended Iraqis’ dependence on
government for many basic necessities of life… And you can see how
the collapse of central government had so much more drastic an effect
on the lives of ordinary people in Iraq than an anlogous collapse had
earlier had in Lebanon…
Secondly, the amounts and kinds of weaponry at the disposal of the
local militias and fighting forces have been a quantum leap more lethal
than anything the fighting parties in Lebanon ever had access to.
In both cases, external occupying powers have worked hard to stir the
pot of internal divisiveness in pursuit of their own policies iof
‘divide-and-rule’…
Anyway, just going back to what I was writing there in the early months
of 2003, I’d like to note the following:
my dire warnings proved correct. The exuberant enthusiasm of
those deeply ignorant souls who promised us ‘cake-walks’ and rapturous
greetings with rice and flowers proved to have no substance at all.
2. Where has been ‘accountability’ in all this?? The thing that
rankles for me, most of all, is that the ‘international community’
(whatever that is) rewarded
Paul Wolfowitz, who had been one of the pleading architects and
implementers of the war, with an appointment as President of the World Bank.
This is madness, madness– if the ‘world community’ wants to say
anything serious at all about (a) the strength of the norm it places on
the avoidance of war, and (b) the value it places on the work of the
World Bank.
The World Bank does much-needed work in many areas of the world where
war is recent, or is a current and recurring threat. How can it
have any credibility working in such zones– on all its programs for
the ‘peaceful resolution of conflicts’, etc etc– if it has at its head
a man so terribly tainted by the forceful role he played in fashioning
and carrying out a policy of unbridled militarism in Iraq?
(I could also ask how much his salary is in that very comfortable and
powerful perch… compared to the pathetic little shreds of income that
I and most other consistent critics of the war policy are currently
able to pull in.)
Of course, most other architects of the war policy have also been well
rewarded, going on to think-tanks, universities, and consultancies
(oftentimes, with arms manufacturers or arms dealers) that pay them
well. Those facts
hurt, yes, but they have less to tell us about the values of the
‘international community’ of which the World Bank is a part than does
Paul W’s continuing employment there.
3. I did write in early 2003 about the dangers that the Bushites’
unilateral and quite unjustified invasion of Iraq posed to the
functioning and integrity of the United Nations system. That is
still a strong concern for me, though the unraveling of the UN has not
been as serious or as speedy as I had feared.
However, the weakness of the UN is already quite serious enough that
the many pleas I have voiced that the UN be given a serious role in
helping to de-escalate the conflict in Iraq and provide a politically
‘legitimate’ framework within which the US can pull out its troops do
seem less convincing, and more problematic, than they otherwise
would. Of course, the fact that the Bushites have been able to
suborn the UN into acting as their junior partner in some key aspects
of Middle East diplomacy– primarily by enlisting the UN as a junior
partner in the time-wasting, doomed-to-failure ‘Road Map’ scheme– has
also considerably underrmined both the integrity of the UN process and
the political credibility it is able to project within the Middle East.
Evidently, the UN is at a slowly evolving turning-point. The
Bushites’ actions have forced the world’s other powers to make a
choice: Do they want a world that is, in fact, ruled by a single
American hegemon, or do they want to try to revive the rules-based,
international equality-based approach of the earlier UN? (Put
crudely: When will the Chnese, the Russians, and the other powers call
in their chips, sell their large stores of US Treasury bills, and push
the US back to punching at its own weight in international affairs–
which on a population basis, is around 5% of the total? This is
unlikely to happen soon– the other big powers are doing nicely with
the world economy the way it is; and they have little interest in
giving Washington too much help to stop the diminution of US military
power that is continuing at a fast rate, day by day, inside
Iraq… It is only the poor bloody Iraqis who are
suffering, for now.)
There is a lot more to write, too. I want to write more about the
historical precedents for the US’s current experience of ‘imperial
over-reach’ inside Iraq… In those early 2003 CSM columns I mentioned
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and the US’s earlier experience
in Vietnam. But I did not mention Britain (and France)’s
experience during the invasion of Gaza, Sinai, and Suez in 1956; and
the role that Britain’s experience there, in particular, had in
catalyzing and hastening London’s withdrawal from (nearly) all the rest
of its imperial holdings around the world, over theyears that
followed… Or apartheid South Africa’s bruising experiences
during its war against Angola in the 1980s… Or the Soviet Union’s
experience in Afghanistan from 1989 on… (or Israel’s experience in
Lebanon in 2006?)
In those other instances, that I had failed to mention in the columns,
the setbacks experienced during one discrete military-imperial
adventure had consequences for the military-imperial power that were considerably broader than in just
that single territory they had attacked.
I definitely need to do a more serious study, sometime, of this
phenomenon of imperial
over-reach leading very rapidly to imperial rollback or even the
collapse of empire.
How far will the rollback of US power extend in the wake of this
still-ongoing debacle in Iraq?
(I have other things I need to write about too… including, what the
exact motors are of the current political developments inside Wasington
DC… something that, I have found in my travels, many non-Americans
seem to have only a rather fuzzy notion about… But for now, I
have to run… Back posting here again soon, I hope.)
Hi Helena,
I am here via juan cole. I lvoe your blog. About looking into the history of American over reach. I am reading Robert Fisk’s War for Civilization (or something close to that). It is sad and amazing to see the exact same people use the exact same arguements for the exact same results.
Cheers,
Glenn
The comparison of Iraq and Lebanon, and why Iraq is worse.
From my reading, I would say the problem in Iraq is its sad history since medieval times. It is difficult to demonstrate logically why history repeats itself. But it is certainly true that the current events in Iraq have many comparisons with past history in the country. The self-destructive infighting of Iraqi politicians today, with no vision of the future, recalls the similar destructive infighting during the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 10th century and later.
The conflict was over a similarly rich, but declining resource. In that case, it was the irrigation agriculture of Iraq, which was fragile, but yielded enormous government revenues.
The fame of the possibilities led to foreign invasions, such as the Mongols in the 13th century, who did nothing to revive the country (Does it remind you of the US?). The Ottomans later simply left Iraq in a wrecked state.
I don’t see any reason why history should repeat itself, but the similarities are clear. A great resource (irrigation agriculture or, today, oil) fought over, without regard for its preservation.
One of my colleagues once said, and it is very true, that Iraq is a country that has the longest history of civilisation, but is also the one that has been the most affected by human activity, and thus ruined.
From my reading, I would say the problem in Iraq is its sad history since medieval times.
Frankly, what are you trying to say here ? that the poor situation with which Iraqis are struggling since the US invasion is of their own making ? That the guilt doesn’t rest with the Americans ? Come on, don’t try to avoid your responsibilities. Why did the US invade Iraq in the first place ?
Christiane
Don’t get me wrong. In no way would I say the Iraqis were responsible for the invasion of 2003. The fact that Iraq has had so many invasions, of which 2003 is the latest, is mainly a function of the geography. The flat land is quite open to being invaded.
The idea I was trying to get across is that it is curious that similar events occur in the long ago past. I don’t know why it is, and it is a subject to discuss. Helena says things went better in Lebanon because of the mountains and the community structure; so in Iraq it is the geography, the economic situation and other factors which it would be worth thinking about.
Why did America invade Iraq in the first place?
Well. As the “liberal hawk” New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman explained: “We had to hit somebody.”
So, there you have it. The awful truth that most Americans have not yet begun to face and accept. “Somebody” hurt America on 9/11/2001, so America had to hit back at “somebody.” And since America had the military power to hit “anybody,” it did. We had to hit “somebody” and we could so we did. Simple, atavistic vengeance against no one in particular as long as we excluded from our target list the Saudi Arabians, Egyptians, and Pakistanis actually involved in hitting us. (Our own government immediately covered up for these “allies” of ours — especially the Saudis). So, substitute “Iraq” for “somebody” and you have all the “explaining” that vengeful, frightened Americans needed.
Not a pretty picture, nor one that most Americans will willingly accept, despite its now incontrovertible obviousness.
Yet, as my fellow Vietnam Veteran and famed “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg succinctly put it, “America invaded Iraq three reasons: oil, Israel, and domestic politics.” Naturally, none of these true “reaons,” entered into America’s pathetic public “debate” (what little of it actually happened) before The War to Let Little Dubya Bush Play Commander-in-Chief Like Dick Cheney Knew He Always Wanted (for reactionary Republican domestic political purposes) began as longed-for and previously scheduled. With their own government cynically taking advantage of primitive, incoherent American blood lust, duped and betrayed Americans now have had to witness all the phony, stated excuses (or “fixing the intelligence around the policy”) evaporate one after another precisely because these bait-and-switch, snake-oil sales promotions never really touched on the nation’s truly needed discussion about its looming fate in the first place. The Ugly American now has a hard time not seeing his own rueful reflection in the warped, fun-house mirror sold to him on the nation’s stolen credit card by America’s own reckless, discredited government.
So, now, four years into an utter disaster, we find ourselves wondering if perhaps we ought to start thinking about why we have done such an inexcusably dumb, destructive, and self-defeating thing. I agree totally with retired general Tony McPeak who said that America has embarked upon an experiment to validate the proposition that it really doesn’t matter whom we elect President; except that when we elect someone really stupid, it matters very much. America now justifiably looks dumber than dirt and too stupid to stipulate. I wonder if we will ever manage to regain a semblance of reason and responsibility again. Sad to say, prospects do not look promising. Few nations will ever voluntarily admit to their own venal viciousness or the corrupt and disreputable purposes to which their own fraudulent government will direct those dark, unexamined impulses at any and every opportunity.
Helena,
For a succinct description of “the motors” that impel national self-destructiveness in Washington, D.C., see Barbara Tuchman’s classic March of Folly (i.e., “pursuit of policy contrary to self-interest”) where she wrote:
“The American government react[s] not to the Chinese upheaval or to Vietnamese nationalism per se, but to intimidation by the rabid right at home and to the public dread of Communism that this played on and reflected. [In the] social and psychological sources of that dread … lie the roots of American policy in Vietnam.”
Short, Mnemonic Version: “Intimidation by the Rabid Right at Home.” This fascist force drives what H. L. Menken called “The Strife of the Parties at Washington.” Pretty much a one-sided strife, actually, with the rabid Republican Party and the senior ranks of the American military machine doing most of the intimidating. For a particularly cheesy example of this intimidation, see W. Patrick Lang’s recent threats to Democrats that the future will hold them “at least partly accountable” (meaning “to blame”) should they dare to “interfere” with the current commander-in-chief by bringing his stupid, bloody vendetta against the now-dead-and-gone Saddam Hussein to a rapid and long-overdue conclusion. Ham-handed attempts at political intimidation such as this reflect nothing so much as a sad, bedraggled “who lost China and/or Vietnam?” replay of the ridiculous presumption that the adverse consequences of wars flow from the ending rather than the starting of them. As we said in Vietnam: “We lost the day we started. We won the day we stopped.”
To combat ridiculous rhetorical assaults like ex-Colonel Lang’s, the Democrats can and should “take the credit” for winning-by-stopping-the-stupid rather than caving in to right-wing-militarist canards that in reality only seek to go on “losing by starting and continuing.” To its shame, the Democratic Party let the red-baiting, “who lost China!” (not a question) rabid right in America bully it into deepening America’s escalating violent intervention in Vietnam’s reunification struggles. To its eternal credit — and gnashing of rabid Republican/militarist teeth — the Democratic Party then came to its senses and helped end the stupid Vietnam War by cutting off funding for bombing Cambodia and then for any further air war against Vietnam after the removal of American ground forces supposedly neutralized anti-war opposition (it didn’t) in America. The pathetic Republican “We’ll blame you for once again losing what we don’t and never have owned if you stop us from wrecking the Iraqi village in order to save it” line of crap really ought not to dissuade any Democrat from boldly and proudly taking the historical credit for once again stopping a stupidity. Someone has to drive a stake through the heart of this un-dead, slanderous canard once and for all. The time of the war-stoppers has arrived. The war-starters and war-continuers have had their chance and blown it thoroughly once again.
At any rate, James Carroll, in his book Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War uses the term “Mystical Dread” to encompass politically exploitable public psychological Bogeymen like “Monoithic World Communism” and/or “Global Terrorism.” I like to call this national emotional cattle prod “Abstract Angst” or, as FDR did, “Fear Itself.” Quite simply, as Gore Vidal says, Americans, “the most easily frightened people on earth,” just need a little quick, cheap fear instilled in them — about Cuban construction workers in Grenada, for example — and the Lunatic Leviathan will go rampaging off to bomb some more “safe houses,” “bad weddings,” or even the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Generate some quick, easy fear in Americans and their government/military bureaucrats can get them to suppinely acquiesce to just about anything. Thus the “motor” of “Mystical Dread,” “Abstract Angst,” or just plain “Fear Itself” that the Rabid Right at Home in America employs to intimidate any and all “liberal” opposition to creeping (now lunging) fascism. What I call Warfare-Welfare and Makework-Militarism energizes and drives what I call the Lunatic Leviathan. The founders of our Republic called this mindless monster “a large standing army” and correctly foresaw that it would lead to kingly aspirations by Presidents and the demise of our Constitutional government unless regularly defunded at two-year intervals, Congress after Congress, forever. The time for such a theraputic defunding of the Lunatic Leviathan has now, by far-seeing design of our Republic’s founders, arrived. Naturally, the champions and beneficiary camp-followers of the Lunatic Leviathan see any cut-off of its insatiable appetites as anathema. Hence the threats to “blame” Democrats for putting the beast on a severely restricted diet, if not starving it down to a size where generally accepted accounting practices can tell us where each and every dollar of our looted and blown incomes has gone, and for what, if anything.
the current political developments inside Wasington DC… something that, I have found in my travels, many non-Americans seem to have only a rather fuzzy notion about…
No surprise it’s exactly as a “ political inside Washington DC” many Americans seem to have only a rather fuzzy notion about other nations and countries.
So that why “political inside Washington DC” makes heavy use of lies to drive US citizens for their political goals
And now, we are here…
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2036590,00.html
“Many Americans seem to have only a rather fuzzy notion about other nations and countries.
So that’s why “political inside Washington DC” makes heavy use of lies to drive US citizens…”
Worse than that, many political insiders have a weak grasp of overseas geopolitics. Polls of US congressmen show that most of them couldn’t tell you the difference between Shi’is, Sunnis and Kurds.