Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
May
20, 2003
Linda
Heard
The Cage of Occupation
Edward
Said
The Arab Condition
May
19, 2003
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
Ross
Vachon
Dennis Miller's New Gig: the Last
Refuge of Goofy?
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Matt
Vidal
Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market
Michael
S. Ladah
The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map
Robert
Fisk
Bush's Eternal War Backfires
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
May
17 / 18, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Children's Teeth
Peter
Linebaugh
An American Tribute to Christopher
Hill
Gary
Leupp
Nepal Today
Rock and
Rap Confidential
The Republican Plot Against the Dixie Chicks
Walter
Sommerfeld
Plundering Baghdad's Museums
Ron Jacobs
Condy Rice's Yipping Tirades
Thomas
P. Healy
Dubya Does Indy
Tarif Abboushi
Bush, Sharon and the Roadmap
Francis
Boyle
Debating US War Crimes in Iraq
Mark Davis
An Interview with Richard Butler
Richard
Lichtman
American Mourning
Michael
Ortiz Hill
Overcoming Terrorism
Adam
Engel
Uncle Sam is YOU!
Alan Maas
The Best News Show on TV
Poets'
Basement
Reiss, Guthrie, Albert
Elaine
Cassel
Good Enough for an Alien
Website
of the Weekend
The 37 Americans Who Run Iraq
Song of
the Weekend
Talkin' Sounds Just Like Joe McCarthy Blues
May
16, 2003
Leah
Wells
In Iraq Water and Oil Do Mix
Ben Tripp
Fear Itself
Sharon
Smith
The Resegregation of US Schools
Ramzy Baroud
Does Defeat Have to be So Humiliating?
Sam
Hamod
A Nation of Fear
Phil Reeves
Baghdad Pays the Price
Robert
McChesney
The FCC's Big Grab
Mark Engler
Those Who Don't Count
Steve
Perry
We're All
Extras in Bush's Movie
Website
of the Day
Iraq and Our
Energy Future
May
15, 2003
Ayesha
Iman and Sindi Medar-Gould
How
Not to Help Amina Lawal: The Hidden Dangers of Letter
Writing Campaigns
Julie
Hilden
Moussaoui and the Camp X-Ray Detainees:
Can He Get a Fair Trial?
Tanya
Reinhart
Bush's Roadmap: a Ticket to Failure
Laura Carlsen
Here We Go Again: NAFTA Plus or Minus?
Kenneth
Rapoza
The New Fakers: State Dept. Undercuts
New Yorker's Goldberg
Stew Albert
A Story I Will Tell
Steve
Perry
Bush's Little
Nukes
Website
of the Day
Strip-o-Rama
May
14, 2003
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Jason
Leopold
The Pentagon and Hallburton: a Secret
November Deal for Iraq's Oil
David
Lindorff
Fighting the Patriot Act: Now It's
Alaska
John
Chuckman
Giggling into Chaos
Jack
McCarthy
Twin Towers of Journalism: Racism
and Double Standards
Wayne
Madsen
Assassinating JFK Again
M.
Junaid Alam
The Longer View
Paul
de Rooij
The New Hydra's Head:
Propagandists and the Selling of the US/Iraq War
James
Reiss
What? Me Worry?
Steve Perry
More on Saudi Arabia Bombings
Website
of the Day
A Tribute to Ted Joans
May
13, 2003
Saul
Landau
Clear Channel Fogs the Airwaves
Michael
Neumann
Has Islam Failed? Not by Western
Standards
Uri
Avnery
My Meeting with Arafat
Steve Perry
The Saudi Arabia Bombing
Jacob
Levich
Democracy Comes to Iraq: Kick Their Ass and Grab Their Gas
William
Lind
The Hippo and the Mongoose: a Question of Military Theory
The
Black Commentator
Fraud at the Times: Blaming Blacks for White Folks' Mistakes
Stew Albert
Asylum
Hammond
Guthrie
An Illogical Reign
Website
of the Day
Sy Hersh: War and Intelligence
May
12, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Bush, Bin Laden, Bechtel, and Baghdad
Dave
Lindorff
America's Dirty Bombs
Sam
Hamod and Elaine Cassel
Resisting the Bush Administration's War on Liberty
Uzi
Benziman
Sharon and Sons, Inc.
Jason
Leopold
The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Rich Procter
George Jumps the Shark
Federico
Moscogiuri
Going to Israel? Sign or Else
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/12
Book
of the Day
Fooling
Marty Peretz
Website
of the Day
T-Shirts to Protest In
Hot Stories
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
May
21, 2003
The
Real Quagmire is the Aftermath
Everywhere
There are Signs of Breakdown
By PATRICK COCKBURN
In one sense everybody, supporters and opponents
of the war in Iraq, got it wrong. Opponents denounced US plans
to impose neo-imperial control the country. Supporters spoke
of the good things the US planned to bring to the Iraqi people
once Saddam Hussein was overthrown.
It was only as the looting of Baghdad
continued week after week and the US visibly failed to get control
of the situation that the bizarre truth emerged: Washington does
not have any real plans for Iraq at all. It is making up its
policy as it goes along.
Everywhere there are signs of the breakdown.
A few weeks ago I nervously drove from Baghdad to Amman in Jordan
along the great highway through the western desert of Iraq. As
we passed looters, their elderly pick-ups and taxis piled high
with junk, I wondered if it would occur to any of them that they
could make a lot more money by stealing our car at gun point
than they could by stripping old Iraqi government offices of
broken chairs and battered filing cabinets.
But even then I thought that the phenomenon
was probably temporary. At some point the Americans, whom we
could see assiduously checking the papers of aid convoys from
Jordan, would surely feel bound to secure the most important
land route leading to Iraq. In fact it has got worse. Even tough
 Jordanian drivers, who drove to Baghdad
at the height of the bombing, now often refuse to travel the
road because of fear of armed bandits.
Paul Bremer, the new US viceroy in Iraq,
who abruptly replaced retired Gen Jay Garner last week, has supposedly
started a new tough policy, holding looters for 20 days and sacking
some 15,000 to 30,000 former Baath party members. It is probably
all too late. With at least 60 per cent of the Iraqi population
destitute before the war, according to the UN, brief detention
by US troops is not going to end the looting.
The US has largely wasted any political
capital it gained with Iraqis for overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
Iraqis remember that after the Gulf War in 1991 the Iraqi administration,
vicious though it was, did a better job than the US in restoring
electricity and water.
If the US was so uninterested in what
happens in Iraq after the war why on earth did it fight it in
the first place? After all it paid an immense diplomatic price
in terms of the disruption or destruction of its traditional
alliances. George W Bush and Tony Blair tend to treat their previous
justifications for the war as a bit of ancient history, but they
matter still because they are pointers to what may now happen
in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
The US seems to have fought the war essentially
because it wanted a war. It did so because the political fuel
on which present US administration runs is to emphasise the external
threat. Through this means it has won control of the Senate and
may well win the next presidential election.
Other explanations for the war do not
really work. Some US oil companies may have wanted to get a share
of Iraq's oil wealth. But even they need a measure of security
to exploit Iraqi oilfields as some western oilmen dolefully point
out . They are also nervous that it is becoming more and more
dangerous to be an American, or indeed any other type of westerner,
anywhere in the Middle East.
There is nothing particularly strange
or unique to the US about the willingness of its government to
exploit the sense of external threat felt by Americans since
the attacks on the World trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001.
Most governments anywhere in the world, if they thought they
could get away with it, would like to hold a 'khaki' election
in which they could wrap the flag around them and traduce their
opponents as unpatriotic.
The difference in the US today is that
the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, notably Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz, are uniquely reckless, arrogant and ill-informed
about Iraq. At the end of last year Wolfowitz was happily saying
that he thought the Iraqi reaction to the capture of Baghdad
would be much like the entry of the US army into Paris in 1944.
He also apparently believed that Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of
the Iraqi National Congress, then as now one of the most unpopular
men in Iraq, would be the Iraqi Charles de Gaulle.
These past mistakes matter because the
situation in Iraq could easily become much worse. Iraqis realise
that the Saddam may have gone but the US does not have real control
of the country. Last week, just as an emissary of Mr Bremer was
telling academics at Mustansariyah, the ancient university in
the heart of Baghdad, who should be purged from their staff several
gunmen, never identified, drove up and calmly shot dead the deputy
dean.
There will be more such attacks. They
may not be on a large scale. But the tendency is for the present
administration in Washington to respond to any threat by escalating
its rhetoric and over-reacting. It would not take much for President
George W Bush to start describing bomb attacks or assassinations
in Iraq as as one more example of the long arm of al-Qa'ida or
the Iranian government.
Supposed links between Saddam Hussein
and al-Qa'ida, heavily publicised by the White House before the
war, were largely journalistic concoctions. But in the present
anarchy in Iraq al-Qa'ida will find that Iraq, where people are
suffering all the disadvantages of occupation but without civil
order, a fertile recruiting ground.
Patrick Cockburn
is the co-author with Andrew Cockburn of 'Out
of the Ashes: the Resurrection of Saddam Hussein.'
Today's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
Ross
Vachon
Dennis Miller's New Gig: the Last
Refuge of Goofy?
John
Chuckman
Blair's Awkward Lies
Matt
Vidal
Corporate Media and the Myth of the Free Market
Michael
S. Ladah
The Fine Print to Bush's Road Map
Robert
Fisk
Bush's Eternal War Backfires
Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|