Late Withdrawal and Illigetimate Occupation

With the ascendant Democrats taking power in Congress, the media is awash in “new direction” stories about Iraq. Supposedly the Democrats are going to push for a change in course, which more or less means we need to increase our inputs of troops and bombs to get the beacon of Democracy outcome we all hope for. Bush has tacitly admitted what has been obvious for some time, that he no longer has much power, by declaring he is open to discussions on “tactics” with the Democrats. Bush no longer has any tangible domestic or foreign support and although these metrics have been trending downward for quite some time with approval ratings in the thirties and the immolation of his closest political ally Tony Blair, the 2006 elections drove the point home quite forcefully. Bush has been compelled to fire the controversial Donald Rumsfeld and to retreat somewhat from his stubborn commitment to a worldview that does not waver or allow for inconvenient facts. This has allowed for an opening on what Bush calls “tactics”, note that Bush by specifically mentioning “tactics” is also implicitly saying that his strategy is untouchable, unchangeable. Strategy reflects a value system; tactics are how you maximize those values. In other words, changes in the most important matters are off the table.

The majority of Americans now favor withdrawal. Elite opinion misinterprets this as a cultural reformation and return to the "inward" and "shuttered" worldview before America’s rise as a global superpower after World War II. It is more likely a natural reaction to the horrifying ineptitude and inability of the government to care for post Katrina New Orleans while at the same time listening to high-flying rhetoric about nation building and watching our political leaders pour much national blood and treasure into the Middle Eastern reconstruction project. Most citizens asked the obvious questions, such as, why should be rebuild third world countries when we have an embedded third world country here in the United States? Shouldn’t our priorities be here at home? (Not to mention that the Iraqi reconstruction project has failed almost beyond the imaginations of the most rabid pessimists.) For many imperialists, Bush’s biggest crime has been to push Americans away from accepting the strategical value of American empire.

Another bit of elite consensus holds that withdrawal from Iraq would be irresponsible, that withdrawal would make the ongoing Civil War worse. The imperial mandarins have internalized several assumptions that are fast becoming conventional wisdom through repetition. Understand that the question about what to do in Iraq is already largely answered if you accept it as a certainty that the U.S. is the only thing preventing the country from exploding in paroxysms of sectarian violence. From there it is hard not to conclude that it would be immoral and irresponsible for the U.S. to leave and that we have a moral obligation to stay. For example, the New York Times reports on November 16, 2006, that “the top American military commander for the Middle East said Wednesday that to begin a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq over the next six months would lead to an increase in sectarian killings and hamper efforts to persuade the Iraqi government to make the difficult decisions needed to secure the country.” The article details military testimony before Congress; the generals all agree that the American troops are keeping a “lid on the violence.” They also concede that U.S. forces can not do much to stop it and that only if the U.S. pours more troops into occupation, further delaying any withdrawal, will we be able to contain the violence.[1]

This argument, wait, check that, it is not an argument - it is an assertion. This assertion, that the U.S. is preventing an even worse Civil War than the one that exists merits scrutiny. The assertion relies on several questionable assumptions. Before I go any further and delineate the imperial assumptions that are the glue holding this bit of conventional wisdom together, I’d like to make a rather elementary moral point. The U.S.’s position and invasion of Iraq does not in any way parallel WWII. (In some circles that is the only relevant historical analog.) The Iraq war has similarities to Vietnam, to be sure, but that is not the comparison I want to make either. The U.S.’s position in Iraq is most similar to Russia’s position in Afghanistan during the 1980s. Then, as now, the occupying and invading force could point to the opposition as a morally bankrupt and fanatical enemy. The mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the 1980s were the direct ancestors of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other fanatically violent religious extremists. The U.S. referred to them as “freedom fighters” then, bringing the chief of Reagan’s CIA to tears of pride, and funneled billions in arms and training to them through Pakistani security forces. But they were the same acid in the face of unveiled women and death to infidels thugs they are now. The resistance in Afghanistan was also a mottled hodgepodge of religious fanatics, outside agitators (like Bin Laden), and Afghans that were chiefly motivated with expelling an invading army. (The ethnic divisions did not make for such stark relief, but not all historical analogs are exact.) In spite of all the evil to be found in the mujahadeen then, most Americans would have no difficulty recognizing Russia’s morally bankrupt position in that war. We would snicker at any hand-wringing coming out of Pravda or the Politburo over how the Russians could not leave because the violence would get worse in the vacuum they would leave behind. We would recognize such locutions as self serving rationalizations. The obvious course of action was to get rid of the occupying army and then help the country mend the fabric of its tattered society using NGOs and other multinational aid organizations because the occupying army was the primary impediment to recovery. (What really happened is that after Russia left, so did the American dollars. Afghani society was by then ground into fine powder.) We have no trouble recognizing that the primary reason Afghanistan was a bloody mess was because of the Russian invasion, not in spite of it. With that precedent in mind, I now turn back to the assumptions about the Iraqi occupation.

The first assumption is that U.S. forces are stemming the bloodshed rather making the wounds deeper. A second assumption is that the U.S. has the implicit right to dictate the terms of its military presence in another country. A third assumption is that the U.S. has the power and moral standing to stop the internal forces ripping Iraq into bloody scraps. None of these are self evident truths; it should be incumbent upon anyone arguing that the U.S. must stay to provide some empirical arguments for why the above assumptions are true.

The first assumption (that the U.S. is stopping Iraq from devolving further into Civil War) may or may not be true. I would suggest that the best source for determining which direction the U.S. presence is pushing the violence in are Iraqis who have first hand experience living in Iraq with fellow Iraqis and the U.S. occupation; not U.S. generals, politicians, or op-ed writers. Their opinions are secondary, especially when so many of them have no interest or knowledge of Iraqi society. What Iraqis think of the U.S. occupation is a much more reliable source for determining how the U.S. occupation is affecting their lives than, say, neoconservative luminaries or American politicians who have vested interests in a continued occupation and have proven to be wrong time and again in the recent past.

If we consider Iraqi opinion to help us figure out what role U.S. forces play in the conflict, we find poll, after poll, after poll that have reached the same findings: Iraqis, by large majorities, feel the presence of U.S. troops makes them less – not more – less safe. They want the U.S. to leave immediately or within a year. The most recent polls released in September 2006 confirm this. A Program on International Policy Attitudes poll found the following; a growing majority of Iraqis are in favor of attacks on American led forces (61%). 78 percent of Iraqis believe the US military is causing more conflict than it is preventing. This includes almost 100% of Sunnis, who it should be remembered are a minority and the primary targets of Shiite death squads now terrorizing Baghdad and dominating U.S. headlines.[2] At the same time, the Washington Post reported that another poll by the State Department found, “A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence.” In Baghdad, nearly 75% of respondents reported they would feel safer if U.S. troops were withdrawn. 65% wanted immediate withdrawal. Note that Baghdad is a city wracked with violence, something that conventional wisdom holds U.S. forces are keeping a lid on. An Iraqi poll found that 80% of the population wants an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces. [3]

Some other polls that corroborate the above findings, briefly:

May 2004: An occupational authority poll found that 80% of Iraqis had a negative view of foreign troops. Several other polls at the same time by USA Today, CNN, and Gallop found that almost 60% of Iraqis wanted immediate withdrawal. [4]

October 2005: A secret poll by the British military found that 65% of Iraqi citizens supported violent attacks on occupational troops. Some Iraqis believed U.S. troops were improving security, the precise number was “fewer than one percent,” and 67% reported feeling less secure in the presence of coalition troops. 82% were strongly opposed to the presence of foreign troops.[5]

The findings are clear and consistent. A large majority of Iraqis want American troops out of their country because their presence is making security worse, they feel less safe with them around, and a growing percentage of them favor attacks on American troops. This directly contradicts the belief in America that no matter how we got there, we cannot leave because we are the only force putting downward pressure on the rising violence. Again, and I believe it bears repeating; the presence of our troops is worsening security and hastening violence for Iraqis. We should have no problem understanding the naturally antagonistic relationship between an uninvited occupying army and the domestic population given our revolutionary past. If Iraqis living under occupation and in the midst of violence we can not fathom believe our military is a root cause of the continuing strife, why do so many Americans believe otherwise?

The second assumption is that we have the right or prerogative to dictate the terms of our presence in a foreign country. We illegally invaded Iraq. Therefore we do not have rights, we have responsibilities; the responsibility to pay reparations, to adhere to domestic Iraqi opinion, and withdraw as soon as possible.

The final assumption, that the U.S. has the power and moral standing to prevent what may follow from now, is also false. The U.S. is not an omnipotent power. The evil unleashed by the U.S.’s rogue invasion is not likely to be something the U.S. can contain through willpower and determination. Nor, as discussed above, is the U.S. in a moral position to stop those forces because it was the catalyst for, and continues catalyzing, the ongoing strife and sectarian violence. That is self-evidently true when reviewing the limited polling data we have from how Iraqis see the U.S.’s role in the conflict. Too often we ignore this reality. In a typical example, Los Angeles Times op-ed writer Jonah Goldberg compares the Iraq war to a man with a knife buried in his chest, “A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out. We are in Iraq for good reasons and for reasons that were well-intentioned but wrong. But we are there.” Goldberg’s metaphor is actually quite apt once we make a few obvious corrections. We are the third party “you” in Goldberg’s construct, hovering over the victim and taking advice from the doctor. What Goldberg leaves out – and facilely papers over with his assertion about our nobility of purpose – is that we are not a dispassionate third party. In fact, we are the attacker. We sunk the knife into the victim’s chest. It follows that we can not be trusted to act as a concerned third party and the knife wound may be fatal no matter what we try to do. Willpower and sheer force of will are not going to ”unstick” the knife or close the wound. Nor would anyone suggest that we continue hanging around in close proximity to the victim whom we have brutally attacked. (Of course, it is not a serious analogy and I only highlight it to make a point about the debased state of our national discourse.) [6]

Our illusions and self-serving myths about American exceptionalism have blinded us to several obvious facts. We have illegally invaded and occupied another country; since that is the case we have no moral footing to serve as a disinterested third party to act as a buffer between the death squads and jihadis warring in Iraq. Iraqis have confirmed that whatever we are doing, it is certainly not preventing violence. We are creating more violence with our very presence, and it makes sense that many Iraqis are primarily motivated to rid themselves of a military invader. This is confirmed by the U.S. military. U.S. General Joseph Taluto explained to the Gulf News that he understands why ordinary Iraqis take up arms against the US military. "If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could [want to fight us]… There is a sense of a good resistance, or an accepted resistance. They say 'okay, if you shoot a coalition soldier, that's okay, it's not a bad thing but you shouldn't kill other Iraqis." Taluto also estimated that 99.9% of insurgents are domestic Iraqis, not foreign jihadists. Fred Kaplan from the online magazine Slate noticed that according to U.S. military data, “most of the [insurgent] attacks – about three-quarters – have been aimed at Western occupiers” rather than Iraqi civilians or Iraqi security forces.[7]

The Bush administration and other neocon cheerleaders have a vested interest in painting a much different picture; they want us to believe that Iraq is being invaded and subverted by radical religious groups, primarily Al Qaeda, and that our troops are protecting Iraqi civilians from them. Any retreat would strengthen Al Qaeda and leave Iraqis to a similar fate that befell Afghanistan when both the US and Russia abandoned the country after Russia’s defeat and subsequent withdrawal. The proper context is to list the occupational forces alongside death squads and jihadis as contributors to the ongoing destruction. We are strengthening these forces because as long as we maintain our presence, we strengthen the ties binding the various fighting factions in Iraq who can at least agree that they don’t want US troops occupying their country. (Of course, many of these factions are warring with each other anyway.) Withdrawal could very well increase violence, analysis that is seconded by the American military and some Iraqis. But it does not follow that we have to continue with occupation; some things are beyond our control especially given our historical role in the ongoing conflict.

Notes:
[1] Gordon, Michael and Mazzetti, Mark. General Warns of Risks in Iraqi if GIs are Cut. New York Times, 16 November 2006.
[2]Reuters. Poll Says Most Iraqis Want U.S. Out. Reuters, 29 September 2006
[3] Paley, Amit. Washington Post. 27 September 2006
[4]Ricks, Thomas. Washington Post. 13 May 2004.
[5]Rayment, Sean. Telegraph. 23 October 2005
[6] Goldberg, Jonah. Los Angeles Times. 19 October 2006.
[7] Sands, Phil. Gulf News. 6 September 2005
Kaplan, Fred. Slate. 9 Feburary 2006