The Importance of Losing the War

The Importance of Losing the War

Jonathan Schell, The Nation September 5, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=16720

The basic mistake of American policy in Iraq is not that the Pentagon --

believing the fairy tales told it by Iraqi exile groups and overriding
State Department advice -- forgot, when planning "regime change," to
bring along a spare government to replace the one it was smashing.

The mistake was not that, once embarked on running the place, the
administration did not send enough troops to do the job. Not that a
civilian contingent to aid the soldiers was lacking. Not that the
Baghdad museum, the Jordanian Embassy, the United Nations and Imam Ali
mosque, among other places, were left unguarded. Not that no adequate
police force, whether American or Iraqi, was provided to keep order
generally. Not that the United States, seeking to make good that lack,
then began to recruit men from the most hated and brutal of Saddam's
agencies, the Mukhabarat.

It is not that, in an unaccountable and unparalleled lapse in America's
once sure-fire technical know-how, Iraq's electrical, water and fuel
systems remain dysfunctional. Not that the administration has erected a
powerless shadow government composed in large measure of the same
clueless exiles that misled the administration in the first place.

Nor is it that the administration has decided to privatize substantial
portions of the Iraqi economy before the will of the Iraqi people in
this matter is known. Not that the occupation forces have launched
search-and-destroy operations that estrange and embitter a population
that increasingly despises the United States. Not that, throughout, a
bullying diplomacy has driven away America's traditional allies.

All these blunders and omissions are indeed mistakes of American policy,

and grievous ones, but they are secondary mistakes. The main mistake of
American policy in Iraq was waging the war at all. That is not a
conclusion that anyone should have to labor to arrive at.

Something like the whole world, including most of its governments and
tens of millions of demonstrators, plus the UN Security Council,
Representative Dennis Kucinich, Governor Howard Dean, made the point
most vocally before the fact. They variously pointed out that the Iraqi
regime gave no support to al-Qaeda, predicted that the United States
would be unable to establish democracy in Iraq by force (and that
therefore no such democracy could serve as a splendid model for the rest

of the Middle East), warned that "regime change" for purposes of
disarmament was likely to encourage other countries to build weapons of
mass destruction, and argued that the allegations that Iraq already had
weapons of mass destruction and was ready to use them at any moment
(within forty-five minutes after the order was delivered, it was said)
were unproven.

All these justifications for the war are now in history's ash heap,
never to be retrieved -- adding a few largish piles to the mountains of
ideological claptrap (of the left, the right and what have you) that
were the habitual accompaniment of the assorted horrors of the twentieth

century.

Recognition of this mistake -- one that may prove as great as the
decision to embark on the Vietnam War -- is essential if the best (or at

any rate the least disastrous) path out of the mess is to be charted.
Otherwise, the mistake may be compounded, and such indeed is the
direction in which a substantial new body of opinion now pushes the
United States.

In this company are Democrats in Congress who credulously accepted
the Bush administration's arguments for the war or simply caved in to
administration pressure, hawkish liberal commentators in the same
position and a growing minority of right-wing critics.

They now recommend increasing American troop strength in Iraq. Some
supported the war and still do. "We must win," says Democratic Senator
Joseph Biden, who went on "Good Morning America" to recommend
dispatching more troops. His colleague Republican John McCain agrees.
The right-wing Weekly Standard is of like mind. Others were doubtful
about the war at the beginning but think the United States must "win"
now that the war has been launched.

The New York Times, which opposed an invasion without UN Security
Council support, has declared in an editorial that "establishing a free
and peaceful Iraq as a linchpin for progress throughout the Middle East
is a goal worth struggling for, even at great costs." And, voicing a
view often now heard, it adds, "We are there now, and it is essential to

stay the course." Joe Klein, of Time magazine, states, "Retreat is not
an option."

"Winning," evidently, now consists not in finding the weapons of mass
destruction that once were the designated reason for fighting the war,
but in creating a democratic government in Iraq -- the one that will
serve as a model for the entire Middle East. Condoleezza Rice has called

that task the "moral mission of our time." Stanford professor Michael
McFaul has even proposed a new Cabinet department whose job would be
"the creation of new states." The Pentagon's job will be restricted to
"regime destruction;" the job of the new outfit, pursuing a "grand
strategy on democratic regime change," will be, Houdini-like, to pull
new regimes out of its hat.

On the other hand, the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
which recently produced a report on the situation in Iraq, thinks a big
part of the problem is bad public relations and counsels "an intense
communications and marketing campaign to help facilitate a profound
change in the Iraqi national frame of mind."

These plans to mass-produce democracies and transform the mentalities of

whole peoples have the look of desperate attempts -- as grandiose as
they are unhinged from reality -- to overlook the obvious: First, that
people, not excluding Iraqis, do not like to be conquered and occupied
by foreign powers and are ready and able to resist; second, that
disarmament, which is indeed an essential goal for the new century, can
only, except in the rarest of circumstances, be achieved not through war

but through the common voluntary will of nations. It is not the
character of the occupation, it is occupation itself that in a multitude

of ways the Iraqis are rejecting.

The practical problem of Iraq's future remains. The Iraqi state has been

forcibly removed. That state was a horrible one; yet a nation needs a
state. The children must go to school; the trains must run; the museums
must open; murderers must be put in jail. But the United States,
precisely because it is a single foreign state, which like all states
has a highly self-interested agenda of its own, is incapable of
providing Iraq with a government that serves its own people. The United
States therefore must, to begin with, surrender control of the operation

to an international force.

It will not suffice to provide "UN cover" for an American operation, as
the administration now seems to propose. The United States should
announce a staged withdrawal of its forces in favor of and in
conjunction with whatever international forces can be cobbled together.
It should also (but surely will not) provide that force with about a
hundred billion or so dollars to do its work -- a low estimate of what
is needed to rebuild Iraq.

Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United
States must learn to lose this war -- a harder task, in many ways, than
winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive

fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time (well, of the next

few years, anyway).

The cost of leaving will certainly be high, but not anywhere near as
high as trying to "stay the course," which can only magnify and postpone

the disaster. And yet -- regrettable to say -- even if this difficult
step is taken, no one should imagine that democracy will be achieved by
this means. The great likelihood is something else -- something worse:
perhaps a recrudescence of dictatorship or civil war, or both. An
interim period -- probably very brief -- of international trusteeship is

the best solution, yet it is unlikely to be a good solution. It is
merely better than any other recourse.

The good options have probably passed us by. They may never have
existed. If the people of Iraq are given back their country, there isn't

the slightest guarantee that they will use the privilege to create a
liberal democracy. The creation of democracy is an organic process that
must proceed from the will of the local people. Sometimes that will is
present, more often it is not. Vietnam provides an example. Vietnam
today enjoys the self-determination it battled to achieve for so long;
but it has not become a democracy.

On the other hand, just because Iraq's future remains to be decided by
its talented people, it would also be wrong to categorically rule out
the possibility that they will escape tyranny and create democratic
government for themselves. The United States and other countries might
even find ways of offering modest assistance in the project; it is
beyond the power of the United States to create democracy for them.

The matter is not in our hands. It never was.

Jonathan Schell, the Harold Willens Peace Fellow of the Nation
Institute, is the author of the recently published "The Unconquerable
World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People" (Metropolitan).
Reprinted with permission from the September 22, 2003 issue of The
Nation. Read more at TomDispatch.com.

***

The UN should just say 'no'
By Phyllis Bennis

The Bush administration's recent draft United Nations resolution
proposing a
new role for the UN in Iraq would be a welcome step if it were done to
help
improve the lives of Iraqi citizens. But the reassessment is not a
reflection of any concern regarding the illegality of the occupation,
the
lack of legitimacy of the US presence in Iraq, or the impact on Iraqis
of
Washington's abject failure to provide for even the minimal humanitarian

needs of the population. Instead, it reflects a growing concern
regarding
what the New York Times called the "high cost of occupation" for the US
in
Iraq - costs both in US soldiers' lives and in dollars.

The high price in dollars is being paid by US taxpayers as the
administration of President George W Bush is planning an emergency
request
of US$60 billion to $70 billion to cover current fighting and
reconstruction
costs. This follows $79 billion that was released in April. The
beneficiaries are corporations close to the Bush administration, notably

Halliburton and Bechtel, which are earning billions of dollars.

The high price in lives is being paid by US troops assigned to
state-building duties for which they have no training, by translators
and
other Iraqis working with and for the US occupation authorities, and by
UN
humanitarian staff who are seen as working under or within the US
occupation
structure. The highest price in lives is paid by Iraqi civilians, both
in
armed attacks and as a result of the lack of sufficient clean water,
electricity and medical care.

The current proposal under consideration calls for the creation of a
UN-endorsed multilateral military force to join the US occupation force
in
Iraq. It would function as a separate, parallel force with a separate
command structure, but the commander would be an American. US officials
make
clear their intention that the multilateral force would be accountable
to
the Pentagon's strategic control. There is a history of this kind of US
control of UN peacekeeping operations through imposing a US general or
admiral as UN commander. This was US practice during the Bill Clinton
administration in Somalia, Haiti, and elsewhere.

But what is unprecedented is that the plan does not envisage Washington
even
sharing authority and decision-making with the UN itself or with the
governments sending international contingents, let alone ending its
occupation and turning over full authority to the UN to oversee a rapid
return to Iraqi independence.

A number of countries, facing US pressure, might be prepared to send
troops
with a new UN resolution providing an international imprimatur. US
officials
have actually described a new UN resolution's value as providing
"political
cover" to governments wanting to participate but restrained by public
opposition. Countries under particular pressure to send troops include
Pakistan, Turkey and India.

It is likely that many members of the Security Council might be willing
to
cave in to such pressure. Any resolution, however, would also have to
win
approval from Russia, Germany, and especially France - which have made
positive remarks about the resolution but are likely to demand more
control
for the Security Council over the mission. French Foreign Minister
Dominique
de Villepin said that "the eventual arrangements cannot just be the
enlargement or adjustment of the current occupation forces. We have to
install a real international force under a mandate of the United Nations

Security Council."

The new UN resolution also encourages other countries to contribute
funds,
as well as troops, to the US occupation. A donors' conference is
scheduled
for late October in Spain, a key US ally. If a UN resolution is passed
before that date with little acrimony in the Security Council, new
amounts
of financial support will be forthcoming.

What should be done
Any new UN resolution aimed at providing more legitimacy for the US-UK
occupation of Iraq should be opposed. Countries should not send troops
or
funds to maintain or strengthen or "internationalize" Washington's
occupation.

Oppose Richard Perle's claim that "our main mistake is that we haven't
succeeded in working closely with Iraqis before the war so that an Iraqi

opposition could have been able to immediately take the matter in hand".

Instead, the over-reliance of the Bush administration on the claims of
the
exiled Iraqi opposition, driven by self-interest and ideological fervor
rather than grounded information, is one of the main reasons for the US
failure to anticipate the postwar crisis in Iraq.

Only after the US-UK occupation has ended should the UN and a
multilateral
peacekeeping force return to Iraq. Their mandate should be for a very
short
and defined period, with the goal of assisting Iraq in reconstruction
and
overseeing election of a governing authority.

As belligerent powers who initiated the war, and as occupying powers,
the
United States and the United Kingdom are required to provide for the
humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. While their military occupation
should be ended immediately, Washington and London remain obligated to
pay
the continuing costs of Iraq's reconstruction, including the bulk of the

cost of UN humanitarian and peacekeeping deployments. The US should
immediately make public a realistic estimate for the cost of
reconstruction
in Iraq.

Washington should turn over funds to UN authority, beginning with a
direct
grant of at least $75 billion (the initial amount spent on waging the
war)
for reconstruction work. These funds should be raised from an
excess-profits
tax on corporations benefiting from the war and postwar privatization in

Iraq, as well as from Pentagon budget lines initially aimed at carrying
out
war in Iraq.

The United States should use this moment to reverse its longstanding
opposition to the creation of a standing UN rapid-reaction military
force,
beginning with reconstituting the UN Charter-mandated Military Staff
Committee.

Phyllis Bennis (pbennis@...) is a Fellow at the Institute for

Policy Studies and writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus.
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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