Two recent incidents relating to the formation of the new “Iraqi Army” are worth mentioning in some detail, for they demonstrate that recent U.S. officials' talk about “two years or so” until it is fully prepared for operations is “pie in the sky” at best – or downright lies at the worst.1
The first incident is described by a Washington Post piece in which the entire thrust of the article was ably captured by its headline, “Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable.” The authors recap the U.S. government position, that “the reconstruction of Iraq's security forces is the prerequisite for an American withdrawal from Iraq.” They then go on to say that in spite of how the administration “extols the continuing progress of the new Iraqi army, the project in Baiji … demonstrates the immense challenges of building an army from scratch in the middle of a bloody insurgency.”2
Baiji is a desolate oil town located strategically in northern Iraq, where the Iraqi army's Charlie Company is being trained by American Army Sgt. Rick McGovern. He complains in the Post story that “[w]e can't tell these guys about a lot of stuff, because we're not really sure who's good and who isn't.” The reporters explain what he means.
An hour before dawn … the soldiers of … Charlie Company began their mission with a ballad to ousted President, Saddam Hussein. “We have lived in humiliation since you left,” one sang in Arabic, out of earshot of his U.S. counterparts. “We had hoped to spend our life with you.”3
These are supposed to be our “Iraqi allies,” remember. Given their questionable loyalty, it is hardly surprising to hear not only that the entire Company disintegrated in December 2004 when its commander was killed by a car bomb, but also that
members of the unit were threatening to quit en masse this week over complaints that ranged from dismal living conditions to insurgent threats. Across a vast cultural divide, language is just one impediment. Young Iraqi soldiers, ill equipped and drawn from a disenchanted Sunni minority, say they are not even sure what they are fighting for.4
But, of course, they do know – it is the relatively munificent $300-$400 per month that brings them, nothing else.
When McGovern was asked when he thinks that the Iraqi soldiers such as those he trains will be ready to operate independently, he says with refreshing honesty: “There's part of me that says never. There's some cultural issues that I don't think they'll ever get through.” McGovern provided an example of what he meant. When U.S. troops believed that the Rahma mosque in the town was being used by rebels, they sent in their Iraqi allies to search the place, something that they initially refused to do. When they were finally ordered to arrest everyone inside the mosque, the Iraqi platoon leader refused; the entire unit sat down next to the mosque in protest. Iraqi Cpl. Idris Dhanoun said simply that “you cannot enter the mosque with weapons. We have traditions, we have honor, and we're Muslims. You enter the mosque to pray, you don't enter the mosque with guns.” If these are the kinds of “cultural issues” that Sgt. McGovern expects the Iraqi's to “get through” before being ready to operate successfully, one wonders indeed whether they'll ever measure up to the standards set by the Americans.
McGovern's pessimistic view of things was confirmed in a candid comment made to the Post reporters by his executive officer, 1st Lt. Kenrick Cato.
I know the party line. You know, the DoD, the U.S. Army, five-star generals, four-star generals, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld: the Iraqis will be ready in whatever time period …. But from the ground, I can say with certainty they won't be ready before I leave. And I know I'll be back in Iraq, probably in three or four years. And I don't think they'll be ready then.1
Part of the problem may lie in how our so-called Iraqi “allies” are being treated. “Due to a mix-up in paperwork, dozens of Iraqi soldiers went without pay for three months. Many lacked proper uniforms, body armor and weapons.” Many “Iraqi forces” are currently
housed at what they call simply “the base,” a place as sparse as the name. Most of the Iraqis sleep in two tents and a shed with a concrete floor and corrugated tin roof that is bereft of walls. Some have cots; others sleep on cardboard or pieces of plywood stacked with tattered and torn blankets. The air conditioners are broken. There is no electricity. Drinking water comes from a sun-soaked camouflage tanker whose meager faucet also provides water for bathing.2
Baiji isn't an isolated example. Similar stories can be heard all over, one of which was covered by the New York Times at about the same time. This time it's about the “Iraqi Army” in Mahmudiya, a town south of Baghdad, which was charged with raiding a number of houses in a search operation targeting actual or suspected resistance fighters. After one of the house raids ended, the Times chronicles, the Iraqi soldiers rushed
to board pickup trucks they use as troop carriers [and] abandoned the blindfolded, handcuffed man they had come to arrest. “They left the detainee,” an astonished American soldier said, spotting the man squatting in the dust along a residential street. “They just left him there. Sweet.”1
Meanwhile, “American troops have been conducting night-time patrols to make sure the Iraqis stay awake” as a result of a recent incident where “Iraqi soldiers manning a checkpoint fell asleep [and] the checkpoint was ambushed by insurgents who tossed a grenade into the building, then stormed in and killed at least eight Iraqis …. ”2
Sgt. Joshua Lower, a scout in the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division working with the Iraqis, is less than impressed. “I just wish they'd start to pull their own weight without us having to come out and baby-sit them all the time,” he complained to the NT. “Some Iraqi special forces really know what they are doing, but there are some units that scatter like cockroaches with the lights on when there's an attack.”3 The NYT reporters also discovered – like their colleagues from the Post – that the Sunni soldiers make “little secret of their support for Saddam Hussein and their contempt for the Americans.”
Even the deployment of thousands of Iraqi troops in May 2005 across the Baghdad region by “Prime Minister” Ibrahim al-Jaafari, billed as the largest Iraqi-led military operation yet (aimed at the relentless rebel attacks on the capital), proved a very visible test of the validity of the American exit strategy. It had a less-than-impressive result, for it “underscored the raft of problems the American command has identified in the Iraqi force build-up.”4 Some of the problems noted were “hasty recruitment, insufficient training and a weak command structure, leading to breakdowns in discipline, especially under the stress of combat.”
Summarizing this whole situation is a rather unexpected voice, though it is one that cannot be dismissed offhandedly. Speaking to a Washington Times reporter following his third trip to Iraq, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey – of first Gulf War fame (or notoriety) – said that it will be at least another year before the violence subsides (many would critique that as optimistic). The problem with even that optimistic prediction is, according to Sharon Behn, who summarized McCaffrey's remarks for the Times, “[t]hat timetable may be cutting it fine for U.S. forces, which … [are] rapidly reaching the end of [their] rope.”1
“We are getting toward the end of our capacity,” warned Gen. McCaffrey …. “The U.S. Army and Marine Corps are incapable of sustaining the effort. Our recruiting is coming apart. The National Guard is going to unravel.”
Some economic effects of the resistance
For many people, the economic effects of this war are the least important of the war's evils. The life and safety of American troops ranks far higher than mere accountancy. Nonetheless, the war is having tremendous economic effects, and these should be thoroughly understood. At the end of the day – whether people focus on the problem or not – it is still the American taxpayer who is picking up the tab.
In the blizzard of lies that has characterized the Bush administration's war against Iraq, one of the snowflakes was a statement from former Deputy Defense Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, who told the House Appropriations Committee on March 27, 2003, that Iraqi oil could ge
nerate $50–100 billion over two or three years: “We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”2 The reality?
UPI Senior News Analyst, Martin Sieff, summed up the financial catastrophe that the war represents in a compelling piece from the beginning of this year. “The liberation of Iraq,” he wrote,
was to have been the war that paid for itself in spades and gave U.S. corporations the inside track on the greatest energy bonanza of the twenty-first century. Instead, it has become a fiscal nightmare, a monetary Vietnam that already accounts for around 15 percent of the annual U.S. budget deficit, a figure likely only to grow remorselessly into the unforeseeable future.3
Details for Sieff's piece were provided by an analysis from Anthony Cordesman of CSIS. His comprehensive review of the war's costs completed in December 2004 offered some astounding figures.
The projected cost of the war to the end of 2004 was an incredible $128 billion, but this did not include the cost of replacing damaged or destroyed equipment, the cost of upgrading equipment, or even the cost of major maintenance. Cordesman thus believed that another $5–10 billion more should be added to the $128 billion figure.
According to Cordesman, the projected cost of the war through the end of 2005 was going to be between $212 and 232 billion, again not including equipment replacement, necessary upgrading, and major maintenance. He concluded that the war was costing around $1–2 billion a week, and rising constantly. On April 21, 2005, the Associated Press announced Senate approval of an emergency supplemental funding bill of $81 billion, for the most part covering costs of the war in Iraq (though Afghanistan operations are merged into funding for personnel, operations, maintenance, etc.). This easily brings the total costs of war and reconstruction well past $300 billion, and it only covers expenditures foreseen as necessary through the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2005.1 The measure was approved through the House and Senate in early May and signed into law on May 11, 2005.2 Moreover, the defense spending bill for 2005, totaling $409 billion for the fiscal year 2006, calls for “$45.3 billion in emergency funds to cover the ongoing cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from this coming October through March of next year.”3 This is yet another colossal sum of money to be spending on an unnecessary war at a time when too many Americans are suffering economic hardship, and when the nation's infrastructure is in an extremely poor condition.4
Another way of looking at this fiscal fiasco is to compare the war to that in Vietnam during the '60s and '70s. According to figures produced by the Congressional Research Service, the Vietnam War cost a total of $623 billion, using inflation-adjusted dollars. The current cost of Bush's war, following approval of the May 2005 supplemental, is about half of the Vietnam total.1 What stands out, though, is that the Vietnam War went on for ten years, while Bush's war is only two years old and change.
Against Wolfowitz's estimate of $50–100 billion worth of oil revenue that would be available over two years to finance the war and reconstruction, what do we find? “Nineteen months after the invasion, Iraq has generated just $17 billion, according to [former] Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadhban.” The prediction at that point was that “Iraqi oil sales might not reach $25 billion by Wolfowitz's two-year mark.”2 The same report that provided the oil minister's remarks also indicated that because of rebel attacks, export revenue has been lost to the tune of $7–12 billion. Updating this figure is a comment from Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, Iraq's new Oil Minister, confirming that sabotage attacks against “Iraq's northern and central pipeline network [have led to] $1.25 billion of lost revenue in the first five months of this year” (emphasis mine).3 “More than $1 billion in Iraqi oil revenues,” the earlier report added, “also flowed to American and British companies, who landed expensive contracts from the now defunct U.S.-led occupation authority, often without competitive bidding.”4 And audits show that 60 percent of the large contracts financed by the oil funds went to Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old company.
As frustrating as the lack of oil revenue must be for those who banked on it as a way of funding the U.S. invasion and occupation, more frustrating still must be the fact that the Iraqi rebels know that by attacking the oil infrastructure they are hitting Uncle Sam in his wallet. The former Iraqi oil minister was quoted in a Reuters wire report as saying that “[w]e are up against people who plan every move and know where to hit” (emphasis mine).5 Prefacing his remarks, the report candidly noted the motive for the attacks on Iraqi oil facilities by insurgents: “to deprive the U.S.-backed government of export revenue by choking off supply of fuels.” Less than a month after the Reuters wire, James Glanz reported for the New York Times from Baghdad that
[i]nsurgent attacks to disrupt Baghdad's supplies of crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, water and electricity have reached a degree of coordination and sophistication not seen before, Iraqi and American officials say …. The new pattern, they say, shows that the insurgents have a deep understanding of the complex network of pipelines, power cables, and reservoirs feeding Baghdad.1
Al-Ghadhban told Glanz, furthermore, that “[t]here is an organization, sort of a command-room operation,” and that “the scheme of the saboteurs is to isolate Baghdad from the sources of crude oil and oil prod-ucts.”2 He also added: “they have succeeded to a great extent.” The only reasonable conclusion, based upon the technical “savvy” of the attacks, then-Electricity Minister Aiham Alsammarae told Glanz, was that “the sabotage operation is being led by former members of the ministries themselves, possibly aided by sympathetic holdovers.”3 The reminiscence of this campaign to the third division of Saddam's resistance plan – the one involving the technocrats – is striking, and needs no additional comment. A June 2005 report detailed accusations that the tribes being paid to provide security for the northern oil pipeline running from the Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish oil terminal of Ceyhan were actually themselves behind the attacks.4 Meanwhile, the trend is towards an increase of these kinds of attacks: they numbered 77 in 2003, but were 246 in 2004.5 Though reports indicate that they take place mainly in the Sunni areas in the north and center of the country, it is conceded – illustratively – that “facilities in the mostly Shiite south have not been fully secure either.”6
What does the future hold?
Since we are not fighting the war to defend our homeland and we abuse so many of our professed principles, we face great difficulties in resolving the growing predicament in which we find ourselves. Our options are few, and admitting errors in judgment is not likely to occur. Moral forces are against us as we find ourselves imposing our will on a people 6,000 miles from our shores. How would the American people respond if a foreign country, with people of a different color, religion, and language imposed itself on us to make us conform to their notions of justice and goodness? None of us would sit idly by. This is why those who see themselves as defenders of their homeland and their way of life have the upper hand regardless of the shock-and-awe military power available to us. At this point, our power works perversely. The stronger and more violent we are, the greater the resistance becomes.
So said Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) before the House of Representatives on June 14, 2005.1 It is only upon such an analysis that the United States can extricate itself from a disaster of its own making. Yet, sadly, it is probable that the Bush crowd will continue to listen to people expressing not facts, but fantasies. One good example is that uttered by David Phillips, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, who said that “[t]he real struggle for power in Iraq is going to be over the constitution. It will define the country's future for decades to come.”2 That's nonsense.
The Iraqi resistance movement has shown itself to be a force that has exceeded every analyst's predictions. It has shown that how it sees the world, how it sees itself, and how it operates do not mesh with Western methods and conceptions. Put simply, the resistance has absolutely no interest in a new constitution for the good reason that if th
e resistance destroys the willpower of both the puppet Iraqi government and the U.S. government, the constitution will become what the American constitution has largely become in recent years – a scrap of paper of questionable utility. A constitution drawn up by whatever political constituency that does not have the agreement of the resistance leaders is a constitution destined for the waste basket. Talk of the constitution is an argument about where the deckchairs belong on the Titanic.
In the West, a respect for pluralism, democracy, the rule of law, and the other shibboleths of our vitiated political discourse still have some limited impact in our culture. In Iraq, they have absolutely no resonance whatsoever. To believe otherwise is not merely inane, it is to perpetuate the senseless sacrifice of our men and women on foreign fields to no good end and for no good purpose.
Can there be a “political solution” to the present conflict? Yes. But it consists only in acceptance by the U.S. of the need to get out of the country sooner rather than later. It might, of course, be objected that there are already tentative feelers between American officials and the resistance, issuing forth in a series of meetings, conferences, and behind-the-scenes rendezvous; that there is a desire on the part of much of the resistance movement to come “into the political process.” It has appeared in articles with headlines like “Some Sunnis Hint At Peace Terms in Iraq, U.S. Says,” published in May 2005 in the New York Times.1 Such notions will appear, no doubt, with increasing frequency as the situation worsens.2 Articles claiming that insurgents are ready to “deal” invariably admit that it is the U.S government that is pushing for its Iraqi puppet to come to terms with the resistance. Evidence that the resistance is considering “negotiations” is sourced exclusively – and unsurprisingly – to “unnamed administration officials,” “senior government sources,” or, in one case, a “government-appointed overseer of Sunni religious sites.” What these stories actually reveal is that it is the Bush administration that needs a political resolution to the problem, not the resistance. Even Central Command head Gen. Abizaid put it this way in June 2005, while speaking to CNN: it is “U.S. officials and Iraqi officials” who are “looking for the right people in the Sunni community to talk to.”1 Whether those “right people” will make themselves available, absent an immediate agreement to end the occupation, is another story.
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