APPARENTLY intelligent people backed the invasion of Iraq for all sorts of well-meaning reasons. Some, such as Colin Powell, said that the world was threatened by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Others, such as Tony Blair also emphasised that Saddam Hussein must be punished for defying a final warning from the UN. Still others, myself included, believed that the chance to remove a barbaric dictator, whose butchery was comparable to that of Idi Amin or Pol Pot, was a sufficient reason to go to war — especially if the tyrant’s overthrow could be achieved with only modest bloodshed and broad international support.
How stupid we all look today. The security arguments for regime change in Iraq were quickly exposed as bogus. The legal grounds were destroyed before the war even started. What about the humanitarian reasoning? I wrote on this page last year that the justification for the Iraq conflict would not lie in the discovery of a few rusting drums of chemical poisons or bacterial cultures but in the improving lives of millions of people who had been oppressed by Saddam — and maybe in the example this would set for other brutal regimes around the world. How naïve that now sounds. For who can seriously doubt now that America will cut and run from Iraq, abandoning the country to bloody chaos as it has in Afghanistan, long before the job of creating a stable democracy is anywhere near done?
But have all those who backed the war turned out to be wrong? Not quite. In one unexpected sense, the neoconservative ideologues who pushed hardest for the war have been proved absolutely right — and therein lies the only remaining hope and the greatest danger of the Iraq disaster.
The Washington neocons, led by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, were dreaming of a war against Iraq long before the hanging chads in Florida were even counted, when most people would have imagined that al-Qaeda was the name of a Lebanese restaurant. The neocons’ desire for war had a psychological wellspring deeper than geopolitical calculations about oil or their love for Israel. They believed that invading Iraq would open a new chapter in America’s military history. By overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the US would prove that it had both the means and the determination to enforce its will whenever and wherever required. This would expunge once and for all the debilitating memories of defeat in Vietnam.
Well, the neocons have been proved right, though not in the way they expected. Vietnam will indeed be forgotten. Thanks to Rumsfeld, Cheney and their henchmen in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, Iraq will indeed now replace Vietnam — as the byword for America’s military humiliation, its strategic incompetence, its wayward moral compass and its lack of political resolution.
Iraq may have shown off US military supremacy, but it has also proved that military supremacy can be worse than useless in achieving US objectives — not only such nebulous ideals as the “triumph of democracy” and the “defence of freedom”, but also the hard-nosed, cynical calculations favoured by conservative thinkers: uprooting terrorism, gaining control of the world oil market, and strengthening Israel.
The war which the neocons promoted to restore America’s military self-confidence and put an end to the feeble-minded consensus-seeking of Bill Clinton (not to mention Jimmy Carter) has so far had the opposite effect. It has proved that the US military is even more of a “paper tiger” today than it was in Vietnam. America can now be thwarted in a matter of months, not the decade which it took the Viet Cong — and by a ragtag band of poorly-armed medieval zealots, whose military prowess cannot begin to compare with that of the Vietnamese.
If Iraq moves along the course which now seems most probable — a further deterioration in security followed by an effective break-up of the country and control of the largest sector by an anti-US theocratic dictatorship allied to Iran — one thing can be said for certain. Americans will not want to embark on another military adventure of this kind for many years. The US will move into an era of impotence and isolationist indifference to the world.
This would be a disaster, because America, for all its faults, is the only country with the military means and the liberal political ideology to be an effective guarantor of a peaceful, prosperous and broadly democratic world order. The most urgent question in the world today is therefore quite simple: “Is there any way for America to extricate itself from this mess before it is too late?” The answer goes back to the role of the Washington neocons.
Consider the specific blunders which have led America into the present morass: the decision to rush ahead with invasion last spring in the face of UN Security Council opposition; the failure to control looting in the early days of the occupation; the manifest incompetence of General Jay Garner, the first administrator; the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and to ban former members of the Baathists from all official jobs; the refusal to provide the manpower which US generals demanded; the lack of trained American civilians prepared to take over administration; the effort to minimise the UN’s role; the packing of the Iraqi Governing Council with exiles who had no local support.
The list could go on and on — right up to and including the latest and greatest disaster — the refusal to abide by the Geneva Convention, which led to the “sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses” of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, to quote the impressively candid language of Major-General Antonio Taguba, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. Had it not been for all these blunders Iraq today could have been on the road to the security, political stability and economic viability which its long-suffering people were promised a year ago.
What is most striking about these blunders is that they are linked back to one source — the civilian leadership of the US Defence Department and specifically to the Defence Secretary himself.
Looking at the record of the past 12 months — from Mr Rumsfeld’s distortion of intelligence and deliberate alienation of the French and Germans, to the bureaucratic infighting which led within days of the invasion to Pentagon staff tearing up a detailed State Department plan for Iraq’s civilian administration and economic resuscitation — it would be fair to place most of the blame for failure of the Iraq adventure at the Defen ce Secretary’s door.
Many of these blunders cannot now be undone, but others — ranging from the treatment of future prisoners, to the relationship with the UN and the unconditional backing of Israel — are eminently reversible. Still others can be remedied, at least in part, by admitting that appalling mistakes were made — and by locating the burden of responsibility not just on lowly foot-soldiers but on the civilian leadership at the highest level. In other words, Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation is now the minimum condition for America to start pulling itself out of the quagmire into which he has led it.
Of course it is not just a matter of personalities. Mr Rumsfeld did not make so many mistakes because he is stupid. They all stem from the arrogant neoconservative ideology which he embodied — the interlocking beliefs that America is always right, that violence must be met with violence, that compromise is weakness, that international allian- ces are a needless encumbrance, and that legal niceties are a dangerous distraction in a time of war.
Only by getting rid of Mr Rumsfeld can President Bush publicly detach himself from the blunders which have sabotaged what could have been a successful strategy of enforcing regime change in Iraq. Even today it may not be too late to internationalise Iraq’s security and reconstruction, to hand over genuine power to the UN and — above all — to show some sincere contrition to the Arab world and the people of Iraq. But the time to avoid disaster is running out — for Iraq, for America and for the world as a whole.
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