[NYTr] No Light, Just Tunnel: The Bipartisan Guarantee of More War in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Aug 13, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd08132007.html


No Light, Just Tunnel:

The Bipartisan Guarantee of More War in Iraq

By CHRIS FLOYD

Our text for today is from the New York Times:

    "Even as they call for an end to the war and pledge to bring the
troops home, the Democratic presidential candidates are setting out
positions that could leave the United States engaged in Iraq for years.
John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, would keep troops in
the region to intervene in an Iraqi genocide and be prepared for
military action if violence spills into other countries. Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would leave residual forces to fight
terrorism and to stabilize the Kurdish region in the north. And Senator
Barack Obama of Illinois would leave a military presence of as-yet
unspecified size in Iraq to provide security for American personnel,
fight terrorism and train Iraqis."

My word, this is certainly a surprise! Who ever would have thought that
the most "serious" Democratic candidates would take such a position?
Why, I suppose this means that if a "serious" Democrat gets elected
president, the war crime in Iraq (which is what the old-timers used to
call it when you aggressively invaded a country that hadn't attacked
you and occupied their land with your troops) will go on -- just the
same as if a "serious" Republican gets elected!

And they say there is no unity in our politics, no bipartisan consensus
in Washington!

The NYT article is a hoot and a half -- or it would be, if the farce
was not spattered with so much blood. Dig, if you will, this serious
knitting of analytical brows:

    "Among the challenges the next president could face in Iraq, three
seem to be resonating the most: What to do if there is a genocide? What
to do if chaos in Iraq threatens to engulf the region in a wider war?
And what to do if Iraq descends into further lawlessness and becomes
the staging ground for terrorist attacks elsewhere, including in the
United States?"

Grave challenges, indeed. But why do they await the next president,
when they are happening right now -- when, in fact, they were
guaranteed to happen as soon as the criminal action was launched?

The very serious John Edwards says, seriously, that he would keep an
unspecified number of troops on hand because "we have to be prepared
for the worst possibility that you never hear anyone talking about,
which is the possibility that genocide breaks out and the Shi'a try to
systematically eliminate the Sunni." But of course, Mr. Edwards himself
is noticeably reticent on the subject of the genocide that's going on
over there right now: the genocide against the Iraqi people. The number
of deaths caused by the war that Bush launched is nearing or has
surpassed one million. At least 4 million have fled their homes (an
equivalent number in the US would be around 50 million), with most of
them living in great hardship in places where they are not wanted. (But
not in the United States, of course, which has allowed in the barest
trickle of Iraqis since we destroyed their country.)

The nation is nearing a state of collapse as a direct result of the war
that was launched by Bush, approved by Congress, countenanced by the
American people and set to continue under every "serious" Democratic
candidate running for president. Oxfam's recent study of the
humanitarian catastrophe put in plainly:

    "While horrific violence dominates the lives of millions of
ordinary people inside Iraq, another kind of crisis, also due to the
impact of war, has been slowly unfolding. Up to eight million people
are now in need of emergency assistance. This figure includes:

    - four million people who are 'food-insecure and in dire need of
different types of humanitarian assistance'

    - more than two million displaced people inside Iraq

    - over two million Iraqis in neighbouring countries, mainly Syria
and Jordan, making this the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the
world....

    "Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water
and sanitation, health care, education, and employment. Of the four
million Iraqis who are dependent on food assistance, only 60 per cent
currently have access to rations through the government-run Public
Distribution System (PDS), down from 96 per cent in 2004.

    "Forty-three per cent of Iraqis suffer from 'absolute poverty'.
According to some estimates, over half the population are now without
work. Children are hit the hardest by the decline in living standards.
Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19 per cent before the US-led
invasion in 2003 to 28 per cent now.

    "The situation is particularly hard for families driven from their
homes by violence. The two million internally displaced people (IDPs)
have no incomes to rely on and are running out of coping mechanisms. In
2006, 32 per cent of IDPs had no access to PDS food rations, while 51
per cent reported receiving food rations only sometimes.

    "The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has
risen from 50 per cent to 70 per cent since 2003, while 80 per cent
lack effective sanitation. The 'brain drain' that Iraq is experiencing
is further stretching already inadequate public services, as thousands
of medical staff, teachers, water engineers, and other professionals
are forced to leave the country. At the end of 2006, perhaps 40 per
cent had left already."

What's more, the national power grid is breaking down -- in the midst
of summer temperatures that make the US heat wave look like a wintry
chill, as the BBC reports:

    "Iraq's national power grid is on the brink of collapse, the
country's electricity ministry has warned. Water supplies to Baghdad
have also been cut off for days at a time, with summertime pressures on
key systems said to be more intense than ever. The ministry blamed poor
maintenance, fuel shortages, sabotage by insurgents and rising demand
for the problems, and said some provinces hold onto supplies."

And what is the answer of the occupying power to this crisis? Not
surprisingly, it is an echo of Vice President Cheney's famous remarks
to Senator Pat Leahy on the floor of the Senate: GFY.

    "The US Army told the BBC that Iraq must now take charge of fixing
the problems. The general in charge of helping Iraq rebuild its
infrastructure, Michael Walsh, said that although Iraqi authorities
only have one-quarter of the money needed for reconstruction, solving
the problem was now up to them."

So the Iraqis don't have the money to rebuild the infrastructure
destroyed by the war launched by the Americans -- doubtless because
billions upon billions of reconstruction dollars have been looted by
the crony conquistadors and their local bagmen. The Pentagon knows the
Iraqis don't have the money to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by
the war launched by the Americans; but they don't care. Bush doesn't
care. The Democratic leaders in Congress don't care. The "serious"
Democratic candidates don't care. Thousands of innocent Iraqis -- the
young, the sick, the injured, the poor, the abandoned -- will be added
to the death count this summer from this collapse of basic services.
But none of this is an American responsibility. Not the collapse of the
state, not the collapse of the society, not the plunge into wholesale
sectarian violence by forces being armed on all sides by the Americans.
No, it's all the Iraqis' responsibility now.

This unspeakably hideous attitude is not just the stance of the
Pentagon, of course; it's also the credo the most serious Democratic
candidate of all, the breakaway leader for the nomination, Hillary
Clinton. As the Times tells us:

"In February, [Clinton] said her message to the Iraqi government would
be simple: 'I would say 'I'm sorry, it's over. We are not going to
baby-sit a civil war.'"

We invaded your country. We occupied your country. We wrote your
constitution, in which the arbitrary decrees of our colonial viceroy
were imposed as fundamental law. We looted your money. We armed your
sectarians. And we are going to keep a large number of troops in your
country, come what may. But we aren't going to baby-sit you anymore.
No, if you don't get your act together -- and sign the goddamned Oil
Law already -- we are just going to withdraw to our permanent bases and
watch you kill each other. -- That is the sum total of the leading
Democratic candidate's position on Iraq.

It is of course an incoherent mish-mash, because it is just a
smokescreen to obscure Clinton's true policy: to continue the war,
largely as it is being fought now. Such a course is absolutely
inevitable if you leave American forces in Iraq, to "fight terrorism,"
to "keep the civil war from spilling across the border," to "protect
American personnel" (including, er, the troops you have left in the
country), and so on. How will you "fight terrorism" in Iraq without
raiding residential areas where "terrorist units" are located and
launching airstrikes on "terrorist targets" and rounding up "suspected
terrorists" and subjecting them to "strenuous interrogation" without
charges in mass prisons and mounting checkpoints to check for
terrorists and wreaking the usual "collateral damage" from "force
protection" incidents? In other words, how you will operate any
differently than the Bush-led operation in Iraq right now? The only
difference under Clinton and her "serious" rivals is that there will be
fewer troops -- which will actually mean an increased reliance on
airstrikes, and hair-trigger "force protection," and even more
mercenaries to fill the gaps.

And if the mission of your "residual force" is to "prevent
genocide" (that is, a different genocide from the one going on now),
how will you do that without intervening -- with airstrikes, troops,
checkpoints, arrests, interrogations, "force protection," the whole
schmeer -- on behalf of one side or the other? Or both sides? And
again, how will this be different from what's going on now?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: anyone who advocates leaving
even a "residual force" of American troops is Iraq is actually
supporting the continuation of the war, on largely the same terms as it
is being waged now. There is no "middle way," there is no magic,
bipartisan compromise. There is only no war, or more war.

American troops were sent into Iraq on a criminal mission, an act of
aggression that was the moral and legal equivalent of the Nazi invasion
of Poland or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Their continued
presence in Iraq only exacerbates all the evils that the "serious"
people say will happen if America withdraws. (As if these things
weren't happening in Iraq right now.) The Iraqis will never hammer out
any kind of political accommodation as long as American troops are in
the country, dividing the nation into "collaborators" and "insurgents"
just by their very presence (much less by their alliance with one
faction or another). The Iraqis will never come to any kind of fair
agreement on the distribution of the nation's oil wealth as long as
American troop are in the country, emblems of the nearly universal (and
certainly correct) belief among Iraqis that the West is out to steal
their oil.

It may be too late for any kind of accommodation or agreement now. The
ruination that Bush and his willing executioners in Congress have
brought to Iraq may be irreparable. As for "destabilizing the region,"
the war crime has already done that. (Indeed, it was one of the aims of
the invasion, as its architects and champions once boasted. "Creative
destruction" was the phrase used by the very serious Michael Leeden, I
believe.) There will be an inevitable escalation of the proxy war
between Iran and Saudi Arabia that is now going on the country; but
that will happen no matter what. Sectarian violence will also continue
to spiral no matter what, with one possible exception: if the Americans
leave the country and are no longer there arming the factions, stirring
them up, setting one against the other, and killing and imprisoning
civilians, thereby radicalizing more and more Iraqis every day. The
only possible chance Iraq has to see a lessening of sectarian violence
lies in the complete withdrawal of American troops.

What would happen next? Well, I think a windfall profits tax on the oil
companies and the weapons peddlers -- and the private equity sharks
like Carlyle and Wall Street firms and investment banks who have gorged
themselves with blood money like big ole ticks on a hand -- would
produce a very sizable fund for the massive reparations the United
States should pay to the Iraqis for destroying their country and
murdering their people. Special prosecutors investigating the origins
and conduct of the war would also be in order: a Homeland Nuremberg, on
national TV -- bigger and better than the Watergate hearings!

But we all know that none of that is going to happen. Certainly not the
reparations, the investigations and prosecutions -- not in a million
years, not in the "shining city on a hill." Nor will an American
withdrawal -- which, as I said, is the only hope Iraq has of lessening
the hell that now rages there. The sainted General Petraeus -- who has
been one of the most egregiously mendacious blowhards touting the war's
"success" for years -- is now telling U.S. lawmakers that his "surge"
strategy will take 9-10 years to work, as The Hill reports.So anyone
relying on Petraeus -- as Bush and all the "serious" Republicans are
doing -- is buying into at least 10 more years of the present
situation. And as we outlined above, anyone touting a "residual force"
is essentially doing the same thing.

Moreover, the same strategic and economic concerns that motivated the
invasion in the first place will still obtain for the next president.
In order to "preserve America's sacred way of life," the United States
must have privileged access to the world's oil heartlands. The latter
will not only allow America to continue using a vastly disproportionate
share of the world's energy resources but also be a vital asset in
containing the growth of any potential rivals and putting the squeeze
on recalcitrant client states (or allies) who get out of line. No
president dedicated to maintaining America's global dominance -- via a
worldwide empire of military bases and a gargantuan war machine far
surpassing that of any other nation -- can afford to willingly give up
control of Iraq to a Shiite majority closely allied with Iran. (Unless
of course there is a favorable "regime change" in Tehran.) This is part
of the evil genius behind the Bush Regime's invasion of Iraq: it
essentially commits any Establishment candidate -- one pledged to the
aforesaid military-based global dominance (as all of the "serious"
candidates of both parties are) -- to continuing the Bushists'
policies. Now that the Rubicon of invading Iraq has been crossed, there
is no going back. Saddam Hussein was a neutral in the war for energy
supremacy: he could be counted on to sell his oil to anyone -- indeed,
the United States was his best customer, even during the sanctions
regime, even as Bush was building up his invasion force. But a
sectarian-based Iraqi government allied with Iran -- or some other
unknown quantity seizing power in the vacuum created by the invasion --
could very well curtail or cut off the flow to America for ideological
reasons. If you are committed to American hegemony, American empire,
then you will have to stay militarily involved in Iraq, now that Bush
has led America into it. What's more, the logic of imperial geopolitics
will lead inexorably to an attack on Iran as well, to secure the
now-necessary dominion over Iraq.

Most people persist in believing that the Bush Administration has
"mishandled" or "bungled" the war in Iraq, when in fact they have
achieved almost all of their goals. They have vastly enriched their
cronies. They have installed a U.S. military presence in Iraq. They
have expanded the size, power and scope of the armed forces and the
intelligence services (which now have their own secret armies) beyond
the wildest dreams of the most hawkish Cold War militarist. They have
not only gutted the Constitution but proved that you can get away with
it -- an invaluable lesson for dictators to come. And, as noted, they
have committed the American Establishment to continuing the radical
course they have set in motion -- because the Establishment will never
allow the election of any candidate who would seek to institute the
rollback of the empire and the restoration of genuine constitutional
government. Especially as the latter would entail bringing justice to
the war makers and the war profiteers, all of them honored stalwarts of
the Establishment.

Thus turning over ostensible authority to a "sovereign" Iraqi
government was another masterstroke by the Bushists, a truly audacious
scam. While still occupying the country and controlling its affairs,
the United States has divested itself of the legal responsibilities of
an occupying power. The leaders of both parties in Washington are now
busy washing their hands of the blood they have shed, putting the onus
on the occupied, co-opted and controlled nation to "put its own house
in order." But of course, the Iraqis don't own their house anymore; the
largest and most powerful armed force in the world is squatting there,
and will keep squatting there for years to come, if the "serious"
leaders of both parties have their way.

And they will.


[Chris Floyd is an American journalist based in the UK. He is the author
of "Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium."
He writes the Empire Burlesque blog at http://www.chris-floyd.com/ ]