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Today's
Stories
May
5, 2004
Gilbert
Achcar
Bush's Cakewalk into the Iraq Quaqmire
May
4, 2004
Human
Rights Watch
A Timeline of Torture and Abuse Allegations
and Responses
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
David
Peterson
CBS, Self-Censorship & Iraq
Barry
Lando
CACI's Private Torture Chambers
Patrick
Cockburn
Torture: Iraqis Disgusted, But Not Surprised
Dr.
Susan Block
Indecent Insurgents: Watch What You Say
Fidel
Castro
A Mindless, Unnecessary War
Mike
Whitney
Empire of Torture
Sonali
Kolhatkar
How to Stop the War: Demonstrate Against
John Kerry
Josh
Frank
The Lost Sierra Club
Stan
Goff
The Role: Another Open Letter to US Troops in Iraq
Agustin
Velloso
Spare Us Your Disgusting Ethics
Stew
Albert
American Know-How
Website
of the Day
Scenes from a Cover-Up
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
April 20, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Bush and Kerry Share a Problem
Stan
Cox
Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers
Bruce
Anderson
On Listening to Air America
Joseph
Kalvoda
Czech Mate for Condi
Greg
Moses
Yesterday's Intelligence
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
Website
of the Day
Santorum Happens
April 19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
May
5, 2004
Self-Deception
and Selective Expertise
Bush's Cakewalk
into the Iraq Quagmire
By GILBERT ACHCAR
In an important book first published
in 1958 and unjustifiably underrated since- probably due to its
title, The Causes of World War Three, referring to the
tensest years of the Cold War-C. Wright Mills expressed views
the relevance of which should be obvious today. I consider these
views central to any understanding of modern U.S. politics. That
is why I hope you will excuse me if I quote some of them at length:
"[I]n those societies
in which the means of power are enormous in scope and centralized
in form a few men [in the following sentences, we may now ad:
"and women"G.A.] may be so placed within the historical
structure that by their decisions about the use of these means
they modify the structural conditions under which most men live."
"At the top [of the United
States] there has emerged an elite whose power probably exceeds
that of any small group of men in world history, the Soviet elite
possibly excepted. The middle levels are often a drifting set
of stalemated forces; the middle does not link the bottom with
the top."
"Corporation men move
into the political directorate, and the decline of Congressional
politicians to the middle levels of power is accelerated. The
legislative function often becomes merely a balancing of sovereign
localities and partial interests Behind the increased official
secrecy great decisions are made without benefit of public or
even of Congressional debate."
"The leading men of the
U.S. government--the political directorate-are neither professional
party politicians nor professional civil servants; they are former
generals and former corporation men or the hangers-on of the
higher business and legal circles. The state in which we live,
in its personnel and in its persistent outlook, does indeed appear
at times as a committee of these ruling circles of corporation
and high military."
At the time of his writing,
Mills ascribed to these ruling circles a foreign policy based
on what he called "crackpot realism." They are "so
rigidly focused on the next step that they become creatures of
whatever the main drift-the opportunist actions of innumerable
men-brings In crackpot realism, a high-flying moral rhetoric
is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter
of unfocused fears and demands."
* *
*
What I would like to demonstrate
in this presentation is that the administration of George W.
Bush is also inspired by what I would call "crackpot idealism."
I am evidently referring here to the traditional dichotomy in
International Relations Theory between "realism" and
"idealism." If "realists" are to be described
as pragmatic opportunists and their "crackpot" variant
is composed of those who combine unfocused "realism"
with "high-flying moral rhetoric," then "crackpot
idealists" are those whose actions are directly inspired
by the same "high-flying moral rhetoric" adopted as
a guiding focus of foreign policy in a way that stands in blatant
contradiction to pragmatic needs.
I am not insinuating here that
the Bush administration is motivated purely and solely by ideology.
Quite the contrary. I am fully aware of the very oily factors
that underlie the slide of this administration toward establishing
a direct military control of the area stretching from Central
Asia and the Caucasus to the Arab-Persian Gulf-as I have explained
elsewhere. My point is, however, that in pursuing this goal for
obvious economic and strategic  reasons, the Bush administration
has been inspired in many of its concrete decisions-in the
case of Iraq, and in this case exclusively -by ideological
factors of the kind that every true "realist" could
only consider as utterly disastrous. The Bush administration
has acted on ideological views so contrary to the "reality
principle" that they could only lead into this major nightmare
of U.S. imperial policy, known since Vietnam as a "quagmire."
I say "in the case of
Iraq, exclusively" because this administration's behavior
is a peculiar combination of "idealism" and "realism,"
with the "crackpot" character as the only constant
feature. This combination was already obvious in the themes put
forward by candidate George W. Bush in the presidential election
of 2000. On the one side stood the man who blamed strongly the
Clinton administration for its "nation-building" ventures,
the candidate whose foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice,
wrote in 2000, in Foreign Affairs, the following sentence,
which has acquired a peculiar ring since then:
"Using the American armed
forces as the world's '911' will degrade capabilities, bog soldiers
down in peacekeeping roles, and fuel concern among other great
powers that the United Sates has decided to enforce notions of
'limited sovereignty' worldwide in the name of humanitarianism."
On the other side stood the
man whose close friends and allies signed the "Statement
of Principles" of The Project for The New American Century
that declared:
"Of course, the United
States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we
cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership
or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has
a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia,
and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite
challenges to our fundamental interests Such a Reaganite policy
of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable
today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on
the successes of this past century and to ensure our security
and our greatness in the next."
The very history of the Bush
administration illustrates perfectly this duality. During his
first months in the White House, George W. Bush conducted a foreign
policy that seemed to be a continuation of his father's very
"realist" legacy, with the exception of the son's outstandingly
high contempt for international institutions and treaties. The
way he handled, at that early stage of his mandate, the relations
with Vladimir Putin, as well as the issue of the U.S. Navy spy
plane with the Chinese leadership, gave the impression that here
was a sober administration, inspired by standard Kissingerian
"realism."
September 11, 2001, to be sure,
changed the whole tone and pace of the administration's foreign
policy: the moment required grandiloquent rhetoric, and George
W. Bush-though not as well trained in acting as his model Ronald
Reagan-delivered some of those "great speeches" that
inspire voters' enthusiasm in times of crisis and anxiety. However,
the highest priority on the agenda of the administration-higher
than the "war against terror"-was to seize the opportunity
of the shock provoked by 9/11 to lay U.S. military hands on the
vast hydrocarbon area to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. In
other words, its main concern was to establish in that area a
long-term presence of troops, far beyond whatever time was needed
to get rid of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. For that, a
convenient pretext had to be given. The "neoconservative"
discourse on democracy provided it, or at least it was deemed
most appropriate for the purpose.
As time went by after the invasion
of Afghanistan by U.S. troops and in the run-up to the invasion
of Iraq, the neocons' crusade for bringing democracy-allegedly-to
the Muslim world in general, and the Arab world in particular,
came more and more to the fore. This related also directly to
the great difficulties encountered by the administration in trying
to convince the U.S. public and the world of the validity of
its argument regarding "weapons of mass destruction"
as legitimizing the war. The closer we got to the planned invasion,
the more George W. Bush and his dedicated ally Tony Blair got
entangled in political contradictions for having attempted to
play the U.N. card, and the more the "democratic" argument
was emphasized.
Thus on February 26, 2003,
little less than one month prior to the assault on Iraq, the
President himself delivered a neocon speech on democracy in the
Middle East to a neocon audience: the American Enterprise Institute.
He promised to bring freedom and democratic values to the peoples
of the Middle East, but by the same token he provided the fundamental
pretext for a prolonged presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Referring
to Germany and Japan, where U.S. troops are still stationed by
the tens of thousands fifty years after they first occupied these
countries at the end of World War II, he said:
"Rebuilding Iraq will
require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our
own: we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day
more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before-
in the peace that followed a world war."
Yet, for the whole period up
to the invasion of Iraq-and beyond, regarding the rest of the
world-the truth of the matter is that we were facing a very classical
combination of double-tongued speech with conflicting deeds.
A classical case of "split presidential personality"
as Thomas Carothers, from the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, wrote in an excellent article:
"The war on terrorism
has laid bare the deeper fault line that has lurked below the
surface of George W. Bush's foreign policy from the day he took
office-the struggle between the realist philosophy of his father
and the competing pull of neo-Reaganism."
"'Bush the realist' actively
cultivates warm relations with 'friendly tyrants' in many parts
of the world, while 'Bush the neo-Reaganite' makes ringing calls
for a vigorous new democracy campaign in the Middle East."
In order to be fair, Carothers
added:
"President Clinton made
liberal use of pro-democracy rhetoric and did support democracy
in many places, but throughout his presidency, U.S. security
and economic interests-whether in China, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan,
Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, or various other countries-frequently
trumped an interest in democracy. The same was true in the George
H.W. Bush administration and certainly also under Ronald Reagan,
whose outspoken support for freedom in the communist world was
accompanied by close U.S. relations with various authoritarian
regimes useful to the United States, such as those led by Suharto
in Indonesia, Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, the generals of Nigeria,
and the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico.
"George W. Bush is thus
scarcely the first U.S. president to evidence a split personality
on democracy promotion."
"Carothers could easily
show the continuation of this pattern under Bush Jr.: the contradiction
between the democratic proclamations, on the one hand, and on
the other hand, in Carothers's words, the "bear hug"
to putsch leader General Pervez Musharraf; the friendship with
"the autocratic leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan,"
as well as with "the totalitarian megalomaniac running Turkmenistan";
or inversely, the eagerness to "accept" the April 2002
coup attempt against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez; or the statements
warning that the popular reelection of Palestinian President
Yasir Arafat would be "unacceptable."
We could add to this already
long list the more recent instance of sharp contradiction between
the Bush administration's boast about its protégé's
democratic triumph in the Republic of Georgia-though there is
a lot to say about the pattern of U.S. interference in the internal
affairs of such countries-and what is happening on the other
side of the border, in neighboring Azerbaijan. There, we find
the traditional complicity between Washington and the despotic
ruler of an oil-rich Muslim country: Ilham Aliyev, whose father
has run the country for almost thirty years before handing him
power. About Azerbaijan, The Washington Post has recently
lapsed into what some might regard as "vulgar Marxism":
"Pentagon officials argue
that Azerbaijan is vital to the war on terrorism But a more obvious
source of President Bush's policy is oil. Over the last decade,
Mr. Aliyev and his father granted billions in contracts to such
companies as BP-Amoco, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil. He also
has supported a $3 billion pipeline that is to carry oil from
the Caspian to a port in Turkey. According to Mr. Aliyev, Mr.
Bush once pronounced him an honorary citizen of Texas in appreciation
of his support for American oil companies."
* *
*
In all that, there is nothing
new under the burning sun of the hydrocarbon-rich lands: it is
the same old business as usual. The Iraqi case stands nevertheless
as an exception to this general rule. Is it because the opposition
that Washington faced before launching this war was the highest
ever experienced by a U.S. administration prior to a military
onslaught? Is it because they knew that their central argument
about "weapons of mass destruction" would not stand
the test of reality? Whatever the reason, the fact is that Bush
Jr. and his collaborators have acted for a while in conformity
with their democratic proclamations: they have played by the
rules of their own pledges, so that they could uphold at least
their subsidiary argument about "democratization."
Against an impressive amount
of warnings, from a wide variety of sources, including the intelligence
community, as to the complexity of the Iraqi situation and the
high risks involved in letting loose, imprudently, the long-compressed
popular dynamics in that country, the Bush administration chose
to listen only to a very specific set of "experts":
the Pentagon's friends among the Iraqi opposition in exile. The
most symptomatic of them in my view is Kanan Makiya-a man who
has much been quoted as part of a neocon cabal led by former
"Trotskyites" that took the helm of U.S. foreign policy,
according to a somewhat phantasmagoric view propagated by both
liberal and conservative circles.
Makiya was recruited at Brandeis
University after becoming the anti-Saddam Hussein intellectual
par excellence for the media, which-after the Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait in August 1990-upgraded to the best-seller list his
Republic of Fear, a labored description of Baathist Iraq
inspired by both Arthur Koestler and George Orwell. He turned
from Trotskyism and friendship with people like Tariq Ali (and
myself) into becoming the house intellectual of Ahmad Chalabi,
the famous Iraqi crook and Donald Rumsfeld's buddy. Chalabi leads
the U.S.-subsidized Iraqi National Congress and is now a key
member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, working
under the Coalition Provisional Authority of U.S. "proconsul"
Paul Bremer, as the London Economist likes to call him.
Kanan Makiya played a key role
in urging the invasion and in designing the U.S. blueprint for
post-Baathist Iraq. He has been involved recently in drafting
the "interim" constitution meant to regulate the supposedly
"sovereign" country under U.S. occupation. Makiya is
one of those who made the most intensive use of the completely
misleading analogy with Nazi Germany and post-1945 de-Nazification.
Listen to what he said to the American Enterprise Institute in
October 2002 -soft music to the ears of those longing to lay
their hands over Iraq for a long haul.
In defining the assumptions
he was making, Makiya insisted on the necessity that "the
Government of the United States, further to a treaty with a new
duly constituted Iraqi government, agrees to keep a military
presence inside Iraq whose purpose is to guarantee the territorial
integrity of Iraq for a period measured in years, not months."
As if they needed to be reminded of the importance of the booty
at stake, he told his audience that "Iraq is not Afghanistan,"
but "rich enough" to present the U.S. with "a
historic opportunity that is as large as anything that has happened
in the Middle East since the fall of the Ottoman Empire."
Then he went on describing his vision of future Iraq, very much
modeled on post-war Germany and Japan, including the limitation
of military expenditure and the renouncement to the "right
of belligerency."
At a joint press conference
with Richard Perle, on the eve of the invasion in March 2003,
Makiya gave a hint of what he and his friends had been telling
the administration for a very long time with regard to the invasion
of Iraq.
"I say to you that history
will judge this war to have been a great turning point for the
better in the affairs of the Middle East. If and only if the
President and his Cabinet stick resolutely, doggedly even, to
this idea for this democratic vision of a secular federal and
democratic Iraq. Even if the President has to go into this enterprise
alone, which of course is not the case, the judgment of the world,
of history will overwhelm his critics the day after. Critics
who are too short sighted for reasons of interest, intellectual
laziness, and sheer lack of political imagination to understand
the far reaching nature of what this President is about to do."
And when asked if he agreed
with the statement made the day before by Vice President Cheney
that American forces will be "greeted as liberators"
in Iraq, Makiya replied: "I most certainly do agree with
that. As I told the President on January 10th, I think they will
be greeted with sweets and flowers in the first months and simply
have very, very little doubt that that is the case."
And how could he disagree with
Cheney? The latter himself had given Makiya's expertise as his
key reference in making his prognosis. That was on NBC's program
"Meet the Press." When Tim Russert, the interviewer,
insisted, asking what "if your analysis is not correct,
and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors,"
Cheney replied:
"Well, I don't think it's
likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that
we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis
in the last several months myself, had them to the White House.
The president and I have met with them, various groups and individuals,
people who have devoted their lives from the outside to trying
to change things inside Iraq. And like Kanan Makiya who's a professor
at Brandeis, but an Iraqi, he's written great books about the
subject, knows the country intimately, and is a part of the democratic
opposition and resistance. The read we get on the people of Iraq
is there is no question but what they want is to get rid of Saddam
Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States
when we come to do that."
On one issue, the prognosis
made by neocons-as well as by many other people over the whole
political spectrum, myself included-was definitely right: the
invasion of Iraq was, militarily speaking, a "cakewalk,"
as neocon Kenneth Adelman put it, and could hardly be otherwise
for a lot of obvious reasons. The crucial question, however,
was: a "cakewalk" into what?
* *
*
Having known Kanan Makiya personally,
I tend to think that he genuinely and naively believed in most,
if not all, of what he said and wrote during the whole period
before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The world of the neocons is
itself a mixture of naïve and ingenuous "idealists,"
on one hand, and Machiavellian intriguers who typically use "democracy"
as an ideological pretext for less respectable goals. When Kanan
Makiya joins Richard Perle for a press conference, you get the
two elements of the combination mingling together.
Pressing forward his blueprint
for the de-Baathification of Iraq, expert Makiya advocated in
the same March 2003 press conference quoted above the "complete
dismantling of the security services of the regime" and
the "decommissioning of the Iraqi army," as well as
the "dismantling of the forces of the republican guard."
I deem it probable that, in so doing, he was sincerely motivated
by the liberal credo to which he turned after breaking with Marxism
(but keeping in mind the Marxist concern with the dismantlement
of the repressive state institutions as a requisite for a successful
radical change of government). His chief, Chalabi, however, was
certainly much less inspired by "ideals": aspiring
to a ruling position in the country but holding no real cards
of his own-except his close relationship with Donald Rumsfeld-Ahmad
Chalabi's main concern was to dismantle any existing power structure
that could marginalize him in a post-Hussein Iraq.
Now, this prospect was seriously
threatened in the immediate prelude to the invasion: under State
Department sponsorship, with CIA support, and with Saudi and
Jordanian participation, attempts were made to reach a deal,
whereby top circles of the Iraqi army would overthrow Saddam
Hussein and seize power. One could guess that something along
this line was going on, from the frenzy of Saudi diplomatic activity
in January 2003 and a public statement by Colin Powell about
granting amnesty to Iraqi generals who would rise up against
the tyrant.
We now know better, thanks
to an investigation conducted by the New York Times: in
the three months before the war, from late 2002, intensive contacts
were held with high-ranking Iraqi military leaders, including
the Defense Minister, General Sultan Hashem Ahmed al-Tai, who
offered to collaborate in ensuring a smooth transition into a
post-Hussein U.S.-friendly era under Iraqi Army control. An Iraqi
exile rival of Ahmad Chalabi-Iyad Alawi, like him a Shiite member
of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council-played a key role in
the operation. Alawi heads the Iraqi National Accord, a London-based
opposition group of former Iraqi army officers who staged, with
CIA assistance, an unsuccessful coup d'état against Saddam
Hussein in 1996. He is quoted in the NYT report as saying:
"Our idea was to take off the upper crust and leave the
rest of the regime intact."
The article related the outcome
of the story as such:
"General Shahwani, the
leader of the failed 1996 coup, said one of the early notions
during the preparations for the latest war called for an uprising,
at least partly within the army, prompted by Iraqi exiles and
supported by American bombing.
The plan was abandoned, General
Shahwani said, when the Bush administration decided it would
send American troops. But as late as January, administration
officials were apparently divided over whether they should try
to cultivate members of Mr. Hussein's government, and President
Bush himself was undecided on the issue, administration officials
said. The Iraqi exiles were split as well.
In a January meeting, Mr. Bush
discussed the subject with three leading Iraqi exiles - Kanan
Makiya, an author; Hatem Mukhlis, a New York doctor [head of
the Iraqi National Movement, a State Department-backed group
of Iraqi exiles-G.A.]; and Rand Rahim, head of the Iraqi Foundation
[now "Iraqi Ambassador" to the U.S.-G.A.]. At the meeting,
Mr. Makiya said, there was talk of a negotiated settlement that
would keep the army in place. Mr. Makiya, who opposed any such
settlement, said he had a similar discussion with Condoleezza
Rice, the national security adviser."
The Bush administration-or,
more accurately in this case, President Bush himself, since his
administration was divided on the issue, as it has often been
on matters of foreign policy-was actually still wavering in early
February, if not leaning toward the coup solution. This is at
least the impression stemming from the fact that Makiya felt
it necessary to ring the alarm bell: he published in mid-February
a vehement warning under the title "Our Hopes Betrayed"
urging President Bush to "support us." Yet the article
was published in the London Observer, as if Makiya wanted
at the same time to push Tony Blair to intervene on his and his
chief's side. The subheading of the article was: "How a
US blueprint for post-Saddam government quashed the hopes of
democratic Iraqis."
It is worth quoting at length:
"The United States is
on the verge of committing itself to a post-Saddam plan for a
military government in Baghdad with Americans appointed to head
Iraqi ministries, and American soldiers to patrol the streets
of Iraqi cities.
"The plan, as dictated
to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week by a United States-led
delegation, further envisages the appointment by the US of an
unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries
of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this
military government
"The bureaucrats responsible
for this plan are drawn from those parts of the administration
that have always been hostile to the idea of a US-assisted democratic
transformation of Iraq, a transformation that necessarily includes
such radical departures for the region as the de-Baathification
of Iraq (along the lines of the de-Nazification of post-war Germany),
and the redesign of the Iraqi state as a non-ethnically based
federal and democratic entity.
"The plan is the brainchild
of the would-be coup-makers of the CIA and their allies in the
Department of State, who now wish to achieve through direct American
control over the people of Iraq what they so dismally failed
to achieve on the ground since 1991.
Its driving force is appeasement
of the existing bankrupt Arab order, and ultimately the retention
under a different guise of the repressive institutions of the
Baath and the army."
One month later, during his
joint press conference with Perle, Makiya could boast of his
role in persuading the President and Vice President to "liberate"
Iraq. He was now confident that his views about the de-Baathification
and demilitarization of Iraq prevailed. In fact, after the invasion
of Iraq, his chief, Ahmad Chalabi, was put in charge of the De-Baathification
Council, a decisive piece of the post-Hussein power puzzle in
Baghdad. The clumsiness of de-Baathification, along with Paul
Bremer's dissolution of the Iraqi military, including even the
border patrol, leaving as many as 30,000 party members and 400,000
former soldiers in disarray and wild anger, are now almost unanimously
regarded as major blunders that contributed a great deal to turning
Iraq into a quagmire for the U.S.
They were avoidable. Other
options were possible with regard to exerting U.S. control over
Iraq. These were the "missed opportunities" that the
NYT report described in August 2003:
"In interviews in Washington,
Europe and the Middle East, more than half a dozen people with
direct knowledge of the events said the United States might have
missed an opportunity that might have stabilized Iraq as the
government crumbled.
"American and Arab officials
said that as the war approached, the Bush administration was
skeptical of the idea of cutting a lasting deal with high-level
Iraqi officials like General Hashem. Washington, in the end,
was reluctant to leave any high-ranking officials from the Hussein
government in power after the war.
"Such an agreement, they
said, might have required that some officials with ties to Mr.
Hussein stay in power for a time, but might have eased the entry
of American troops into Baghdad and helped keep Iraq's infrastructure
intact
"Still, a deal that offered
the Bush administration something less than the complete dismantling
of the Baghdad government in exchange for a more stable postwar
environment has some appeal in hindsight, now that the guerrilla
war against occupation forces has taken hold."
Neither did Washington take
heed of the precious advices of previous Iraqi ambassador to
the U.N., Nizar Hamdoon, who died in July 2003. Given out to
the administration a few weeks after the fall of Baghdad, Hamdoon's
memo was excerpted later in the New York Times. It included
advice such as, "Don't throw thousands of officers and soldiers
to the street. Their families will be with no income. They may
well turn into terrorists or thieves."
Or, regarding the security
services:
"Given [their] huge numbers
(over 100,000), it will not be wise to throw those people in
the streets and alienate their families. The top echelons should
be removed now The people who run the torture and repression
machines should be kept for trials. Others who were in non-oppressive
and purely administrative jobs should be kept on Government jobs
and payroll at least until they find other civilian jobs or get
successfully integrated in the new system."
* *
*
One could easily write a whole
book about the mishandling by the Bush administration of the
invasion of Iraq and the post-invasion management of the country-let
alone their well known mishandling of the diplomatic prelude
to the invasion. In all these instances, it is obvious that the
administration has been mislead by its belief that U.S. troops
will be "greeted as liberators" in Iraq and that the
management of the country will run like a remake of that of post-1945
Germany. They woke up to the bitter reality of the so-called
"democracy paradox" as defined by Samuel Huntington:
"adoption by non-Western societies of Western democratic
institutions encourages and gives access to power to nativist
and anti-Western political movements."
Allow me to repeat here what
I wrote in July 2003:
"Either Washington will
keep the country under its rule by brute force, exercised directly
or through the mediation of puppets despised by the people and
'legitimized' by a travesty of democracy, on the model of what
it is doing in Afghanistan; or the Iraqis will democratically
choose their own government and elect leaders hostile to continuing
US-British control of their country's resources."
The "mission civilisatrice"-now
the "democratizing mission"-of the U.S. empire has
turned sour: the project of the U.S. occupation to transfer formal
power to a U.S.-appointed government was opposed in the name
of democracy and universal suffrage by an old traditionalist
Muslim theologian! Washington confronts the terrible prospect
of sinking deeper into the Iraqi quagmire or loosing control
of this oil-rich country that has already cost the U.S. taxpayers
more than 100 billion dollars, and bleeds the state coffers for
another one billion dollar per week!
There are attempts to make
scapegoats of Chalabi and his folks. But they can't be held responsible
for the deeds of an administration that chose purposively and
deliberately to disregard other advice and discard other options,
pursuing its central goal-taking hold of Iraq-wrapped in "crackpot
idealism" provided by Donald Rumsfeld's friends. The Bush
administration's handling of the invasion of Iraq and the first
phase of its occupation was a typical case of self-deception
based on selective expertise: the "cakewalk" thus led
directly into the quagmire.
History will probably record
this venture as one of the most important blunders ever committed
by an administration abroad from the standpoint of U.S. imperial
interests. However, by one of those ironies that History is full
of, the "crackpot idealism" provided by the likes of
Kanan Makiya has opened the way for the Iraqi people to seize
control of their own destinies. Much more effectively so, than
what could have been the case had the Bush administration acted
from a craftily Machiavellian perspective and managed to get
hold of Iraq through an arrangement with the Iraqi army and other
apparatuses of the Baathist state.
The clumsy overthrow of Saddam
Hussein by the U.S. could thus become truly the first step toward
this "democratization" of the Middle East that the
neocons have advocated, though in a way deeply contrary to what
they hoped. That could come only at the expense of U.S. domination
of the region, starting with the withdrawal of all U.S. troops.
It would be then, most probably, to the benefit of Islamic fundamentalist
forces, somewhat on the Iranian pattern. The "democracy
paradox" would then have prevailed again over the wild dreams
of "crackpot idealism." And Washington would have acted
one more time as the sorcerer's apprentice, unleashing forces
it cannot master and which backfire on it.
Gilbert Achcar lived in Lebanon for many years before
moving to France where he teaches politics and international
relations at the University of Paris. He's a frequent contributor
to Le Monde Diplomatique and is the author of several
books on contemporary politics. He is the author of The
Clash of Barbarisms: September 11 and the Making of the New World
Disorder and, most recently, Eastern
Caulron, both published by Montly Review Press.
Weekend Edition
Features for April 24 / 25, 2004
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Jeffrey
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Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
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A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
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A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
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October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
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"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
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The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
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Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
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Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
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Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
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