A Mesopotamian Summer

The United States’ occupation of Iraq is confronting a series of problems and seems more insecure than it was a year ago. The United States in Iraq is paying the costs of imperial arrogance, which had miscalculated the consequences of its intervention in Iraq. The United States’ occupation and administration of Iraq is being compromised by a lack of political clarity on the part of the present administration. It seems from the manner in which the George W. Bush’s White House is handling the crisis that there was more of an ideological reason for the war in 2003 than anything else.

The origins of the Second Iraq War started in the immediate aftermath of the First Iraq War in 1990-1991, when the United States liberated Kuwait, but stopped short of removing Saddam Hussein from power. The failure of the United States to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 1991 was blamed on the hesitancy of its Arab coalition partners as being unwilling to continue the war. The United Nations’ was also held responsible for allowing Saddam Hussein to continue in power, because the United Nations’ resolution in 1990-1991 only consented to the liberation of Kuwait and did not authorize a political change in Iraq. These allegations may be true, but they also overlook the reality that the United States, in the First Iraq War was a part of a political coalition of western European and Arab and Muslim nations. It was, and is, the nature of coalition war fighting that political constraints always constraint military operations and even though the United States was the dominant member of the coalition, it was also powerless.

The United States was powerless, because had it not agreed to a cease-fire in 1991, its coalition partners might have deserted. Hence, the decision of George Bush to end the war short of removing Saddam Hussein from power was motivated by reasons of pragmatism. Political pragmatism of the first Bush administration suggested that defeating Iraq in a military sense was effortless, but enduring the occupation of Iraq would be a suicide, if its allies chose not to support the United States in the endeavor. The verdict of history is always partial towards those nations, which are capable of successfully ending a war and not towards those nations, which start a war they are incapable of finishing. The political nightmare associated with the occupation of Iraq without any allies or political support cautioned the first Bush administration to avoid being entangled in a protected political-military occupation of Iraq.

The reasons for the Second Iraq War lay within the internal politics of the Republican Party, whose political platform advocated the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. The need for a regime change in Iraq became significant as the Republican Party gained a majority in Congressional politics in 1996 and took on an increasingly strident tone against Iraq. The election of George W. Bush in 2000 gave the Republican Party the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The reason argued for the removal of Saddam Hussein was more ideological than it was realistic, because it was rationalized on the basis of the Republican Party’s domestic politics and not because of the United States’ strategic national security interests.

Iraq, in the period from 1991 to 2003, was subjected to a sanctions regime enforced by the United States and condoned by the United Nations, which had effectively chortled any nuisance value Iraq could pose regionally. Iraq was incapable of posing a threat to its neighbors, because Iraq was under the aerial occupation of the United States and Great Britain. Saddam Hussein was only a menace to the Iraqi society since he had been politically neutered after the collapse of the Iraqi armed forces in 1991 and the sanctions regime had consistently isolated Iraq in a diplomatic sense. The United States’ claim that it was resisting Saddam Hussein, because he was not a democratic leader was mischievous. United States had failed to support Kurdish rebellion in the north of Iraq and another uprising in the south by Shias in 1991. The United States had stood and watched as Saddam Hussein crushed those rebellions with utmost of brutality and disregard for human lives.

The United States’ argument, which made the case of war, was that Iraq was the cause of all the political problems in the Middle East. It was also claimed that Saddam Hussein was supporting the military insurgency against Israel and as long as Saddam Hussein was in power, Israeli security would always be a under a political threat of a resurgent Palestinian nationalism. Since this Palestinian nationalism was seen as being politically funded and supported by Iraq, the need for an enduring Middle East peace suggested the eviction of Saddam Hussein from power. Whether these rationales were correct or not and whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq posed a viable threat to Israel is a disingenuous argument. The important consideration was that this logic was actually believed by those making the case for war against Iraq. As this group of officials, the so called cabal of neo-conservatives, was dominant in the second Bush administration, argument for a war against Iraq ended up as a simple case of reinforcement of a mutually agreed upon idea in the second Bush administration.

The case for war against Iraq was a foregone conclusion. Herein lay the seeds of the political and military quagmire that eventually greeted the United States in Iraq. Consequently, there was no concentrated effort on the part of United States to stem the slide to war. The caus belli for war against Iraq was provided by the allegations, as of yet unconfirmed, that Iraq owned weapons of mass destruction. It was also further alleged that Iraqi capability to deliver these weapons of mass destruction still existed and had not been fully degraded, but rather that Iraq was steadily working to improve its capability to deliver biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons. It was also alleged that Iraqis were disgusted by the inhumane rule of Saddam Hussein and wanted democracy and would rise up and greet any liberator who would remove Saddam Hussein from power.

In all of the arguments for war, no one in the second Bush administration bothered to ponder, how the Iraqis would really react to an American invasion. No one in the Bush administration cared to point out that the Iraqis already had a bitter experience of being “left at the altar”, when they had opposed Saddam Hussein in 1991. The sin of the decision makers in the White House was that they methodically opted to ignore all the intelligence and pre-war cautions, which did not compliment their personal believes. The officials of Bush administration were convinced in their own righteous convictions and viewed the dissenting voices as being traitorous. The growing dissent against the war with Iraq was seen as a threat not to the United States, but to the political ideology of Bush administration itself. The Bush administration viewed itself as crusaders in the path of destiny fulfilling a messianic task of bringing peace, and securing the existence of Israel, in the Middle East. Therefore, the reasons for the war against Iraq were the personal opinions of the officials in the Bush White House in terms of their religion, politics and morality, which the saw the war in tones of a personal stamp of validation and not through the prism of the United States’ security interests.

Despite these assumptions, the Bush White House correctly predicted that the Iraqi resistance to a determined military assault by the United States would be futile. The only obstacle in the path of removing Saddam Hussein from power was the lack of legitimacy and that was addressed through a United Nations’ resolution making the case for war on Iraq’s non-compliance on the issue of providing access to weapons of mass destruction. The United States was not interested in the verification of an Iraqi program devoted to weapons of mass destruction, as much as it was eager for an excuse for inciting a war against Iraq. The United States was so pre-occupied with the hope of engineering a pretext for war in the fall of 2002 and in the early months of 2003 that it completely failed to rationalize the possibility of occupying Iraq after the war. It seemed that the United States had prepared for war under the believe that the post-war occupation of Iraq would easy, because the Iraqis having seen Saddam Hussein toppled, would not resist the American forces. The political utopianism of the Bush administration imagined that the United States would be considered as a liberating, and not as an occupying force in Iraq.

The cardinal mistake, which the United States made in judging its post-war occupation responsibilities in Iraq, was that it ignored the prospects of an Iraqi reaction to the occupation. The United States assumed, wrongly, that Iraqi post-war occupation interests would be the same as the United States’ interests. The second mistake, which the United States made, that compounded the flaws of the first mistake, was to presume that both the Iraqis and United States shared a common purpose in Iraq; the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. What the United States failed to consider was that the Iraqis were not interested gifting the political power in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq to the United States or representatives of its choice. Consequently, when the majority of the Iraqis cheered the removal of Saddam Hussein, they were not applauding the United States’ as liberators of Iraq, as much as they were celebrating the right to exercise power in Iraq free from any political intimidation.

The Iraqi hope after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime was that political power would be distributed and would not be monopolized as it was under Saddam Hussein’s rule. This meant that the majority of the Iraqi people, the Shias, who had had been denied political power, by a minority of Sunnis, would gain political importance in the new Iraq. What the Iraqis never imagined was that the United instead of sharing political power, would simply deny it to the majority of Iraqis. The United States’ occupation is facing problems, because the problem in Iraq deals with the question of how the political power will be distributed. The reasons for the Iraqi insurgency against the coalition forces lie in the fact that, there is a genuine concern on the part of the Iraqis that the United States is denying them an equal share in the Iraqi politics. The insurgency against the United States and its coalition partners is generated from the United States’ refusal to compromise politically with the Iraqis. The roots of the Iraqi insurgency are motivated by a sense of nationalism, which does not wish Iraqi sovereignty to be decided by non-Iraqis. The Iraqi insurgency is being fanned by the refusal of the United States to transfer political power to the Iraqis and not because the Iraqis are supporting Saddam Hussein or Al-Qaeda.

Another reason, which is fuelling the resistance to the United States’ political administration of Iraq is the growing awareness that the Iraqis are being denied a voice in the future politics of Iraq. Historically, the Iraqis were never allowed to develop their own political representation, because soon after independence in the early 1920s, Iraq was forced to suffer through a British appointed royal family, which was more reflective of an Iraqi minority than it was of the majority of the Iraqis. The Iraqi royal family’s rule was replaced by Saddam Hussein’s rule and that too, represented the minority will over the interests of the majority. Hence, to the majority of the Iraqis, the United States’ invasion has lost all of its legitimacy and they consider the United States’ occupation of Iraq as illegal. In the Iraqi eyes, there is no difference in the actions of the United States and the past rulers of Iraq, because all these rules were based on the denial of political rights in Iraq.

It is interesting to note that the Iraqi insurgency flared up after it became clear that the United States, wished to retain power in Iraq after June 30, 2004. Granted that there was a simmering rebellion by the Sunnis, but the majority of Iraqis were not supportive of the Sunni resistance to the United States, as they waited to see how political power devolved from the Americans to the Iraqis. The scintilla of doubt, which ignited the Iraqi insurgency was the declaration by the United States that it opposed direct elections, as advocated by the Iraqi majority, and favored an interim constituent set up in Iraq. This seemed to suggest to the Iraqis that the United States was not interested in the transfer of power, scheduled for June 30, 2004. What was a localized political rebellion turned into a national war of liberation against the United States and its allies.

The United States reaction, to the increased levels of resistance, miscalculated the nature of the insurgency. The United States chose to view the insurgency as an attempt by pro-Saddam Hussein supporters trying to resist the United States’ occupation and did not realize that the insurgency was a symptom of Iraqi frustration at being denied a voice in their own political affairs. The United States seems to be routinely confusing the distinction between nationalism and support for Saddam Hussein in Iraq, just as it continually failed to draw the dichotomy in Vietnam. The United States, in that particular war, seemed to equate the Vietnamese struggle for liberation against colonial powers, as a manifestation of Vietnamese communism and was determined to quell it. In Iraq, the United States seems determined to think that it is fighting pro-Saddam Hussein groups. Hence, the United States is fortified in its believe not to capitulate to the Iraqi insurgents, because that would gravely undermine its crusade in the war against terrorism. Since the United States has failed to understand the real reasons behind the resistance, it will only make the situation worse and it will make the Iraqis more determined to resist the United States’ occupation.

This is a serious mistake, because what the United States imagines to be a war against terrorism is a war of national liberation by the Iraqis to evict the United States from Iraq for the right to determine their own political future. The conflict in Iraq has reached absurd proportions of political surrealism, because the more the United States escalates the conflict to defeat the insurgency, which to the United States is a metaphor for terrorism, the more determined the Iraqi resistance will become to what is considered as a foreign occupation of Iraq. There is no question or utility for the United States winning the heart and the minds of the Iraqis or to continue in this prospect, because to the Iraqis the United States’ occupation is a simple extension of minority power groups, which have dominated the Iraqi politics from the creation of Iraq as a modern state in the 1920s.

The United States has, for practical purposes the lost the struggle to win the hearts and the minds of the Iraqis, because its occupation of Iraq is considered as being akin to the monarchial rule of Iraq from the 1920s to the 1960s and the rule of Saddam Hussein from the 1960s to the early 2000s. The only feasible option to end the Iraqi national insurgency against the United States would be to agree to an expedited mechanism for transferring political power to the Iraqis, but that would be seen as the political defeat of the United States and would never be considered by Washington. The reason for United States’ delay in the handing over power to the Iraqis is that the United States is not willing to trust the Iraqis with the administration of their own political affairs. As long as the United States is distrustful of an Iraqi independence in politics, it will refrain from depositing political power in the Iraqi hands and the insurgency will continue unabated.

It is ironic that the United States had intervened in Iraq to change the greater Arab political culture, but now it seems have adopted a Arab custom of “not losing face”, which is prompting the United States to persist with doomed policies. The United States has invested much in terms of its domestic political capital to retreat from Iraq without accomplishing its stated goals, which are elusive and unattainable. The United States political goals in Iraq are futile because they have never been clearly articulated. The original reason for the war against Iraq, was to destroy the Iraqi stockpiles of the weapons of mass destruction and but it was unable to find those weapons. Once that argument seemed to come under international criticism, the reason for war was given as an attempt to bring democracy to Iraq. When, the Iraqis did not welcome the United States’ occupation and resisted it, the reason for war changed again. This time, it was claimed that the Iraqi resistance was being supported by Al-Qaeda and thus, had to be defeated.

In all of these verbal gymnastics, the United States never created a coherent policy. The United States seems be politically befuddled in Iraq since it has consistently tried to, and seems intent to, solve a political problem through the application of military force. The application of over powering military force will not the end insurgency in Iraq, but will cause the United States to suffer an eventual political defeat in Iraq. The United States can commit over whelming force in Iraq and it can defeat the insurgency, but it cannot guarantee an absence of future insurgencies against the United States. Popular insurgencies, as the one being waged in Iraq, are difficult to defeat because defeating such an insurgency is not dependent on military power, but on its political endurance to stay and maintain its occupation of Iraq. The Iraqis have been proven, through their historic experience, as being politically patient and have suffered nearly 80 years of political inequality and are likely to suffer more years of being denied their political rights.

The real question is, who will show first signs of fatigue – the Iraqis or the United States?

Chances are that the United States will be the first to show a “commitment fatigue”, because its levels of endurance, in Iraq, are pegged to the popular public opinion in the United States. The Achilles heel of the United States military occupation of Iraq and its ability to fight the Iraqi insurgency resides in the popular opinion of its public and their views on the issue. The fact that the United States is endeavoring with flawed policies in Iraq has created a situation, which has seen the United States becoming politically and militarily bogged down in Iraq. As the United States applies military solutions to a political problem, the conflict shall gain more volatility and show lesser probabilities of subsiding. Consequently, the United States is slowly entering an abyss of failure in Iraq; because the more desperate it gets to solve the political problem via military means, the more entrenched and more resistant it will make the political scenario in Iraq to a military solution.

The United States cannot leave Iraq without undermining its international credibility. Therefore, it will try its utmost to solve the problem and that suggests that the United States will rely more on military power as a solution to its problems. The United States will reinforce its own failures in Iraq. The United States has to grit its way to more increased levels of troop projections in Iraq to effectively deal with the crisis and it has to bludgeon its way to a military victory in Iraq. A military defeat for the United States in Iraq would be disastrous for its international image. The more troops the United States commits to Iraq to avoid a military defeat, the more it will risk a backlash of public opinion. In the long term, this policy of military force being applied to solve a political problem will be self-defeating as the American public opinion will not tolerate it indefinitely and the United States will in be forced to leave Iraq in the end.

Therefore, the United States’ options are limited in Iraq. The United States cannot defeat the Iraqi insurgency militarily, because it is of a political nature. The United States cannot avoid the usage of military force, as it does not trust the Iraqis enough to transfer political power to them. The tragedy is that since the United States intervened in Iraq without any clearly defined policy goals, it will be forced to leave Iraq and this will be seen as a political and military defeat for the United States’ foreign policy. There is no possibility for the United States to win this conflict and the only option for the United States is to leave Iraq, while it still has a semblance of respect left in its Iraq policies. The United States started the Iraqi war for the wrong reasons; it fought, and is fighting, the war for questionable reasons and it is occupying Iraq due to confused reasons. It should leave Iraq, because that is the only reason, which makes sense.