BEIRUT — Now that the United States and Great Britain are talking increasingly about how to get out of Iraq, could we please try to agree on why they went in there in the first place? I do not say this out of spite or to score points. There are compelling practical consequences to the exercise of military power around the world, especially by countries that feel they can deploy their troops anywhere at will.
Ending the violence and waste in Iraq is an urgent goal, as is withdrawing foreign troops. But equally important is the goal of ending Western military assaults on the Middle East region — the only part of the world that remains subjected to foreign military invasions and sustained occupations since Napoleon’s army entered Egypt in the late 18th Century. This is not history class; this is current affairs and show-and-tell class for most of us in the Middle East.
We fear the Anglo-American exit from Iraq could turn out to be as destructive as their going in, given the terrible mess that foreign invaders have usually left behind in the form of police states or chaotic lands. Just take a snapshot of largely Arab northeast Africa this week in the wake of its post-colonial distress: Tens of thousands of Egyptian police beat up demonstrators asking for the rule of law and an independent judiciary; Sudan with its military-run government is embroiled in a grotesque series of non-stop rebellions and genocides; Somalia is ungoverned, and again suffers hundreds of deaths per week in mindless tribal warfare.
Will the Anglo-American amateur politicians and obedient young soldiers now leave Iraq in a state of turmoil, and turn their aggressive attention and chaos-making machines to Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and others who resist Western goals?
The impact of the Iraq war has already been enormous, and mostly negative: rising terrorism and anti-Western sentiments, more vulnerable “moderate” Arab regimes, more deeply entrenched autocratic regimes, blunted democratic transformations, proliferating militias, more states seeking weapons of mass destruction, and state integrity succumbing to ethnic and religious fragmentation, often deliberately promoted by Western policies. Worse things yet will happen when the Anglo-American assault forces depart quickly, leaving behind a fractured land full of angry, armed people.
One of the best analysts of Iraq is Dr. Toby Dodge, lecturer in politics at Queen Mary College of the University of London and a fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. When I asked him here last week for his assessment of the situation, he stressed several key points that are worth pondering:
* The Iraqi invasion was a huge gamble by a combination of risk-taking neo-conservatives who wanted to force open state boundaries around the world to U.S. power, and more traditional “American nationalists” like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who thought military power should be used aggressively and at will to protect American interests. The American political elite was obsessed with America’s weak influence in the Middle East and used 9/11 as an excuse to attack and change the region.
* The war aimed primarily, in American eyes, to break open the closed Middle Eastern system in order to halt weapons of mass destruction proliferation, stop the expansion of terror networks, and promote more democratic systems that brought the region’s economies into the world system more directly. Iraq was a symbol of all the problem trends in the Middle East, and removing the Baathist regime would be an example of what American power could do to change the map of the Middle East.
* The Iraqi invasion failed due to: lack of sufficient troops to achieve the post-invasion goals; misconceived planning for the post-war period based mainly on idealism and ideological wishful thinking; the expected coup to decapitate the Saddam Hussein regime at the start of the war never happened; the Anglo-Americans ended up doing nation-building instead of political reform because the state structures collapsed; the U.S. underestimated the potency of primordial identities and Iraqi nationalism, and put too much faith in expatriate Iraqis in the U.S. and U.K. who proved not to have much credibility or legitimacy inside Iraq.
* Iraq today is a country and not a state, dominated by two violent groups — the insurgents or resistance that attacks Iraqis and foreign targets, and the various armed militias who comprise over 100,000 men under arms, many of them integrated into the police and army.
Dodge believes the decision to disengage from Iraq will come when a tipping point is soon reached, as political momentum for such a pullout builds in the United States, especially since most “non-ideological” U.S. staff feel the war is lost. The decision to leave, however, is probably too big for George W. Bush to make, and he will most likely leave it for the next president.
Dodge suggests the U.S. pullout from Iraq will be more consequential than getting out of Vietnam was three decades ago. “The consequence of a U.S.-led pullout will be to leave the Middle East as a place where American power is weak, the area is destabilized, and Iran is strong,” Dodge said.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 13 May 2006
Word Count: 886
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