Iraq: the American people want out, our leaders won't listen

1. Americans Want a Rapid Exit from Iraq but Elected Leaders Aren't Even Considering It -- by Kevin Zeese/www.dissidentvoice.org

If the election results did not make the message clear, polls taken since the election have done so. Support for sending additional troops to Iraq is at 11% according a December 15-17 poll by CNN. The same poll found that 54% of Americans want the troops home by the end of 2007 and 67% oppose the war. Yet, in the Capitol there is talk of adding new troops and almost no talk of getting out of Iraq. Representative government is failing to represent the voters.

Why is the leadership of both parties in Washington, DC failing to discuss getting out of Iraq -- rapidly? They say a US exit will lead to an escalation of violence, a blood bath or civil war. But the truth is we can design a rapid exit from Iraq that reduces the risk of violence. How?

First, it is important to look at the real violence. While sectarian violence gets all the attention in the US media, the November 2006 DoD report, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq," found that more than 80% of violence is directed at the US military or at the Iraqi military. "Coalition forces attracted the majority (68%) of attacks," according to the report. Attacks on Iraqi Security Forces are the next largest category, with attacks on civilians being the smallest group. Thus, the real war is between Iraqis fighting the US and America's Iraqi allies. Of course, civilians amount for the most casualties as they are unprotected when attacks occur.

Dahr Jamail, a top reporter on Iraq, reports in a December 28 article entitled "More Troops but Less Control in Iraq": "Through the occupation, each time the US has increased troop levels, there has been a corresponding increase in attacks on the forces, and consequently an increase in civilian casualties." Thus, rather than learning from past experience the Bush administration, with a compliant Congress, are likely to repeat past mistakes.

On December 6 James Baker, the co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, even admitted to Anderson Cooper on CNN that removal of US troops may reduce the violence.

Cooper : And is it possible that getting the US troops out will actually lessen that violence, that it will at least take away the motivation of nationalist insurgents?

Baker : Many people have argued that to us. Many people in Iraq made that case.

Cooper : Do you buy it?

Baker : Yes, I think there is some validity to it, absolutely. Then we are no longer seen to be the occupiers.

Despite the fact that a US withdrawal is likely to reduce the violence, Baker concluded: "We're still going to have a very robust -- forced presence in Iraq and in the region for quite a number of years after this thing sorts itself out whichever way it sorts itself out. We have to do that because we cannot -- we have vital national interests in that region."

William Polk , a former Harvard and University of Chicago professor who has served in various foreign policy posts in the US government, is in the process of writing about twelve insurgencies throughout history. His review finds that one common denominator of insurgencies is "when the occupiers leave the violence ends as the insurgency loses support."

While merely leaving Iraq is likely to reduce the violence because Main Street Iraqis will realize they are getting their country back and will no longer have to resist US occupation, there are additional steps the US can take to make a reduction in violence even more likely. William Polk and George McGovern, co-authors of "Out of Iraq," put forward a detailed strategy for leaving in a way that is likely to reduce the violence.

There are two broad areas they recommend: (1) strengthen the government by funding civil works project to rebuild the country, creating jobs for Iraqis and encouraging hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to return home; (2) underwrite a stabilization force that will engage in bringing basic security and policing to Iraq -- a force that will not include US soldiers. The cost of these two steps is a fraction of the cost of the Iraq occupation and will save the US more than $100 billion immediately.

Regarding funding the rebuilding of Iraq, it is important to remember that Iraq was able to rebuild its country after the first Gulf War. They have the capability to rebuild. Rebuilding efforts by Halliburton, Bechtel and other US contractors have failed, and their employment of a foreign workforce has resulted in very high unemployment in Iraq, reportedly over 50%. As an Iraqi businessman told The Washington Post: "The longer this [unemployment] goes on, we are asking for trouble because we are breeding more and more insurgents. Unemployment is exactly what the terrorists want."

Indeed, the US military recognizes that high unemployment may be a major source of the insurgency. As Military.com reported:

"Most of the folks that are out there are not ideologues," Air Force Gen. Lance Smith, who heads US Joint Forces Command, told Inside the Pentagon last week in a telephone interview. "They're people that don't have jobs that [do] have a choice: You can go make 10 or 20 dollars a month picking up trash. . . . You can make -- you pick the number -- 50 or 100 dollars to be a policeman, or 50 or 100 dollars to be a soldier [in the new Iraqi army]. Or you can get $200 to go pick up an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] and go shoot at the next camouflage-desert vehicle that goes by."

The November 20 DoD report on stability in Iraq noted that unemployment "has been an issue that has had a significant effect on the security environment." Combined with underemployment -- estimated by one Iraqi government agency at 34% -- unemployment "may make financial incentives for participating in insurgent or sectarian violence more appealing to military-age males," says the Pentagon assessment.

Polk and McGovern include in their list of costs: rebuilding funding for the reconstruction of Iraq by Iraqis; removing landmines and depleted uranium; dismantling blast walls and wire barriers; restoring archaeological sites; training lawyers, judges, journalists, and social workers in Iraq; bringing back professional Iraqis who emigrated; rebuilding Iraq's public health system; compensating the families of civilians killed and tortured and training an Iraqi police force.

In addition to this, there would be a need to fund a stabilization force -- a force that would not include US soldiers because we cannot bring security to Iraq . They describe this as a group "hired" by the Iraqis, not to fight the insurgency, but to provide order on the roads, at schools, banks, hospitals and other key locations. This force would preferably include Arabs and Muslims from non-contiguous countries acting under UN auspices or a regional authority like the Arab League. Polk and McGovern estimate such a force would cost $6 billion for two years.

McGovern and Polk estimate the cost of rebuilding Iraq to be $13.2 billion. David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org makes a slightly higher estimate totaling $22.05 billion based primarily on the number of Iraqis killed or injured as he used the Lancet study, which came out after McGovern and Polk's book was written. Swanson points out "That's the cost of twelve and a half weeks of occupying Iraq." The Congress has already approved $70 billion for Iraq 2007 expenditures and will be considering another $100 billion in an appropriation supplemental this February. Thus, the US will immediately save $148 billion -- that's billions the US will not have to borrow from China and other countries as the government is already spending more than we have.

But, it is also $148 billion that could be spent on other basic needs at home. For example, we could restore, and add to, the nearly $2 billion cut from veterans benefits last year. Further, the US could invest in the most important step to protect its security: slow global warming, protect the environment and build a 21st Century economy -- invest in evolving from a fossil fuel based economy to a clean, sustainable energy economy. Then, the US would no longer have the need to engage in oil wars. We'd even have money left over for a middle class tax cut!

Ending the occupation of Iraq is consistent with the views of the majority of Americans, will save tens of billions of dollars, allow investment in urgent needs at home and put our economy on a more secure footing. Yet, the leadership in Congress is not even debating it. They seem to put their desire for military bases in Iraq, control of Iraq and Middle East oil and protection of Israel ahead of the views of the voters. Is our democracy working?

(Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising and a co-founder of VotersForPeace.)


2. Genghis Khan: Law and order
How would four of the greatest war leaders in history have handled Iraq?
By Jack Weatherford/LA Times

IN HIS FINAL televised speech to the Iraqi people in 2003, Saddam Hussein denounced the invading Americans as "the Mongols of this age," a reference to the last time infidels had conquered his country, in 1258. But the comparison isn't very apt — unlike the Mongols, the Americans don't have the organizational genius of Genghis Khan.

In the 13th century, Temujin — better known by his title, Genghis Khan ("world leader") — headed a tribal nation smaller than the workforce of Wal-Mart, yet he conquered and ruled more people than anyone in history. After Genghis Khan's death, his grandson, Hulegu, further expanded the empire, easily conquering most of the Middle East and achieving the Mongols' aim: the establishment of a trade corridor from Korea on the Pacific to Syria on the Mediterranean, one part of their goal of controlling the world.

So that every warrior knew his place within the struggle, Genghis Khan began each campaign with meetings to communicate to his approximately 100,000 soldiers where and why they would fight. The legal justification for the Mongol invasion of Iraq derived from the reluctance of the caliph of Baghdad to control the Shiite Cult of the Assassins, whom the Mongols accused of attempting to kill their khan.

The assassins operated from a series of fortified mountain camps spread from contemporary Afghanistan to Iraq, and the Baghdad invasion did not begin until the Mongols had eradicated the threat from the assassins and destroyed their fortresses. For the final attack on the caliph, the Mongols assembled a coalition of nations, and as their main army invaded Iraq in two columns from the east and the south, their allies approached from the north and west.

Genghis Khan recognized that victory came by conquering people, not land or cities. In contrast to the Americans in 2003, who sought to take the largest cities first in a campaign of shock and awe, the Mongols in 1258 took the smallest settlements first, gradually working toward the capital. Both the Mongols and the Americans used heavy bombardment to topple Baghdad, but whereas the Americans rushed into the capital in a triumphant victory celebration, the Mongols wisely decided not to enter the defeated — but still dangerous — city. They ordered the residents to evacuate, and then they sent in Christian and Muslim allies, who seethed with a variety of resentments against the caliph, to expunge any pockets of resistance and secure the capital. The Americans ended up as occupiers; the Mongols pulled strings, watching from camps in the countryside.

The Mongols also immediately executed the caliph and his sons on charges that they spent too much money on their palaces and not enough defending their nation. They killed most members of the court and administration. The Mongols took no prisoners and allowed no torture, but they executed swiftly and efficiently, including the soldiers of the defeated army who, they believed, would be a constant source of future problems if allowed to live. The first several months of a Mongol invasion were bloody, but once the takeover ended, the bloodshed ended.

By contrast, the American military campaign was quick, with comparatively few Iraqi (or coalition) casualties, but the bloodshed has continued for years. Constrained from decisively dispatching enemies of a new Iraq, the United States has allowed Iraqi terrorists to select who lives and who dies, including women and children, in a slow-motion massacre.

And while the violence continues, the U.S. can't come close to establishing a government that rivals what the Mongols achieved. They exercised a genius for speaking to people in terms that they understood. When conquering Muslims, Genghis Khan always announced that Allah willed the Mongol victory as divine punishment; to resist the Mongols was to defy the will of God.

Just as the Mongols perfected the list of who to kill in a conquered land, they knew whom to reward and how to do it. In Baghdad, Hulegu installed a government under Ata Malik Juvaini, a devout Persian Muslim, who governed for most of the next 20 years and whose writings survive as some of the great scholarly works of the Muslim world.

The Mongols spared anyone with a craft, such as carpentry, writing, pottery, weaving or metal working. They fiercely enforced religious freedom, which created an essentially secular state. In Baghdad, they gave many of the caliph's palaces to Mongol allies for more practical uses. They lowered taxes for merchants and eliminated them for religious, medical and educational professionals. They educated women along with men. For all subjects, they instituted harsh laws enforced equally under nearly incorruptible officials.

Fundamentalist Muslims look back at Mongol secularism as a scourge. But, although U.S. rule in Iraq has produced a constant flow of refugees, particularly religious minorities, out of the country, under Mongol rule Christian, Muslim, Jewish and even Buddhist immigrants poured into the newly conquered Iraq to live under the Great Law of Genghis Khan. It was said that during this time a virgin could cross the length of the Mongol Empire with a pot of gold on her head and never be molested.

By the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the political achievements of the Mongols had been forgotten, and only the destructive fury of their wars was remembered. Yet under the Mongols — and the legacy of Genghis Khan — Iraq enjoyed a century of peace and a renaissance that brought the region to a level of prosperity and cultural sophistication higher than it enjoyed before or after. Any country with a bent for empire could do worse than learn from Genghis Khan.

(JACK WEATHERFORD teaches anthropology at Macalester College. He is the author of "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.")


3. He Takes His Secrets to the Grave. Our Complicity Dies with Him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal
By Robert Fisk/The Independent UK

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. One frosty day in 1987, not far from Cologne, I met the German arms dealer who initiated those first direct contacts between Washington and Baghdad - at America's request.

"Mr Fisk... at the very beginning of the war, in September of 1980, I was invited to go to the Pentagon," he said. "There I was handed the very latest US satellite photographs of the Iranian front lines. You could see everything on the pictures. There were the Iranian gun emplacements in Abadan and behind Khorramshahr, the lines of trenches on the eastern side of the Karun river, the tank revetments - thousands of them - all the way up the Iranian side of the border towards Kurdistan. No army could want more than this. And I travelled with these maps from Washington by air to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt on Iraqi Airways straight to Baghdad. The Iraqis were very, very grateful!"

I was with Saddam's forward commandos at the time, under Iranian shellfire, noting how the Iraqi forces aligned their artillery positions far back from the battle front with detailed maps of the Iranian lines. Their shelling against Iran outside Basra allowed the first Iraqi tanks to cross the Karun within a week. The commander of that tank unit cheerfully refused to tell me how he had managed to choose the one river crossing undefended by Iranian armour. Two years ago, we met again, in Amman and his junior officers called him "General" - the rank awarded him by Saddam after that tank attack east of Basra, courtesy of Washington's intelligence information.

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, andEscherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment."

Nor was the Pentagon unaware of the extent of Iraqi use of chemical weapons. In 1988, for example, Saddam gave his personal permission for Lt-Col Rick Francona, a US defence intelligence officer - one of 60 American officers who were secretly providing members of the Iraqi general staff with detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning and bomb damage assessments - to visit the Fao peninsula after Iraqi forces had recaptured the town from the Iranians. He reported back to Washington that the Iraqis had used chemical weapons to achieve their victory. The senior defence intelligence officer at the time, Col Walter Lang, later said that the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis "was not a matter of deep strategic concern".

I saw the results, however. On a long military hospital train back to Tehran from the battle front, I found hundreds of Iranian soldiers coughing blood and mucus from their lungs - the very carriages stank so much of gas that I had to open the windows - and their arms and faces were covered with boils. Later, new bubbles of skin appeared on top of their original boils. Many were fearfully burnt. These same gases were later used on the Kurds of Halabja. No wonder that Saddam was primarily tried in Baghdad for the slaughter of Shia villagers, not for his war crimes against Iran.

We still don't know - and with Saddam's execution we will probably never know - the extent of US credits to Iraq, which began in 1982. The initial tranche, the sum of which was spent on the purchase of American weapons from Jordan and Kuwait, came to $300m. By 1987, Saddam was being promised $1bn in credit. By 1990, just before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, annual trade between Iraq and the US had grown to $3.5bn a year. Pressed by Saddam's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, to continue US credits, James Baker then Secretary of State, but the same James Baker who has just produced a report intended to drag George Bush from the catastrophe of present- day Iraq - pushed for new guarantees worth $1bn from the US.

In 1989, Britain, which had been giving its own covert military assistance to Saddam guaranteed £250m to Iraq shortly after the arrest of Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft in Baghdad. Bazoft, who had been investigating an explosion at a factory at Hilla which was using the very chemical components sent by the US, was later hanged. Within a month of Bazoft's arrest William Waldegrave, then a Foreign Office minister, said: "I doubt if there is any future market of such a scale anywhere where the UK is potentially so well-placed if we play our diplomatic hand correctly... A few more Bazofts or another bout of internal oppression would make it more difficult."

Even more repulsive were the remarks of the then Deputy Prime Minister, Geoffrey Howe, on relaxing controls on British arms sales to Iraq. He kept this secret, he wrote, because "it would look very cynical if, so soon after expressing outrage about the treatment of the Kurds, we adopt a more flexible approach to arms sales".

Saddam knew, too, the secrets of the attack on the USS Stark when, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi jet launched a missile attack on the American frigate, killing more than a sixth of the crew and almost sinking the vessel. The US accepted Saddam's excuse that the ship was mistaken for an Iranian vessel and allowed Saddam to refuse their request to interview the Iraqi pilot.

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

('The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East' by Robert Fisk is now available in paperback)