Iraq Zeroes in on Vietnam
Analogy
By
Nat Parry
July 6, 2004
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For
the past year, the Bush administration has argued that Iraq is not
another Vietnam, which in some ways was true. In South Vietnam, the U.S.
was propping up the Saigon government, but the regime was regarded as
"sovereign." In Iraq, until June 28, the U.S. was simply occupying Iraq
after eliminating the old government.
The supposed step forward that
occurred when the United States granted "sovereignty" to Iraq has now
created a parallel closer to the Vietnam War. As in South Vietnam, U.S.
forces in Iraq have the job of defending a dependent government that
couldn't survive on its own.
There was even the feel of
Vietnam-style desperation on June 28 when former U.S. administrator Paul
Bremer pushed the "sovereignty" ceremony two days ahead of schedule to
avoid an expected round of attacks and then held the event behind the
high walls of the U.S. compound in Baghdad. After messing up the news
networks' pseudo-dramatic "countdown to handover," Bremer rushed to the
airport and flew out of the war zone.
The hasty transfer meant George
W. Bush missed out on the grand "sovereignty" celebration that was
originally envisioned. The Bush administration had to settle for the
staged "historic" moment of Bush being handed a note from national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice at the NATO summit in Turkey, saying
“Mr.
President, Iraq is sovereign.” Bush scribbled back, “Let freedom reign!”
The administration
and the U.S. press corps played the scene as a genuine news event, as if
Bush was surprised and didn't really know that the furtive ceremony in
Baghdad had been moved up a couple of days. Under that unlikely
scenario, Bush dashed off his comment extemporaneously, not as part of a
prearranged scene.
Some critics have
noted that the phrase normally is "let freedom ring," but it could be
that political adviser Karl Rove had decided to alter the phrase
slightly so it would seem fresher – and then had to make sure that Bush
knew not to write, "Let freedom rain!"
Fahrenheit 9/11
Whether
intentional or not, the "Iraq is sovereign" note-passing also
represented a kind of cheesy counterpoint to the scene of Bush in the
Florida classroom on Sept. 11, 2001, being told by chief of staff Andrew
Card that "the nation is under attack"– after the second aircraft hit
the World Trade Center.
The real news
event of Bush continuing to sit in the classroom for seven minutes has
finally been highlighted in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," a scene
that is shocking to many Americans, in part, because the national news
media had shielded them from the fact that Bush sat frozen with no clue
how a president should behave in a crisis. In the do-over scene in
Turkey on June 28, Bush is supposedly on top of his game, dashing off a
memorable one-liner and shaking hands with fellow world leader, British
Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Still, the larger
reality in Iraq is that the "sovereignty" theatrics have not improved
the prospects for either the Iraqi people or the 140,000 U.S. troops
whose job it is to quell a nationalistic uprising by killing young Iraqi
fighters who – for whatever their ideological thinking – want foreign
troops off their nation's soil.
Bremer insists
that the new government will “exercise full sovereign authority on
behalf of the Iraqi people,” but that power falls short of anything
resembling classical definitions of “sovereignty.” Of course, the
concept of "sovereignty" has been abused before. During World II, France
and other occupied European countries technically maintained their
sovereignty under puppet regimes. During the Cold War, the same was true
for nations of Eastern Europe.
But the overriding
fact for the Iraqis is that their country is still controlled by a
foreign military presence and governed by compliant "leaders" who can
function only under a strict set of external rules. Not the least of
these rules is that the foreign troops can open fire on pretty much any
Iraqi target with minimal requirements for "consultation" with the new
Iraqi officials.
Plus, while
Bremer's
Coalition Provisional Authority may have ceased to exist on June 28, its
binding decrees will remain in place indefinitely. The interim Iraqi
government also looks like a reshuffled version of the disbanded
"Governing Council," which was appointed by Bremer's Coalition
Provisional Authority.
Then as now, the
principal criterion for the Iraqi "leaders" is that they be acceptable
to the Bush administration. Whether or not they have the "sovereign"
right to order out the 160,000 foreign troops, the possibility is moot
because the interim officials were selected because they wouldn't
order the foreign troops out of Iraq.
Ayad Allawi, the new Iraqi prime
minister, is a former CIA operative who also has worked for other
foreign intelligence services. Beyond his history of dependence on
foreign money, Allawi allegedly engaged in some of the same terrorist
tactics to destabilize Saddam Hussein's government that he is now
decrying when the tactics are used in an effort to overthrow his
government.
Several former intelligence
officials say that during the early 1990s, Allawi ran an anti-Saddam
exile organization that sent agents into Baghdad to plant bombs and
sabotage government facilities under the direction of the CIA. The New
York Times reported that Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used
car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from
northern Iraq in attacks that resulted in many civilian casualties.
Ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, recalled that one bombing “blew up a school
bus” in which “schoolchildren were killed.” [NYT,
June 9, 2004]
But the New York Times disclosure has largely
disappeared into the memory hole, already. When U.S. correspondents,
such as NBC's Tom Brokaw, went to Baghdad to interview Allawi, they
furrowed their brows in asking Allawi how he will contend with the
inhuman brutality of Iraqi "terrorists," but they tactfully avoided
questioning Allawi about his own use of terror tactics.
Through Allawi, the Bush
administration also expects to extend its control of Iraq's internal
security and foreign policy for years, even if a new government is
elected next year. Under Bremer's orders, Allawi will have the authority
to choose Iraq’s national security adviser and a national intelligence
chief, whose terms will last five years.
The prospects of an elected
government early next year also are growing dicier. The promised Iraqi
elections, already postponed until January 2005, may be postponed again
due to the continuing violence, Allawi said. [BBC,
June 27, 2004]
Geneva Rules
Though Iraq's new
"sovereignty" may mean little in the day-to-day life in Baghdad,
Washington may see it as a way to avert requirements that the Geneva
Conventions impose on occupying forces. By calling Iraq "sovereign,"
some of those responsibilities – and some of the blame for violations –
shifts to the new government.
Bremer’s
announcement technically ending the occupation, therefore, is
reminiscent of assertions made after the invasion when Bush
administration officials insisted the Americans were not occupying Iraq
and therefore didn’t have to comply with the international legal
requirements of an occupying power.
When the
International Committee of the Red Cross warned in April 2003 that U.S.
forces were violating the Geneva Conventions in failing to live up to
responsibilities as an occupation army,
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks replied, “Right now we're still a
liberating force, and that's how we're approaching our operations.”
The Red Cross told the
administration that the concept of “a liberating force” is not
recognized in international law. By the definitions of the Geneva
Conventions, a foreign power is an occupying power if it operates
“effective control” over a territory. Now, by saying Iraq is
"sovereign," Washington is again claiming not to be an occupying power,
even though its forces remain in effective control.
But several human rights
organizations have noted that if the occupation is officially over,
there is no legal basis for the U.S. to continue detaining thousands of
Iraqis without charges. Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, and the Red Cross say that in order to be in
compliance with international law, the U.S. must either charge or
release the Iraqi prisoners currently being held.
“In the absence of an
occupation or an international conflict, no one can be detained under
international humanitarian law without being charged with a recognized
crime,”
Human Rights Watch said. Amnesty International goes even further and
insists that the prisoners must be immediately released. If
the “occupation effectively ends with
the handover, then international humanitarian law requires that all
prisoners of war, detainees and internees must be released by the
occupying powers,”
Amnesty said.
Yet, despite
international law and the Red Cross estimate that 70 to 90 percent of
the prisoners were rounded up by mistake,
the U.S. military has announced that it will continue holding
without charge the 4,000 to 5,000 Iraqis in its custody. Meanwhile,
the Bush administration is claiming blanket immunity for U.S.
forces in Iraq, including immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for
killing Iraqis or destroying local property.
That was accomplished simply by extending Bremer's
Order 17, which grants all foreign personnel immunity from “local
criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of
arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their
parent states.” The immunity is in effect until Iraq holds elections,
whenever that may be. [Reuters,
June 28, 2004]
Sovereignty?
The extension of immunity is
only one of the limitations of sovereignty that were instituted by the
Coalition Provisional Authority before it was dissolved on June 28.
In the lead-up to the “handover
of power,” Bremer issued a number of edicts that placed constraints on
Iraq's right to self-rule. The Washington Post reported that Bremer
issued 97 legal orders as of June 14, orders which are defined by the
U.S. occupation authority as “binding instructions or directives to the
Iraqi people.” Since the interim government does not have the power to
make laws, Bremer’s declarations will effectively serve as the law until
a permanent government is established.
Even if elections take place as
scheduled, those election results also may already be pre-ordained by
another Bremer edict. He ordered an election law that gives a
seven-member commission the power to disqualify political parties and
any of the candidates they support.
Under-Secretary of State for
Political Affairs Marc Grossman testified to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in April that “anti-American candidates”
might be blocked. “That's why we're going to have an embassy there,” he
said. “It's going to have a lot of people and an ambassador. We have to
make our views known in the way that we do around the world.” [Washington
Post, April 23, 2004]
Bremer also has appointed Iraqis
hand-picked by his aides to influential government positions, installed
inspectors-general for five-year terms in every ministry, and named a
public-integrity commissioner who will have the power to refer corrupt
government officials for prosecution. Bremer even formed and filled
commissions to regulate communications, public broadcasting and
securities markets.
Mahmoud Othman, a member of the
recently dissolved Governing Council, complained, “They have established
a system to meddle in our affairs.” [Washington
Post, June 27, 2004]
U.S. officials have suggested
that the purpose of the world's largest U.S. embassy will be to
influence, if not dictate, official Iraqi policy. At the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing, Grossman was asked what the Bush
administration would do if the Iraqi government pursues policies
“that are in contradiction to what American foreign policy might be,”
such as forging closer ties with Iran or the Palestinian Authority.
Grossman intimated that those policies would not be tolerated, which is
“why we want to have an American ambassador in Iraq.” [Washington
Post, April 23, 2004]
With extremely limited official
powers, the new interim government may be even further handicapped in
the face of an intensifying insurgency. Hundreds have been killed over
the past couple weeks in targetted attacks on Iraqi police stations,
Army recruitment offices and other symbols of the “new government.” As
the
Los Angeles Times put it, “Iraq's
insurgent movement is increasingly potent, riding a wave of anti-U.S.
nationalism and religious extremism.”
The insurgency
has grown increasingly effective over the past year, and has made it
clear that not only Americans but those seen as collaborators are
targets. The newly adopted practice of beheading hostages and
distributing the footage over the Internet may not be making the
insurgents many friends across the world, but it has proven effective in
solidifying global opinion against the war in general.
The recent
beheading of a South Korean hostage sparked a wave of protest in South
Korea against the government’s participation in the war and its plans to
send additional troops. While the South Korean government did not alter
its plans, the protests revealed widespread public opposition and could
serve to reinvigorate the anti-war movement.
While the
occupation's counter-insurgency attacks and the anti-occupation
resistance are becoming increasingly grisly, the bigger story may be
that the real national uprising is yet to come. The Iraqi people know
that they have had success in expelling colonialists in the past,
particularly in their victory over the British Empire in 1921. Many are
eager for a replay of that triumph and – having seen how the insurgents
in Fallujah essentially expelled the U.S. Marines – are confident they
can do it. Some insurgents are predicting a Fallujah-type uprising on a
national scale.
In comments made to Western
journalists before "sovereignty," several Iraqi resistance fighters
asserted that the “big battle” is yet to begin and the “liberation of
Baghdad” is near. Asia Times quoted one as saying, “The Americans have
prepared the war, we have prepared the post-war. And the transfer of
power on June 30 will not change anything regarding our objectives. This
new provisional government appointed by the Americans has no legitimacy
in our eyes. They are nothing but puppets.” [Asia
Times, June, 25, 2004]
These statements could be
dismissed as propaganda or bravado, but they
echo similar comments made months ago, which have turned out to have
been based in reality. In the early days of the insurgency, one
resistance fighter claimed, “We have many more people and we’re a lot
better organized than the Americans realize. We have been preparing for
this for a long time, and we’re much more patient than the Americans. We
have nowhere else to go.” [Newsday,
July 10, 2003]
‘Wars Are
Unpredictable’
As the months have dragged on,
and the violence has persisted, it appears Washington may be belatedly
coming to realize what a threat the resistance poses. Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified to the House Armed Services Committee
that military planners might have underestimated how persistent the
anti-American forces would be even after the leaders of Saddam Hussein’s
regime had been killed or captured, conceding that the U.S. may be in
Iraq for several years. [NYT,
June 22, 2004]
Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld told reporters that the situation in Iraq is not what the
administration had hoped for prior to the invasion in 2003. “Wars are
unpredictable, and post-war recoveries are unpredictable,” Rumsfeld
said. [BBC,
June 27, 2004] But while acknowledging that fact now, he arrogantly
rebuffed pre-war advice warning the difficulty of subduing a resistance
and rebuilding a shattered nation.
When George W. Bush took
the nation to war in Iraq last year, there was
never any comprehensive explanation of what post-war Iraq would look
like and what the overall plan for “regime change” would be, beyond the
administration's expectations of a "cakewalk."
Before the war,
Consortiumnews.com was among the news outlets, citing potential
problems. One story in February 2003, a month before the invasion,
observed, “it is not clear how the U.S. will police a population
that is certain to include anti-American radicals ready to employ
suicide bombings and other terror tactics against an occupying force.”
[See Consortiumnews.com's "Iraq’s
‘Liberation Day.’"]
It is now obvious that Bush was
overly optimistic about the outcome. His administration simply didn't
prepare for establishing order immediately after Saddam Hussein's
government was ousted and had no long-term strategy to deal with a
nationalistic uprising. As Knight-Ridder newspapers reported almost a
year ago, when the insurgency seriously began to take root, the
architects of the Iraq War “didn’t develop any real post-war plans
because they believed that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops with open
arms and Washington could install a favored Iraqi exile leader as the
country’s leader.” [Miami
Herald, July 12, 2003]
Still, the Bush administration
doesn't appear to have come to grips with how fragile its predicament in
Iraq is. It's lumbering ahead with its plans of installing a favorable
government and establishing permanent military bases. So far, its
principal response to challenges in Iraq has been a decision to send an
additional 15,000 troops. [CNN,
June 25, 2004]
Vietnam
Besides sending more troops, the
administration doesn’t seem to have any workable strategy for defeating
the insurgency. One likely strategy to be tried will be the introduction
of Iraqi government paramilitary forces to duplicate the kind of
assassination programs that decimated the Viet Cong infrastructure in
Vietnam and wiped out almost a generation of leftist dissidents in
Central America. In the $87 billion package approved by Congress last
November, $3 billion was appropriated for a paramilitary unit manned by
militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. [American
Prospect, Jan. 1, 2004]
According to a former U.S.
intelligence officer familiar with the plan, “It could be expected to be
fairly ruthless in dealing with the remnants of Saddam.” [Telegraph,
April 1, 2004]
But while these paramilitary forces may
kill some leaders of the insurgency, they also are certain to kill many
civilians, further fuelling the resentment that is feeding the
resistance.
If previous counterinsurgency
campaigns are a guide, there is little reason to think that the plan for
Iraq will succeed in crushing the Iraqi resistance any time in the near
future, if at all. Unlike in Central America, there is no
well-entrenched ruling elite backed by loyal security forces.
Perhaps the closest comparison
to the situation in Iraq is the Vietnam War. In that conflict, the U.S.
was defending a fragile South Vietnamese government – which was widely
seen as a puppet of the United States – against a home-grown insurgency
that had previously fought occupiers from France and Japan. The only way
the Saigon government could survive was with massive U.S. support.
But as former Defense Secretary
Robert McNamara and other architects of the war now concede, they failed
to understand the enemy and underestimated the determination to expel
the American forces. In Iraq, the architects of the war assumed that the
overwhelming military power of the United States, showcased by the
"Shock and Awe" bombing campaign at the start, would be enough to scare
the Iraqis into submission.
Few Accomplishments
Except for the three-week
military campaign to seize Baghdad, not much has gone right. A new
report by the General Accounting Office found that in a number of ways
Iraq is worse off now than before the U.S. invasion, including security,
infrastructure and the functioning of the legal system. Twenty million
Iraqis are living with
less electricity now than they were before the invasion.
Also, there are doubts about the
effectiveness of training Iraqi security forces. The GAO noted that
Iraq’s new civil defense, police and security units are suffering
from mass desertions. On some occasions, those
trained and armed by the United States have joined the insurgents in
battling the occupation forces. During the siege of Fallujah in May,
many of the U.S.-recruited Iraqi security forces that were
supposed to help defeat the insurgents abandoned their posts or joined
the militants.
The London Telegraph has
reported that U.S.-trained police officers and units of Iraq’s new army
have formed a united front with Muslim fundamentalists in Fallujah to
fight the Americans. One Iraqi lieutenant told the Telegraph that,
“Resistance is stronger when you are working with the occupation forces.
That way you can learn their weaknesses and attack at that point.” [Telegraph,
June 27, 2004]
Even the administration's claim
of “progress” in gaining NATO's agreement to help train Iraqi forces may
be less than meets the eye. French President Jacques Chirac said he is
firmly opposed to seeing the NATO flag fly in Iraq. And, while NATO may
be contributing to the training of security units, the NATO member
states are not offering Washington any new military forces.
Legal Status
The Bush administration also has
suffered defeats within the diplomatic community. Washington was forced
to withdraw a resolution before the UN Security Council that would have
extended immunity for U.S. forces from the International Criminal Court.
The previous Security Council
resolution provided that no forces would be under the court’s
jurisdiction if their nations had not ratified the treaty creating the
ICC, effectively granting the U.S. blanket immunity from the court. But
the U.S. exemption was set to expire on June 30. So the administration
sought the two-year extension.
However, facing unusually strong
opposition in the Security Council and from UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan, the Bush administration decided to withdraw its draft resolution
on June 23. Now, U.S. forces could be subject to prosecution in a
variety of UN authorized operations.
Abuses such as those that took
place in Abu Ghraib prison theoretically could be prosecuted as war
crimes, provided that the American legal system is unwilling or unable
to deal with the perpetrators, as provided for in the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court. Still, Shantha Rau
of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court
said the Bush administration has little reason to fear Americans facing
prosecution. Even if the court has jurisdiction over the Americans, it
is unlikely to pursue a case against American forces, with a glut of
cases stemming from conflicts in Uganda and Angola.
Still, the failure to secure an
exemption is in marked contrast to the Bush administration’s position of
a couple years ago when it appeared that the U.S. was forging a new
world order in which all nations were expected bow to American will.
Since 9/11, the administration has pursued a dogmatically unilateral
approach to international relations, asserting U.S. exceptionalism and
demanding that the United States essentially be placed above
international law.
In September 2002, the
administration issued a new National Security Strategy statement that
spelled out its doctrine of pre-emptive war and its goal of world
domination. The essential concept of the strategy was to deter, through
military pre-eminence, the possibility of any country or alliance of
countries to ever surpass or equal the power of the United States.
To this end, the document
argued, the U.S. must adopt a policy of pre-emptive regime change to
remove actual or potential adversaries and replace them with friendly
regimes. The document complained that “the major institutions of
American national security were designed in a different era to meet
different requirements,” and so, “all of them must be
transformed.”
Besides permanent U.S. global
dominance, the White House asserted the U.S. president possessed near
dictatorial powers. In a series of legal memoranda, the administration
argued that neither domestic nor international law could apply to Bush’s
prosecution of the “war on terror.”
In order to carry out his
“commander in chief” authority, the administration argued, there could
be no constraints on his actions. In particular, they asserted, Geneva
Conventions do not apply to the U.S. in this war, because the war on
terror was not a war envisioned when the Conventions were signed in
1949.
Going beyond theoretical legal
arguments, George Bush actually signed an order in February 2002, in
which he stated, “I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend
Geneva.” [AP,
June 22, 2004] Bush also used new definitions to grant himself
exemptions from international law, such as the
creation of a category called "enemy
combatants," who supposedly aren't covered by the Geneva Conventions or
U.S. constitutional safeguards. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's
'Apex' of Unlimited Power."]
International
Push-Back
But in the recent bilateral
U.S.-European Union declaration on Iraq, the relevance of the rule of
law was upheld and the Geneva Conventions, particularly, were defended.
“We stress the need for full respect of the Geneva Conventions,” the
declaration read.
Along with the Security
Council’s refusal to extend U.S. immunity from the ICC, it is apparent
that the international community is trying to rein in the excesses that
have become common place since Bush launched the war on terror almost
three years ago. The international community appears to have grown weary
of the Bush administration’s unilateral declarations about which
international laws apply and which ones don't.
The American political system
also has taken some steps to limit Bush’s assertion of near-unlimited
power. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees being held without
charges as “enemy combatants” may have access to U.S. courts.
However, Bush's conservative
base continues to bluster against the idea of any constraints on U.S.
actions abroad. Right-wing Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly referred
to Iraqis as a “prehistoric group” and advocated that we “bomb the
living daylights out of them.” Earlier, during the siege of Fallujah,
O’Reilly used his radio program to urge the military to “level” the
city. “We know what the final solution should be,” he said, leaving
listeners to wonder whether he meant a nuclear strike.
Bush, too, has shown a tough-guy
contempt for international law. When asked once whether his decision to
exclude anti-war nations from reconstruction contracts was in compliance
with international law, Bush sarcastically replied, “International law?
I better call my lawyer.”
How Bush will react if the
situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse is anybody's guess, especially
if he succeeds in gaining a second term in the White House. Bush could
interpret an electoral victory as a carte blanche to seek "final
solutions" not only in Iraq but within the U.S. political process.
But, in the meantime, Iraq is
looking more and more like a Vietnam War without the jungle, a
nationalist struggle waged against foreign domination while Washington
rushes in more troops to prop up a tottering puppet regime.
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