Iraqi dead join us optimists to extol success of surge
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
A
man at a horse show danced joyfully in a pile of manure.
“Why
are you so happy?” another attendee asked.
“There
must be a pony in here somewhere!”
The
U.S. media has attacked the Iraq War story by going straight for the
periphery. For example, instead of focusing attention on the
devastation caused by an unjust, imperial war that has endured for
six plus years, the media changed the debate: “Has sending more
U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007 –“the surge” — succeeded or
failed?”
“It’s
no longer a close call,” wrote Peter Beinart. (Washington
Post,
Jan. 18, 2009) “President Bush was right about the surge.” By
being “right” Beinart means that the number of Iraqi dead came to
only 500 in November 2008, compared with 3,475 in November of 2006.
And only 12 Americans died in Iraq in that same period, compared to a
higher number in previous years. (Figures from The Iraq War Index, a
Brookings Institution
report
by Michael O’Hanlon and Jason Campbell) The realist might have added:
“That’s 12 more than should have died.”
The
New York Times
Op-Ed page editors seemed undaunted about printing columns on the
surge’s success by the very pundits who had only recently assured
the public of the biggest lies of the young 21st
Century: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and
links to Al Qaeda. Among the surge proselytizers, emerged Kenneth
Pollack. In The
Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq
(2002), he wrote: “The only prudent and realistic course of action
left to the United States is to mount a full-scale invasion of Iraq
to smash the Iraqi armed forces, depose Saddam’s regime, and rid
the country of weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed wusses
who “exaggerated the danger of casualties among American troops.”
Pollack
even helped persuade Times
columnist Bill Keller to support the Iraq war. “Kenneth Pollack,
the Clinton National Security Council expert whose argument for
invading Iraq is surely the most influential book of this season,”
wrote Keller (February 8, 2003), “has provided intellectual cover
for every liberal who finds himself inclining toward war but uneasy
about Mr. Bush.”
After
expressing absolute certainty about Saddam’s WMD, Pollack threw his
enthusiasm behind the surge — without apologizing for his role in
helping to perpetuate destruction and death. Again using the Times
as his propaganda organ, Pollack offered new dogma. The surge had
provided “the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory’
but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live
with.” (“A War We Just Might Win” with Michael O’Hanlon, June
30, 2007)
Like
Shakespeare’s Polonius, Pollack the Pompous babbles clichés.
Luckily for him, he didn’t get himself killed hiding in Barbara
Bush’s bedroom while spying on W. But he shares with Polonius the
characteristics of a pedantic who wields no real power. Shakespeare
uses Polonius to mock obfuscators who ladle out “wisdom” like
watery soup — like Pollack’s and fellow surge zealots’ recipe
for Iraq.
The
surgists focused on reducing violence in Baghdad which, if
successful, would serve as a model for smaller cities. By late 2007,
almost a year after its onset, the Pentagon sold the surge to the
usual media suckers as the U.S. “success story.” The Pentagon
claimed it had reduced by 60 percent the war violence and had driven
Al Qaida from Baghdad and mostly from Anbar Province as well.
The
increased number of U.S. soldiers did allow U.S. forces to disarm
some Sunnis in Baghdad. Then, the U.S. occupiers invited Shiite
militias to invade Sunni neighborhoods and ethnically cleanse them.
By mid 2007, Baghdad, once about 65% Sunni, emerged as a
predominantly Shiite city. Indeed, leader of the multinational armies
in Iraq
General
David Petraeus, now in charge of Central Command, purposely or
inadvertently encouraged Shiites to drive Sunnis from their homes.
Many went to Syria. (George Hunsinger, Common Dreams.org, October 23,
2008)
One
mainstream media exception on surge reporting, Karen de Young,
explained how many Iraqis had homes destroyed or, “the homes they
left no longer exist. Houses have been looted, destroyed or occupied.
Most Baghdad neighborhoods, where Shiites and Sunnis once lived side
by side, have been transformed into religiously homogeneous bastions
where members of the other sect dare not tread.” (Washington
Post,
Dec. 16, 2007)
She
cited Col. William E. Rapp, a senior aide to Petraeus, who admitted
the decline in violence was “the result, in part, of the city’s
segregation. There are now far fewer mixed neighborhoods where
religious militias can target members of the other sect.”
“In
most of Baghdad,” de Young wrote, “the population shift has been
at the expense of Sunnis, many of whose former neighborhoods are
newly populated by poorer Shiite migrants under militia protection
and, often, control.”
Alongside
cleansing, came payola. The U.S. military paid some Sunni groups to
stop fighting U.S. occupiers and turn their guns on “outsiders”
— meaning Al Qaeda. This payoff also reduced the number of attacks
against U.S. forces.
The
White House used the surge with media cooperation to shift debate
from the wisdom of starting an unjustified war to how to leave Iraq
with a taste of victory. No one defined the “surge” for what it
was, however: the old military tactic of bribing the opponent.
From
mid 2005 until November 2008, the U.S. paid thousands of “Awakening
Council” Iraqis $300 a month not to fight against U.S. forces. Al
Jazeera’s military analysts estimated that as many as 100,000
Awakening fighters in Iraq were responsible “for the marked
reduction in violence in the country.”
By
late 2008, thanks to increased oil sales, reported Al Jazeera, “The
Iraqi government started paying the salaries of about 54,000
Awakening fighters at 60 locations in Baghdad on Monday.”
In
other words, Bush was paying unknown quantities of U.S. taxpayers’
money to Iraqis in return for them not attacking U.S. forces. So,
while the infusion of more U.S. troops played some role in cutting
down violence, it didn’t compete with the part played by death
squads.
Bob
Woodward in The
War Within
(Simon & Schuster, 2008) suggests that by creating Iraqi “Death
Squads” the Pentagon also helped reduce fighting in Iraq. A “Top
Secret” memo, according to Woodward, implies that U.S. forces
targeted certain Sunni groups for systematic assassination. This
operation, like the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam, called for
killing those who refused to “reconcile” to U.S. reason; they
wouldn’t even take bribes.
The
surge fans, however, ignored such minor details. They focus on the
bright side. Iraq now sells 2 million barrels of oil per day! Tie
that marketing fact to 2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes and
remain displaced inside the country; or the 3 plus millions who felt
forced to leave their unbalanced country. They don’t tie together?
Surgites
like
Pollack and Beinart say, like Bush, that the $610 billion spent on
the war has built a “democracy” in the region. Indeed, by
knocking off Saddam, the United States opened to the entire Arab
world the road to democratic reform. And pigs will fly!
Thus
far, thousands of Iraqi professors, scientists, and doctors have been
assassinated. Bush’s rescue of Iraq also cost the lives of some 350
journalists. Tens of thousands of prisoners remain in detention camps
and, according to a UN report, “the detention of children in adult
detention centers violates U.S. obligations under the UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child, as well as accepted international human
rights norms.” (AP, May 19, 2008)
In
September 2002, I visited Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. Most Iraqis
enjoyed electricity, running water and functional sewage — even
though the impact of multilateral sanctions and continuous air
strikes throughout the 1990s by U.S. and British war planes kept
destroying parts of the already mangled post 1991 War
infrastructure.
After
the surge’s success, Iraqis average 3 hours of electricity daily;
many water and sewage systems remain un-repaired. By 2008, Iraqis
suffered some 10,000 cases of cholera — the average over the last
five years. By August 2007, Iraqis still suffered some 25 car bombs
per month. (Kevin Drum, Washington
Monthly,
August 24, 2007)
The
surge did succeed in reducing Iraq war coverage by some 60%,
according to the NY
Times.
(“With Success of Surge, NY
Times’
Iraq War Coverage Drops to All-Time Low,” Oct. 21, 2008) Reduced
violence equals loss of media interest.
If
not for Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, and occasional articles by
Seymour Hersh in the New
Yorker,
and an exceptional case like Karen de Young and a few others, the
public would have little access to the facts of war. The media gives
the war mongers lots of space to promote the deadly events in which
few of them ever fight. But they do cheer for the troops — almost
like fans at a ballgame.
Saul
Landau, an Institute for Policy Studies fellow, author of A BUSH AND
BOTOX WORLD also makes films available from
roundworldproductions@gmail.com.
