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50 Years of Unbalanced American Foreign Policy About to Burst
(The Independent, 19 May 2004)
Misguided from the start, the war in Iraq is spiralling out of control. Any legitimacy the occupying forces may ever have possessed has been destroyed, and there are signs that Iraqi insurgents are coming together to mount a movement of resistance that could render the country ungovernable. With even more damning images likely to find their way into the public realm in the near future, the United States is facing an historic defeat in Iraq - a blow to American power more damaging than it suffered in Vietnam, and far larger in its global implications. . . . Abuse on the scale suggested by the Red Cross report cannot be accounted for by any mere lapse in discipline or the trailer-park mentality of some American recruits. It was inherent in the American approach to the war. American military intervention in Iraq was based on neo-conservative fantasies about US forces being greeted as liberators. In fact, as could be foreseen at the time, it has embroiled these forces in a brutal and hopeless war against the Iraqi people. . . . The resistance mounted by the Iraqi insurgents can be compared to the anti-colonial liberation struggles of the 1950s, but the closest parallels with the intractable conflict now under way are found in Chechnya, which remains a zone of anarchy and terror despite the ruthless deployment of Russian firepower and the systematic use of torture for more than a decade. It was the prospect of an intractable guerrilla conflict that led many soldiers in the Pentagon to express deep reservations regarding the war. When the civilian leadership launched the invasion of Iraq, US forces were plunged into a type of conflict for which they are supremely ill equipped. . . . leading naked Iraqi males around on dog leads and covering their heads with women's underwear look like techniques designed specifically in order to attack the prisoners' identity and values. The result is that an indelible image of American depravity has been imprinted on the entire Islamic world. . . . In effect, the Bush administration deliberately created a lawless environment in which abuse could be practised with impunity. . . . The torture of Iraqis by US personnel is an application of the Bush administration's strategy in the war on terror. . . . The immediate beneficiary of the torture revelations is likely to be Iran - a fact that seems to have been grasped by Ahmed Chalabi (the Iraqi emigre that the neo-conservatives believed would take the country to American-style democracy), who appears to be forging links with the Iranian regime. At a global level, the principal beneficiary is al-Qa'ida, which is now a more serious threat than it has ever been. . . . In part, the attack on Iraq was simply another exercise in the type of neo-Wilsonian fantasy that is a recurring feature of US foreign policy, but it was also an exercise in realpolitik - and a resource war. A key part of the rationale for the invasion was to enable the US to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, which had come to be seen as complicit with terror and inherently unstable. . . . If it was to pull out from Saudi Arabia, the US needed another source of oil. Only Iraq has it in sufficient quantities - hence the drive for regime change. In this Dr Strangelove-like vision, once Saddam had been removed and Iraq remodelled as a Western-style democracy, the oil would start flowing. The war would be self-financing, and the world economy would move smoothly into the sunlit uplands. . . . Things have not turned out quite like that. . . Iraq will be the scene of a mass exodus. International organisations and Western oil companies will leave and any prospect of rebuilding the country will be lost. Where will that leave Iraq - and its oil? . . . In the US, American withdrawal will be represented as a reward for a job well done. The rest of the world will recognise it as a humiliating defeat, and it is here that the analogy of Vietnam is inadequate. The Iraq war has been lost far more quickly than that in South-east Asia, and the impact on the world is potentially much greater. Whereas Vietnam had little economic significance, Iraq is pivotal in the world economy. No dominoes fell with the fall of Saigon, but some pretty weighty ones could be shaken as the American tanks rumble out of Baghdad. . . . The full implications of such a blow to American power cannot be foreseen. One consequence is clear enough, however. The world has seen the last of liberal imperialism. It died on the killing fields of Iraq. It is no consolation to the people of that country, but at least their sufferings have demonstrated the cruel folly of waging war in order to fight a liberal crusade. . . . The exodus will not be confined to Iraq. Western companies are already leaving Saudi Arabia, the producer of last resort in the global oil market. . . . Iraq and its people are now viewed with a mix of bafflement and hatred, and a mood of despair about the war has set in. Most Americans want out - and soon. Locked in internal dispute, the Democrats have not so far been able to grasp the nettle. The pressure on President Bush to announce that America has completed its mission with the handover of sovereignty may well prove overwhelming.

posted by LoZo 5:02 PM