The joint American-British occupation of Iraq is five years old this week and
shows no sign of ending. There has been a fall in civilian deaths due to the
intensive American policing of Baghdad, the legitimising of a 60,000 Sunni
militia to fight Al-Qaeda and sheer exhaustion at the horror. But these are
entry rather than exit tactics. They make departing more rather than less
hazardous.
Nowhere in non-Kurdish Iraq is there a stable political or security regime.
There are even indications that the anarchy of the Baghdad area has shifted
north, witness the terrible killing of a Christian bishop in Mosul and a
surge in deaths over the past month. The relationship between Kurds and
Arabs, for instance over oil and the status of Kirkuk, is unresolved.
There are two stark indicators of the state of this occupation. One is that
after five years power supplies in oil-rich Iraq are still no better than
they were under Saddam Hussein and many utilities are worse. The other is
that no leader of the two occupying countries dares to appear in streets
that he claims to have liberated.
The mood was best summed up by an American soldier who, on radio last week,
said simply, “We have broken this country. Our violence had bred violence,
but we cannot leave until we have put the place back together again.” Any
question of how to exit the quagmire is thus begged, since nobody has an
idea of what putting Iraq back together again involves.
History is now sliding the invasion into focus. Lessons are raining from the
sky like bombs once did over Falluja. None that I have encountered, not one
book, article or film, reflects well on the venture. Even the memoir of Paul
Bremer, the early proconsul, was a howl of frustration against Washington.
The forthcoming apologia from Douglas Feith, the occupation’s chief Pentagon
planner, refers to it as “grimly incomplete”.
I have never doubted the integrity of those perpetrating this war. I do not
believe it was secretly about oil or money or regional hegemony. Even the
stupidest strategist knows that these are determined by markets, not armies.
Those within Washington’s elite for whom the invasion was really about
Israel were open about the fact, nor is Israel’s security in itself an
illegitimate concern.
There are reasons for invading foreign states that are justified at law and
before the court of pragmatism. They embrace forestalling a humanitarian
catastrophe (Kosovo) or reversing an attack on a foreign state (Kuwait).
Neither applied in Iraq but I accept that many listening to Tony Blair’s
deceptive Commons speech in March 2003 might have thought they did.
What is astonishing is the sheer scale of the self-delusion that consumed two
powerful, nuclear-armed nations and, quite separate, their incompetence in
converting that delusion into action. Britain’s only defence, and it is
thin, is that at no point did Blair pretend to do anything but limp
pathetically in Washington’s wake. Britain could hardly rebuild Iraq if
America refused to do so.
The plan of Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, was not initially
implausible. It was “invasion lite”: topple the regime, install a puppet as
in Afghanistan and leave. The puppet was Ahmed Chalabi. US commanders were
told to assume they would leave within six months.
This was why Rumsfeld cut out the State Department and even those “neocon”
nation-builders who saw their Iraq as an island of pro-western, pro-Israeli
capitalism in the Middle East. The occupation plan was drawn up in
Rumsfeld’s office by Feith, who rejected all help from experts and relied on
interns from right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. He was
dubbed by General Tommy Franks as “the f****** stupidest guy on the face of
the earth”.
George Bush himself told Bob Woodward, the writer, that in Iraq “the degree of
difficulty had to be relatively small in order to make sure that we
continued to succeed in the first battle”, Afghanistan.
Reconstruction would be financed, said the Pentagon’s Paul Wolfowitz, from
Iraq’s own oil revenues, much to the enrichment of the vice-president’s
various companies. Iraq was the nearest to a private war in modern history.
What both Bush and Rumsfeld ignored was the power of mission creep. It was
this that led to the catalogue of executive and military errors: the absence
of a plan for Iraq’s governance, the lack of skills in the coalition
authority, the failure to police Baghdad, the treating of Iraqi civilians as
“the enemy” and the army’s brutal imposition of order. A nation was
alienated and nation-building turned from mission improbable to mission
impossible.
Even the early remedies, such as flooding the Iraq economy with reconstruction
money, corrupted local government and financed gang warfare under the guise
of sectarian strife. It was not until last year and General David Petraeus’s
recourse to private militias and the “surge” that anything like a plausible
occupation strategy emerged from Washington. It was far too late to ease
withdrawal.
The implications of Iraq for intervention generally are awesome. In The Three
Trillion Dollar War, Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank economist
(writing with Linda Bilmes), points out that war has become cripplingly
expensive. Risk aversion and over-mechanisation lead to massive destruction
and loss of civilian life, not to mention the imputed cost of military
deaths and injuries long into the future.
Stiglitz puts the cost of the war at 60 times the official figure of $50
billion, apart from such additional costs as the higher price of oil. He
blames it for the collapse of America's public finances and for aiding the
descent into recession.
To British participants such as Hilary Synnott, the Basra administrator, what
was most tragic was the inability to build civil order on military victory.
His memoir, Bad Days in Basra, out last week, charts the collapse of liaison
between London and Washington as the coalition lost control in autumn 2003.
It was a shambles reminiscent of 19th-century wars. Synnott pleads for a
corps of administrators not obsessed with “Whitehall’s fixation with a duty
of care which prevents them being exposed to the risks which soldiers face
every day”.
In other words, Synnott is saying occupation lite must mutate into imperialism
lite if such adventures are to have any hope of success. As Colin Powell
warned Bush before the invasion, “You know that you’re going to be owning
this place.” Blair’s interventionism, set out in his 1998 Chicago speech,
displayed that most dangerous of military illusions: that establishing a
bridgehead wins a war. Blair could explain his interference in other
countries’ affairs - to end some evil - but not what to do next.
Our soldiers now hunkered down in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq
went with the noble aim of righting a wrong. But they have induced in London
a renaissance of the imperial urge, the desire to impose one’s own values on
foreign peoples through the barrel of a gun. They then do not know how to
leave. British ministers deny this is their intention. But that denial is
fatal to their cause.
The strength of the British Empire was that both occupier and occupied
expected the British to stay. Promising to leave “when the job is done” may
satisfy a domestic audience but it ensures the worst of both worlds. It
stirs political and financial dependency for the present while creating
uncertainty about the future. The job is never done. Autonomy is not imposed
but postponed. Today’s imperialism lite, by constantly debating its
departure, induces instability, encourages rebellion and so undermines its
declared mission.
The occupation of Iraq was a shocking case of a great power wounded by one
terrorist incident thrashing out against any Muslim state that came to mind.
As Kabul crumbled, Rumsfeld turned his gaze on Iraq, as “Afghanistan is
running out of targets”.
Even then, had he confined his objective to revenge, Iraq might have been a
short-lived affair. Instead it slid into a wider crusade to bring western
values to an often ungrateful world. Revenge has cost the American people
some $3-$4 trillion – so far.
Visiting Baghdad in 2003 I recall being asked what I would write if, against
all odds, Iraq became a Mesopotamian Sweden. That unlikely outcome, I said,
would still not justify the invasion but success would probably atone for
the sin. Five years on nobody would even bother to ask the question.
simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk
Forget what it has cost the damm Americans - whatever it is it isn't enough. What about hte Iraqi's! It has destroyed their country and killed some 3/4 million of their people. Not a problem for the US I guess, military invasions and the slaughter of foreigners is just th ewat they do things.
No one has apologized yet for the slaughter of 3-4 million Vietnamese for nothing, and neither have they learnt anything from that invasion.
Having th emost deadly military in the world doesn't make you right. It just makes everyone else dead.
Bob McNaught, Brisbane , Australia
I can't believe what I 'm reading here. Bondy of Dartmouth, do you REALLY want China or Russia in a Cold War with us? Miss the good old days of the Cuban Missile Crisis and being a hair trigger away from nuclear annihilation, do you?
For me as an American, the decision was simple. Besides 9/11 we were hit with the Anthrax attacks that killed nearly 20 people and paralyzed the nation. Remember Congressmen and their aides lining up for Cipro? All I know is, Saddam had 10,000 liters of Anthrax he couldn't account for despite UN demands. He also showed at Halabja and in the Iran-Iraq War that he was more than willing to use them.
That we haven't found them does not mean they never existed. Everyone knows they did. And I, as well as millions of Iraqis I'm sure, sleep better knowing Saddam and his two sons from Hell are not raping, murdering and torturing anymore.
If the US is as bad as you say, why is liberated Europe not a Gulag, which the Soviets would have if not for us?
JohnnyT, Nashua, NH USA
The UN is toothless because it is funded largely by the US.Bring back the Cold War someone has to stand up against the US. Come on China come on Russia bring back the balance of power. The UK will always kowtow to the US and the EU doesn't have the military power to act together(and may never) though it may act as the good cop to the US's bad cop.
bondy, dartmouth,
The purpose of the occupation of Iraq & Afganistan was most likely never anything to do with some ethical regime change or WMD. Instead we are securing the supply of oil that keeps our western economies functioning. Anyone who buys anything from a shop is a part of that. We won't leave them alone until it takes a barrel of oil to get a barrel of oil out of there.
Jeremy, Southampton, UK
Perhaps if America created a Department of Social Anthropology, the citizens and the world would benefit from the intelligence gathered and provided by people who actually know why an occupation would never work- short or long term. Why not let those smart folks in college figure it out?
And then, if that was successful, we could push for the development and implementation of a Department for Judgments At Face Value, whose role would be predicated upon helping citizens figure out things like- if Iraq couldn't take over Kuwait, chances are- they probably can't take over the world. This would help all citizens to learn how to think better. Hell, they could also help the FEMA people figure out, a) where New Orleans is by using a Google Map, b) calculate the supplies needed on a free laptop calculator, and then, c) assist the government in coordinating supply drops with US Coast Guard who was already in the area. That might have saved some lives.
Who knows?
David Fleming, Minneapolis, Minnesota
the real problem here is the toothless u.n. if we had a proactive, interventionist world body, that didn't sit on its hands whilst zimbabwe and darfur descend into chaos or simply wouldn't tolerate the israel/palestine conflict, it would not be left to a few powerful nations to act unilaterally.
we would not be imposing our values, we would be imposing the world's values. there would be no them and us.
unfortunately, half of the u.n. votes are held by the sort of regimes we ought to be turfing out. the idea that we shouldn't interfere in sovereign states is outdated. who is going to protect the innocent if the world abandons them to their leaders?
iraq doesn't work as a country. split it into three - kurdistan (with a bit of turkey) and give the other two parts to saudi and iran to administer.
jem, london, uk
I've always felt that Bush was motivated by private, family based vengeance, something that does not jell with his stance as a Christian in high profile. If I am right, it is a pretty good object lesson in the consequences of unforgiveness.
Paul Flynn, Sai Kung, Hong Kong
"Now, the "Againsts" think that a quick departure is a solution - equally foolish. "
Well, I'm an 'against' and I don't think that a quick departure is a solution. I don't think there is a solution.
Whenever we leave there will be a bloodbath, now or in five years time. We'll have to accept reality at some point. So let's leave sooner rather than later.
Ed Bowsher, London,
I hate to add to the torrent of words, but I think both the supporters of the war (then) and the opponents of the war (then and now) are making the same mistake - underestimating the depth of hatred the Islamic sects harbor for other sects and "the West." Bush and the "Fors" thought that democracy would cure all - utter foolishness. Now, the "Againsts" think that a quick departure is a solution - equally foolish.
Repeat slowly, "If this is another Vietnam, what is Cambodia?"
David, Philadelphia, USA/PA
"witness the terrible killing of a Christian bishop in Mosul."
Witness the beating (attempted murder) of a Christian priest in London a couple of days ago by "Asian youths". Maybe the troops should be transferred to the streets of the UK. It is starting to take on the whiff of Mosul.
Karl , mount tremper, new york,
What an incredibly evil act and atrocious waste of lives and resources. These leaders and their willing armies have invaded a land and destroyed it completely. Meanwhile back in the states they drive their big cars and get fat on their junk food. Same in the UK where society is really getting sicker by the minute. We haven't got away with these evil acts of war because every thing has an impact and a 'karma'. The two great wars should have put an end to all this evil, we should have learn from it. Indeed there was a time of goodness for a short time afterwards, but no, we have not learnt. So Iraq is destroyed and our societies degenerate from the over consumption of material things, our youth are aimless and drunk and drugged up - that's the true price we pay, not the money - the actions of these leaders will have a far reaching impact into future generations.
Jess, Oxford, UK
"The plan of Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, was not initially implausible. It was “invasion liteâ€: topple the regime, install a puppet as in Afghanistan and leave. The puppet was Ahmed Chalabi. US commanders were told to assume they would leave within six months."
This wasnt the reason for the war that we were told about. It was about WMD.
Forced regime change is illegal isnt it?
Or are you saying that I could maybe hook up with thay guy from Bebo with the millions, get an army and bomns together, and bomb Parliament and take the UK over.
I am no fan of Brown, or Cameron's lot, and the Lib dems are pretty feeble, but the last time I checked I dont think I am allowed to undertake a forced regime change and if I kill a few million Brits with my shock and awe tactics, just massage the numbers and put it down as collateral damage, well would get away with that?
Simon Ralli Robinson, Gibraltar, Gib
Mr Jenkins is a master of words. As a notable journalist, he cannot shoot straight and insult his Prime Minister. To say self-delusion, it means "the Americans and the Brits were cheated by their leaders". To say imperialism lite, it means "Imperialist invasion of Iraq". With or without 9/11, George W Bush was elected to carry out a mission left unfinished by his Repubican father. The military establishment, the vice president, and the greedy oil men have plotted to take over Iraq many years ago in disguise under humanitarian liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein.
How to move forward? Appoint Tony Blair and George W Bush to be special ambassador to Iraq and make them live in Iraq until problems solved.
Sunny, Hong Kong,
As a Baptist, we have known for a long time that America will be a non-factor in the final days. We never quite knew how our demise would come about, though now, we are seeing a glimpse. This country was once good but now we are a people given over to violence, pornography and materialism. We were once a nifty tool in the potters hand but are now doomed to be cast-offs.
Mark, Houston, Texas
Most of us could read in the papers in the past that President Hussain was financially supporting suicide bombers ,that went into Israel, families.
We could hear at is hanging that his last words was his support for the Palestinian people.
He was a huge threat to the Israelis
If we try to look forward the core problem must be to find a peace deal between Israel and Palestine. This conflict has cost most of us too much money in high oilprices!
Peter Darlington, Southampton,
What is not mentioned is the cost to the Iraqis. How many deaths have there been of ordinary civilians, sixty thousand, six hundred thousand? Does anyone know? Does any one care? No, not in the West. As long as we have our own narcissistic lifestyles, human rights anywhere else can take a running jump.
Nick Ferriman, Bangkok, Thailand
Mr Jenkins,
a few years ago you said in the Evening Standard that the Americans and the British were going to 'cut and run'. They haven't and it is obvious that they well in Iraq for at least two or three years more.
Richard, London, England
Paying soldiers in peace time in their own country must be far less costly than supporting an active army in the field of action. One 30mm shell costs around $10!
David, London, UK
Death, destruction, hatred and chaos. That is what sums up the Iraq War. Had any other foreign country invaded another nation in the way that the USA, and its puppet the UK did in Iraq, then Bush, Blair and Brown would have been the first to demand that nation's leaders stand trial as war criminals. The whole episode fills decent people the world over with utter disgust at the people who purport to represent us (here in the UK they were elected on a vote of just 27 per cent of the electorate, democracy? I think not).
Neil, Gloucestershire, England
Just looked up Douglas Feith on Wikipedia and found:
"He was a member of the study group which authored a controversial report entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [2], a set of policy recommendations for the newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu"
Bob, London, UK
To say that the cost of the Iraq war was $3-$4 trillion dollars is utterly ridiculous. It starts with the financially illiterate assumption that the salaries of the soldiers fighting in Iraq are a cost of the war. These salaries would have been payable even if there was no war and the soldiers were on exercise at their bases in the US. One could go through a long list of daft assumptions that were made in arriving at the ludicrous figures quoted in the article.
John, LONDON,
"The occupation of Iraq was a shocking case of a great power wounded by one terrorist incident thrashing out against any Muslim state that came to mind."
That is the most succinct, clear-headed and devastating summing-up I have read. Only a conspiracy theorist would demur.
Andrew, London,
It is possible to see both Blair and Bush, but especially Bush, as confidence tricksters who knew in advance that they would get away with it in the end - to the detriment of everyone else, but especially the Afghanis and Iraqis. Bush already had a lifelong track record of scamming other people for personal gain and "because he could" - and while we are still stunned by the irrationality and cost of all this "elective destruction" and the incessant stream of copouts and rationalisations (in the psychoanalytical sense) for the death and destruction meted out with impunity to other people - again for personal gain - all we can do is to freeze the perpetrators out: If nobody falls for the dulcet tones of "liberal intervention" any more, at least we may be able to limit the wanton damage to life and property.
Julia Iskandar, London, England
"There are reasons for invading foreign states that are justified at law and before the court of pragmatism [including] reversing an attack on a foreign state ..."
Unfortunately there is no state or alliance strong enough to enforce the law by compelling the United States and Britain to reverse their criminal attack against Iraq. Nobody can even threaten to invade those aggressor states. Therefore the catastrophe they have caused in Iraq will drag on further, until the day when the Iraqis themselves succeed in forcing the occupiers to flee their country.
Richard Cheeseman, Wellington, NZ
Iraq will be the United States' suicide note. Could devolution of the US be the solution we are working towards? Because with the dollar and Dow going into a back hole, the US will no longer be able to afford such a huge military. So lacking both the military and economic muscle, the massive foreign trade debt will kick in. Once the dollar stops being the world's reserve currency and with oil increasingly being sold in euros, the money tree will be well and truly felled and all bets off. Perhaps that's what Bush used to blackmail Blair with in order to secure support for the Iraq misadventure. Unlikely, keeping in mind Blair’s full-hearted support.
But to deal with the present and future rather than dwell on the past, the question that needs to be addressed is "What do we do now?"
(What do you mean, "we"?)
Andrew Milner, Yokohama, Japan
Mr. Jenkins is the first commentator I've seen who has suggested the real reason for the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. My reading is much the same as his, though a little less charitable: After 9/11, Mr. Bush's more intelligent advisers must quickly have realized that their chances of finding Osama bin Laden ranged from slight to zero. At the same time, if the administration didn't exact revenge from someone, Mr. Bush would be perceived by his own party as a hopeless weakling. Iraq suggested itself because Saddam was widely known to be a monster, but more important, the US had flattened his military once, and a second victory would be relatively bloodless - for us. Saddam's supposed weapons of mass destruction were no more than a useful excuse, and no politician in either party seems to have thought past "victory."
Wolcott Gibbs Jr., Bath, Maine USA
The reference to any invasion in the 21st century as being justified by law or pragmatism begs the most important question of international order set up (by the victors, not Germany and Japan and Italy) at the end of the Second World War - why have the invasions in Iraq and Kosovo (in 1999) happened despite the full authority of the United Nations Security Council? Is it because the ardours of democratic debate and decision-making are becoming anathema to presidential and quasi-presidential leaders in the West, who desire to substitute the United Nations Security Council with NATO - and pliant new members of the Western Alliance, whose soldiers are ironically now confronting people who were not so long ago their "allies". Is NATO/the EU being gradually built to become the new "League of Democracies" referred to by Senator McCain? This is the main question for all those who are not citizens of the US or UK today.
Mike, London, UK
Once again Mr Jenkins writes a very interesting piece.
"The other is that no leader of the two occupying countries dares to appear in streets that he claims to have liberated.".
However, they've made it safe for Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to walk the streets of baghdad, which before the war would have been impossible.
jayil, london, uk