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Waiting for the Other Shoe(s) to Drop
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BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by Steven Day
It's all so predictable. Once again the United States has proven the obvious -- that we have the military muscle, as the world's only super power, to defeat a small militarily weak country. "We were right! We were right!" the neoconservative chorus has begun. The slogan for Fox News Network should probably be changed to, "We Gloat. You Abide."
But as the neocon hawks well know, opposition to the war was never based on the notion that Saddam Hussein's badly degraded military assets were somehow a match for U.S. and British forces. The coalition’s ability to win the war, in a conventional "we kicked their ass" sense, was never in doubt. Opposition to this war was based on two things: the dubious morality of "preemptive" war; and the danger the war, and in particular its aftermath, would lead to tragic unintended consequences for the United States. Both of these concerns are as valid today as they were when the fighting started.
There's no doubt, however, that the Bush Brigades are winning the spin battle. New polls show Bush's generic popularity ratings zooming back into the 70s. That, too, was predictable. Soon we'll be hearing the same media buzz about Bush's supposed political invincibility we heard back when his ratings went sky-high after Sept. 11. This is nonsense, of course. The bloom on the Iraqi rose will have dried up and blown away long before November of 2004, even assuming nothing goes dramatically wrong during the occupation, which is itself one hell of an assumption.
But that doesn't mean that those of us who oppose Bush's ultra-militaristic approach to foreign policy can afford to hang back and wait for the dust to settle. Rest assured, the hawks aren't hanging back. They're already hard at work lobbying for the next glorious battle in the war to remake the Middle East, this one against Syria or Iran -- probably Syria.
If you haven’t been spending at least a little time of late fretting about this, then you probably haven't read Joshua Marshall's article "Practice to Deceive" in the April Washington Monthly. You should read it now (on line at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html). Then consider the eery ways in which recent events seem to be confirming Marshall's thesis that administration hawks have set their sights on "rolling the table" by taking out essentially every existing Arab government and replacing it with one more to our (and Israel's) liking.
First came Donald Rumsfeld accusing Iran and Syria of providing military aid to Iraq and warning ominously that they would be "held accountable." Next up, Paul Wolfowitz, the honorary president of the war-is-fun-as-long-as-someone-else-fights-it club, told Tim Russert, "There’s got to be change in Syria as well." Meanwhile, various administration officials have been dropping hints (apparently based on no evidence at all) that Saddam may have transferred weapons of mass destruction to Syria before his government fell. Rumsfeld has also publicly accused Syria of giving sanctuary to members of Saddam's regime. And if all that wasn't enough to give a peace-loving soul an ulcer, there's also talk that James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, may be given a leading role in occupied Iraq. Woolsey is one of the most outspoken neocon hawks. He recently told students at UCLA that the United States will likely have to spend years and perhaps even decades fighting a new World War against radical Islam.
For the moment, these happy warriors appear to be piling up converts by the millions. A new poll indicates that half of the American public supports a military strike against Iran if it continues to work on developing nuclear arms and 42 percent are in favor of attacking Syria if it's shown that it was helping Iraq.
It's time to start raining a little cold reality on this giddy victory parade. The truth is that while the military campaign was a smashing success, politically we've won next to nothing to this point. Ridding Iraq of Hussein is a big plus in any rational person's book, but that's only the beginning of the story. This was a political war fought to promote political ends. Iraq didn't attack us. We weren't defending ourselves under any conventional understanding of that concept. The United States, therefore, will have won this war in a meaningful sense if, and only if, we are able to achieve our political objective of establishing a reasonably stable and democratic government in Iraq, thereby reducing the risk of terrorist attacks against American interests. This process of nation building hasn't even started yet and the road ahead looks long and perilous.
And let's face it. Our track record stinks. We promised to bring stability and democracy to Afghanistan. Instead, Hamid Karzai, our hand picked "national leader," hides out in Kabul, protected by Dynacorp rent-a-cops. Real power in the rest of the country rests with a ragtag collection of brutal warlords, many of whom finance their operations by growing opium that will eventually find its way onto American streets. American military personnel are coming under increasingly frequent attacks by resurgent Taliban elements. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has fallen so far off of Bush’s radar screen that his administration actually forgot to include the country in its foreign aid budget proposal to Congress.
Will we do better in Iraq? I would tell you not to bet the farm on it, but, unfortunately, we already have.
The truth is that almost all of the Iraq "disaster scenarios" that have so haunted antiwar activists and foreign policy experts alike remain very much in play.
Ethnic Warfare
This is, of course, the nightmare scenario of nightmare scenarios -- the possibility we may have walked straight into the middle of another Yugoslavia. Every sane American should pray this isn't true. Every sane American should worry it may be true. We just don’t know yet.
The scary thing is that post Saddam-Iraq looks a lot more like post-Tito Yugoslavia than it does post-World War II Japan or Germany. Like Yugoslavia, Iraq is an artificial construct made up of historically hostile ethnic groups thrown together for the conveyance of outside powers. Also like Yugoslavia, these ethnic conflicts, long held in check by a ruthless dictator, have now been set loose. Already, serious incidents of ethnic violence are occurring and the possibility of a complete meltdown is all too real.
Increased Terrorism
The early signs are troubling. Arab intellectuals, including those viewed as pro-American, warn that anger against the United States within the Arab world is at an historic high. So, too, is the sense of hopelessness and shame that has proven such a fertile ground for recruitment by al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The experts are nearly unanimous in believing that the Iraq invasion will cause an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. Of particular concern is the possibility that organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas -- which traditionally have not targeted American interests -- may start doing so now. And who knows what new terrorist organizations may now rise up out of the rubble of Iraq (the wonderful fact that many Iraqis greeted our troops with open arms after Baghdad fell doesn't mean they all will).
Another troubling sign is the fact that some of the most ferocious fighters encountered by coalition forces were non-Iraqis. Their willingness to "martyr" themselves in defense of a foreign land represents just the sort of fanaticism that can lead to suicide bombings and other terrorist acts. And there's no statute of limitations on terrorism. The Sept. 11 attacks occurred more than 11 years following the first Gulf War (the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia following that war is widely believed to have been part of the motivation for the attacks). It may take decades before we can confidently issue the "all clear" from the increased threat of terrorism brought on by the current war.
The No Exit -- Exit Strategy
The Bush administration showed great political skill in getting the United States into Iraq. It's becoming increasingly apparent, however, that they don’t have a clue how to get us out. One gets the disturbing impression, in fact, that they're making up this whole occupation thing as they go along. The official exit strategy, if you can call it that, seems to be based on a hope and a prayer that, against all odds, a stable democracy will quickly take root in the desert sands. And if it doesn't? They don't seem to have given that much thought. The answer, though, is obvious. A large contingent of American military personnel will almost certainly remain in Iraq for years to come.
Two Hundred Thousand "Targets of Opportunity"
While no one can predict precisely how long American troops will need to stay in Iraq, the prospects for a rapid withdrawal are bleak. Meanwhile, there's every reason to worry that our troops may become "targets of opportunity" for terrorist attacks. Two suicide bombings have already caused significant American casualties.
Nuclear Proliferation
The message to any reasonably observant dictator of a "rogue state" couldn't be clearer. If you don't have nuclear weapons and a large arsenal of other nasty weapons (Iraq), the United States will thump you. If you do have them (North Korea), we want to talk. What would you do?
Copycat Preemptive Wars
The United States holds no copyright on the concept of preemptive war. If other countries follow our lead and start attacking each other on the basis of remote future threats, it will have a profoundly destabilizing effect on the world. Already, India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, have engaged in tit-for-tat threats of preemptive action.
Oceans of Debt
The $79 billion currently being budgeted for the Iraq adventure is, we are told, a mere down payment on what's to come. Meanwhile, the Bush budget deficit, which had already been sent into orbit by the twin devils of the Bush recession and the Bush tax cuts, is now getting ready to explode under the weight of the Bush military budget. Many economists, including New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, believe that this will cause a disastrous return to high interest rates.
Be Careful What You Ask For – The Likely Outcome Of Democracy
The Bush Administration has promised to bring true democracy to Iraq. That means majority rule. A full 60 percent of Iraqis are Shia Muslim, a group with traditional ties to "Axis of Evil" superstar Iran. Notwithstanding the traditionally secular nature of Iraqi society, there is every possibility that a truly free and open election would result in a radical Islamic regime being voted into power, a result that would be devastating to U.S. interests.
Liberties Lost
We need to keep in mind a simple truth: War destroys freedom, at least for a time. And a war without end would destroy freedom for all time. Writing in the April 14 edition of The Nation, David Cole offers this quote from Francis Biddle, FDR's attorney general during the Second World War, "The Constitution has not greatly bothered any wartime President." As Cole points out, the Constitution didn't seem to greatly bother George W. Bush even in peacetime. But certainly, since the War on Terrorism began in earnest following the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has shown a consistent pattern of treating constitutional liberties as petty irritants.
Things are happening in the United States today that would have been unthinkable just two years ago -- American citizens held without charge or access to a lawyer, secret roundups of foreign nationals, vastly increased spying on innocent citizens, unprecedented governmental secrecy and a McCarthy-era-like chill on political dissent. That's war. That's what war does. And while Bush appears to be particularly tone-deaf to personal liberties, the problem is far from unique to him. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist correctly pointed out during a speech on the subject of personal liberties during time of war (given before Sept. 11), historically personal freedoms have suffered even during the administrations of some of our greatest (and most liberally minded) wartime presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, FDR and Woodrow Wilson. It's in the nature of the beast.
If popular enthusiasm for our military successes in Iraq ends up enabling the neoconservative hawks to follow their dream of expanding the war into a full fledged regional conflict, then we may find ourselves at war with Islam for generations to come. And if that happens, it's hard to believe that much of our freedom will still be there when, at long last, we do finally emerge on the other side. That is the ultimate nightmare scenario.
Hopefully nothing like that will happen. Hopefully none of the disaster scenarios will come to pass. But before we declare victory and march into the next preemptive war, shouldn't we wait to find out?
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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