[NYTr] An Endless Occupation: The Korea Model Rationale for Staying in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Sep 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman09192007.html


An Endless Occupation?

The Korea Model Rationale for Staying in Iraq

By ZOLTAN GROSSMAN

The "Korea Model" is not a new model of Kia or Hyundai. It is President
Bush's rationale for extending the U.S. occupation of Iraq from four
years to four decades--or even more. As reported on CNN and the New
York Times, South Korea is Bush's stated model for a long-term
occupation of Iraq. In his September 13 televised address, Bush said
that Iraqi leaders "understand that their success will require U.S.
political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my
presidency. These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship
with America."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained in June that "the idea is more
a model of a mutually agreed arrangement whereby we have a long and
enduring presence but under the consent of both parties and under
certain conditions." Stationing Korea-style permanent military bases
(or "enduring" in the Pentagon's wordplay) has been the goal of the
Iraq occupation since it began in 2003.

Since an North-South armistice halted most hostilities on the Korean
Peninsula in 1953, freezing the Korean War in a stalemate, U.S. forces
have been stationed in huge military bases in South Korea. Their
presence in the country has become an omnipresence, particularly along
the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where they have skirmished a few times
with North Korean troops. In recent years, South Korea has developed a
relatively prosperous economy and a functioning electoral democracy,
perhaps more despite the U.S. presence than because of it.

But comparing Iraq and Korea is like comparing apples and oranges--or
hummus and kimchee. Unlike in Iraq, U.S. troops are not fighting
against an insurgency in the streets and villages of South Korea. They
are facing a standing army of North Korean troops along a clearly
defined boundary, with large-scale weaponry on both sides. Armed with
smaller weapons (such as IEDs) and an ability to blend into the
population, Iraqi rebels could be effective for many years.
Insurgencies with shifting rebel zones (and counterinsurgent death
squads) can and have lasted for decades, as shown by the alternate
"model" of Colombia.

Iraq has become deeply divided along ethnic and religious lines,
whereas South Korea is one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries
on Earth. In Korea, the U.S. has not faced anything remotely like the
civil war between Arab Sunnis and Shi'as, or the conflict between Arab
and Kurdish regions-both driven partly by a U.S. divide-and-conquer
strategy centered on their access to oil. If anything, the U.S. is
following a "Bosnia Model"-rubberstamping the de facto partition of the
country through ethnic cleansing, in order to create smaller and easily
controlled political enclaves.

Washington claims to promote "democracy" in Iraq, but it backed a
string of military dictatorships to secure control over South Korea.
>From 1948 to 1992 (with a brief democratic period in 1960-61), the
country was ruled by a series of U.S.-backed dictators and military
leaders. In 1980, South Korean troops were temporarily released from
U.S. command so they could massacre pro-democracy protesters in the
city of Kwangju. Civilian presidents have been elected only since 1992,
but they too have tended to collaborate with Washington's military
presence and neoliberal free-trade economic policies, just as recent
Iraqi leaders have.

Since civilian rule emerged in South Korea, the Korean public has
increasingly questioned the presence of 37,000 U.S. troops as
prolonging the North-South divide, and are opposing the expansion of
the military bases that disrespect women and rural people. Prostitution
is rampant around the Korean bases, with the U.S. military enabling the
exploitation of Korean women in the "camptowns." Farmers have fought
the expansion of Pyongtaek and other bases, and police have forcibly
evicted them from their ancestral lands. This base expansion is part of
refashioning the installations as not only "defending" South Korea, but
as capable to project force into other Asian countries.

Most Iraqis have wanted U.S. troops to leave (and do not view
neighboring countries as a threat), whereas many South Koreans at least
initially backed a U.S. military presence as "protection" from North
Korean attack. If South Korea is Bush's model for Iraq, then North
Korea is clearly his model for Iran. Yet the Iraqi leaders he claims
want "enduring" U.S. bases are predominantly Shi'as who actually want
good relations with Iran. Bush intends to oust-constitutionally or
otherwise--the elected Shi'a government that he once called a miracle
of democracy, and now sees as too close to Iran. As the only remaining
large countries in the region that do not yet host U.S. military bases,
Iran and Syria are the last obstacles to a contiguous American sphere
of influence (stretching from Poland to Pakistan) situated between the
emerging economic competitors of the EU and China. The "Korea Model"
would make it easier to target Iran as a perpetual enemy state.

But rather than following a "Korea Model" in Iraq, the U.S. actually
appears to be following a "Palestine Model." Just as the Israeli state
uses multiple military posts, checkpoints, and imprisonment to
intimidate and control an independence-minded population, U.S. forces
are carrying out the same tactics in Iraq--with an identical rationale
of fighting Islamic "terrorists." In the name of separating hostile
populations, the U.S. occupiers have gone to the point of constructing
an Israeli-style separation wall between Sunni and Shi'a neighborhoods
in Baghdad. Much as armed settler militias carry out the Israeli
military's dirty work on the West Bank, the American forces in Iraq
hire private security contractors such as Blackwater, which are now
being exposed as mercenary goons who endanger democracy in Iraq and at
home.

Because Bush cannot admit to either Arab states or the American public
that the decades-long Israeli occupation is the closest parallel with
his long-term plans for Iraq, he has to tout the ridiculous "Korea
Model." His calculation is that Congress will accept the drawdown of
U.S. forces in Iraqi cities, not through a withdrawal out of country,
but through a "redeployment" into the heavily fortified imperial
garrisons. These bases include Green Zone, Baghdad Airport, Balad
(central), Al Asad (west), Tallil (south), Bashur (north), and about
ten other major installations covering the Sunni, Shi'a and Kurdish
regions. In fact, an "enduring" occupation run from these large bases
has been the central plan since Day One of the Iraq War.

Congressional Democrats have marshalled a tepid response, recently
passing House Resolution 2929, which bans funding for new permanent
bases in Iraq, but does nothing about the bases already constructed. On
Google Earth, the Balad air base (north of Baghdad and just west of the
Tigris River) is visible as a dot when all of Iraq fills the screen,
and the base fills the screen when you zoom into the sprawling KBR-run
complex. In the decades ahead, future Republican and Democratic
presidents would use the inevitable rebel attacks on these huge targets
as a "tripwire" for counterattacks, in order to prevent a genuine
democracy that would call for Iraqi control over Iraqi oil and bases.
These bases would also be used as "lilypads" from which to threaten
other peoples in the region from taking control of their own destinies.

Permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq will merely intensify Iraqi and
regional resentment over the years, draw more U.S. troops into
continuing internal conflicts, and ensure more instability and a
harsher "blowback" in the decades ahead. The question of the bases is
the key to the future of Iraq. They are a test of the future not only
of Iraq, but of the United States. This is one of the historic moments
when Americans have to decide whether our country will be a republic,
or continue to function as an empire. Our failure to make that
fundamental decision today will ensure future imperial wars and
occupations.

[Dr. Zoltan Grossman is a geographer and member of the faculty at The
Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who researches and
teaches on the relationship between ethnic nationhood, natural
resources, and military interventions and bases. His website is at
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz and he can be contacted at
grossmaz at evergreen.edu ]