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What
Victory?
By
David
Krieger
President, Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation
TFF
associate
August 29, 2003
What a difference a few
months can make.
At the end of April 2003, just four months ago, Donald
Rumsfeld was in the Qatar headquarters of General Tommy
Franks, effusively comparing the US victory in Iraq to
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of
Paris.
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold
War and a reuniting of East and West, and the people of
Paris actually welcomed the Allied forces as liberators
from the Nazis in World War II. In neither case was it
necessary for American forces to remain as an occupying
force; in neither case did the US government have its
eyes on the oil.
As Rumsfeld savored US military dominance over the far
inferior Iraqi forces, he triumphantly crowed, "Never
have so many been so wrong about so much." He was
presumably referring to the "many" who doubted American
military tactics in the war, not those who thought the
war was immoral, illegal and unnecessary.
It was clearly a day of jubilation for Rumsfeld and he
was enjoying trumpeting to the world that he had been
right all along.
A few days later, a triumphant George W. Bush, dressed
up like a combat pilot, was flown some thirty miles off
the California coast to the flight deck of the USS
Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Bush
announced to the assembled troops on the carrier that
major combat operations in Iraq had ended.
Bush said: "With new tactics and precision weapons, we
can achieve military objectives without directing
violence against civilians." He did not mention that
approximately twice as many innocent civilians died in
the Iraq War as had died on September 11th. Nor did not
mention the Iraqi children who had lost arms and legs and
parents as a result of the war, and would carry their
injuries through their lives.
The president, looking to all the world like the
military hero he was not, continued: "No device of man
can remove the tragedy from war." He did not say,
presumably because he did not think, that with wisdom the
tragedy of war might be prevented. Nor did he say that,
in the case of this war, it was initiated illegally
without UN authorization based on arguments by him and
his administration to the American people that the Iraqi
regime posed the threat of imminent use of weapons of
mass destruction.
The combat pilot impersonator went on, "Yet it is a
great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from
war than the innocent." He might have added that this is
especially true when it is he and his colleagues, and
them alone, who decide who is guilty and who is
innocent.
As the television cameras rolled on, Bush said, "The
battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that
began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on." Four
months out his perspective on victory is questionable,
and there remains no established link between the regime
of Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 terrorists. He was also
wrong to conclude that the "battle of Iraq" was a victory
or had ended.
While an action doll of Bush in military garb is being
marketed across the country, almost daily young Americans
in the occupation force are being killed in what now
appears to be an on-going war of liberation from the
Americans.
Saboteurs are blowing up and setting fire to oil
pipelines, disrupting water supplies, and attacking UN
relief workers. US occupation forces appear helpless to
stop the new terrorists that have been created as a
result of this war.
The former Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki,
had argued for a far larger occupying force in Iraq.
Rumsfeld overruled him, concluding that a larger force
wasnít needed. It now appears that General
Shinseki was right and Rumsfeld was wrong.
The weapons of mass destruction that the Bush
administration alluded to in order to frighten the
American people and justify the war have not been found,
despite our being told by Cheney that he knew where they
were located.
Four months after Rumsfeld crowed about the liberation
of Paris and Bush declared an end to the major combat
phase of the war, there is a deadly continuing war of
attrition against US and British troops in Iraq. America,
far from being hailed as a liberator, has created even
more enemies in the Middle East and terrorists seem to be
growing in numbers and boldness.
Paraphrasing Rumsfeld, who himself was paraphrasing
Churchill, it might be said: "Never have so few been so
wrong about so much." Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney and
Wolfowitz are the leaders of the militant and
shortsighted few. There has been no victory in Iraq, and
under the circumstances victory is not possible. We now
need a public dialogue on how best to extract ourselves
from the perilous situation these men have created before
we become ensnared in an oil-driven equivalent of the
Vietnam War.
The starting point for ending this peril is to awaken
the American people by a full and open Congressional
investigation of the misrepresentations by the Bush
administration regarding Iraqís purported weapons
of mass destruction as a pretext for the war. In Britain,
the misrepresentations of the Blair government are being
vigorously investigated by Parliament, but in the US an
investigation of the Bush administration is being blocked
by Congressional Republicans. What is needed is an
investigation as rigorous as that being pursued in
Britain.
Additionally, as an intermediate step to transferring
full administrative authority to the Iraqi people, the
United States and Coalition Forces should move
immediately to turn over authority for the administration
of Iraq to the United Nations. Such a recommendation
assumes, perhaps too readily, that the UN would be
willing to accept this role and would be able to act with
sufficient independence of Washington. By entrusting the
future of Iraq to the UN, the United States would make
clear that it is not administering Iraq in order to
dictate the political future of the country or to enrich
US-led corporations with ties to the Bush administration.
It would also allow for sharing the security burden in
Iraq and make possible the earlier return of the US
troops presently in Iraq.
David Krieger is the editor of Hope
in a Dark Time, Reflections on Humanity's
Future.
©
TFF & the author 2003
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