The best the U.S. can do? — Review of
By
Saul Landau and Farrah Hassen Read Spanish Version
The
public receives such a barrage of print, visual and audio garbage on
a daily basis that its historical memory is bound to get shaken. In
between stories about global warming and carnage in Iraq, the media
confronts readers, viewers or listeners with their sexual and
consumer inadequacies. Is it any wonder citizens have difficulty
focusing on global crises? What’s more important, global warming or
one’s burning need for an iPhone and a remedy “even better”
than Viagra?
Advertising-induced
amnesia creates an ideal atmosphere for imperial charlatans to pursue
their media agendas. The war and occupation of Iraq has attracted
schemers of all stripes. Kenneth Pollock assured us that Saddam
Hussein possessed WMD. Then he admitted his error. Now Pollock and
fellow Brookings scholar Michael O’Hanlon declare that we can win.
(NY
Times,
July 30)
They
saw for themselves, spending a day on a guided tour of Baghdad’s
green zone.
Presidential
aspirant Senator Joe Biden devised an original scheme — well, if you
dismiss British colonial officials of a century ago — to redraw
Iraq’s boundaries. Hillary joins frustrated Administration
officials to blame the puppet Iraqi government for the morass. Bush
blames Democrats for wanting to have withdrawal timetables from Iraq.
In
an August 24 speech to the notoriously hawkish Kansas Veterans of
Foreign Wars, the President alluded to the horrors of premature U.S.
withdrawal from Vietnam. Did Bush mean more U.S. soldiers should have
died there before withdrawing; or just more dead Vietnamese
civilians?
Even
in college Bush didn’t grasp history; nor excel at management.
Robert Dallek (Nixon
and Kissinger: Partners in Power,
2007) said Bush’s distortions “boggle
my
mind.” He told the Washington
Post:
“We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam
than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700
American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign
conflict. And we couldn’t work our will.” (August 23, 2007)
Dallek
added: “We’ve been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II.
It’s a disaster….But the disaster is the consequence of going in,
not getting out.” Some Bush critics avoid the “going in” part
and focus only on Bush’s “bungling” of the occupation.
A
new documentary reflects that efficient management school of empire.
In his documentary “No End in Sight,” Charles Ferguson argues the
“if only it had been managed correctly” line. In a form that has
come to typify modern documentaries — power point presentations on
video — Ferguson assembles a convincing array of participants in the
Iraq war and occupation to make a case that Bush and company grossly
mismanaged the war and post-war reconstruction effort. “There were
500 ways to do it [the reconstruction] wrong and two or three ways to
do it right,” said Ambassador (Yemen 1997-2001) Barbara Bodine, who
worked in Baghdad at the onset of the U.S. occupation. “What we
didn’t understand is that we were going to go through all 500.”
Following
the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, U.S. forces discovered a paucity
of Arabic speaking personnel, inadequate phone service and no plan
for winning Iraqi hearts and minds — outside Baghdad’s fortified
Green Zone.
Ferguson’s
talking critical heads range from former Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage (2001-2005), Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff Col.
Lawrence Wilkerson (2002-2005) and former National Intelligence
Council Chairman Robert Hutchings (2003-2005) to Iraq’s Deputy
Ambassador to the UN Faisal al-Istrabadi and Lieutenant Seth Moulton
(U.S. Marines).
Most
complain about Bush’s mistakes: the military did nothing to stop
looting after the initial conquest of Iraq; Bush dismantled Iraq’s
Ba’ath Party and the government bureaucracy it ran; Bush ordered
the dissolution of the 400,000 man army and didn’t immediately
establish a viable interim Iraqi government.
Had
these errors not occurred, the film’s commentators imply,
Washington might have dethroned the dirty dictator and brought
democracy to Iraq. They blame Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and their gang
of neo con intellectuals cum policy makers led by Paul Wolfowitz and
Doug Feith. These ignorant policy wonks dispatched J. Paul Bremer
with a “privatization uber alles” mission. Bremer pretended to
consult with knowledgeable people on the ground, but according to
General Jay Garner, Colonel Paul Hughes and other initial supporters
of Bush’s invasion (Ferguson claims Ambassador
Bodine opposed Bush’s war),
he paid no attention. His agenda mocked Iraqi reality.
The
film doesn’t address why Bush went to war, how he misled and lied
to the public; nor do the film’s critics confront the evolution of
Bush’s stated reasons for going to war. They also don’t deal with
his perpetually moving goalposts: dismantling the threatening WMD and
destroying Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda, to toppling — and later
executing — Hussein and bringing democracy, to making the U.S.
secure, to not being able to tolerate the consequences of withdrawal.
The
well-filmed talking heads share screen time with clips of Bush and
Rumsfeld assuring decisive victory and success in Baghdad. But the
filmmaker doesn’t ask the on-camera experts why they would have
conceived that a rich, spoiled brat — remember how The
Great Gatsby’s
Jay and Daisy Buchanan “smashed up things and creatures…and let
other people clean up the mess” — would miraculously change
character as “a war time President” and become a model of
American efficiency. As if anyone runs wars efficiently!
Ferguson’s
failure to confront this issue makes the film’s underlying premise
problematic.
Because
Bush invaded Iraq without a reconstruction plan, the world now
witnesses a country in daily chaos, Ferguson implies. The film
emphasizes how Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ignored the State
Department’s massive “Future of Iraq” project, which began to
plan for a post-Saddam Iraq in October 2001. The camera zooms in on
the 13 volume study, as if by using this hubris-laced tome as a
guideline Bush could have “fixed” Iraq.
Among
other major shortcomings, the study’s authors didn’t stress that
Iraqis could be divided into “Sunni,” “Shiite,” “Kurd”
and “Turkmen.” State’s “scholars” didn’t predict
sectarian war. Like Bush and Rumsfeld, they assumed that Iraqi
identity would remain in tact after the invasion. But they did warn
that “The people of Iraq are being promised a new future and they
will expect immediate results. The credibility of the new regime and
the United States will depend on how quickly these promises are
translated to reality.”
(http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB198/index.htm)
The
“Future of Iraq” project — like the Bush administration —
didn’t consider larger security concerns, including the refugee
crisis, Iran’s influence in Iraq, sectarian violence and the
emergence of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Even ideal reconstruction plans cannot
undo original sin: the illegal war against Iraq.
The
film’s best parts highlight Iraqi civilian and U.S. soldiers’
voices, but it reverts to power point when documenting the early days
of the occupation (overusing actor Campbell Scott’s narration).
Nevertheless, interested Members of Congress ought to add “No End
in Sight” to their arsenal of tools for withdrawing from Iraq. As
Bush seeks support to extend his war, this film shows the tragi-comic
ineptness of his Administration and the banality of its daily
operations.
The
film’s collection of “shoulda” testimonies — “don’t
should on yourself” — don’t address the question of how the U.S.
should proceed in Iraq: withdraw immediately, gradually or remain
indefinitely and blame the puppet government and Iran for lack of
“progress.” After two hours of testimony on bungling, we thought
of historian Gabriel Kolko’s observation: wars don’t turn out the
way they are supposed to. “Are
you telling me that’s the best America can do?”
asks
dejected
looking Lieutenant Seth Moulton.
The
answer is “yes.”
In
Vietnam, the U.S. military killed 4 million Vietnamese and lost the
war. Rather than continuing to debate about who will better “manage”
Iraq, Democratic presidential aspirants should consider the Iraq war
in light of wars in Korea and Vietnam and rethink their assessment of
war-making itself.
Saul
Landau’s new book is A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
He is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. Farrah Hassen is a
Seymour Melman fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
