What to do when you have no good choices [View All]

[Tansy_Gold]

There seems to be a lot of discussion about the two options open to the current U.S. administration regarding Iraq: cut-and-run or stay-the-ever-escalating-course.

Both options offer little in the way of attractive outcomes.

Staying and escalating has the obvious as well as not so obvious problems. The administration has already proposed cutting domestic spending programs in order to finance the war in Iraq; further escalation will only exacerbate the economic aspect of the inability to continue in this direction. Where, after all, is the money to come from? The treasury is already borrowing enormous sums to make up the shortfall between revenues and expenditures, effectively mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren (depending on our ages).

Part of the problem that isn't often examined is the lack of industrial infrastructure in the U.S. and how the decline in the industrial/manufacturing segment of the U.S. economy has diminished the ability of the government to collect the tax revenue to support the war. Instead of making things that make money, ours has become a "service" economy in which many of our "jobs" consist of little more than shifting already-earned money around from one place to another: financial services, health care, retail sales, etc. In essence, the administration and its corporate globalization supporters has put the U.S. on the same road to economic self-destruction that befell the old Soviet Union. The difference is that the U.S. had a thriving manufacturing infrastructure before its slide into feudalism; the Soviet Union never achieved that height and thus had a much shorter distance to fall.

Staying and escalating is, however, within the capability of the virtually imperial administration currently in place. There is little hope that it will succeed in anything remotely resembling a "victory," even though no definition of that "victory" has yet been clearly articulated. If we operate on the assumption that "victory" means an effective, stable, peaceful, small-d-democratic government in an Iraq within the same borders as now delineate it, the internal conditions of civil war, sectarian violence, and anti-occupation insurgence seem to preclude such a victory. And for the U.S. military -- even augmented by private security companies, mercenaries, etc. -- to establish and then maintain such a government is a pipe dream: we simply don't have the troops and materiel to stand there like prison guards and enforce an unwanted administration on the people of Iraq for an indefinite period of time, perhaps years, possibly decades.

So staying the course is abject futility, with nothing good possible. Nix that idea.

But is cutting and running any better? Probably not. A "phased redeployment" while the bad guys are still shooting at us and laying IEDs under our vehicles is going to be a delicate operation, very different from either a clear cut victory or a defeat and surrender. If victory were possible, we could leave after the "enemy" surrenders and agrees to our terms. But since that isn't a reasonable expectation, do we dare look at the other possibility?

Even in Vietnam, the U.S. did not surrender to the Vietnamese or the Viet Cong, nor were there any terms agreed to that laid out specific items such as reparations, decrease in military establishment, and so on, such as were levied against the defeated powers in World Wars I and II. How could such a formal surrender be effected in Iraq? Could the U.S. government, under either the present administration or some future administration, effectively "surrender" to Iraq? The political logistics would be a nightmare. To whom would we surrender? Who would set the terms? Who would enforce them? There is no truly functioning government in Iraq right now, and given the realities of the sectarian violence and anti-American insurgence, who would guarantee "safe-conduct" for the withdrawal of the surrendered troops? If there's a formal surrender, would the departing military be able to act in its own defense if attacked in the act of retreating? Or would the "defeated" military forces be considered prisoners of war, war criminals, or what?

These are, of course, rhetorical questions, but only in the sense that they don't have any real answers right now. If, however, the option of formal surrender were to be considered, these questions would have to be addressed.

And what about all the materiel? Who would take possession of that? After all, there is an enormous amount of equipment – paid for with taxpayer dollars – over there, not to mention all the extravagant construction going on both in the "green zone" and the various military bases being "established" in the country. Would all of that be simply turned over to the Iraqis?

Then comes the question of reparations. A victorious nation, if one can apply that title to Iraq at this stage, has often been granted the right to exact payment for the damage it has suffered at the hands of the vanquished. Considering the horrendous damage inflicted on the Iraqi people and landscape by the invading U.S. military forces and private contractors, it is not inconceivable that Iraq, with support from an unknown number of other nations and international bodies, could demand that the U.S. fund the reconstruction of Iraq. Even though the original plan for the invasion, occupation, conquest, and ultimate democratization of Iraq included funds for the reconstruction, very little has been done. Many facilities are in worse shape than under Saddam Hussein.

So while a formal surrender might have the advantage of getting the U.S. troops out of Iraq expeditiously, the collateral damage could be as bad as, or even worse than, staying the course.

Any kind of withdrawal short of absolute victory has to address the existing conditions in Iraq, specifically the sectarian violence, ethnic civil war, and the economic implications of the chaotic state. It might be interesting to play a bit of "what-if" to determine any other viable options.

Certainly we acknowledge that prior to the ousting of Saddam Hussein, there was no civil unrest in Iraq to compare to what exists now. Saddam, as a secular leader, kept the violence in check. Granted, he may have done it in unsavory ways, oppressing the majority Shia in favor of the minority Sunni and discriminating against the ethnic Kurds, but at least there was much less violence and the infrastructure functioned. In a sense, then, it could be said that the U.S. invasion triggered the violence.

However, we also know that these "tribal" animosities are of long duration, stretching back for centuries. The victorious allies after World War I established Iraq as a sovereign nation, but it had no organic development. Only external intervention and/or strong man tyrannies have held it together this long. And perhaps it is time that we, as "western democracies," recognize that in order for a similar democracy to take firm hold in Iraq, it must do so as a result of the will of the people. It may very well be that, even though the U.S. invasion toppled Saddam and unleashed the violence, that very violence may have been inevitable no matter when Saddam fell. It may be that the violence, rather than democracy, is organic.

In other words, the U.S. was wrong to invade and rip the top off the volcano, but the current U.S. administration didn't start the volcano; it was there all along.

In that sense, then, the "Crate and Barrel" metaphor should be discarded. Yes, the U.S. barged into Iraq and wreaked unconscionable havoc. There is no doubt about that. And that havoc extends from the initial "shock and awe" bombing to the invasion and occupation, through the failure to secure the existing weapons supplies, to the failure to plan for contingencies such as resistance and insurgence. But what the U.S. should not be blamed for is the tribal sensitivities that are fueling the attacks against American troops.

Yes, to counter that one must acknowledge that the U.S. seems to have set out upon this enterprise with no understanding of those sensitivities, no understanding of the ethnic, cultural, and religious as well as political history of the region. But what the U.S. – both the administration and the public – needs to understand is that there may not be an acceptable military outcome to this misadventure. There may not be a recognizable democracy to emerge from whatever violence remains after a U.S. withdrawal.

That violence may have been just waiting for an excuse and an opportunity to erupt; it may very well have been inevitable. If it was not inevitable and was solely the result of the U.S. invasion, then the removal of American forces should result in the cessation of violence. If, however, the sectarian and ethnic clashes are the natural culmination of centuries of repression, then a U.S. withdrawal will have no noticeable effect, just as a U.S. military presence is having no noticeable effect.

We know that the region is crucial to U.S. political and economic interests. We know the invasion of Iraq was about the oil, and if some analyses are accurate, it's also about the generation of inexpensive electricity by means of nuclear power plants. (If the oil-producing nations have cheaper nuclear plants, they would be able to use less of their own oil and thus better control the world supply. The capacity to produce nuclear weapons is only a scare tactic, albeit an effective one for both sides, as other DUers have pointed out far more eloquently and informedly than I can even attempt to do here.) Any invasion of Iran will be for the same reason, and it will be equally futile in achieving that goal. The U.S. simply does not have the military machinery -- human and otherwise -- to engage successfully in such an operation; the result could very likely be "formal surrender."

But because the U.S. administration seems oblivious to the "tribal sensitivities" in the region and their impact on military operations, no effective exit strategy can be designed or implemented. Victory is impossible, defeat is inconceivable, so something else has to be devised. The inability of an either/or perspective to find alternatives is obvious in this tragic instance.

Let's look again at the complexities, and at how tangled the current U.S. operation is in the very "tribal sensitivities" it's not paying any attention to -- and what that means in terms of developing an alternative to the either/or of victory or defeat:

The Saudis are ostensibly U.S. allies, and they are Sunnis, as are the majority of Muslims around the world. The Iranians, who were U.S. allies as long as the U.S. propped up the Shah, are mostly Shia. In Iraq, the U.S. is supporting a Shia-led and Shia-supported puppet government, while the majority Shia are led by sectarian leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr who are committed to defeating and ousting the U.S. occupation! To complicate matters, the Saddam regime was run by the Baath party, made up almost entirely of Sunni Muslims. As supporters – often in name only – of Saddam, the Baath party and its Sunni members were stripped of any rights and privileges they had under Saddam, thus alienating them from the U.S. These Sunni represented most of the professionals in the Saddam government: the professors and engineers and doctors and scientists.

In other words, we made EVERYONE there our enemy!

Yes, we broke it, but it's beyond fixing. We already know that many of the professional class in Iraq have fled; many others have been killed in the fighting. We can't undo that. Allowing more of our own people to be killed, allowing them to kill more Iraqis, putting our own nation further and further and further into debt over an unwinnable war is absurdity piled on obscenity.

We must leave now. We must cut our losses and get the hell out. Will it mean 3000+ Americans have died in vain? Perhaps, but the alternative could very well be waiting until 58,000 Americans have died in vain, because the U.S. is truly engaged in another Vietnam: a situation in which no military victory is possible, but the political logistics of traditional military defeat and surrender are likewise untenable. Nothing is going to bring those 3000 back. Bombing Afghanistan did not bring back the 3000 killed on September 11, 2001; invading Iraq did not bring them back either.

We must address the economic issues that led to the motivation for invading Iraq and for contemplating the invasion of Iran: the unquenchable American thirst for oil and the destruction of an equitable economic system. Corporate globalization, with its refined concentration of wealth into just a few hands, promotes the kind of feudalistic tyranny that considers war "politics -- or business -- by different means."

Just as we tried to help Iraq evolve into a western-style democracy without the evolutionary social foundation for it, we need to help our own western culture – and specifically our culture of American exceptionalism and our culture of Puritanic revenge motivation – evolve to a point where we look to the past for instruction, but to the future for motivation.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Ten thousand wrongs don't make a right. And two million deaths will not restore a single lost life. We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting a different result: we all know that's the definition of insanity.

There are no good choices; there is only an opportunity to stop making bad choices. We can't undo the harm that's done; we can only resolve not to do any more. Let's stop the insanity. Let's stop the war. Let's stop it NOW.


Tansy Gold