Need Iraq Suffer More If We Pull Out?
As it bleeds into its fifth year, the Iraq war is excelling only in savagery and surrealism. We now have an American President publicly citing the similarities to Vietnam as a reason why the US must not withdraw - and he is merrily quoting Graham Greene’s anti-war masterpiece The Quiet American in his defence. Far from thinking anything has gone wrong, he declares: “The Iraqi people owe the American people a great debt of gratitude. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.”
Meanwhile, the Iraqi psyche is so wrecked by the 7/7 blasting on to their streets 24/7 that my Iraqi friends report mass hysteria gnawing into the survivors. After a small string of attacks by badgers - you know, the little furry creatures - in Basra, so many people were convinced this was a new weapon of war that UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer had to announce publicly: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”
The last excuse the remaining defenders of the war can scrape together is - yes, but it’ll be even worse if we leave. As David Petraeus, the commander of US forces, says: “If you don’t like Darfur, you’re going to hate Baghdad [after a US withdrawal].”
But buried in all the self-serving propaganda about staying the course, there is a dilemma for those of us genuinely worried about the Iraqi people. What if a genocide begins to unfold in a broken Iraq after the withdrawal of international troops? There are harbingers of it already. The jihadi suicide-massacres of the Yezidis in Northern Iraq last week is only one signal. I have been startled by how viciously even my democratic, liberal Iraqi friends now talk about the other side in sweeping, annihilatory language. Almost every institution of the Iraqi state - the police, army, even the hospitals - are now divided into Shia and Sunni wings which detest each other. There is a real and hefty risk that this will metastasise into an attempt to physically eliminate each other.
Just as dark is the risk of the neighbouring countries invading Iraq after a simple US withdrawal, with the Saudis marching in to defend the Sunnis, the Iranians invading to protect the Shias, and the Turks invading to prevent the creation of a separate Kurdistan in the North. This would create a Congo-on-the-Tigris.
But is this a case for keeping the US forces there? A recent, much-discussed-in-DC article in The New York Times by Brookings Institution scholars Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack said so. They argued that “the surge” of 21,000 troops into Iraq is finally working, and creating momentum away from sectarian violence.
If this were true, it would be important - but their own institution’s figures show it is the opposite of the truth. It makes no sense to compare statistics on violence in Iraq month-to-month, because the violence fluctuates seasonally (as it does in most cities in the world). For reliable figures, you have to compare this July to last July.
And what do you find in the Brookings statistics? The number of Iraqi military personnel and police killed are up 23 per cent. People dying in multiple-fatality bombings is up 19 per cent. US troop fatalities are up 80 per cent. The size of the insurgency is up 250 per cent. Attacks on oil and gas pipelines are up 75 per cent. Hours of electricity available per day are down 14 per cent. Far from creating the space for political compromise among Iraqis, this has led to Sunnis and secularists marching angrily out of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. This is success? This is momentum?
The US troops cannot be an agent of anything positive in Iraq, after using chemical weapons in cities, after using torture routinely, after overseeing the deaths of 650,000 Iraqis. Today, 78 per cent of Iraqis say the US presence “is doing more harm than good” and that they should leave. This is hardly surprising: Jeff Englehart, formerly a US soldier in Iraq, said recently: “The general attitude was: a dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi.”
But how do they get out without leaving behind something even more hellish? To grope for a solution, we must first be honest and clear about the Bush administration’s motives.
It is currently trying to force the Iraqi parliament, as its top priority, to pass an oil law that would hand two-thirds of Iraq’s oil fields to their friends and paymasters in Big Oil. Ordinary Iraqis see this new plan as crude looting of their wealth, with 63 per cent appalled in a recent poll. Yet the US is suppressing resistance: they leaned on the Ministry of the Interior to use Saddam-era laws to ban the oil worker’s trade unions, which have been democratically, peacefully fighting the law.
Only massive public pressure will change this course. So what should we demand they do? Former presidential candidate George McGovern, who fought heroically against the Vietnam War, has worked on a detailed way to leave Iraq that doesn’t also leave behind a holocaust. It is mapped out in his book Out of Iraq.
McGovern’s plan begins with a simple, stark apology from the US, Britain and other invaders for the catastrophe we have wrought - the opposite of Bush’s deranged demands for thanks. There must then be a commitment to dismantle all permanent US bases on Iraqi soil, and to allow Iraqis to own their country’s oil - with royalties paid equally to every citizen, in a regular cheque, like they do in Alaska.
The US then needs to convene a regional conference, at which it pledges to pay full-whack for an international stabilisation force to police Iraq, manned exclusively by Muslim countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan. These countries will need all sorts of financial inducements to send troops. Tough. Pay them. McGovern calculates that even at top-rate, this would cost $5.5bn - just 3 per cent of keeping the US forces there for the next two years. Once the police are fellow-Muslims, the often-murderous insurgents will be much more isolated. Al-Qa’ida’s tiny presence (estimated by US generals to be fewer than 500 fighters, rendering Bush’s claims they will take over the country absurd) will be even more despised. Only troops like this could have the legitimacy needed to stop a genocide.
It’s not a perfect plan. People will still die in the fall-out. But it is less lethal than any other option I can see. The present course is too horrific to maintain. In Baghdad today, people have stopped eating fish from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The reason? So many dead bodies are being dumped there every day - and being munched by the fish - that Iraqis began to fear they would contract diseases associated with cannibalism. That’s the score-card so far: to reduce Iraqis from the horror of Saddamism to physically consuming themselves. Now what was the President saying about gratitude?
© 2007 The Independent
There’s a good piece of wisdom in Michael Moore’s SICKO I’m assuming most Common Dreams readers have seen.
In France, they have a healthy democracy with universal health care, a vibrant unemployment system, and even a free nanny service for new mothers.
Why does France have all these things? Because the GOVERNMENT FEARS THE PEOPLE. In the U.S. the people fear the government, a fact that is not only anti-democratic, but it’s also the reason why the United States is caught up in a futile war nobody wants.
Governments in democratic societies SHOULD fear the electorate. Politicians are elected to do the bidding of the people; if they don’t, the electorate should be rioting in the streets. The problem is, the uneducated, apathetic masses don’t have a clue what’s going on and the Bush administrations continues to do everything it can to keep it that way.
The world — and much of anti-war America — seems to be waiting out George Bush’s term in office.
I think we need to address — loudly — not the war but the humanitarian crisis that exists in Iraq and which is worsening weekly. It can be argued that the “genocide” has already begun … I am uncertain if there is some external criteria to meet to warrant that designation, however, 500 here, 200 here, 10, 20, 30 quite routinely and the stray dead daily and weekly — these lives add up to — quite simply — horror.
Then there are the displaced, both internally and those in exile, living hand to mouth, precariously, tolerated but no longer wanted.
We simply cannot and must not wait for a new president … my confidence that a newly elected democratic president will in fact end this nightmare in, say, the first 90 days is low. We must acknowledge and then confront the humanitarian disaster — internationally.
While we worry about our next election, our tax dollars better spent elsewhere, our dead and wounded, America is standing in the way of desperately needed assistance and, by lying or simply not reporting, hiding this suffering … which if it were happening anywhere else would — on it’s own merit — cause outrage … How to begin?
For those interested in a psychological analysis of warmongering, I have recently completed a 10-minute online video entitled “Resisting the Drums of War.” It examines how the Bush administration has promoted the misguided and destructive war in Iraq by targeting five core concerns that often govern our lives–concerns about vulnerability, injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. Looking ahead, the continuing occupation of Iraq–or an attack on Iran–will likely be sold to us in much the same way. The video examines these warmongering appeals and how to counter them. It’s available for viewing HERE.
With much respect to Mr McGovern (and without doubting his benevolence), I would say that it is the business of the Iraqis to decide about their way of life after the US occupation. I always get a bit angry when I see these kind of plans. They implicitly regard the Iraqis (or other people) inmature, unable to deal with their problems etc.
More specifically, external military presence (whether Muslim or not) would prolong the the instability. Outside forces inevitably take sides etc. If you carefully consider the Lebanese example, you can see that the relative stability was reached by internal consensus. The Syrians, contrary to the general Western beliefs, were much more careful in their interference than the US in Iraq.
While the Alaskan way of distributing the oil revenues looks very appealing, there is only one place on earth where it is used, ie. Alaska. Saddam used this money to run the state apparatus, including hospitals, education (and yes, the police as well). The taxes were low, and the standard of living was among the highest in the region (at least before the first Gulf War). That is to say, Saddam’s way was good. There was no direct revenue distribution. Actually, the current system in Venezuela is pretty similar, the Chavista socialism is run on oil revenues. There is nothing bad in that.
The big hype about oil and revenue distribution is mostly due to the American intent to control the world oil production. The other thing is that the various Iraqi parties, factions etc see oil as the source of power now even at the local levels.
Anyway, it’s none of our business. Let the Iraqis decide.
All this talk about how Iraq may be even worse if U.S. forces leave may be a valid assumption, but still the USA was warned about Iraq becoming a “Pandora’s Box” and would open “the gates of Hell” if the USA invaded. Yet the USA, particularly George W. Bush, chose to invade anyhow despite any risk. While this now is irrelevent, it makes me upset that the USA Government did not take heed and, with non-chalance and characteristic American arrogance, as well as ignorance, say that invading Iraq would be a cake-walk. It would have been even worse, hard to imagine I know, if Iraq DID have WMD. But the USA went in with the assumption that they did.
I hope that the people of Iraq can settle their differences in shall we say a “civilized” way. Unlike most Americans, I am very very sorry about what the people of Iraq are going through. I am unable to imagine daily life there. To have death hover over someone 24/7, no matter where one is, would drive me insane. By now, the people of Iraq are probably experiencing worse than death. Tragically, as we all shoudl know, this situation is even worse than the years of Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq.
How ironic for the President of the USA comparing Iraq to Vietnam in the way he did. The lesson the USA shoud have learned from Vietnam is not to get involved in the business of other nations and to not…terrorize its people. George conveniently did not mention that lesson. Indeed ignored it. Someone once said that those who do not learn from History is condemned to repeat it. It looks like Iraq is an even worse situation than Vietnam was. All this through the choice of the leader of the USA.
Something I never can understand about Hillary’s claim that we can’t withdraw because it would be so dangerous. No one ever proposed that it would be dangerous to ship troops in. In fact, they promised the Iraqis would be dancing for joy in the street. Seems to me, the Iraqis would be dancing for joyful gratitude if the troops pulled out. Why would they impede that process?
People are led to believe that the US represents the great beneficence font in the world and others, in their primitive barbaric state(even when it is an acient culture), can’t be counted on to resolve matters in a civilized manner. It is unthinkable to think that the US actually is the destructive, de-stablizing presence–and that it is deliberate intervention based on shameful motives.
Saddam was hardly the “template” for success in running IRAQ. While holding down the religious extremists, he and his sons also terrorized the populace, made any sort of “justice” a perversion of the word, and baldly looted the treasury for him and his families benefit. Remember the “3 billion dollar palace building” kick that he was on after the first gulf war, while crying about the sanctions? Or his theft of 2 TRACTOR TRAILERS of $100 U.S. bills after the second?
There has to be another way other than anarchy or corrupt “strongmen”.
Screw all the rest of this stuff, we said we’d never put our military in a civil war again after Vietnam. Since when did we change our minds on that??? Since when did we let their stupid talk about what would happen if we left…like they’ve ever been right yet…chance our minds???
Never put our troops in the middle of a civil war again. Even the neocons didn’t disagree, before it became a civil war. Never leave them in a civil war. NEVER put our troops in a conflict they couldn’t win.
Our soldiers are in a civil war they can’t win. Nothing else matters.
Like:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1656389,00.html
But still, what do we care if we get the oil and destablize the Country to suit the Zionist entity?
If warring factions impede out objectives, then a strongman, compliant to our will (Saddam increasingly was not, after all), is all it takes.
“We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”
Amazing.
I seem to recall Hari was a supporter of the war and ousting Saddam.
Everyone said Viet Nam would be a bloodbath if we left.
Of course, Viet Nam did not have oil.
I think you are right about Hari. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember him as a Bush apologist for whatever policy Bush was espousing at the time.
a couple major difference between Vietnam and Iraq include that in Vietnam there was generally only TWO sides fighting each other … and both North and South Vietnam had recognized functioning governments …. just for starters ….
We don’t even have names to attach to purported “leaders” of the various “factions” … except for Moqtada Al Sadr … and there are even intra-faction quarrels and turf wars … Shiite on Shiite violence has been reported in the south …
We’d all be suffering a lot less if George Sr had only pulled out of Barbara.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
“The problem is, the uneducated, apathetic masses don’t have a clue what’s going on ”
This is elitist bullshit. The common people are powerless to do a darn thing even if they are sickened by whats happening. The political parties and the Media are in lockstep and information bubbles down through these outlets and doesnt bubble back up. Yeah sure theres a heavy dose of apathy but thats common in any society. Certainly something like the ‘Draft’ would stoke a hornets nest of protest but thats reactionary.
True organic resistance can only be achieved by an unbiased informative and critical media that disseminates accurate information and educated opinions.
We don’t know whether Iraq would suffer more if we would pull out; we DO know that it would suffer more if we do not pull out.
As others before me have said: pulling out is a bad idea. All the other alternatives are even worse!
Al Gore said of our objective in Iraq, “To get our troops out of there as soon as possible while simultaneously observing the moral duty that all of us share — including those of us who opposed this war in the first instance — to remove our troops in a way that doesn’t do further avoidable damage to the people who live there.”
It’s plain the attempt to get Iraq to pass the Hydrocarbon Law is not happening and the Sharing Agreements will not happen. The Unity Gov. there is reaffirming an oil production agreement with China.
It’s proving true that the Shia cannot be depended upon to share revenues with the Sunnis so that the civil war will rage on whether we are there or not but certainly a bloodbath if we are not there.
For these reasons, to carry out Mr. Gore’s approach, it will be necessary to tilt in favor of Sunni control of the oil revenues because they will have to share the money with the Shia and Kurds to get the oil out of the ground. This can be done by re-deploying our troops to the six oil pipeline terminals out of the country and patrolling by air along the borders to prevent oil exports by truck. Also the banking must be controlled to assure that the oil is not pirated away from Sunni control.
To offset this unstable condition, the Shia and Kurds must control the reconstruction, reparations and infrastructure rebuilding so that down the road, there really is a nation there with enough balance to suppress the insurgency and civil war.
The re-deployment must be coordinated with the UN so that American greed is ultimately removed from the equation. The object of the UN involvement is to get the US out; first from the interior of the country and then from the re-deployment.
If there is no attempt to restore the balance of the status quo ante, any withdrawal will be bloody and will prevent the United States from recovering its composure around the world for years to come.
I made the mistake of reading the story called ‘Cancer in Iraq Vets Raises Possibility of Toxic Exposure’ AFTER reading this one. It appears increasingly likely that many American soldiers are coming home with cancers that seem increasingly likely to be a response to DU (depleted uranium), which the U.S. military is using. If that’s what’s happening to American soldiers, what’s happening to the Irais? All the more reason to get out of Iraq sooner rather than later.
Once again, our Idiot-President is conflating two true statements into a single false one: A) America pulled out of Vietnam and B) Millions died in Indochina afterward.
Therefore, the American pullout caused a “bloodbath”.
We need to remind the loudmouths who will repeat this drivel in local letters to the editor that yes, millions died, but not in Vietnam.
The Genocide took place next door in Cambodia - after the secret U.S. bombing campaign against the Viet Cong and a U.S. supported military coup removed a popular neutral government. The result was civil war and the ascent to power of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.
And guess what? It was our former enemies, the North Vietnamese, who invaded Cambodia in 1978 and put a stop to the slaughter.
I agree with George McGovern. We give 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid to Egypt. Their army is the same size as Iran’s (450,000 front line personnel). Let them police Iraq. They could easily recognize their own among the foreign extremists.
“Almost every institution of the Iraqi state - the police, army, even the hospitals - are now divided into Shia and Sunni wings which detest each other. There is a real and hefty risk that this will metastasise into an attempt to physically eliminate each other.”
Like they’re doing now while U.S. troops are still there? Is there any reason to believe this fighting among factions within Iraq is going to stop within the next few decades, knowing that it’s been going on for over 1,000 years?
Pulling out would be easy if the waring factions would realize who the agitaters are that are keeping the civil war going with false flag operations, and take them out!!!
They will suffer if we stay or leave. There is so much DU in the air in Iraq, they will all be dead in less than twenty years.
If we fill a bunch of C5A airplanes with things that the Iraqi people need now and could use to rebuild their country i.e. wheat,rice,cornmeal, all kinds of food, all kinds of small fruit trees to plant, tractors all sorts of farming tools, seeds of all kinds, electrical and plumbing materials and anything else they could use in need and want. Empty those C5A at one end of the airport and fill them up with soldiers and weapons. We could probably get out of there safely especially with the promise of sending the Iraqi people, shias Sunnis and Kurds a shopping list and filling it with whatever they want and of course an apology and reparations payments from war companies like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Bechtel.
Robert Goldsborough– Not such a bad idea but about 4 years too late. If we had made an honest attempt after entering Baghdad and capturing Sadaam to help fix up what we had damaged we could have gotten out. However, we let the country sink into chaos while we built the biggest embassy in the world, many permanent airbases, and concentrated on their oil reserves. It is our own fault that we had no plan to get out and if we intended to, why build our own installations instead of fixing theirs? Besides that, why did we not invade Saudi Arabia as they had almost all of the suicide people on the 9-11 deal.
It’s obvious that we were after oil from day one. Remember Bush told the Iraqi people not to destroy their oil. Bush Co. wanted oh so much more. With Paul Bremer in charge, they wanted to privatize everything in the Iraqi economy for the transnational corporations a true experiment in globalization: the water, electricity, the school system everything they could think of them wanted to privatize. That’s why these corporations didn’t want to fix the existing systems in fact, they wanted to decimate them. When that failed,the Shias pushed for a democratic vote because they knew they would win. Bush Co. then fomented discord between the various religious sects to create civil war a quagmire so there would be excuse to stay there forever and forever reap the profits of war. We even want to GUT our military forces and replace them with a privatized mercenary army which which we have there already in place.
Before too long, that mercenary army will be here, as they were for Katrina, to stick dissidents in privatized jails. The pattern is obvious, destroy government services here and there and replace them with privatized corporate entities. Anyway he can make government services look bad that would be another excuse to privatize.
“We’d all be suffering a lot less if George Sr had only pulled out of Barbara.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.”
*no apology necessary*
Apologies in the face of apologizing for pulling out of Vietnam, all oil giving back to the country without western big oil getting a penny, and Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan police force sound great although maybe as in “drop in a bucket” great, but about as likely to happen as a wave of Buddhism sweeping the U.S. and Middle East.
We can fantasize though.