Tag: Iraq

The fruits of winning an unnecessary war are indistinguishable from those of losing a vital one

 

The extremist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has become the more powerful terrorist force on earth. This may not have been by design but it was also not purely by accident. This rise has been caused by the opportunism of the group itself but also by the cynical geopolitical strategy followed by America, its NATO satellites, and its Middle Eastern allies.

By controlling territory in Iraq and Syria and threatening the Iraqi capital, ISIL, once a franchise of Al Qaeda, has ventured beyond the feats of its parent. Because of the personnel it has attracted from the global inventory of jihadist combatants, ISIL has transformed from a hit-and-run group into a formidable conventional military fighting force. It is no longer a guerilla outfit. It is a small, well-disciplined army capable to taking and holding territory. As such, it has quickly hashed the Iraqi army, revealing that institution to be no tougher than a damp paper napkin.

The ISIL has gobbled a significant portion of the predominately Sunni regions as if by irresistible force. The Kurds are already well ensconced with a substantial degree of autonomy in their traditional homeland. At sixty percent of the population, the Shiite and the embattled Maliki government hold the rest. Given the relative newness of the intense fighting, the informal, war-hewn boundaries between the three regions will undulate. But, unless the rarest type of political reconciliation between the Sunni rebellion and the Shiite-dominated government can be extracted from the belly of war then this division will stand albeit fluid around its edges.

Effectively, Iraq has been partitioned before our eyes. The post-World War I boundaries drawn by the British and French upon this parcel of the defunct Ottoman Empire are being sundered and redrawn a full century after the start of the cataclysm that would prostrate the Ottomans.

That Iraq has fallen into a more pitiful condition than under Saddam was a story foretold from the moment second President Bush determined to unleash war.  The stated reason for the assault – to protect the world from weapons of mass destruction – was a malevolent fraud. The documentary evidence used to support the trespass was counterfeit. Rarely has such a sloppy, easily-disprovable fabrication been the impetus for a major power to strike war against a distant nation that posed no material threat. For its authors and architects, the war was part lark, part ideological imperative. For the Iraqis who would suffer it, the war was a compound tragedy. Under Saddam, they knew misery but had order. They would retain misery, only to have disorder heaped upon it. It would be the start of a great unraveling.

For the United States, the Iraqi war will be recorded as the greatest strategic blunder of the post-Cold war era. I hope it stands as the worst foreign policy decision of the 21st century. For this to be true, America would have to avoid future errors of great consequence. However, should the present course of American policy continue, I fear the world shall see future errors and commissions, so dangerous, immense and costly that the Iraqi misadventure may come to be viewed as a minor failure or even a relative success when measured against the mistakes to come.

The American war machine plowed into Iraq promising “shock and awe.” In the end, we were shocked that leaders so awed by their own power were also so arrogant that they failed to anticipate the strategic fallout of their dubious mission. In attacking Iraq, America certainly got their man. Saddam Hussein was hung unceremoniously like a vagrant cattle rustler. While excelling in getting Saddam, America miserably lost the country. Due to its superficial understanding of the nation it invaded, America alienated the population, failed to keep order and turned a stable if despotic nation into a laboratory of chaos.

Saddam clearly landed on the wrong end of the war. With hundreds of thousands of people killed, a greater number maimed and an economy shredded into pockets of depression, the people were the second greatest losers. Ironically, the Americans who subdued Saddam and his cohort would be the next in the line of losers. The next in this queue of war casualties would be Syria.

While America accomplished the rather odd feat of losing a nation by defeating it in war, Iran amply profited by America’s misguided exertions. Assessing the vacuum created by Saddam’s demise, Iran simply allowed proximity and Shiite religious solidarity to run their course. Inevitably Iranian influence would expand in Iraq once Saddam joined the league of the departed. The other benefactor was Al Qaeda. Saddam loathed the jihadists. They requited his animosity measure for measure, hatred for hatred. He held them off his land for his brand of despotism was a cynically practical one that brooked no place for a band of armed zealots who harkened to a voice that was not his and that no one else could hear.

During the American occupation, Al Qaeda would grow, shrink split and splinter. One of the fractions would become ISIL. In time, its adherents migrated to Syria to ply their lethal trade. But they never took their eye off Iraq.

By weakening the structure of central government, America released and gave liberty to ethnic, religious and regional rivalries that Saddam’s strong arm had kept pent. America said it was bringing modern representative democracy to Iraq. That was a sonorous but untruthful line. What it let slip was old-fashioned turmoil. There were elections and other institutions that gave the form of nominal democracy.  But the actual working of governance ventured far from the democratic ideal.  It was a beehive of ancient prejudices competing one against the rest. The lone element lending the government a semblance of order and stability was the American troop presence. In another twist of irony, America’s troops assumed the role Saddam played in keeping the sub-national rivalries in check. Once the bulk of the American contingent was withdrawn, the breakage of the frail stability was a verdict foretold, like the cracking of thin film of ice atop a warm and roiling sea.

America’s most serious mistake was that in Iraq, it waged war against a known enemy in Saddam but also against an enemy it did not know. America waged war against War itself. The ways of War may not be as mathematically precise as the rules that govern the physical sciences. Still, War is jealous of its laws and principles. These laws must be obeyed for the combatant to obtain the favor of War. In Iraqi, America broke War’s commandments.  A nation should never invade another unless it is willing to occupy that nation indefinitely. If you must keep checking your watch to gauge whether you are spending too much time in an occupation that place is not worth the expenditure of life and material War minimally requires of the undertaking. By placing a time limit on your presence, you signal to your foes to merely slink into the recesses and out wait you. Once you leave, they will undo in a moment what you took years to achieve.

Second, never invade a nation you don’t adequately understand. One does not ask a goat herder to captain a ship or a farmer to design a skyscraper. To invade a place with little knowledge of its people and governance is to schedule an appointment with disaster. The invader ensures that he will leave more hated than when he came. His stint will not achieve his objective or even palliate the adverse challenge. It will exacerbate it. In the end, the invader will have to return or be forced to accept that victory had come at a price dearer than most defeats.

Thus, America used a great display of military force to implement a grand strategy that was neither strategic nor grand. The strategy was is actually a petulant one unbefitting a nation that sets claim to be the underwriter of global stability and justice. To the outsider, American policy looks woefully inconsistent. In Iraq, it appears to be against ISIL; yet, in Syria, it allies with ISIL against the Assad government.

The real problem is not that American policy is devoid of logic. The trouble is that it lacks high principle. Judge no nation by what is says for self-serving words bear light consequence and even lesser costs. But actions speak a language words cannot rival.

Particularly in the Middle East, America has targeted certain regimes for extinction. It will expend every effort to accomplish this objective. Thus, it fixated on Saddam. America was not deterred by the fact Al Qaeda would grow where it once had no presence. America and its NATO brood furnished the air support that paralyzed Gaddafi in Libya, enabling the rag-tag ground forces of Al Qaeda and related groups to win the contestation. In Syria, the West now funnels substantial war materiel to the opposition knowing full well ISIL is the most potent rebel force. America now wants to send 500 million dollars in aid to the rebels. Inevitably, much of that aid will work its way into ISIL hands. In effect, western aid has so annealed ISIL in Syria that it could expand and re-enter Iraq in a new, more potent form.

A pattern emerges. Western rhetoric says the war against terror is the highest priority. The reality of Western action mutters a different tale. The top actionable priority is to dismantle enemy regimes. If this requires teaming with the itinerant jihadists, America will make this devil’s choice almost every time. This behavior accords with America’s overarching objective of retaining the title as the world’s lone superpower. For that title to stick, America also must strictly control the world’s key regions. Thus, the unfriendly governments must be swept aside. Even in the current round of the Iraqi breakage, America’s attention has focused more on removing Maliki as prime minister than on halting ISIL.

In Western eyes, Maliki’s transgression is not so much that he governed poorly. His indecency was to have angled too closely to Iran. Iran infantry has come to his side in this time of crisis. Even Russian, poking its finger in America’s eye, has come to Maliki’s aid by sending lethal air support. With all this, America has determined he must go. America has placed heavy diplomatic pressure on other strategic points of the Iraqi political architecture, the frailty that it is, letting it become known that significant American military help will come only after Maliki departs. Meanwhile, America has sent a token group of 300 advisors to counsel Iraq’s beleaguered army. This symbol was as utile as grabbing a handful of ice cubes from the freezer to toss at the house fire raging all about.

America cares little about Iraq beyond whether the leadership leans sufficiently westward. America is not even moved that ISIL might establish itself as a government in the areas it has conquered. In fact, America would be gladdened the jihadists transformed themselves from hidden ghosts and gypsies into a stationary government.

The America military has difficulty against able guerilla fighters. However, it is beyond equal at toppling stationary governments and their conventional forces.  If ISIL tries to establish itself as a government, it would have walked away from its expertise into an arena where the American military machine stands supreme. Thus, America is not too concerned about ISIL except in using it as leverage to boot out Maliki.  As long ISIL remains a roving terrorist band, it poses no threat to core American interests while its presence can be used to stoke fear that will help increase the military budget.

ISIL has declared for itself a caliphate over the land in Syria and Iraq from which it has ousted the two governments. This declaration is more symbolic than real. By itself, it confirms ISIL’s military prowess and achievements. However, it is far cry from establishing a government. A government requires offices, civilian personnel, currency. It requires static positions and routine activity. Government to be effective must sit in a place known to the public.

If ISIL proves sufficiently foolhardy to try to sit as a government, America will bide its time and deracinate the fledgling government whenever it wills. Meanwhile, ISIL’s presence serves the corollary benefit of giving Israel an additional rationale to seek protection behind security and military measures, eschewing a diplomatic solution with the weathered Palestinians.

When done best, national interests and foreign policy shape the contours of a nation’s military. But that is not how things are in reality. Once established, a military apparatus takes on a life of its own, independent of the national interests and of rational foreign policy formulation. The American war machine is the largest, most powerful ever assembled. Because of the dictates of modern technology, building such a machine takes long-term investment and arcane expertise that must constantly be honed and cultivate. The war machine has become a business. To remain afloat, business must profit and expand.

For the war machine, peace is bankruptcy. Treasure is made amidst conflict. The nation cannot maintain its global leverage without the war machine. Thus, the propagation of war becomes the way of the nation. Policy is driven by what befits the war machine and its business allies not by what fits genuine national interests. This would merely be sad if the damage could be limited to America alone. However, this is not the case. America leads the world for better or worse. Once upon a time, it appeared America wanted to lead the world to a safer, more peaceful place. Now, it appears it may be leading the world down the maw of incessant war.

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The wicked help the poor that they may later enslave them.

 

Iraq is a slim line, an untimely hiccup, away from full-tilt civil war. It is a war in the making, based on a war that never should have been made. In 2003, when deploying its modern war-machine against this ancient land and its brutal despot, America was purblind to the strategic back draft of this misadventure. So tactically and technologically advanced had America become that it grew arrogant and intellectually lazy.

America’s leaders believed so much in their technological superiority that they substituted it for strategic wisdom. This is worse than thinking one’s strengths can mask weakness. They duped themselves to the point where they felt they suffered no weaknesses in the thought, preparation or implementation of this martial undertaking.

History has unveiled their reasoning as the folly that it is. The most obvious violation of the truth was claiming to rid the land of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. This deception made the war illegal but did not, of necessity, consign it to be the failure it became. Throughout history there have been wars predicated on venal or false reasons yet expertly prosecuted to the desired objective. There have also been wars waged for noble causes that came to disaster for they were poorly conceived and weakly prosecuted. The American War in Iraq is of that melancholy category of war launched for bogus reason and terminating in ill conclusion for being so awkwardly designed and effectuated.

The great mistake of the America war is found not in the falsity of the reason it was ignited but in the danger of the consequences it unleashed.

A statesman’s most sublime duty is the protection of his nation. In times of troubling exigency, a statesman bound to jettison decorum in order to perform whatever grisly and mean task is required of him to render safe his homeland. No great statesman has ever valued the propriety of the law or convention over the survival of his nation. The higher duty has always been the protection of the state. All else is secondary. A statesman must be willing to risk the damnation of his soul to save that of his country.

As a corollary, the worst foul a statesman may commit is to expose his nation to unneeded danger while attempting to acquire uncertain gain in a place not of vital interest. This is the dereliction into which American leaders fell when they determined Iraq might be invaded.

The Americans knew what they were doing but did not know what it would do. Defeating an inferior army is no great feat; but, corralling a smaller army is a far distance from subduing a nation or conquering an opposing ideology. The demise of the latter duo cannot solely be accomplished by bullet or blade. It is easier to kill an enemy with your weapon of choice than to force him to behave as you would choose. An enemy is usually an enemy for a reason that is so fundamental that it defines the core existence of one or both antagonists. That reason can be suppressed and concealed by superior military power but never is it completely eliminated unless the enemy himself is obliterated.

Thus, America quickly won the military war it initiated; but, in doing so, it ignited more important contests it would lose.

First, America said ridding of Iraq of Saddam would bring secular democracy to the nation and the region. American leaders had scant understanding of the centrifugal pressures that described the Iraqi political economy. America also did not understand the wider regional repercussions of unsettling the political balance Saddam had imposed by force on his nation. Thus, America thought it would be enough to change the direction of the nation simply by erect signposts that claimed to lead toward democracy. This was delusional for only the signage not the road had changed.

The road Iraqi leaders travelled was still the cul-de-sac of shortsighted religious and tribal chauvinism. Today, there is little democracy or liberal governance save that everyone is free to kill and be killed and, in death, there is a certain equality that living mortals can never alter. There is nothing liberal in the society except bombs and weapons have become more liberally and indiscriminately employed. The nation is less safe now than during Saddam’s reign. Democracy is but a silly façade in this lethal setting. Either a strong man or chaos will rise to capture the day. Either way, the 2003 war has been for naught. The several hundred thousand Iraqis and the several thousand American killed in this fracas lost their lives in vain. Those who sent so many to their premature doom may be without remorse or uneasy conscience believing they did right by their estimation of the world; however, their ease of conscience does not release them from the reality that, upon their hands, sits a vast quantity of spilled, innocent blood.

Second, America hoped the war would trap Iran in a pincer. Surrounded by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran would become more circumspect. Instead, the one nation that most benefitted from the Iraqi has been Iran. Without going to war, Iran won the demise of its most implacable regional foe, Saddam. The dead man’s minority Sunni government was replaced by a Shiite-dominated regime increasingly adherent to Tehran’s worldview.

The icing on the cake is that these benefits were funded by the American war machine. America fought the war while its chief enemy in the region reaped the benefit. In common life, intellectual density is neither crime nor sin but does incur its peculiar costs. In the conduct of nations and their international affairs, the folly of a nation’s statesmen is the enemy’s best weapon. Dumb policy has destroyed more empires has the opposing sword. Bad enough, the Washington architects of the American-Iraqi conflict might be guilty of war crimes, worse is that they are guilty of rank strategic misjudgment that has destabilized a nation and its already combustible neighborhood.

Iran’s heightened influence in Iraq piqued Saudi Arabia, putting fuel to the Sunni-Shiite rim of fire in the Middle East. Positioned as guardian of the Sunni tradition, the Saudis did not take kindly to Iraq falling into the Iranian sphere of influence. Before this development, Iranian influence among Arab nations was basically limited to Syria and Hezbollah regions of Lebanon. Iraq coming under Shiite rule jolted the extant power balance. Iran could use Iraq not only to as a conduit to influence events in Syria, but also to reach out to Shiite communities in the Gulf and in Saudi itself.

As a result of this perceived threat, Saudi foreign policy has turned decidedly hawkish. It now downplays the Palestinian issue. It has found informal truce with Israel for both nations loath Iran more than they hate each other. Saudi funds extremist fighters to topple Assad in Syria. These same fighters now spark civil war in Iraq.

Third, America claimed to war to prevent Saddam from teaming with Al Qaeda. This allegation slandered the despot. Saddam was many a brutal thing. A friend of Al Qaeda was not among them. Saddam, like all conventional Arab dictators, feared and despised Al Qaeda. Neither he, nor Mubarak nor Qaddafi broke break with Al Qaeda. These dictators were power conscious and extreme in their own right. They were not about to countenance any free-wheeling religious extremists to go out of control so as to rival them on their own turf.

The American invasion changed this. Al Qaeda poured into Iraq when America attacked. The superiority of American muscle suppressed this presence but never could fully end it. Once the American military withdrew, Al Qaeda gradually resurfaced. It began with small scale, intermittent actions and improvised explosions. With each success, they got bolder; subsequent operations grew larger. This made Iraq more fragile and made the Shiite government more suspicious of the Sunni community. This created further political estrangement which provided fertile ground for Al Qaeda to continue its urban guerilla tactics. A dynamic was established where each incident made political rapprochement more implausible. The lack of political reconciliation across the sectarian divide gave Al Qaeda tacit support within the Sunni community, thus enabling it to continue its disruptive activities.

Then war broke in Syria. Jihadists from across the region joined the fray. At first, Iraq was a staging area for the Syrian theatre. Eventually, fighters began to war in Iraq because Iraq was funneling Iranian aid into Syria. Then the fighters began to strike in Iraq to disrupt and redefine Iraq itself. The Al Qaeda franchise, the Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), now carried out operations in both Iraq and Syria for the purpose of seizing and controlling territory.

When America assassinated bin Laden, President Obama boasted the world would be safer. As so often has been the case in military aspects of foreign policy, he was wrong. Facing an Al Qaeda headed by bin Laden would have been an easier task than dealing with this current group. Bin Laden was obsessed with the perversely quixotic dream of replicating a spectacular attack against symbols of western power as occurred in 9/11. The chance of a repeat was slim and fairly well contained. Killing Osama elevated a new leadership with a vastly more effective strategy. Al Qaeda would not target western countries as their primary goal. Instead, they would foment and take opportunistic advantage of trouble in Middle Eastern nations adverse to the group. By doing this they could gain control of territory, weapons, riches, perhaps whole governments. Thus, they joined in the fight against Qaddafi, Assad and now battle for the heart of Iraq.

Weighed against every reasonable diplomatic criterion, the American incursion into Iraq was a strategic military blunder of vast magnitude. It was one of the worse designed campaigns of the past two hundred years. Even the debacle of the Vietnam War was not as counterproductive as this episode. There is only one aspect of the American foreign policy machinery that benefits from the way things unfolded: the war industry. With fighting raging in Syria and Iraq, there will be heightened demand for war materiel. Much of this will be purchased at high costs and with Saudi money.

If Iraq worsens, there will be pressure to redeploy American troops to keep this “success” from turning into failure. President Obama will not want to redeploy but he also does not want to be accused of “losing Iraq” to the jihadists. On the near horizon, there lurks the prospect of war with Iran if the nuclear deal is scratched. Many important interests in Washington hope the deal founders because war would enhance their balance sheets.

It is a terrible thing that the world’s most powerful nation seems primed for war just because a few vested institutional interests profit thereby. Yet, these interests are powerful and integral to the system. They say little publicly but do much harm privately. A large-scale, private-sector military industry is anathematic to peace. Such firms need profits to exist and expand. They can only expand if there is increased demand for their merchandise. Demand for their product only expands in the face of broadening war. In times of sustained peace, these firms would become irrelevant then fold bankrupt.

This story holds lessons for Africa. The American and western military encroachment in the Middle East is mimicked on a smaller, yet still deadly, scale on this continent. Already, we see the effects in Libya. America fought hard, purportedly to save the people from Qaddafi. America and friends neutralized Qaddafi and decimating the nation’s infrastructure through aerial bombing. The West has done little to rehabilitate the nation, save for repairing the oil production facilities. The reason for the oil production repairs is so obvious that it needs no explanation save to the most naïve.

Beyond this, the nation is a house of bedlam. Chaos reigns and government is a disservice. Yet, the West no longer cares.

Western effectives have trundled into several African nations in the past two years. Each nation into which they have entered is resource-endowed but poorly led and governed. We are told the troops are here to save souls and rescue nations from themselves. The truth is less noble. They are here to protect or promote access to precious raw minerals. The people and humanitarian concern are but pretext.

There is great fanfare and accolades from the global media wherever western intervention begins. However, there follow up is rare to see if or how the tale ends. French troops entered Mali. How fares that nation and what precious minerals are being extracted from it? Years ago, America assigned dozens of Special Forces soldiers to track the notorious Joseph Kony and his misfit army. They have had no success finding Kony although he and his glum band have little military training or expertise. Perhaps they can’t find the outlaw because they are not looking for him. Perhaps they are giving protection to Western firms seeking to strip and extract costly rare minerals from some of Africa’s most remote and hidden places?

The bottom line is that most places Western troops deploy are no better after than before the intervention. This is because the entry was never done for the benefit of the populace or even a part of it. The encroachment happens because it profits the encroacher. Darfur has been a humanitarian maelstrom, dwarfing all others combined save for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet, there was never a thought of intervening in Darfur. The reluctance was not because of Khartoum’s resistance but because there was no material profit to be had from rescuing people from that massive sand dune.

A century ago, these activities were dubbed gunboat diplomacy. Today, we rename them “drone diplomacy” for the venal objective remains the same although the weapons technology has evolved. Those who run the global economy need Africa’s material resources and want to pay the lowest price for them. They are not interested in bargaining with Africans and their nations as equal parties in a negotiation. They would rather that you stoop poor and weak. That way they may take what they want and tell you it is for your own good.

So goes the battle of the Western war condominium against the poor and powerless, especially in Africa. This is one of the most uneven and unfair contests ever waged. You have been invaded, and know it not. You have been violated, and know it not. You have been pilfered and know it not. You cannot let this continue and expect to prosper or be independent but you know it not.

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