We won in Iraq? Where’s the cheering squad?
By Saul Landau
After 7 and ½ years President Obama seems to be updating his Republican predecessor’s May 1, 2003, pronouncement: “Mission Accomplished – Iraq Still Destroyed.”
Bush still gets support from the gushing (synonym for surging) David Brooks. “Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable”. (NY Times August 23, 2010).
Brooks should have blushed in embarrassment over a Times story that previous day comparing Iraq favorably to Venezuela because it had fewer murders. (Simon Romero, “Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why”)
More serious analyses, however, indicate the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has converted a people once integrated into a nation led by a brutal thug named Saddam Hussein into virtual particles thrown into spin in a political centrifuge.
On August 25, two days after the Times’ thumbs up homicide rating for Iraq, the paper reported that the supposedly defeated “insurgents” – by Bush’s successful surge – had struck 13 Iraqi cities from southern Basra to northern Mosul. They shot, bombed and mined. Of course, the corpses didn’t result from ordinary murders like those in Venezuelan cities. The relatives of the dead will find solace in this fact as they try to survive in the once integral nation smashed in the crusade to neutralize non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction and building democracy.
While mendacious mountebanks mouth “successful surge” nonsense – “Have patience: it will also work in Afghanistan!” — Iraqis absorb the meaning of “democracy.” Squabbling tribes (political parties) cannot reach agreement on how to form a government. The people once called Iraqis now find themselves re-labeled and separated into sub divisions – brands of Shia and Sunni, Christian, Kurd – and forced by invasions and surges to live in segregated communities of their own kind.
The surgers, like Brooks, tend to omit a few factors when saying, “Bush was right.” For example, an illegal and unprovoked war caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and uncountable levels of destruction. Or does Brooks narrow his view of success to a simple question: did the surge work? Yes, Bush sent additional U.S. troops into Iraq and simultaneously bribed some “insurgents” to stop fighting the Americans. Once U.S. combat forces left, however, and the bribes dried up, the “defeated insurgents” re-emerged.
Compare Brooks’ silliness and Romero’s inanity with veteran correspondent Robert Fisk’s assessment of bringing democracy to Iraq. “The millions of American soldiers who passed through Iraq have brought the Iraqis a plague. From Afghanistan…they brought the infection of al-Qa’ida. They brought the disease of civil war. They injected Iraq with corruption on a grand scale. They stamped the seal of torture on Abu Ghraib — a worthy successor to the same prison under Saddam’s vile rule.”
Fisk, a veteran reporter of the region’s affairs observed that “Iraq’(s)…suicide bombers…turned America’s soldiers from men who fight to men who hide. Anyway, they are busy re-writing the narrative now. Up to a million Iraqis are dead. (Tony) Blair cares nothing about them…Nor do most of the American soldiers. They came. They saw. They lost. And now they say they’ve won. How the Arabs, surviving on six hours of electricity a day in their bleak country, must be hoping for no more victories like this one.” (Independent, August 20)
His words echoed my experience seven years ago. In September 2002, an Iraqi merchant in the outskirts of Baghdad pleaded with me as if I had special access to President Bush. “Please don’t come here with troops. Saddam is old. His sons are foolish, incapable of governing. Be patient. Saddam will soon be gone. Better people will replace him. If America invades only horror will follow.”
Sadly, he was right. In decades prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “the percentage of the urban population living in slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage has risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban dwellers.” (Foreign Policy in Focus)
In late September 2002, Sonia Angulo and I filmed (“Iraq: Voices from the Street”) in downtown Baghdad. Lights burned. Air conditioners hummed in the hotels. Other Iraqis who spoke with us agreed with the merchant: “We have seen enough war,” said a souvenir seller. “No tourists visit any more.”
“War doesn’t help your business,” I said sympathetically.
He brushed off my comment. “My brother died in the Iran War. Another brother was wounded in Gulf War I.” He told us to turn off the camera. “Haven’t you Americans learned from Vietnam? Wars don’t bring good results. Look what happened to Germany and Japan because of Hitler and Tojo. Look how difficult it was for your Presidents to leave Vietnam.” He feared as we did that George W. Bush was not – was he ever? – in a learning mode.
Obama has moved slowly to reduce U.S. combat presence. And as he did so, the violence escalated. Again, we learn – not — the lessons of war. Hey, it’s only been this way for several thousand years!
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow. His “Iraq” film is available on DVD from roundworldproductions.com.
