Trying to convert military aggressions into longterm political control: Iraq, Lebanon (x2)

Today is the 26th anniversary of Israeli PM Menachem Begin’s launching of a large-scale invasion of Lebanon. So, given the notably unsuccessful, or even counter-productive (from Israel’s point of view) record of that invasion, today is an excellent day on which to consider the stalling of the Bush administration’s present attempt to cash out some political gains– inside Iraq– from its decision to invade that country in 2003.
On May 17, 1983, Israel thought it was cashing out its political gains in Lebanon from the invasion of the year before. That was the day Israeli PM Menachem Begin, Lebanese President Amin Gemayyel, and U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz all gathered to sign a final peace treaty between Lebanon and Israel that included provisions for tightly US- and Israel-dominated security cooperation between Lebanon and Israel. (I don’t have my 1984 book on Lebanon to hand to provide all the details I need here. It should be with my by tomorrow.)
You can read the text of the May 17 agreement here. Though it was duly signed and ratified by all parties (including, I believe, by a Lebanese government that had been sufficiently bought and paid for by the US-Israeli alliance by that time), within less than nine months it was toast.
Lebanese nationalist forces backed by Syria were able to force out of the country the US Marine force that, though it was originally deployed in August 1982 to protect unarmed Palestinians, rapidly thereafter moved closer to giving outright support to Gemayyel’s minority government instead. The US plan in Lebanon also relied heavily on building up the national army to support their ally, Gemayel. But in February 1984, when Gemayyel ordered the army to start shooting into civilian areas, the majority of nationalist-minded Shiites who made up its ranks simply deserted en masse rather than follow those orders, and the whole army collapsed. (I recently blogged a little about that, here.)
With no “Lebanese Army” left to provide a cover for their presence, the Marines fled the country. By mid-February Gemayel– a man always more opportunistic than principled– had made his peace with Damascus and Amal.
The May 17 agreement lay in tatters on the floor.
So now, a different US administration is working very hard to translate its position as post-invasion military occupier of Iraq into a vassalage-style agreement with Iraq that is very similar– or even more draconian– than what Shultz and Begin were trying to impose on Lebanon in May 1983.
Patrick Cockburn is the western MSM-er who’s been doing the best and most systematic coverage of the actual extremely coercive “diplomacy” of this attempt. Here and here. Huge kudos to him.
The first of those pieces leads thus:

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US…

The second leads thus:

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.
US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday…

As Cockburn and others note, however, the very coercive nature of the US diplomacy involved has aroused some very serious Iraqi pushback.
The WaPo.com’s excellent Dan Froomkin published a survey of accounts of some political aspects this pushback in his post yesterday.
Iraq’s nationalist forces are very smartly mounting their campaign against the arrangements proposed by the Bushists at three distinct levels:

1. Through broad grassroots organizing against it. You can find some accounts of this through the Sadrist “Al-Kufiyya” news agency. Juan Cole has also produced two good recent compilations of accounts of this, on May 31, and June 3.

2. Through some fascinating cross-sect and cross-party political work inside Iraq. You can find many glimpses of that in the sources cited by Cole… and
3. Through political contacts Iraqi lawmakers are pursuing with American legislators and other sectors of US society. In a sense, this is the most intriguing aspect of the campaign. These Iraqi legislators are using precisely what we might call the emergence of a global political community– that is backed up by vastly improved global communications and by the strengthening of many key global norms– to appeal across national borders to their counterparts inside US society. And they are doing so in a way that may be very fruitful indeed. (Though they certainly shouldn’t end their grassroots organizing at home in favor of this international diplomatic initiative!)

This is where the events that Froomkin was reporting on yesterday become so important.
Basically, we now have these two Iraqi parliamentarians right here in Washington. (I think I’m going to a lunch event with them in about an hour’s time.) They are Nadeem Al-Jaberi, described by Reuters as “a co-founder of the al-Fadhila Shi’ite political party” and Khalaf Al-Ulayyan, identified as “A Sunni Iraqi lawmaker… [and] founder of the National Dialogue Council.”
That Reuters report tells us that on Wednesday Jaberi and Ullayan testified in person directly at a hearing convened by the International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee,. They stated in no uncertain terms,

that U.S. troops should leave Iraq, and that talks on the long-term security pact should be postponed until after they are gone.
“What are the threats that require U.S. forces to be there?” asked Nadeem Al-Jaberi…speaking through a translator.
“I would like to inform you, there are no threats on Iraq. We are capable of solving our own problems,” he declared. He favored a quick pullout of U.S. forces, which invaded the country in 2003 and currently number around 155,000.
… Khalaf Al-Ulayyan… said bilateral talks on a long-term security deal should be shelved until American troops leave — and until there is a new government in Washington.
“We prefer to delay until there is a new administration in the United States,” he said.

Froomkin also provided a link to what was described as a letter that Jaberi and Ulayyan handed to the Subcommittee chair, Rep. William Delahunt (D.Mass.) (Take care, the link is actually, despite appearances, to a PDF file.)
The letter bears the signatures of only 31 of the 275 members of the Iraqi parliament. But at the top, the heading says that Jaberi and Ulayyan affirmed that it had been signed by these MPs “on behalf of parties representing a majority of the 275 members.”
The letter made two main arguments. The first was that under the procedures of the (Bremer-designed) Iraqi Constitution itself, any international agreement signed by the Iraqi “government” needs to be ratified by the parliament in order to enter into force.
The second was simply,

We wish to inform you that the majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any … agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq, in accordance with a declared timetable anmd without leaving behind any military bases, soldiers or hired fighters.

Excellent clarity.
So what will Bush do next? The Democrat-strong US congress is (a) holding hearings like this one that expose the administration’s imperialistic shenanigans for what they are, and (b) strongly opposed to the idea that Bush might have the right to conclude any form of binding longterm agreement with Iraq without that agreement being submitted to the legislature here in the US, too.
Where is Bush’s “pro-democracy” rhetoric on this question, I wonder?
The WaPo’s Karen DeYoung has a piece in today’s paper in which she provides details of the follow-up in the to-and-fro between the administration and Congress over this question of the longterm agreement with Iraq. She also reports that the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, tried to claim that the opposition that Iraqis had voiced to the proposed text had all been stirred up by the Iranians.
She quotes an un-named Iraqi official– probably foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari (whose personal qualities somewhat resemble those of Amin Gemayyel, see above)– as saying that Iraqi government may seek an extension of the UN Security Council “mandate” over Iraq rather than succumbing to the terms Bush is proposing for switching to a bilateral agreement.
Anyway, I guess I want to make a few last quick points here before I get ready for this lunch.

1. The Iraqi nationalists really do seem to be getting their act together these days, pushing back five years’ worth of dedicated attempts by the US occupying force and others to foment divide-and-rule hatreds and conflicts.
2. Though international law maintains its is quite illegal for an occupying power to push through deep changes in the governance system of an occupied territory, nevertheless, the system imposed by the US occupiers in Iraq does allow for some accountability on issues of fundamental national importance there– such as whether the country gets turned into a longterm vassal of the US, or not. The “democratization” rhetoric and campaign maintained by the Bushists has also sort of ended up hoisting them on their own petard with regard to allowing the Iraqi nationalist lawmakers a voice within the US system.
3. The norms of national sovereignty and the accountability of governments to their citizens are anyway very well entrenched internationally these days. The arguments made by the Iraqi lawmakers cannot simply be ignored– even here, in the United States.
4. In an international system that is today marked by greater degrees of international connectivity and transparency than ever before, as well as by the spread of respect for the global norms described above, 19th-century-style colonial campaigns to convert raw military dominance into solid political gains– as in the consolidation of the British Raj in India, or whatever– are simply no longer feasible. Israel learned this long and slowly in Lebanon after 1982, and then again in a short and sharp “refresher lesson” in 2006. The US political system is only now starting to learn this lesson in Iraq.

Bottom line: Military power just ain’t as useful to the world’s big nations as it once was. Heck, you could even say that when they employ it, the effect is nearly always actually counter-productive.
Whatever next? A world without wars of aggression? A world in which nations stay within their own recognized boundaries and resolve conflicts through negotiation, mediation, litigation, or other nonviolent means? How amazingly revolutionary! How very, um, United Nations-y.
(Which was, we can recall, a US creation, back in 1945.)