Counterpunch, 18 January 2007
From its inception,
the US occupation of Iraq was a lose-lose proposition. Simply rolling into Iraq -- a
society of which the Bush neocons had so distorted a conception and US occupation
commanders and foot soldiers had no grasp at all – was a formula for doom. But US policy in the Middle
East has now advanced to a new stage and the risk to the rest
of us has changed. For stopping an attack on Iran,
which is the only way to avert final regional disaster and the utter collapse
of US hegemony, may require
action in Washington that
falls outside the parameters of what is normally politically possible.
For the first two
years of the occupation, the US
dilemma was plain to everyone. On the one hand, pulling out “prematurely”
promised an internal Iraqi melee for power and the quick collapse of the feeble
pro-US Iraqi government. On the other hand, the ongoing presence of American
troops and the inevitable brutalities of occupation could only inspire more
armed resistance, progressively wreck US legitimacy, and make things
worse. As it staggered forward, wreaking tens of thousands of direct Iraqi
casualties (and possibly hundreds of thousands in indirect ones), the US
occupation fed an unprecedented surge of anti-US and anti-western militancy. As
a result, three short years later, five decades of largely uncontested US hegemony in the Middle East are collapsing
into the same clouds of dust now engulfing Iraq’s
national society -- the World
Trade Center
towers going down in slo-mo.
Yet in a sense, the
occupation has already done its work on the support structure, as the US occupation
has already combusted on social forces that its architects never comprehended
even as they manipulated them. From the beginning, the Bush neocons viewed the
region through an Orientalist lens, and therefore saw tribes everywhere, as
mentors like Daniel Pipes encouraged them to do. Viewing the Middle
East also through an Israeli lens, they saw ethnicity as the best
way to break up national and pan-Arab solidarities. Their staggering ignorance
of the region was perhaps best exposed by their early faith in the charlatan
Ahmad Chalabi, who promised a pro-Israeli Shi’a-led Iraqi government. On such
rampant idiocy were their enthusiasm and deceitful arguments for war fueled.
Predictably, their
neocolonial efforts to foster and employ ethnic divides – e.g., creating Shi’a
militias to attack Sunni neighborhoods to root out Baathi insurgents -- have
resulted in blowback. The soaring death count (at this writing, some 100 Iraqis
are dying daily) is grim testimony of the country’s slide out of the US’s hammy
hands. Every day, old norms of Sunni-Shi’a ethnic coexistence are transforming
further into mutual fears and murderous mutual hatreds. With every death, the
Iraqis’ own ability to reconcile this deepening ethnic bitterness dwindles.
Every day the US
stays in the country, the ethnic militias grow in size and legitimacy. The US capacity to
contain them has withered to nothing. One might think the US military
architects would grasp their fatal blunder and try to amend their ethnic
machinations, but the latest US plan is to send Kurdish troops to patrol Baghdad, on the insane premise that a third ethnic force will somehow defuse
the other two. (Kurdish naiveté in collaborating in this fatal plan is equally
impressive.)
The report of the
Iraq Study Group gets several things wrong, but its appraisal of what must
happen now is credible and widely accepted. The only way to salvage US standing
in the region, they argue, is to withdraw as fast as possible, while obtaining
essential Iranian and Syrian help in multi-lateral efforts toward forging
a new national consensus in Iraq.
From the Iraqis’ perspective, too, the only hope is an immediate US withdrawal, which can allow them
to begin tortuous negotiations toward national reconciliation. This effort
cannot be started as long as the US is there, not only because the US still
controls practically everything in the country, making genuine domestic
politics impossible, but because the US presence itself will inevitably distort
and discredit any new political process or leadership that tries to arise.
Still, in setting
out its package of recommendations, the supremely pragmatic Iraq Study Group
neglected one glaring political fact. It assumed that the package was a real
possibility -- i.e., that the Bush administration could muster the necessary
energy and faith to engage in the multilateral diplomacy essential to it. The
Bush neocons have no talent or faith in multilateral politics and indeed openly
deride them. And they are still in charge, whatever the changing political
climate in Washington and mounting popular
hostility to the Iraq
war. The Great Decider is still the president. Machiavellian Mr. Cheney is
still the Vice-President. All the old villains, like Douglas Feith and David
Wurmser and the scary Michael Ledeen, are still in government or guiding events
from Isengards like the American Enterprise Institute. They have exactly two years
to complete the agenda they formulated in the 1990s: that is, reshape the
entire Middle East, in the interest of Israel
and their own construction, security, and oil companies, by taking out any
regional rival to Israel’s
uncontested military hegemony.
Hence we have
increasingly clear signals that, far from withdrawing troops, the US plans to take the next disastrous step in
their program: bomb Iran's
nuclear facilities and, they hope, change Iran’s regime.
Long in the making,
a US attack on Iran has been
maturing over the past year. Most graphic, although not catching much
public alarm until now, was the transfer last year of two US naval carrier groups to the Persian
Gulf (each flanked by nuclear submarines and battleships, carrying
fleets of attack jets, and holding special Marine landing forces). Now some
staff changes in the US
security and command staff are drawing worried comment. One change is the
replacement of General Abizaid (who did not favor a troop increase) with
the Pacific theatre's top naval commander, Admiral Fallon, hitherto in charge
of those same carrier groups (which were posted in the Pacific). Another
signal, less widely noted, is that Director of National
Intelligence John Negroponte, who downplayed the nuclear threat from Iran, has been
replaced by Vice Admiral John
Michael "Mike" McConnell, also a Navy man seen as much more compliant
(having already facilitated the Bush administration's programs to monitor
international financial transfers).
It is over-obvious that, while the Navy is a vital support to
US operations throughout the Middle East, a massive carrier build-up in the
Gulf cannot possibly assist the US
occupation in Iraq.
But it is absolutely pivotal to launching an attack on Iran and containing Iran’s retaliation. In this
context, even Bush's proposed troop "surge", otherwise puzzlingly
meaningless, may be intended to support an attack on Iran, as the US will need
more ground troops to consolidate its transportation lines in the event of
Iranian or allied Iraqi-guerrilla reprisals. (That the “surge” itself can only
prolong and worsen Iraq’s
suffering and further demolish US standing in the region is relatively
unimportant.)
Bombing Iran will cast the Middle
East into such a frenzy of violence, however, that desperate editorials
denouncing it are starting to appear all over the world press. But the Bush
neocons -- and, of course, Israel
– also have utter contempt for world opinion and indeed any analysis
outside their immediate crazed circle. Certainly the little question of
international law, which makes a preemptive strike on Iran entirely
illegal, does not figure for them in the slightest. (It did not stop them from raiding and seizing Iranian
consular staff and archives in Arbil, which was also entirely illegal and has
recklessly imperilled US consular relations globally.)
The only hope of
stopping a US strike on Iran is
therefore the Democrats, who now control the purse strings for US war-making
and are already sending signals that the troop "surge" might be in
trouble. Whether they have sufficient spine to stop the attack on Iran is
universally questioned. But even if a US
attack is somehow stalled by domestic action, Israel
can always strike Iran
instead. It is still not widely debated that, over the past few years, Israel has purchased a cluster advanced German
Dolphin submarines, which would allow sea-based missile launches on Iran from the Indian Ocean,
as well as a new fleet of attack jets and thousands of
"bunker-busting" bombs. Or that last year Israel
was running test bombing runs on a mock-up site of the Natanz reactor, well
ahead of its recently revealed long-distance bombing test flights to Gibraltar.
Why such a
dangerous US-Israeli alliance in such a clearly crazed mission? The old neocon
strategy of A Clean Break is one obvious answer. But the goals may go
further. A strike on Iran
by Israel might be the magic
bullet for the sinking US
neocons and their stumbling military global mission. No Democrat now breathing
is going to vote to withhold the US
funds necessary to "defending Israel" from an Iranian
counter-attack. Generating a direct threat to Israel may
indeed now be their only way to ensure that war funding continues to flow
lavishly.
If an Israeli
attack is indeed pending, only something close to a coup in Washington can stop it. The real question
now, therefore, is whether the same pragmatists who entered US politics
unbidden to comprise the Iraq Study Group (led by Baker but representing the
old Cold-War guard, including now-frightened Pentagon officers, desperate State
Department experts, and even alarmed oil men) will conclude that the US
national interest is indeed in such imminent peril that they must launch
emergency political measures to preclude a US or Israeli attack. This effort could
take several shapes, but the normal options are not promising. Hearings to
expose White House malfeasance (lying, fraud, graft) in the Iraq war, leading
even to an impeachment process, could fatally cripple the attack plan, but
would take more time than we have and would not stop Israel in any case.
Hearings to expose Israeli espionage and discredit Israel’s
role in US
foreign policymaking could stymie an Israeli attack, but the
AIPAC-saturated Congress would never countenance them. Normal Washington
peer pressure, represented by the Iraq Study Group, has demonstrably failed.
More urgent methods, which might be pursued in other countries facing such a
crisis, are precluded in the US
by very potent political and military cultures that preclude any open revolt against
a sitting president or the civilian command. (Recall General Powell's quiet
capitulation to lies, deceit, and foolery that he could not possibly support.)
No one wants the US
to operate otherwise.
The challenge to
the US political system is therefore now extremely grave: somehow forcibly to
retake rational control of US foreign policy, from people known to be lying
criminals, within as little as two months, yet with no precedent for doing so.
It is not impossible. Insider Washington
pressures must now become ultimatums. But insider operations require political
backing that can only be obtained through a pincer strategy: rapid public
revelations of White House criminality by serving officials, with responsible
headline coverage by the national press sufficient rapidly to cripple White
House foreign policymaking. This political rebellion would require rare
political will, but it must be obtained at last, in the interest of US security
itself -- even forgetting the hapless suffering countries and populations of
the Middle East.
The US occupation of Iraq has manifested since its
inception like a large and cumbersome truck driven into a swamp. We have been
watching, in horrified fascination, as it slowly sinks. In recent months, we
have been certain that even the drivers must soon surely abandon the truck,
jump for shore, and try to preserve some shred of dignity as it goes down.
Instead, we are seeing those drivers flinging out ropes around everything in
sight and getting ready to haul, apparently in the hope of dragging the whole
bloody carcass back onto solid ground and rolling on to glory. That they can
only strangle the rest of us, and bind everyone into the swamp with them, must
finally inspire decisive collective action. Washington insiders and key players in the
new Democratic Congress, with political backing from an alarmed electorate and
frantic international allies, can still stop the neocons' rush to disaster. But
it will require rare determination, initiative, transparency, and courage, and
it must happen fast.
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