Reidar Visser takes on US politicians’ myths about Iraq

Our esteemed friend Reidar has a solidly argued new piece on his website that roundly criticizes some of the myths about Iraq being disseminated by US politicians– primarily but not exclusively Democratic pols– in preparation for the pursuit of a policy of “cut and blame” in Iraq.
He writes,

    to dismiss Iraq’s civil strife as “chronic”, as Democratic commentators increasingly do, requires blind ignorance of centuries of Iraqi coexistence – as seen for instance during the monarchy (1921–1958), during Ottoman rule in the nineteenth century (when Shiites and Sunnis coexisted in the two mixed provinces of Basra and Baghdad), and during the reign of the Baghdad-based Georgian mamluks, who ruled from Mosul to the Gulf between 1747 and 1831. And to diagnose a state of “irreconcilable sectarian conflict” in contemporary Iraq would be to overlook the fact that it is the post-2003 Iraqi elites of returned exiles, rather than the Iraqi population at large, that are behind many of today’s most outrageous sectarian maximalist demands. In historical perspective, it is the current heightened sectarian tension – particularly acute since 2006 – that is the “artificial” aspect of the Iraq situation, and it should be an American responsibility to try to reverse this situation as part of a withdrawal strategy.

Blaming Iraqis for being the backward kind of people who are locked in age-old sectarian hatreds etc is very analogous to some of the arguments made by westerners about other conflicts throughout the world, including former Yugoslavia, Africa, etc. In all such cases these arguments are used as a pretext to cover up the ineffectiveness of the various interventions made by the “international community” or to try to justify the inaction of the states of the rich western world.
Visser makes some excellent argument in this piece. I am concerned, however, that he still seems too easily to believe that there is some “optimal” mix of US sticks and carrots that, if correctly brought to bear, can produce a better-than-otherwise outcome in Iraq. For my part, I still hold that

    (1) it is none of the Americans’ damn’ business at this point how the Iraqi people choose to rule themselves,
    (2) the track record of the US’s attempt to build a workable political order in post-Saddam Iraq has been abysmal, since the level of killings and major conflict there has increased with every year the US forces have remained there,
    (3) therefore the first demand of the US government should be to pull all of its troops out of Iraq, without engaging in any further political maneuvering inside the Iraqi system, whatsoever, and
    (4) the very fact of an imminent, rapid, and complete withdrawal of US troops from the country may well serve to concentrate the minds of Iraqis on finding their own form of political entente to produce a functioning national administration after the departure of the US troops and the end of all the harmful interference their presence has caused.

For more details of my thinking on these matters see any of the ‘withdrawal plans for Iraq’ that I provide links to near the top of the sidebar on the main page of this blog.

35 thoughts on “Reidar Visser takes on US politicians’ myths about Iraq”

  1. “…it should be an American responsibility to try to reverse this situation as part of a withdrawal strategy.”
    Reidar, with all respect for your knowledge of Iraq, and deep thanks for pointing out what is obvious to those of us who know Iraq from the inside – that the “historical conflict” nonsense is just that, utter nonsense – the Americans have proven beyond any doubt that they have the reverse Midas touch. In other words, everything they touch in Iraq turns not to gold, but to s***. Given that obvious fact, they should not be allowed to touch anything else. Not only can they not be trusted to have decent intentions in anything they do in Iraq, it should be obvious that everything they do will have a negative effect, including trying to reverse the situation that they created, whether intentionally or inadvertently due to incompetence.
    The only responsibility they have now is to simply get the hell out as quickly as possible, and leave Iraq to the Iraqis to sort out. and by get the hell out, I mean 100%. No military, no politicians, no “diplomats”, no mega-embassy (i.e. regional command and control center), no “advisors”, no “contractors”. Only then will there be a chance for things to begin improving.
    Please, please, PLEASE do not suggest that they should try to fix ANYTHING. That is tantamount to having the rapist be his victims’ therapist. The criminal as his victims’ healer? Not even remotely a good idea.

  2. Helena, thank you so much for covering this and my apologies for being so inactive in blog discussions over the past weeks – all due to work pressures… Your line of thought was indeed what I had in mind when I referred to “responsible withdrawal plans”. Shirin, thanks for your feedback as well. To both of you, I would say that my worry is that the bad forces in Iraq have gained such momentum and such strategic positions between 2003 and 2007 that any sudden withdrawal would give them a head start that would make it quite impossible for the moderate majority to catch up with them. I too used to hope for some kind of Lebanon miracle, but I’m not so sure anymore. I fear that any attempt at regionalisation by involving the neighbours, for example, would ultimately be blocked by the current Kurdish & Shiite elites. This is what makes me hold on to the idea that somehow one should try to transform the American presence into a more constructive force, all the serious problems related to this presence notwithstanding.
    The many methodological problems aside, it is noteworthy that a majority of the Iraqi respondents in recent polls have indicated that whereas they do want a full withdrawal, they do not want it to commence instantly.

  3. General Odom (retired) has been saying a constant position for 4 years. He says get out now!. The longer your wait the worse it is. I agree and it fits with all I know of working with Iraq, Iran, and Palestinians some years ago. They can solve their problems, by themselves. Look at history, if you question it. Don not count the times of British and U.S. meddling in the country.
    Veratis Max

  4. Right on, Max! The worst problem for Iraq and Iraqis (and Palestine, and most likely Iran too) was, is, and will remain interference by outsiders trying to force the country to serve their interests instead of the interests of its citizens and legitimate residents.

  5. “The many methodological problems aside, it is noteworthy that a majority of the Iraqi respondents in recent polls have indicated that whereas they do want a full withdrawal, they do not want it to commence instantly.”
    Reidar is certainly correct that the majority of Iraqis do want complete withdrawal, but not yet, because of the lamentable security situation. A “visit” by US troops is a lot better than similar by Iraqi police or army. I see and hear this everywhere.
    The problem is as Shirin puts it: a rapist cannot be therapist for his victim. Put in non-metaphorical terms, Reidar only allots blame for lighting the civil war to al-Qa’ida. That a civil war should suddenly erupt, when over many centuries calm between Sunni and Shi’a has been maintained, is amazing.
    At the same time, we know that many of the US people who operated in Central America in the 1980s, provoking civil conflict, have been again to be found in Iraq, including Negroponte. Although there is no direct proof for the moment, it is entirely illogical to suppose that they were not tempted to play the same sort of games. Perhaps not always, perhaps not currently, perhaps only at one point or two. But to say never defies belief.
    I regret to say that the Iraqis are being naive.

  6. Reidar and Helena – How would you answer the assertion that if the US leaves before Iraq is “stabilized,” the bloodbath will be greater than the current level of deaths?
    I understand that no one can know for certain what would happen if the US withdraws combat troops in the next 12 to 18 months (or sooner, as Helena advocates). However, it seems to me that people of good will toward Iraq cannot forcefully advocate for a quick withdrawal as long as they fear creating a worse outcome, and Administration supporters use the fear as a convenient rejoinder to calls for withdrawal.
    I fear that as long as there is no convincing response to the fear of a bloodbath, the strongest arguments for withdrawal will be those being used by the Congressional Democrats (however mistaken) that you both criticize.

  7. Mr. Visser has been making this arguement of peaceful loving unified Iraqis for sometime. However, he never so far as I can tell explains why people who are so unified and love each other are inflicting such unbelievable violence on each other. Other than to blame the Americans.
    To simply blame the Americans for a Sunni who blows up a Shia marketplace and vice versa is not empirical or logical.
    Mr. Visser is an ideologist in guise of a scholar. Not unlike J. Cole. They are both valuable reads. One can get much information from them. But, one must recognize when they provide us fact and when they povide us opinion in the guise of facts

  8. Tom, have you ever lived in a country suffering from prolonged civil war? I have. I spent seven years in Lebanon in the 1970s– six of them after the civil war started. Under the conditions that came to dominate there, there was a huge increase in the fearfulness of several communities, leading many of their members to undertake acts against neighbors of an atrociousness that in normal times they would never have undertaken…
    I experienced that directly then, and I have certainly heard many riveting firsthand testimonies of how it has happened in other places, including former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, mozambique, etc.
    I think many people in rich western societies have a certain (im-)moral smugness, a lack of experience, and an even greater lack of moral imagination and empathy when they read about atrocities being committed by people in much more fear-dominated… Or they just settle for the pat explanations that “the Hutus and Tutsis (or whoever) have always been like this.” The drivel I’ve been reading in Time magazine about the allegedly “deeply engrained nature” of the Sunni-Shiite divide is exactly of this ilk.
    As for the armed forces of the rich, settled societies of the north, they prefer to kill people from a distance, with massively lethal stand-off weapons that leave the hands of the warhead-deliverers allegedly “clean.” Maybe we should seek some honest explanation for what drives them to engage in such anti-humane lethality?

  9. I’m not sure that there is a paucity of evidence suggesting US complicity in the sectarian violence. There is no doubt that the kurds have been encouraged, trained and protected by the US and Israel and that their enclave has been used as a base for raiding southwards. And we know too that the Kurds have been pushing Arabs and Turks out of areas they wish to hive off into Kurdistan. We know too that the shia were encouraged in 1991 to fight Bagdhad, that their skies were “no fly” zones etc. And the election process has been used to split the country into bite sized pieces.
    Yes, of course there are ancient fissures in Iraqi society but both in law and in fact the USand its vassal forces are responsible for the current situation there. The problem is that there is no evidence that, having promoted sectarian warfare for the past four years, the US is now interested in dampening it down in the interests of community harmony. And that would be the only justification for remaining there. My guess is that most of the carnage in the country stems from the “Force Protection” policies under which the cities are regularly staffed and bombed. Remove the US forces and there will be no more air power in the equation, and no more of these massacres of civilians at checkpoints. Left to their own devices the Iraqi will very quickly begin to rebuild their society. What has happened in Iraq is a crime with few parallels in history, a crime whose consequences will slowly over many years in many ways. So far those nations responsible have paid nothing for what has been done in their names. We will have to do so. In the meantime let us commit no more crimes here and let us begin to understand what we have done and that we must offer to make amends. In the past, while this world was being built, it seemed possible for empires to commit genocide with impunity, so vast was the technological divide between aggressors and victims. That is no longer the case-our scieties are incredibly vulnerable to enemies, the key to security lies in the cultivation of peaceful relations, the nourishing of solidarity and the promise of justice. What we are seeing in the world is the sowing of winds which we shall reap soon enough.

  10. Re-reading what I wrote yesterday about fears of a bloodbath tending to paralyze people of good will and provide an argument for those who support the continued US troop presence in Iraq, I want to make clear that I personally am convinced that US troops should leave as quickly as possible (i. e., 4 to 6 months, as it will be a massive logistics effort).
    What I hope to hear from Reidar and Helena is an argument that would be convincing to those who truly believe that the US has a moral obligation to stay longer to prevent a worse outcome.
    For example, it seems likely that the area controlled by the Kurds may be relatively peaceful, and that the southern area of Iraq may also avoid major violence. Is there any hope that the central and mixed population areas can also?

  11. “Mr. Visser has been making this arguement of peaceful loving unified Iraqis for sometime.”
    No. He has not. What he has been pointing out is something quite different. What he has been pointing out is the fact that prior to 2003 sectarian/ethnic strife – particularly violent strife – has never been a feature of Iraqi society, and that Iraqis have behind them more than a millennium of coexistence, cooperation, intermarriage, and general acceptance of one another.

  13. Bob, I think you are spot on with your question. I for one cannot see any ground for optimism until there is some kind of national political realignment, probably in the shape of a revised constitution, or, at the very least, local elections held in an atmosphere free of intimidation. As for the “peaceful” south, today there are reports from Basra about severe Sadrist on Sadrist violence (Fadila versus Muqtada supporters). As Shirin says, this high level of violence seen after 2003 is unprecedented in Iraqi history; I’m just worried that it has now gone too far and that history alone will not suffice to restore harmony.

  14. HC: “[I]t is none of the Americans’ damn’ business at this point how the Iraqi people choose to rule themselves.”
    Ah, so.
    Why not ditto for Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, Zimbabwe, the Balkans in 1990, Chile in 1975, Argentina in 1977, S. Africa in 1985, the Tibetan region of PRC, etc?
    If violence or continues in the wake of a quick US departure, would that be a lesser evil because it becomes an “internal matter,” or simply qualify as one more thing to blame on Bush? If Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia fill the vaccum, would that be pretty? Or do we write a letter?
    Consider India’s 1949 independence and partition. The UK pulled out and the Indian independence leaders could not keep a united order. Tens of millions are said to have perished in the ensuing dislocations, communal bloodlettings, and chaos. Who would win credit for a comparable catastrophe in Iraq?
    India had Gandhi, Nehru, and Ali Jinnah, some of the more urbane and civilized people around, yet the outcome defied their plans. Who would fill their shoes in Iraq? No, I do not think even Werner von Braun would want to touch the matter. Rocket science is much more tidy.
    Realistically, the UN would not be able to devise any consensus plan to succeed the US role. Saudi and Gulf money would go to the Sunni insurgents and voilá: the start of a 30 Year War.
    It may be true that some returned Iraqi emigrés have done more harm than good. Does that mean Saddam was right to persecute or expell them? Would it have been wiser to limit “regime change” to a palace coup and hand the keys ASAP to a benign despot? Could the unshackling of the Shia have brought anything other than a vicious cycle?
    If pre-2003 sanctions were evil, if détente with Saddam was wicked, and if war to unseat Saddam was worst of all, then what (absent a miracle) was the policy to pursue?

  15. Having read the comments and happily seen that Reider’s perspective was wider than his original piece, I still think his concentration on some Americans’ use of the word “chronic” as applied to Iraq violence seems a rather weak place to begin. “Chronic” as noted by Reider is more of an example of a temporary semantic characterization common to US media, where new nutshell perspectives are more important than comprehensive discourse. I wish he would have more clearly listed the other significant instances of “chronic” US behaviors that are more significant in explanation for how we have arrived where we are. Looking about the debris field of Bush’s Iraq invasion, there has been a “chronic” complaint by Iraqis since the beginning of the US occupation that they and their families have been embarrassed, dishonored, and disempowered by actions of US troops. There has been chronic and widespread damage by US forces to Iraqi homes and businesses for which the US has made little, if any, recompense. There has been a chronic US policy of not sealing Iraqi borders, which the US occupying force is required to do under international law, while at the same time the US has complained neighboring countries have not sealed their borders. There has been a chronic Iraqi outcry for paying employment, so that familial financial stability can be maintained, simultaneously accompanied by chronic and public profit taking on a massive scale by non-Iraqis. There has been a chronic Iraqi plea for more safety and security that the US has variously been uninterested in, or unwilling or unable to provide. There has been a chronic dissembly and disempowerment of every single traditional Iraqi social structure by US design or incompetence, creating a power vacuum the US now deplores. There have been chronic acts by the Bush administration to pit one Iraqi group against another, so they will “fight each other over there”, so “we won’t have to fight ‘em here”. There has been a chronic betrayal of thousands upon thousands of American troops holding the best intentions of helping the Iraqi people by other Americans engaged in war profiteering or acts of barbarity against innocent Iraqis, a truth which has been religiously avoided. And of course there has been the chronic wail of grief for multitudes of Iraqi dead. In short, there has been a chronic US policy of disregard for the Iraqi people, due to an ideologically driven Bush/Neocon “redrawing of the Middle map”, and the results of THAT is why we are where we are. And to answer Mr. Gaines, I think there is no longer any possibility of American presence preventing a bloodbath, if that is what the future holds. Iraq has been beyond US military control, no matter what Americans would like to think, for perhaps a year and a half (and perhaps longer, if you listen to American generals). George Bush does not want to be recognized as a loser, so virtually all damage suffered by Iraq and the US from the time the situation became irretrievable has resulted from Bush not wanting to lose face. George Bush created that situation, and George Bush owns it.

  16. Bob, thanks for your thoughtfulness there.
    I can say a couple of things. 1. When the Israelis were discussing withdrawing from S. Lebanon in the lead-up to 200 they discussed many vivid fears of a bloodbath afterwards. No such bloodbath occurred.
    Also look at what I wrote in my “Iraqi Frahments” post about what my Iraqi friend T said…
    More to write but am in a big hurry here…

  17. With all due respect for Mr Visser, his position suffers from the same basic flaw as that of the ideologues who advocated the invasion in the first place on the basis that the US could make Iraq into a better place. That flaw is a hubristic over-estimation of the capabilities of the US (in fact, of western, or any, national governments in general).
    As citizens of the western nations responsible for perpetrating the catastrophe that has been the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, what should be our priority, so far as the Iraq issue is concerned? First, to stop fooling ourselves that our governments “know best”. They don’t. Second, based upon that realisation, to put as much pressure as is within our capabilities upon our governments to get wholly out of Iraq and as quickly as practicable.
    Finally, we must devote ourselves to a ruthless and decades long witch-hunt against those in our political and media classes who were responsible for advocating and implementing the attack on Iraq. (I include in this the enablers within the supposed “opposition” parties – the British Conservatives and US Democrats.) They must never be allowed to forget, nor should they ever be forgiven until and unless a full and genuine repentance is forthcoming.
    This is the only way to really reduce the likelihood of similar future crimes. Political memories are short – look how brief the span of the (entirely healthy) restraining effect of the “Vietnam syndrome” on US foreign policy turned out to be.
    Future politicians must be made to see their predecessors continuing to suffer the political consequences of waging aggressive war for decades to come. At the present time, hardly a one of the principal architects has suffered any personal loss as a result of their advocacy of policies that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and waste and destruction on literally epic scales. Indeed, in most cases the main advocates have been promoted or have been allowed to slide quietly into a position of claiming that the decision was right but the execution was flawed.
    Positions such as Mr Visser’s unfortunately have the side effect of allowing the architects of the invasion to use the excuse of making things better, or fear of a worse catastrophe, to hold onto power and position while the original crime drifts further back into history. We have to “move on”, you see.

  18. One point never mentioned. The US illegally invaded Iraq, destroyed infrastructure and are responsible for many deaths.
    Can we arrive at a compensation owed by the US to be administered by the UN. Punitive and practical.
    I suggest 1 Trillion US dollars which will concentrate minds in iraq and give hope that it can be made into a top medical, Social, Educational,… country. Just 2 years toys from the US military !.

  19. “Can we arrive at a compensation owed by the US”
    Indeed, the process of publicly doing so will be another useful mechanism to keep people’s minds focussed on the harm done by the architects of this policy. Such a campaign should constantly link the cost with the names of those who were responsible for the policy.
    The money, of course, stands no more chance of ever being paid than did the compensation agreed by the US for Vietnam, because there is sadly no means of enforcement available. Realistically it would be difficult to square charging the payment to the personal pocket of every US senator and congressman and every British MP who voted to politically legitimise the attack, and every media mouthpiece who gave credence to US propaganda in the runup to the invasion, with western norms of free speech etc. But a campaign to do so would itself be useful anyway.
    But here is another problem with the policy of staying on “until the situation is more stable”. Of course, such a policy will be dragged out interminably by our governments, and the less ongoing violence the less the political pressure on them to get out. Eventually, when some kind of stability is achieved (if only through general exhaustion), the Albright argument will be made that it was all “a price worth paying” and the Iraqis will be told they should be paying us for their “freedom”.

  20. re sectarianism in Iraq: Mr Visser’s most salient comment is being missed or ignored: “All of this is calculated to take away attention from the fact that ever since 2003 al-Qaida’s goal has been to provoke civil war in Iraq.”
    Zarqawi’s public declaration of war on the Shiites in 2005 should also be remembered in the context of this issue.
    Anyone who has followed Iraq closely for the last 30 years knows there has never been any overt sectarian conflict in Iraq, extraordinary really under the circumstances and probably mainly due to Shiite quiesance in the face of continuous Baath persecution. The Shiites reminded me in those days of battered wives.
    Can Iraq can be compared to Lebanon? Prior to the Lebanese civil war there was a democracy where the confessional groups all shared power. In contrast in Iraq the 80 per cent majority Shiites/Kurds had no political rights and all attempts to gain them were ruthlessly suppressed. Today in Iraq there is a democratic power sharing consitution, not unlike Lebanon’s, which the insurgency is trying to overthrow in order to restore minority Arab Sunni rule. If the US withdrew, it is hard to see what interest the Islamic State of Iraq and its fellow travellers in the insurgency would have in rolling over to make accommodation with the Shiites? And does anybody seriously expect the Shiites would just sit back and take it again?
    re Democrat policy. In an interview with the NYT on Mar 14, Senator Clinton served notice on Sunni intransigence with the following: “So yes, there will still be Al Qaeda and other extremeist groups elements operating in Baghdad but we’re not going to be putting pressure on the Iraqi Government to limit their reponse or to prevent self defense on the part of the people in the neighbourhoods who are being subjected to this reign of violence.”
    In this, the future President Billary is taking a much stronger line than the present US Admin which is intervening to protect the Sunni minority in Baghdad. S/he seems to be playing a bi partisan good cop/bad cop role, with the intention of trying to co-erce the Sunni leadership to the negotiating table.
    Other interesting comments from future President Billary regarding Democrat policy for phased redeployment: “It actually gives more leverage to Bush and the Iraqi Government” and “it also helps to concentrate the attention of some of those neighbours”. Good cop/bad cop again.
    re re-writing the Iraqi Constitution: To what end? To give the 15-20% Arab Sunnis more power than their demographic entitles them to? If so, is it likely the overwhelming 80% Shiite/Kurdish majority would support such a rewriting? If they didn’t, could it be imposed on them? And if it could, then SHOULD it be imposed? It’d be interesting to see the arguments in favour.

  21. “Anyone who has followed Iraq closely for the last 30 years knows there has never been any overt sectarian conflict in Iraq, extraordinary really under the circumstances and probably mainly due to Shiite quiesance in the face of continuous Baath persecution. The Shiites reminded me in those days of battered wives”
    The following account and analysis makes some good points:
    http://nonarab-arab.blogspot.com/2006/12/sadrists-and-sunni-insurgents-united.html
    “If the US withdrew, it is hard to see what interest the Islamic State of Iraq and its fellow travellers in the insurgency would have in rolling over to make accommodation with the Shiites?”
    The interest in making accomodation would come, as in all such cases, from an inability to triumph by military or political means.
    None of us actually have any real ability to foresee what will happen – the situation is simply too complicated for human analysis, as are most such real world situations. (And that, really, is the most important lesson the true seeker after wisdom will draw from observing the unfolding calamity in Iraq, in my opinion.) But in general terms, there will be conflict until one party or alliance triumphs, or until the parties decide that no triumph will be available and an accommodation is the best course of action. At that point the “fanatics” turn into pragmatists, or are marginalised and/or killed by their former comrades.
    One thing a complete and genuine US withdrawal would certainly do, so far as the supposed “al Qaeda” and its affiliates in Iraq are concerned, is cut down one of their strongest recruiting sergeants – foreign occupation.
    As for Clinton, between her support for the invasion of Iraq and her shameless promotion of the ongoing US aggression towards Iran, the woman is beneath contempt.

  22. For the US hawks, the main issue was how to get the American people to accept the invasion of Iraq. They knew perfectly that once the troops were there, it would be extremely difficult to get them out.
    There are countless easy arguments justifying the extension of US occupation. Some fit the patriots and other hawks : aka, the US can’t get out, because admitting a defeat would weaken the country (as if it wasn’t already much weaker due to the invasion)..
    Other arguments fit the good willing people : aka that the US can’t withdraw because it would allow a bloodbath. It is worth mentioning that all the recent wars have been undertaken for so called “humanitarian reasons”. But when you look at it nearer, most often than not, there were economic reasons behind it as well.
    As an anti-war or a progressive, it’s very difficult to imagine a good solution to the Iraqi nightmare and quagmire. It’s difficult because there are no good solutions, probably not even lesser bad ones. Once something is done in history it can’t be undone. The trap is closing and I’m very pessimist.
    Nevertheless, I do still think that it will be better for Iraqi if the US troops get out. I don’t see any role here for the UN, which the US has contributed to completely discredit.

  23. Kudos to Randal for noting that the perfectly sane “Vietnam Syndrome” kept America — for awhile — from doing the same stupid thing that it has now stupidly done once again in Iraq. I once wrote a poem to this effect called “Syndromes of Wisdom,” which I concluded by asking, rhetorically: “What sort of country considers wisdom a symptom of a disease?”
    Additionally, when Randal notes — ironically — that the Iraqis should probably thank America and pay us for conquering and plundering them, I would only want to remind us all of our govnernment’s many claims that our conquering and plundering of Iraq wouldn’t take more than six weeks — certainly not six months — and that the Iraqis would gladly pay America out of their “vast” oil reserves for conquering and plundering them. This overwhelming gratitude, our government assured us four years ago, would find joyous expression in the form of welcoming parades for the conquerors and no-bid, cost-plus contracts for our military’s crony mercenaries and carpetbagging camp followers.
    Needless to say, the “gratitude” of Iraqis, if it ever comes, will probably sound a lot like Shakespeare’s Caliban who “thanked” Prospero for teaching him to name his own island by spitting: “Yes, and my profit on it is I have learned how to curse.”

  24. Bob Gaines makes an excellent point when he asks how we might answer those who keep throwing the lurid “bloodbath” scenario at us as a means of dialectically dodging their responsibility for initiating and continuing America’s disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. One can easily offer many traditional examples of debunking the interlocking and mutually reinforcing fallacies collectively known as “the bloodbath scenario,” but for now I’ll just suggest purchasing and reading Professor T. Edward Damer’s concise little book, “Attacking Faulty Reasoning: a guide to fallacy-free arguments.”
    For my own contribution, though, I’d like to revisit a letter I wrote to the Washington Post recently in response to “news” that the mother of all “bloodbath” (i.e., “Domino”) fallacy floggers: namely, Henry Kissinger, the infamous Rasputin to reactionary Republicans for several generations now, had advised Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for years now on Iraq policy. I hope an edited regurgitation of this response somehow answers in part Mr. Gains’ timely inquiry.
    So, apologizing in advance for the necessary length and ex-sailor’s aggrieved profanity, I wrote:
    Ever the masochist, I’ve kept on disk an article by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George P. Shultz entitled “Results, Not Timetables, Matter in Iraq” (The Washington Post, Tuesday, January 25, 2005; Page A15). The hyperbolic hysteria recycled from forty years previous made me sick enough when I read it two years ago, but now when I hear it endlessly regurgitated by our so-called and self-styled “foreign policy elite,” I want to vomit. Check it out (from only the first two paragraphs):
    [Paragraph 1 from Messrs Kissinger and Shultz]:
    “All this [public criticism of Iraq policy] is a way of foreshadowing a demand for an exit strategy, by which many critics mean some sort of explicit time limit on the U.S. effort.”
    No and yes. No: the best available criticism of Iraq policy (see, for example, the formerly sane and honest Colin Powell) had demanded an exit strategy even before proposing an entry strategy. The bit about “foreshadowing” here only serves to dishonestly project — as a dialectical trick of denial — what has already long since happened (the criticism) as if no one had ever raised the issue before and it only exists now as some sort of vague future possibility. Yes: the critics did, do, and will demand a time limit on America’s “effort” — like from nothing to as little as possible — but since the proponents of the “effort” had promised that it wouldn’t involve anything anyway and what little it did involve the Iraqis would gladly pay for; well, that just means that the critics — from start to whenever this finishes — never asked for anything that the proponents of the “effort” hadn’t conceded in any event.
    [Paragraph 2 from K & S — taken in bite-size chunks]:
    “We reject this counsel.”
    Naturally, it makes sense. Who cares that you reject sanity? You always did.
    “The implications of the term “exit strategy” must be clearly understood; there can be no fudging of consequences.”
    Yes, but most people already know that “exit” means “leaving.” You don’t have to muddy the waters by implying that some sort of linguistic word magic can transform “leaving” into “staying.” All consequences flow from the “entering,” anyway, and not from any “exiting.” To claim otherwise amounts merely to the discredited dialectical trick of “Shifting the Burden of Proof.”
    “The essential prerequisite for an acceptable exit strategy is a sustainable outcome, not an arbitrary time limit.”
    First, you don’t need the redundant modifier “essential” before “prerequisite.” Next, after we “exit,” other people will do the “sustaining” of whatever they want to “sustain.” Our “acceptance” of what Iraqis sustain (or don’t) has nothing to do with our leaving Iraq for purposes having only to do with us and what we want for our own country. Why do you keep giving recalcitrant foreigners veto power over American actions? Next, nothing focuses the mind like a deadline, arbitrary or otherwise. Nothing unfocuses it like Parkinson’s Law which states that “work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion.” Allow infinite time for the work, or “effort,” and you will get unlimited effort (inversely proportional to accomplishment) — the real military/political bureaucrat’s wet dream — with everyone involved soon forgetting amid all the alligators the original goal of draining the swamp.
    “For the outcome in Iraq will shape the next decade of American foreign policy.”
    Perhaps. Perhaps not. You don’t know any more than I do. So knock off the astrological prognostications. If I want my palm read I’d rather have Madame Sophie do it. At least she tells me up front what I have to pay for the delusions.
    “A debacle would usher in a series of convulsions in the region as radicals and fundamentalists moved for dominance, with the wind seemingly at their backs.”
    Leaving aside the irrelevant issue of wind direction for landlocked people with no sail-boat navies, the ongoing debacle in the region already has produced radicals and fundamentalists — starting with the American variety (actually, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan started producing them) — moving for dominance. Some of these “radicals” — aside from the American variety — seem already to have achieved a little dominance. Wake the f*ck up, will you? [a little pent-up resentment from an exploited and abused Vietnam Veteran starting to boil up here]
    “Wherever there are significant Muslim populations, radical elements would be emboldened.”
    Yes, these “radical elements” do seem to have found themselves “emboldened” by our occupation of their Muslim lands.” How did yo think they’d react to conquering and plundering? Passively? In fact, these radical Muslim elements have gotten so bold over the last four years that by next week, we’ll have lost more of our army than we lost civilians on 9/11/2001. Did you two guys just return from the Alzheimer’s rest home, or what?
    “As the rest of the world related to this reality, its sense of direction would be impaired by the demonstration of American confusion in Iraq.”
    You mean, like, you think the rest of the world hasn’t already witnessed American confusion and debacle in Iraq? Do you mean that you think that other countries haven’t already made up their minds and started moving to take advantage of our self-inflicted conundrum? You apparently seem to think that foreign people wait around for that always-over-the-horizon day when American foreign policy “elites” agree that, “OK you foreigners; you can lose your “impairment” now. We give you our permission. You can call a civil war a civil war now. Really. Even CBS and NBC say so.” What arrogant and deluded crap.
    “A precipitate American withdrawal would be almost certain to cause a civil war that would dwarf Yugoslavia’s, and it would be compounded as neighbors escalated their current involvement into full-scale intervention.”
    A deliberate American non-withdrawal has already done all these things. Wake the f*ck up! [more exasperated resentment] Everything you say will happen if we leave happens when we stay. So shut the f*ck up. You said all this same shit during your time f*cking up America and Vietnam forty years ago. You don’t make any more sense now than you did then. So shut the f*ck up you two old senile farts. [OK, I’ll calm down now]
    I could go on and on, but I feel sick enough already at having to wade through this same old bullshit again and again and again. America really does have no one, and I mean no one even remotely competent to manage our country’s foreign and domestic affairs. We’ve got nothing more than bullshit-slingers, and old bullshit at that.
    … I don’t know if any of this answers Mr. Gains’ query about responding to shameless floggers of the “bloodbath” Domino Fallacy, but I have tried, oh how I’ve tried, to somehow break through the complacent idiocy of America’s failed and failing “foreign policy elite.” Perhaps I should stick to poetry.

  25. Don’t forgot to take these bad guys with you before you leave
    لا أحد يعرف بالضبط من هم هؤلاء، ولا عددهم. يأتون من كل مكان من العالم الى العراق. من أميركا اللاتينية، من آسيا، افريقيا، وحتى من الولايات المتحدة وبريطانيا وأوروبا عموما. مهمتهم الاساسية تقديم «الخدمات الامنية»، لكنهم في واقع الأمر ينفذون اغتيالات، يتاجرون بالمخدرات، يديرون بيوت الدعارة.. ويتقاضى الواحد منهم مقابل ذلك آلاف الدولارات.
    في العام ,2004 اصدر الحاكم المدني السابق للعراق بول بريمر القرار رقم 17 الذي نص على ان يكون للمتعاقدين الأمنيين «الحصانة من الإجراءات القانونية العراقية في ما يتعلق بالأعمال التي يقومون بها بموجب شروط عقد مباشر أو غير مباشر».
    تحول العراق الى مرتع للشركات الامنية المتخصصة، ولمرتزقتها.
    ومع اتساع الفجوة الأمنية، تطور الأمر حتى بلغت الشركات الأمنية العاملة في العراق، بحسب مدير عام رابطة شركات الأمن الخاصة، أندرو بيريارك، عشرات أضعاف ما كانت عليه إبان فترة حرب الخليج الثانية. وقد ذكر تقرير لمكتب المحاسبة الحكومية الاميركية، ان هناك حوالي 100 ألف متعهد في العراق حاليا، يعمل 48 ألفا منهم كمرتزقة، من دون مراقبة أو قيود قانونية فعالة.
    وأكدت الأمم المتحدة هذا الأمر في تقرير أصدرته مؤخرا واعتبرت فيه ان المرتزقة باتوا يشكلون القوة العسكرية الثانية بعد الجنود الأميركيين. وذكرت ان هناك عنصرا امنيا خاصا واحدا تقريبا في مقابل كل أربعة جنود أميركيين في العراق، بينما كانت النسبة واحدا في مقابل خمسين خلال حرب الخليج الأولى.
    وقال عضو مجموعة العمل التابعة للأمم المتحدة المسؤولة عن ملف المرتزقة خوسيه لويس غوميز برادو، ان هناك 160 شركة على الأقل تعاقدت مع حوالي 30 إلى 50 ألف رجل من كافة أنحاء العالم للقيام بمهمات أمنية محفوفة بالمخاطر في العراق.
    http://www.assafir.com/Windows/ArticlePrintFriendly.aspx?ArticleId=2501&ChannelId=12909

  28. To the dreamers of US withdraws from Iraq before setting the house to be slavery to them and taking in account Israeli priorities with Iraq?
    Iraq Index

  29. I hear that the U.N. Secretary General just experienced his first incoming artillery explosion while giving a speech in the Baghdad Green Zone Castle. Somehow it appears that the so-called “surge” (more like a “dribble” or a “trickle”) ostensibly taking place outside the Castle walls has missed a few “dead enders” in their “last throes” setting up and firing their mortars into “the most secure” American hole-in-the-ground stationary target in Iraq. Genius General David Petraeus had better get his PR team “surging” to work spinning this one, and fast.

  30. I profoundly respect the view that the Iraqis themselves are best suited to fix the situation. However, I would be a lot more optimistic if the protagonists of this view could come up with i) the names of the Iraqis who would lead the process towards national reconciliation, and away from the sectarian bickering demonstrated by today’s elites; ii) a convincing scenario as to how and why today’s elites would voluntarily relinquish their stranglehold on positions of power, and peacefully hand over either to elites with more nationalist inclinations, or to some kind of regional or UN-sponsored formation of states.

  31. Reidar, I hope you will not take this the wrong way when I ask why it matters how optimistic or otherwise you (or anybody else outside Iraq) might be about the prospects for the Iraqis solving their internal problems in a way you regard as acceptable?
    This is the interventionist trap: once we have interfered we acquire a seeming responsibility to keep interfering until we’ve “made it right”. And furthermore, we can be made to fear retaliation from those whose interests or allies we have harmed during the interference process, so we can be told it would be too dangerous to let go of the tiger’s tail until we are sure it has calmed down.
    The point is, an honest man will admit that he does not know what will happen if we stop interfering, and neither does he know what will happen if we keep on interfering. The truth is, we are simply clinging on and hoping all will work out for the best.
    But what we can say for certain sure, is that the process of clinging on necessitates our killing people in large numbers in a foreign country.
    If we pull out, we do not know if more will die or if fewer will die, but at least we will not be killing those people directly, and at least there may eventually come a time when we can offer some genuinely disinterested non-military help – though for sure any such offer, to be credible, will require there to have been a proper process of repentance and a thorough purging of those elements in our political and media classes who perpetrated the original crime.
    Anyway, once the honest admission is made that we are not competent to devise, let alone impose, a solution, not even the basest utilitarian justification for remaining in occupation exists. There is merely the illusion of a utilitarian justification based upon our subjective feelings of optimism about one course of action over another.
    My own opinion is that, as commentators, any time people such as yourself or Helena advocate any course of action other than unilateral withdrawal as quickly as possible, you are missing an opportunity to maintain the necessary focus on understanding the mistakes that led to us attacking in the first place and preventing their repeat. The most important part of that proces, in my opinion, is holding to account those who advocated and implemented the attack. That process will never start until we are out, and the more humiliating the withdrawal the better.
    I grant that the attempt to maintain this focus will always be met with the diversionary response that says: “we need to move on”, “we must concentrate on what is best for the Iraqis now, rather than on recriminations”. Such arguments are politically effective, but they must be confronted, because they contain the seeds of the next murderous intervention. Recriminations are exactly what we do need, and the more the better.

  32. Reidar,
    would be a lot more optimistic if the protagonists of this view could come up
    Reidar, do you knew these what you call them relinquish their stranglehold on positions of power how they thinking and how they behaving.
    Most these guys and I am speaking from experiences with many Iraqis who are inside or out side Iraq before 2003 and after the war, these guys they have no carriage or the will to stand for Iraqi or Iraq,
    If you just bring the name of old regime their faces colour changing and you feel their fearness obvious from their body language, some will leave you “flee from you” because their fearness.
    Are these guys you call the relinquish their stranglehold on positions of power thing they can stand?
    I challenge you if US saying today we are leaving after mints after that you see them all in Tehran as Moqtada and others recently.
    Excuses me you think they are strong holding, they are not and they are relay on the occupation power and relations and they are a lions now but the reality when the moment of truth come they all will flee Iraq with looted money that what all they interested.

  33. I would like to second again our friend Randal’s succinct presentation of a view I deeply share: one that I developed during my own enforced servitude in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-1972). (See Frances Fitztgerald’s classic, scholarly version entitled “Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.”) I especially liked Randal’s debunking of the “old news,” “time to move on” gambit that seeks to deny memory itself, the only means we have of comparing actions over time and arriving at some reasoned judgment about them. His absolutely correct statement that we need as much recrimmination as possible directed against the lying, duplicitous perpetrators of this disaster reminds me of that scene in the movie Young Frankenstein, where the village sheriff tells a justifiably angry mob of peasants: “A riot is an ugly thing — and I think it is just about time that we had one.” Time for a riot, indeed.
    As well, I think we can grant Reidar Visser the most benign and innocent of motives while at the same time noting his dialectical attempt — whether conscious or not — to shift the burden of proof onto Iraqis for the actions of Americans that Americans themselves will not acknowledge and confront. As with America’s War on Vietnam, America’s War on Iraq originated in America, not somewhere else, and it continues due to what historian Barbara Tuchman called “intimidation by the rabid right at home,” the fundamental, enduring reactionary political force to which the American goverment consistently reacts. Trying to ignore or disguise this fundamental truth by supposing that Iraqis or Vietnamese have anything to do with it — again — only masks an attempt to shift the burden of proof from the Americans who need to clean up their own damaged and failing political system to hapless foreigners who have their own problems and really do know how best to deal with them.
    No one can do a wrong thing the right way, especially not cowed-and-bullied America, the notorious “Nation of Sheep,” whose browbeaten and subservient multitudes know precious little about their own flawed and flailing government, let alone the government of peoples halfway around the world who have successfully governed themselves for millennia before anyone ever heard of, or even thought about, anything called “America.” No policy founded upon unconscionable lies (Manufactured Mendacity) and sold through relentless, Orwellian demagoguery (Managed Mystification) can ever hope to do anything but unravel. The Iraqi and Vietnamese people didn’t bring this disgraceful and debilitating dishonor upon Americans. The “rabid right at home” in America did that. Mystic Dread, Reactionary Panic, Abstract Angst, or just plain Fear Itself (whether you baldly rename it “Monolithic World Communism” or “Global Terrorism”) has never seriously threatened America — the most geographically, economically, and militarily secure nation the world has ever known — from abroad. Rather, the threat to America comes from within: from “the rabid right at home,” and until such time as a viable, dynamic “liberal left” emerges in America able to wield countervailing power against the endemic crypto-fascism represented and personified by the modern Republican Party (what Republican author Kevin Phillips calls a conglomeration of “oil, borrowed money, and radical religion”) — until that time, Americans can blame Iraqis and Vietnamese for whatever they want, as long as they want, for any reason they can imagine or invent, and America will still continue downhill in an avalanche of its own creation and sustenance: Warfare Welfare, Makework Militarism, or just the long-metastasizing cancer otherwise known as Dwight Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex.” When the “commander in chief” commands the army incompetently but the people with cheap, rhetorical ease, buffaloed-by-a-buffoon Americans have little of worth to contribute to Iraq, Vietnam, or anywhere else.
    No one can do a wrong thing the right (meaning “correct”) way. Time for a riot, indeed, because America’s contemporary political and military “leadership” — the Worst and the Dullest — shows no sign of understanding, much less correcting, its own self-serving depredations not just upon the Iraqi people today, but on future generations of our own descendants as well. Such noxious and nefarious nincompoops have a lot of damn gall, or chutzpah, advising Iraqis or the citizens of any other county what to do or not do. The overweening arrogance and incompetence of America’s “political elites” brings to mind the old adage about free advice having a value precisely equal to what one pays for it. And since Americans continue paying enormously more than nothing for the worthless advice and activities of their “leaders,” one has to conclude — as much of the world correctly has — that the American experiment in Democracy has died: killed by the “rabid right at home” in America itself.

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