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Root of Spiraling Violence and Chaos in Iraq is U.S. Occupation
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Kristina Gronquist, W A M M
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As the resistance to US occupation intensifies and the violence in Iraq spirals out of control, the sponsors of the ill-fated invasion continue to babble about “staying the course.” They peddle the absurd notion that they can lead us to a positive outcome, one that will somehow outweigh the enormous damage and suffering that their policies have wrought to date.
The entire world sees a different reality, from Kofi Annan, who has declared the attack against Iraq "illegal," to Suah Said, a member of the Iraqi interim parliament. She proposes that Iraqis sue over the invasion, stating, "Now that the WMD file is closed, it's only natural that Washington should compensate the Iraqi people for all the damage inflicted since April 9, 2003." "The United States," she believes, "should now pull their troops out of Iraq and present a formal apology to the Iraqi people." According to a new study by a research team at the Blomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, an estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 United States-led invasion.
In contradiction to the majority of Iraqis, who want the troops to leave immediately, both U.S. political parties and our mass media trumpet the idea that if we pull out now, “chaos” will follow. This presumes that what we have in Iraq now is not chaos, which deifies the situation on the ground and the dangerous reality of daily life for the Iraqi people. Iraq-based Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi recently wrote the following in her widely distributed e-mail:
“Who did this war benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and al Qaeda is running around in Iraq? Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler. I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.”
Ahmed S. Hashim, professor of strategic studies at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, wrote a lengthy analysis of the Iraqi insurgency for the Boston Review, titled, “Iraq’s Chaos - Why the insurgency won’t go away.” He ends in summarizing, “The insurgency can evolve, and indeed, from the vantage point of summer 2004 appears to be evolving, into patterns of complex warfare and violence. Should this evolution continue, the prospects for American success in bringing about Iraqi security, political stability, and reconstruction will be nonexistent.”
The idea that the chaos in Iraq would worsen if we leave denies the fact that the source of chaos is the occupation, plain and simple. This is what the majority of the Iraqi people are saying, and we must not disregard their voices. Who should we listen to? Politicians lounging safely in cushy offices in America or the people in Iraq?
Only after US troops leave Iraq will the Iraqi people be able to reassert control over their country, after which, if invited, international bodies like the UN and the Arab League can provide the needed assistance to help rebuild this war-torn nation. Contracts with U.S. businesses should be cancelled. Reconstruction has broken down and little has been accomplished. Iraqi firms need to do the work so they can put their own people back to work. At a minimum we should provide a $50 billion reparations package for the economic development of Iraq and for reparations to people whose families have been killed or injured by this war. Iraq needs to have the debts of the former regime forgiven and they need something like a Marshall Plan (undertaken in a shattered Europe after the end of WWII) to help rebuild.
Withdrawing our troops from the region and halting plans for a dozen permanent military bases in Iraq will also send a much needed message to the Muslim world that we are not diabolical crusaders bent on destroying their way of life. Often we hear concern about the loss of our European allies, due to the pursuit of a preemptive war without UN approval. But angry French and German citizens are the least of our problems. The key issue, according to Michael Scheuer, a senior U.S. intelligence official who wrote the book Imperial Hubris, is the grim reality that our flawed foreign policies have spurred the wrath of one billion plus Muslims.
In the final chapter of Imperial Hubris the 20-year CIA insider calls for the onset of frank debate, not only about the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but about the overall historical thrust of policy toward the Middle East. He argues that foreign policy formed by elites toward the Middle East is stagnant, and he asks us to consider how our “unvarying military, economic, and political support for Israel” serves substantial U.S. interests that affect America’s survival. (Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world, receiving more than 6 billion annually, or about 8 million every day.)
Scheuer believes that Israel, like any state, has a right to exist if it can defend itself and live peacefully with its neighbors. But he poses the question of whether U.S. interests require Americans to be Israel’s rubber-stamp protectors and, as a result, “endure the endless blood and treasure costs of that role.” Scheuer posits that status quo with Israel - especially U.S. support for the ghettoization of Palestine - will result in unending war with Islam.
He further asks American working people to debate the strategy of the U.S. backing corrupt repressive Muslim regimes as a means to achieve below-market oil prices. He writes, “Today’s wars show the direct tie between the West’s dependence on Persian Gulf oil and the loss of U.S. lives: the more dependence, the more deaths.” Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson put this succinctly in a recent op-ed piece. Jackson wrote, “It would be sad to conclude some day that our leaders sent our soldiers halfway around the world to die for our cars.”
Imperial Hubris raises a most profound question in its closing words: “Does U.S. security require, and have we the moral right, to aggressively try to install secular, democratic systems in countries that give no hint of wanting them? Is our nation more likely to perish if the rest of the world is not just like us, or if our democracy-making crusade destabilizes much of the world?” (Here the author implies the goal in Iraq is to install democracy, which is arguable.)
Many acknowledge that the world is less safe as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Middle East leaders warned us that our war would “create a thousand bin Ladens” and they were right. But few in government want to address the uncomfortable questions that lead to the root causes of anti-Americanism in the region. Bin Laden and others do not hate us for who we are, Scheuer forcefully and correctly argues, they hate us for what we do.
If a major player within the CIA can see so clearly that which we anti-war activists have stated for years, then policymakers must also begin to come to grips with the rotten core of our policies toward the people of the Middle East. The ongoing occupation of Iraq is an example of horrendously flawed policymaking. Contrary to official dogma, removal of U.S. troops would alleviate chaos in Iraq, not increase it. |
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© 2004 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete November 2004 Index - click here
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