Delusion of US-guided Iraqi freedom
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Syed Fattahul Alim
The US invasion of Iraq that came down on Saddam Hussein, his army and the people of Iraq as 'shock and awe,' is running its fourth year. But the war with its high technology edge has not been able to keep its glamour for long as the war could not be brought to an end as planned. Rather it has been dragging on and on. The war has now lost its direction.
Iraq has not got its promised liberation, neither has the dream of turning it into a democracy come true. On the contrary, the entire country is splintered into Shiite, Sunni, Kurd and a host of different groups and factions, which are settling their old scores with one another. A terrible civil war is raging through the length and breadth of country. It is a state of abysmal chaos all around. The occupation administration dismantled Saddam's army, his police, his Ba'thist government and in its place created a new US-trained Iraq army, police and a government comprising representatives of the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. But nothing is performing as expected. The guerrillas, the suicide bombers and the warring sects are merrily spilling one another's blood making it impossible for the Maliki government to restore a semblance of order in the country. The US government itself has begun to lose its confidence in the Iraqi government being run with its blessings.
Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian narrates below what US generals in Iraq and the Bush government are thinking about the present situation in Iraq.
America's leading military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, signalled that the Bush administration may be ready to reverse its troop surge in Iraq and begin pulling soldiers out as early as next March.
Only days before he is to deliver his progress report to Congress on the 'surge', Gen Petraeus told ABC television he did not foresee maintaining present troop levels in Iraq because of the strain on the military. "The surge will run its course. There are limits to what our military can provide, so my recommendations have to be informed by, not driven by, but they have to be informed by the strain we have put on our military services," he told ABC during an interview in Baghdad.
The general refused to be more specific. But asked whether the US would begin pulling out the 30,000 extra forces deployed during the 'surge' by next March, he replied: "Your calculations are about right."
Another official told ABC the reduction could begin as early as December with further withdrawals every 45 days.
This interview of September 4 came a day after George Bush made a surprise visit to a US air base in Anbar province. Mr Bush also raised the possibility of withdrawing some forces from Iraq, but warned Congress he would not bow to public opinion in setting his war strategy.
The US forces in Iraq rose to more than 160,000 after Mr Bush ordered more troops into the war zone earlier this year.
Gen Petraeus' hints on a troop withdrawal could help blunt criticism of the war in Congress which yesterday saw the release of a scathing report from the government accountability office, which said Iraq had failed to meet 15 of 18 benchmarks on reducing violence, disbanding sectarian militias, and other indicators of political and military progress.
Mr Bush's direction of the war also came under attack from an unexpected quarter yesterday: Paul Bremer, who in 2003 was America's proconsul in Baghdad. An angry Mr Bremer released two letters to the New York Times to reject Mr Bush's comments that the official had acted on his own accord in committing one of the most calamitous mistakes of the Iraq war.
The disbanding of Saddam's military left hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers stranded without jobs or income, and is recognised as one of the most disastrous measures undertaken by Mr Bremer.
Mr Bremer told the newspaper he sent a draft of the order to the Pentagon on May 9 2003 and that it had been circulated to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other officials. In the first letter, from Mr Bremer to the president, dated May 22 2003, Mr Bremer writes at length about Iraqis weeping tears of joy at their liberation, and the dissolution of Saddam's ruling Ba'ath party. He deals with the disbanding of the army in a single sentence. "I will parallel this step with an even more robust measure dissolving Saddam's military and intelligence structures to emphasise that we mean business."
Another Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland describes British perception of the Iraq war in the wake of withdrawal of its forces from Basra.
'Lord knows, it makes no sense to be anything but a pessimist when it comes to the war in Iraq. The occupation remains as bloody and fruitless as the original invasion was fraudulent and needless. The killing and dying go on, with any let-up only relative and slight. So it would be naively hopeful to see in a series of moves these last few days anything so clear as a breakthrough. But we might detect at least a change, the passing of one phase of this dread conflict into another. As Churchill said following the victory at El Alamein in 1942: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
The first and most substantial indicator is the withdrawal, completed on September 3, of British forces to Basra Air Station. Of the 45,000 British troops involved in the original invasion, and the four Iraqi provinces that were once under direct British rule, soon there will be just 5,000, holed up behind the walls of a single airport. These soldiers will no longer live among the people to whom Britain's UN ambassador promised just last month to bring "a democratic and stable Iraq, at peace with itself and with its neighbours". Instead they will keep their distance, promising to emerge only "in extremis". And things will have to get pretty extremis for them to dare to re-enter Basra city again.
Naturally, the government plays down the significance of the withdrawal, insisting it is merely implementing a plan laid out seven months ago by Tony Blair. It was always the aim to step back once the Iraqis were ready to step forward and that point, ministers say, has been reached in Basra. They speak highly of the Iraqi general in charge, Mohan al-Firaji, believing they have placed the city in a safe pair of hands. "Look, it's not Dixon of Dock Green," one senior cabinet minister told me, acknowledging that the Iraqi police are riddled with militiamen, but there is a semblance of order now, enough to justify the British pull-back.
Ministers are less forthcoming about the timing. After all, events formed a curious sequence, in which Britain handed over 26 detainees, including members of the Mahdi army loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, just as al-Sadr announced a six-month truce last week. Did Britain cut a deal, to ensure its troops could pull out unhindered in the early hours of September 3 morning? And did the Brits have to move now, before any arrangement with al-Sadr could unravel?
Or perhaps the timing owed more to British anxiety over Washington's next move. Next week, George Bush will deliver his progress report on the war, hoping to face down a Congress agitating for a change of strategy, if not an exit - agitation which will only increase after US report of September 4 branding the Iraqi government as "dysfunctional". Veteran analyst Dan Plesch of Soas wonders if London feared that, should the White House hold firm, even announcing more of its "surge", Shia anger in Basra would become uncontainable. Better to move now, while al-Sadr and friends were still in their box.
Whatever the calculus, the appearance is clear enough: the British presence in Iraq is winding down. That's certainly how the Arab press sees it, branding the move from the palace as a "crushing defeat". Gordon Brown will speak to parliament in October, doubtless defining the British role from now on as one solely of "overwatch", rather than direct involvement. UK military planners are said to be considering a reduction to 3,000 men at the spring troop rotation. All the signs point in one direction: not towards a full withdrawal at any time soon but to a shrunken, symbolic presence whose prime objective will be to spare the Americans the ignominy of full abandonment by their closest ally.
Yet there are signs of a change in the US too. On a surprise visit to Iraq on September 3, President Bush dropped a pointed hint. Speaking in Anbar province, in which Sunni tribal leaders have joined hands with the US to beat back al-Qaida, he said "if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces".
That may have been designed to let the air out of the Congressional balloon before next week's confrontation: Bush's hint of a drawdown could well be enough to pacify a few wobbly Republicans. Whatever its motive, Bush's move suggests the White House now understands its war in Iraq is desperately unpopular and that the way to please the American people is to promise less of it.
This might be the context in which to understand the remarks of the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who made the midnight flit to Anbar alongside his boss. "I am more optimistic than I have been at any time since I took this job," he said. At first glance, that might look like proof that Gates is in the same state of denial that characterised his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld - as if the small triumph of buying off a few warlords in Anbar outweighed all the grief and destruction across the rest of Iraq.
The US invasion of Iraq that came down on Saddam Hussein, his army and the people of Iraq as 'shock and awe,' is running its fourth year. But the war with its high technology edge has not been able to keep its glamour for long as the war could not be brought to an end as planned. Rather it has been dragging on and on. The war has now lost its direction.
Iraq has not got its promised liberation, neither has the dream of turning it into a democracy come true. On the contrary, the entire country is splintered into Shiite, Sunni, Kurd and a host of different groups and factions, which are settling their old scores with one another. A terrible civil war is raging through the length and breadth of country. It is a state of abysmal chaos all around. The occupation administration dismantled Saddam's army, his police, his Ba'thist government and in its place created a new US-trained Iraq army, police and a government comprising representatives of the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. But nothing is performing as expected. The guerrillas, the suicide bombers and the warring sects are merrily spilling one another's blood making it impossible for the Maliki government to restore a semblance of order in the country. The US government itself has begun to lose its confidence in the Iraqi government being run with its blessings.
Suzanne Goldenberg of The Guardian narrates below what US generals in Iraq and the Bush government are thinking about the present situation in Iraq.
America's leading military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, signalled that the Bush administration may be ready to reverse its troop surge in Iraq and begin pulling soldiers out as early as next March.
Only days before he is to deliver his progress report to Congress on the 'surge', Gen Petraeus told ABC television he did not foresee maintaining present troop levels in Iraq because of the strain on the military. "The surge will run its course. There are limits to what our military can provide, so my recommendations have to be informed by, not driven by, but they have to be informed by the strain we have put on our military services," he told ABC during an interview in Baghdad.
The general refused to be more specific. But asked whether the US would begin pulling out the 30,000 extra forces deployed during the 'surge' by next March, he replied: "Your calculations are about right."
Another official told ABC the reduction could begin as early as December with further withdrawals every 45 days.
This interview of September 4 came a day after George Bush made a surprise visit to a US air base in Anbar province. Mr Bush also raised the possibility of withdrawing some forces from Iraq, but warned Congress he would not bow to public opinion in setting his war strategy.
The US forces in Iraq rose to more than 160,000 after Mr Bush ordered more troops into the war zone earlier this year.
Gen Petraeus' hints on a troop withdrawal could help blunt criticism of the war in Congress which yesterday saw the release of a scathing report from the government accountability office, which said Iraq had failed to meet 15 of 18 benchmarks on reducing violence, disbanding sectarian militias, and other indicators of political and military progress.
Mr Bush's direction of the war also came under attack from an unexpected quarter yesterday: Paul Bremer, who in 2003 was America's proconsul in Baghdad. An angry Mr Bremer released two letters to the New York Times to reject Mr Bush's comments that the official had acted on his own accord in committing one of the most calamitous mistakes of the Iraq war.
The disbanding of Saddam's military left hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers stranded without jobs or income, and is recognised as one of the most disastrous measures undertaken by Mr Bremer.
Mr Bremer told the newspaper he sent a draft of the order to the Pentagon on May 9 2003 and that it had been circulated to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and other officials. In the first letter, from Mr Bremer to the president, dated May 22 2003, Mr Bremer writes at length about Iraqis weeping tears of joy at their liberation, and the dissolution of Saddam's ruling Ba'ath party. He deals with the disbanding of the army in a single sentence. "I will parallel this step with an even more robust measure dissolving Saddam's military and intelligence structures to emphasise that we mean business."
Another Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland describes British perception of the Iraq war in the wake of withdrawal of its forces from Basra.
'Lord knows, it makes no sense to be anything but a pessimist when it comes to the war in Iraq. The occupation remains as bloody and fruitless as the original invasion was fraudulent and needless. The killing and dying go on, with any let-up only relative and slight. So it would be naively hopeful to see in a series of moves these last few days anything so clear as a breakthrough. But we might detect at least a change, the passing of one phase of this dread conflict into another. As Churchill said following the victory at El Alamein in 1942: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
The first and most substantial indicator is the withdrawal, completed on September 3, of British forces to Basra Air Station. Of the 45,000 British troops involved in the original invasion, and the four Iraqi provinces that were once under direct British rule, soon there will be just 5,000, holed up behind the walls of a single airport. These soldiers will no longer live among the people to whom Britain's UN ambassador promised just last month to bring "a democratic and stable Iraq, at peace with itself and with its neighbours". Instead they will keep their distance, promising to emerge only "in extremis". And things will have to get pretty extremis for them to dare to re-enter Basra city again.
Naturally, the government plays down the significance of the withdrawal, insisting it is merely implementing a plan laid out seven months ago by Tony Blair. It was always the aim to step back once the Iraqis were ready to step forward and that point, ministers say, has been reached in Basra. They speak highly of the Iraqi general in charge, Mohan al-Firaji, believing they have placed the city in a safe pair of hands. "Look, it's not Dixon of Dock Green," one senior cabinet minister told me, acknowledging that the Iraqi police are riddled with militiamen, but there is a semblance of order now, enough to justify the British pull-back.
Ministers are less forthcoming about the timing. After all, events formed a curious sequence, in which Britain handed over 26 detainees, including members of the Mahdi army loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, just as al-Sadr announced a six-month truce last week. Did Britain cut a deal, to ensure its troops could pull out unhindered in the early hours of September 3 morning? And did the Brits have to move now, before any arrangement with al-Sadr could unravel?
Or perhaps the timing owed more to British anxiety over Washington's next move. Next week, George Bush will deliver his progress report on the war, hoping to face down a Congress agitating for a change of strategy, if not an exit - agitation which will only increase after US report of September 4 branding the Iraqi government as "dysfunctional". Veteran analyst Dan Plesch of Soas wonders if London feared that, should the White House hold firm, even announcing more of its "surge", Shia anger in Basra would become uncontainable. Better to move now, while al-Sadr and friends were still in their box.
Whatever the calculus, the appearance is clear enough: the British presence in Iraq is winding down. That's certainly how the Arab press sees it, branding the move from the palace as a "crushing defeat". Gordon Brown will speak to parliament in October, doubtless defining the British role from now on as one solely of "overwatch", rather than direct involvement. UK military planners are said to be considering a reduction to 3,000 men at the spring troop rotation. All the signs point in one direction: not towards a full withdrawal at any time soon but to a shrunken, symbolic presence whose prime objective will be to spare the Americans the ignominy of full abandonment by their closest ally.
Yet there are signs of a change in the US too. On a surprise visit to Iraq on September 3, President Bush dropped a pointed hint. Speaking in Anbar province, in which Sunni tribal leaders have joined hands with the US to beat back al-Qaida, he said "if the kind of success we are now seeing continues, it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces".
That may have been designed to let the air out of the Congressional balloon before next week's confrontation: Bush's hint of a drawdown could well be enough to pacify a few wobbly Republicans. Whatever its motive, Bush's move suggests the White House now understands its war in Iraq is desperately unpopular and that the way to please the American people is to promise less of it.
This might be the context in which to understand the remarks of the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who made the midnight flit to Anbar alongside his boss. "I am more optimistic than I have been at any time since I took this job," he said. At first glance, that might look like proof that Gates is in the same state of denial that characterised his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld - as if the small triumph of buying off a few warlords in Anbar outweighed all the grief and destruction across the rest of Iraq.