Only a realistic strategy can save Bremer, The Daily Star

Opinion, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Only a realistic strategy can save Bremer

The Daily Star, 6/30/03

The word “quagmire” is badly overused, but the United States is headed for just such a scenario unless it changes course in Iraq. The raids and arrests carried out on Sunday were billed as a “show of force” designed to discourage attacks on American soldiers, but in reality they illustrated the cul-de-sac in which the Coalition Provisional Authority finds itself. The occupiers cannot leave for fear of losing face, but they cannot stay without taking a steady stream of casualties. And by seeking to quell resistance by undertaking the sort of heavy-handed action that fueled it in the first place, the coalition is demonstrating a profound lack of imagination.

It would be unfair to blame all of this on Paul Bremer, the senior US administrator in Iraq. He has been brought in to clean up the mess created when the half-baked theories of the neoconservative wing of the Bush administration were allowed to overrule the hard-learned lessons proffered by Pentagon professionals. The result is a litany of inadequacy: an invasion force that was enough to defeat a hollow and dispirited Iraqi Army but not to maintain security for the civilian population; a humanitarian aid plan that failed to consider the impact of the war on such essential infrastructure as water and sewage networks; and a strategy that emphasized the “protection” of Iraq’s oil resources while wholly ignoring the effects of widespread power outages. Never has so seemingly conclusive a military victory degenerated so rapidly into a tragicomedy of errors.

And now it is Bremer’s job to set things right. It is not his fault that the war was launched on flimsy pretexts and prosecuted with little or no regard for the aftermath. Under the lopsided rules by which history is written and remembered, however, the Iraq that eventually emerges from this debacle – including the attendant side-effects on US interests in the region – will bear his signature and therefore determine his legacy as a public figure.

Despite persistent US attempts to portray the continuing violence as the work of Baath Party loyalists, it is patently obvious that the motivation for guerrilla attacks stems from both the presence of occupation forces and the coalition’s inexplicable sloth in restoring order, services and sovereignty to the Iraqi people. Even if a few diehards or even Saddam Hussein himself are orchestrating resistance to some extent, their success in maintaining a steady flow of US casualties derives from deep-seated popular anger at the fact that “liberation” has thus far meant little more than chaos, deprivation and foreign tutelage.

It is not too late for Bremer to salvage the situation, but he is running out of time to demonstrate clear progress before a point is reached at which no amount of goodwill will assuage the concerns and suspicions aroused by prolonged mismanagement. Accordingly, he must move quickly to increase the power and purview of Iraqis to manage their own affairs, rebuild a legal system that can tackle the rampant crime that continues to terrorize the civilian population, and radically accelerate the reactivation of basic services. Unless he acts with alacrity, his reputation can only become yet another casualty of someone else’s war.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).