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Unintended consequences of Iraq war
Ahmad Faruqui
Al-Jazeerah, 10/24/03
President Bush continues to believe that his decision to go to war was a right one. But in his heart of hearts, he must know that if the American people don't like the unintended consequences of his decision to attack Iraq, they will replace him
On March 6, a Vatican envoy met with President George Bush and told him 'clearly and forcefully' that Pope John Paul II wanted him to know that a war against Iraq would be a 'disaster'. Cardinal Pio Laghi told Bush it was easier to start a war than to end one. He cautioned that a war with Iraq would destroy a people who were already 'in a really bad situation'.
President Bush, convinced he was doing the right thing, did not waver in his commitment to remove Saddam Hussein, claiming that his regime possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a clear and present danger to US national security. While some saw Churchillian resolve in the president's demeanour, others like Joe Klein worried that he was blinded by the glare of his moral certainty.
In three weeks, the world's most sophisticated military machine had over-thrown the ill-equipped armies of Saddam Hussein, many of whose commanders had been bribed by the CIA in ordering their soldiers to simply melt away in the desert. Dressed as a navy flyer, the president declared major military operations over on May 1 under a banner that read, 'Mission Accomplished'. One would have thought that Bush would have earned the undying gratitude of the people of Iraq after having liberated them from the clutches of a man whose brutality had touched just about every family in Iraq. But the opposite was destined to happen.
Washington found winning the peace more difficult than winning the war. Since May 1, almost 200 American soldiers have been killed on duty in Iraq and several hundred have been wounded. Americans will end up paying a thousand dollars per family to finance the war effort, just based on the president's supplemental budget request of $87 billion.
The war has created a big divide between America and its traditional allies in Europe. It has created an even bigger divide between America and the Muslim world. Things have gotten to such a stage that outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told the summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference that 'Jews rule the world by proxy' and the world's 1.3 billion Muslims should unite, using non-violent means for a 'final victory'. This is a message that will not endear Muslims to either Washington or Tel Aviv.
Seeing the inability of the US to deal with the root causes of terrorism, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has urged the US to recognise that terrorists can have 'serious moral goals'. He is concerned that in ignoring this reality, the US has lost 'the power of self-criticism and become trapped in a self-referential morality'. Dr. Williams went on to argue that no government should act as its own judge on whether to launch military action against a rogue state, implying that the US, in its response to the 9/11 atrocities, had acted in its 'private interest'.
Things are going so poorly for the US war effort that it decided to seek a UN Security Council resolution that many nations had said was a pre-condition for them to consider sending troops or financial contributions to Iraq. After deliberating five drafts over a six-week period, the Security Council passed the resolution unanimously. But many members who voted for it immediately qualified their vote by saying that the resolution was deficient in many respects and they would contribute neither troops nor monies. Despite strong US pressure, Pakistan's UN ambassador Munir Akram said that Pakistani troops would not be going to Iraq because they would be confused with the occupying forces.
Concerned about the rising cost of the war and slipping popularity at home, the Bush administration has launched a 'good news' offensive about Iraq, saying that the media is filtering out the good news. President Bush is giving interviews to local and regional news outlets - bypassing the major national networks. John Roberts of CBS says that the president has now declared war on the national media.
It is not clear where anyone would go to find the good news about the war, either for Americans or Iraqis. The Americans are faced with rising body counts and expenses. The Iraqis are faced with chronic shortages of electricity and water and an abundance of sewage. Lawlessness is widespread and its most visible reminder is a spate of murderous carjackings. The occasional terrorist bomb explosion reminds them that life was actually simpler and safer under Saddam Hussein.
A few months before the onset of war, Douglas Hurd, Britain's foreign secretary during the Gulf War, had written presciently in the prestigious RUSI Journal, "We might win the war in six days and then lose it in six months." A war against Iraq, he noted, had the risk of turning "the Middle East into a region of sullen humiliation, a fertile and almost inexhaustible recruiting ground for further terrorists."
The International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), in its 2003-2004 edition of The Military Balance, has confirmed this prediction. IISS says that while there was 'tremendous dynamism, flexibility and doctrinal innovation' during the military phase of the conflict, these three factors have been less evident in the management of the post-war occupation. IISS finds that Washington is being 'over confident' when it asserts that it has now turned the corner on terrorism. In fact, the war has 'probably inflamed radical passions among Muslims and thus increased al Qaida's recruiting power and morale and, at least marginally, its operating capability.'
This should come as a surprise only to the neoconservatives in the Bush administration who naively believed that Iraqis would welcome US troops as liberators with roses, kisses and hugs. Al Qaeda was born in the aftermath of the Gulf War, when the US decided to station its troops in Saudi Arabia. The stationing of 150,000 soldiers in Iraq has overshadowed any goodwill generated by withdrawing 5,000 soldiers from Saudi Arabia. Iraq, which was called the central front in the war against terrorism, has ended up becoming a magnet for terrorists.
Even then, President Bush continues to believe that his decision to go to war was a right one. But in his heart of hearts, he must know that if the American people don't like the unintended consequences of his decision to attack Iraq, they will replace him with someone else in just over a year's time. As TIME magazine notes in its current issue, the California recall has sent a powerful message to incumbents everywhere: Beware the wrath of an unhappy electorate.
Dr Ahmad Faruqui is an economist and author of "Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan". This column first appeared in Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan. He can be reached at faruqui@pacbell.net
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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