Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 01:21:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: deleuze oedipus rimbaud <rimbaudboyo-AT-yahoo.ca>
Subject: Helena Cobban 


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Gettin<g Into Iraq Was The Easy Helena Helena Cobban
DarAl-Hayat 2003/04/27
So the American armed forces have been able - at the cost of scores of billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money, and of widespread death and destruction inside Iraq - to topple Saddam Hussein's widely-hated and militarily feeble regime.Now what? Will the "shock and awe" provided by the US victory stun Iraqis and other Middle Easterners into submitting peacefully to the Pentagon's plans for their region? Or, has the American imperium dangerously over-extended itself, stretching both its supply lines into Iraq and the diplomatic lifelines of its relations with other nations to a dangerous degree?We cannot know the answers to these questions yet.  But it is already evident that the first of those possible outcomes looks extremely unlikely. Proconsul Zalmay Khalilzad's first steps in trying to create a pro-American leadership in Iraq - lets call it an Iraqi version of the "Bashir Gemayel ploy" - have already registered serious setbacks. The Iraqis may have been "shocked" by the ferocity of the American assault upon their country. But they certainly haven't been behaving as though they were also "awed".The American failure to rapidly install their "Bashir Gemayel" leadership will of course have huge strategic consequences.  Without their local "Bashir Gemayel" to do their bidding for them, American forces are going to have to stay around in Iraq for a lot longer than the Pentagon had planned. That may be an uncomfortable state of affairs for Iraqis, and for many of their neighbors. But it will also become increasingly uncomfortable politically, for the Bush administration as well.One thing I noticed, in all the media interviews with American soldiers immediately after their units had entered Baghdad, was how many of them would say things like, "Yes, I feel good that we won. Now, I just want to go home." That's understandable, because the way the pro-war people in the Pentagon sold the war to the American public and to the members of the armed forces, before the event, was by stressing that it would most likel

y be a simple, almost surgical, operation that could be completed quickly.And that therefore it would NOT turn into another Vietnam.But if the "Bashir Gemayel" leadership cannot quickly be installed, then those fresh-faced young American men and women soldiers will be sitting around in the streets and cities of Iraq for a lot longer than they had anticipated. And it is quite foreseeable that the hostility that they have already started facing from some sectors of Iraqi society will only grow, the longer they stay.It is my hope that, as they sit out there in Iraq through the heat and hostility of the months ahead, many of those American soldiers will come to understand that they have been seriously misled by their political leaders. And if the American soldiers themselves can come to be convinced that they were deceived by Bush, Rumsfeld, and Company, and that they have been unnecessarily and irresponsibly put in harm's way by the administration, then that new conviction could hugely strengthen the antiwar movement, as the soldiers get cycled back to the United States. (Usually, tours of overseas duty last only about six months before the soldiers get replaced.)All these hundreds of thousands of soldiers and navy personnel have families and large groups of supporters back home. During the Vietnam War, the disillusionment of the soldiers themselves with the tasks they were forced to do was a major factor behind the growth of the antiwar movement. This time, we are likely to see the same effect. But precisely because this war was "sold" to the American public and soldiery beforehand, in such a very public way, as a quick, simple, and heroic undertaking-the fact that it has turned out to be none of these things means that the disillusionment may well be even more rapid this time than it was in the Vietnam era.I have lived in the United States for more than 20 years now, and I am continually reminded how immature much of the country's public culture still is. Many Americans - including even members of the political e

lite - still have a very childish fascination with technological innovation, as well as a naïve belief in the extent of the power of technological "solutions".Back in the 1960s, there was an American defense secretary who was a corporate executive with slicked - back hair who believed that the application of advanced technology could, in itself, in the absence of a sound political strategy, solve the major international problem then facing the country. His name was Robert McNamara. The problem was Vietnam. And even though the technological "solutions" McNamara proposed only ended up digging the United States deeper and deeper into the quagmire of Vietnam, it still took him several years to even understand that that was the case.McNamara, who was a relatively young man in the 1960s,much later came to act as though he regretted and wanted to atone for the mistakes he'd made in Vietnam. He never, as far as I recall, apologized outright for the devastation that his policies had brought to Vietnam, and to scores of thousands of bereaved American families. But when he was President of the World Bank, and afterwards, he often acted as though he wanted to try to make the world a better place, as a way of atoning for past, unspecified errors.But now, we have Rumsfeld. Not a young man. But still burning - as McNamara had been in the 1960s - with the belief that technological innovations can solve problems even in the absence of having a sound political strategy.So Rumsfeld's reliance on very-high-end American military technology has now taken American soldiers successfully into the deep interior of Iraq. But he does not yet seem to understand that at this point, there is no technological "quick fix" that can get the soldiers OUT of there. Only a sound political strategy can do that. And such a strategy, he does not seem even to have thought about. (Apart, that is, from signing on to the vain hope that Ahmad Chalabi can solve all the political problems in Iraq on the Americans' behalf.)Actually, Rumsfeld's naïve 

reliance on high-end technology not only has not addressed the political problems the Americans face inside Iraq, it actually contributed to making those problems much worse than they might otherwise have been. For two reasons. Firstly, much of the technological "edge" exhibited by the Americans resulted in them using much more destructive bombs and missiles than-absent their advanced guidance systems-they might otherwise have comfortable using.  But of course the guidance systems were not perfect.  Of course many warheads fell woefully off target.  And so there were large-scale instances of so-called "collateral damage". Such events certainly have political consequences! Secondly, Rumsfeld's much-vaunted "revolution in military affairs" took the US ground forces to Baghdad, Najaf, and other population centers in the heart of Iraq far faster than ground forces have generally traveled in the past. And that very speed itself ended up causing huge political problems, because the American forces essentially outran any capability they might have had to exert general control over the areas that they "captured". Hence, when they got to Baghdad, they didn't even have a plan - far less, any capability - for providing basic security to key facilities like hospitals or the National Museum.And again, that failure had rapid political consequences.It is very depressing to me to see not just the amount of pain that the Iraqi people have already suffered as a result of this terrible and quite avoidable war, but also to look ahead and see all the additional pain that their society, and the United States, will almost certainly suffer as a direct result of President Bush's decision to launch the war. When people suffer, they often as a result act violently. That is an undeniable human fact. We may yet see terrible acts of violence coming from the Iraqi people-or from the scared and confused American soldiers who are there in Iraq. But the Americans have no rightful reason to be in Iraq at all.  American strategic planners may thin

k it would be hard simply to withdraw the forces and to bring them all home. They may claim that to do that would (1) seriously dent the "credibility" of the US around the world, and (2) leave a dangerous and chaotic maelstrom inside Iraq. Actually, they would be right on both these counts.</p><p>But if they stay, they will only make matters much, much worse inside Iraq - and, also, for the United States.  >Donald Rumsfeld: call Robert McNamara and have a talk with him. Soon.




 



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