In the preface to his book "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States," Trita Parsi states “I have focused on geopolitical forces and developments rather than on ideology, fleeting political justifications, or simplistic Manichean perspectives.” This rational perspective is too often lacking in liberal scholarship, which frequently refuses to separate rhetoric from action. He then proceeds to argue that the main force which compelled Israel and Iran to form an alliance was their “common threat perception,” reinforced by a dogmatic Israeli adherence to the “periphery doctrine.” The common threats which Iran and Israel shared were Iraq and the Soviet Union, according to Parsi, who sees a major part of Israeli and Iranian policy to have been “containing” Soviet “expansion.” Originally devised by David Ben-Gurion, the “periphery doctrine” held that since it was "impossible" – for reasons Parsi doesn't go into – for Israel to make peace with the Arabs, its alliances should be derived from the states in the non-Arab periphery, primarily Ethiopia, to balance Egypt, and Iran, to balance Iraq. As Iraq's power increased, Parsi argues, Israel became more dependent on Iran for security.
Yet thre are many fundamental weaknesses in Parsi's analysis. For example, the reader never learns why the “periphery doctrine” was an option for Israel, or more specifically why it was that the Israelis chose those states to with which to form alliances. Why Iran? This question is derived from a central weakness in Parsi's analysis. While he assigns clear geopolitical interests to Iran and Israel, he refuses to do so for the United States. To Parsi, while Iran and Israel seek regional primacy and geopolitical leverage in the clear tradition of realpolitik, the United States is a vague and omnipresent force which is callously manipulated by the two powers. Just as Israel and Iran, as regional powers, seek regional dominance, the US seeks global dominance, by exercising its power through regional proxies. Thus Parsi has flipped the actual power dynamic on its head. It is not Iran and Israel who manipulate US policy, but vice versa. As US proxies, both Israel and Iran are expected to act within the narrow parameters of clearly-defined US interests, an observation which goes a long way to explain the relationship between the two yet is ignored by Parsi.
The United States had clear strategic interests in the region, which Parsi would have discovered had he actually consulted the documentary record, largely focused around first gaining and then maintaining US control over global energy resources, an important lever of world control. Parsi's focus on interviews lead him to ignore the actual historical record, leaving his assessment of the regional power dynamic thoroughly flawed. It was clear early in World War II that the United States would emerge as the dominant global power. In preparation for this, high-level planning began between the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department to craft a new international order in which it would “hold unquestioned power.”1 As much of the world as possible was to become part of a “Grand Area,” which would be subordinated to the needs of the US economy, and in which US business interests would thrive. It would encompass the entire Western Hemisphere, the Far East, the former British Empire, and as much of Eurasia as possible. In this sphere, only the United States would be permitted to dominate regional systems. The “various components would fulfill their functions” to the functioning of the Grand Area by serving “as industrial centers, as markets and sources of raw materials, or as dependent states pursuing their regional interests within the overall framework of order managed by the United States.”2
The limitations of this “overall framework,” and their dependence on the United States to maintain regional and domestic power ensured that Iran and Israel were both such “dependent states,” which would be allowed to pursue their own “regional interests,” however those interests were limited and defined by the “overall framework of order managed by the United States.” The US enforces this “framework” by taking actions against states that dare defy it, in the manner that Iran did in 1979, when it overthrew a reliable US proxy and implemented a regime which insisted that its national interests need not coincide exactly with the “order” envisioned by the US. Instituting isolating sanctions, denying access to international credit, and shutting off the flow of spare parts and armaments had a profound effect on the Islamic regime, which literally took to begging the US and Israel for weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, and probably would have ruined the Shah. The regime was desperate, and probably would have agreed to any demands the US and Israel made upon it – except becoming a reliable vassal that would unwaveringly protect US interests, as the Shah had (by his own admission).3 While Parsi insists that Iran “brought on itself” these “disastrous consequences” by taking US embassy staff hostage, and even oddly blames later US obstinacy towards Iran on the Iran-Contra scandal, the behavior is more accurately explained by analyzing US strategic interests, gleaned from the declassified record which Parsi unfortunately ignores.4
In the Middle East, the major energy-producing region of the planet, the primary concern is control of energy resources. In 1945, the State Department determined that the oil reserves of the Gulf region constitute “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in history.”5 Roosevelt Administration “oil czar” Harold Ickes advised the President that the “Middle East presented an important key to postwar economic problems and to basic international political arrangements,”6 in other words, the whole of the international power structure. The ability of the United States – through corporations protected by state policy – to seize control of a large portion of global energy resources in the wake of the destruction of World War II, including the vast Saudi reserves, had a large hand in catapulting the US into its present position of global leadership.
The most serious threat to its prescribed international system was always been understood to be indigenous nationalism, not “Soviet expansion” as Parsi claims. To sell this harsh suppression of poor people around the world fighting for their basic rights, it often had to be masked by propaganda about “containment” of Soviet expansion. “You may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the mis-impression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting,” Samuel Huntington wrote in 1981, “that is what the United States has been doing since the Truman Doctrine.”7 Unfortunately, Parsi falls for this rhetoric in his book repeatedly, insisting that the United States and its allies are adopting a defensive stand, stopping the Soviet Union from acting on its dark, shadowy plans for the region.
Rather, those who fall prey to the wrong ideologies, advocating an independent course that does not comport with their assigned role in Washington's prescribed international order, must be vehemently crushed, using violence if necessary and feasible. The primary danger is that forces beyond the control of US elites will seize power and achieve independent development, providing a model for other such initiatives around the world. If the United States accommodates any of these movements, the precedent will have been set; it is the "threat of a good example." Planners can then expect to see invigorated copycats, seriously obstructing the proper functioning of the Grand Area. This imperative can explain US intervention all over the planet, from Europe to Asia to the Middle East and Latin America. The source of the allegiance between the US and its allied regimes in the region is their determination and willingness to eliminate the nationalist threat, which so jeopardized US control of oil resources.
Although Parsi argues throughout much of Part I of his book that the Shah was striving for independence from the United States, he presents little evidence for this, apart from the signing of the Algiers Accord supposedly without US support. At times, Parsi seems to be confusing the very different concepts of “independence,” “strength,” and “leadership.” Often, in arguing that the Shah was becoming independent, Parsi supports this assertion with evidence that the Shah was strengthening Iran, or was leading the region. This does not suggest, or even imply, independence however. In accordance with the understanding of US policy outlined above, the ideal situation for the United States was to encourage (perhaps build) a strong Iran, which would lead the region, and act in accordance with US interests – exactly what the Shah was willing to do, as he consistently showed.
The main evidence he presents to support his assertion of the Shah's thirst independence, the supposed signing of the Algiers Accord without US approval, is not supported adequately by Parsi. Parsi's explanation for how the Shah could possibly negotiate with Saddam over such a critically important issue, including terminating a US policy, without consulting Washington is plainly outrageous. “The Iranian position,” according to Parsi, “was that time for consultations did not exist” since “the negotiations were very intense,” evidently leaving the Shah unable to make a phone call to the White House, an unlikely proposition. Laughably, Parsi adds that “the Shah... was exhausted upon his return,” too exhausted to call his patron and benefactor in Washington.8 There is little chance that the Shah would have negotiated with Saddam on the status of an American program, or settled such a crucial dispute without discussing the terms with Washington.
His statements that “the Shah neither consulted nor informed his Israeli and American allies about the negotiations with the Iraqis, nor did he indicate that the collaboration with the Kurds was in jeopardy”9 rely on an interview with the head of the Mossad in Kurdistan, an Iran expert working with the National Security Council, and the Iran desk officer at the State Department. It would not be surprising to learn that these individuals were not informed by the Washington leadership before allowing the Shah to go ahead with an agreement and negotiations. Amidst these assertions, Parsi tucks the most logical conclusion in a footnote. “Some Iranian officials have also insisted that the United States was supporting the negotiations behind the scenes and was fully aware of the details,” he writes, adding in a later footnote “Iranian diplomats... have argued that the United States also expressed satisfaction with the accord since it gave Iran, a US ally, the upper hand against the Soviet-backed Iraqi government.”10 Thus Parsi's argument of the Shah's drive for independence falls somewhat flat. In contrast, the characterization of Henry Kissinger seems more apt. “Whatever the failings of the Shah,” he wrote in The White House Years, “wrestling perhaps with forces beyond any man's control, he was for us the rarest of leaders, an unconditional ally.”11
There are scores of other problems with the book as well, far more than there is time or space to explore here. For one, he essentially ignored Israel's nuclear program, rendering much of his balance of power analysis next to worthless. The image of the weak, vulnerable Israel depicted by Parsi does not comport with reality, seriously undervaluing the regional power of the Israeli state. He suppresses or distorts important elements of history on several glaring instances, in particular his recounting of the 1967 war, the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam in 1990, the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” Israel's attack on Lebanon in 2006, and many others. While an analysis of the relationship between Iran, Israel, the US, and other powers would certainly be a valuable contribution to the literature on the region, Parsi's book fails at its attempt. It is not merely the thought that counts – the commitment to pursue a realist analysis must include (at least) all three states whose behavior Parsi claims to evaluate.
__________________________________
Endnotes:
1. Shoup, Lawrence and William Minter, “Imperial Brain Trust.” Monthly Review, 1977, 130. Shoup and Minter's study of the War and Peace Studies project of the Council on Foreign Relations and State Department from 1939 to 1945.
2. Chomsky, Noam. Necessary Illusions. South End Press, 1989
3. See Parsi, 61
4. Parsi, 90
5. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1945, viii, 45.
6. Bronson, Rachel. Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership With Saudi Arabia. Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 39 - 40
7. Samuel Huntington, “Vietnam Reappraised,” International Security, Summer, 1981
8. Parsi, 56
9. Parsi, 55
10. Parsi, 295
11. Kissinger, The White House Years. pg. 1261
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Aggression and Consequences
The president has adopted a policy of "anticipatory self-defense" that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, lives in infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans who live in infamy.
- Arthur Schlesinger Jr.1
Academics and journalists observing the situation in Iraq routinely ask the question “how could the US have more effectively carried out its role of democratizing Iraq?” They then proceed to outline, in essays and articles, the many “mistakes” made by the United States in its noble quest for democracy and freedom. Commentators at the critical extreme conclude that the war itself was a “tactical error,” a “misguided,” though well-intentioned, effort that is unlikely to achieve the goals of the United States. Many have analyzed the tenure of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an authoritarian body assembled through which the US ruled Iraq directly, by decree, in order to advance its quest to bring democracy and liberty to the backward land of Iraq, a notion expressed without irony in mainstream circles. These “critical” investigations generally conclude that individual personalities, specific management styles, and a few poor decisions are to blame for the body's radical unpopularity, eventually resulting in its being forced to abrogate rule of Iraq to a more Iraqi-looking governing institution.
In order to even engage in a discussion so framed, one must accept two crucial assumptions: 1) that US policy is guided by a yearning for democracy and general good intentions, and 2) that no state has the right to defend itself from US attack, including the important corollary that the US has the natural right to impose its will, by force if necessary and feasible. The first assumption totally unsubstantiated; like most acts of aggression, the invasion of Iraq was portrayed as an act of self-defense against an ominous and threatening enemy, guided by noble and selfless objectives. Some of the worst crimes in history have been accompanied by loud proclamations of benevolent intent from the criminals, from the Nazis in World War II to the US in Vietnam, Joseph Stalin to Tony Blair. Since it is predictable that this will be the case, basic tenets of rational inquiry dictate that we should set this rhetoric aside, and look at the facts of the case. Unfortunately, this basic logic is rarely followed in mainstream accounts of the Iraq war.
Such passive compliance was displayed rather starkly in a recent exchange I had with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post editor and author of the national bestseller Imperial Life in the Emerald City. In the book, an account of the workings of the CPA, he asserts on several occasions and assumes throughout that the objective of US policy is to “create a secular, stable democracy” in Iraq.2 During a Q&A session with the author, I asked him how he had arrived at this conclusion, pointing out the substantial volume of evidence contained in his own book contradicting this claim.3 With the look of a deer in headlights, Chandrasekaran eventually managed to stammer out “because it's the policy,” which he had faithfully recorded at press conferences and subsequently parroted in his book. His was response was deeply revealing of the degree to which he had internalized the Party Line – our objectives are noble, and it is our right to carry them out all over the world, however we deem necessary. However, in order to conduct a rational inquiry, we must examine the facts. To do so requires separating fact from fiction, rhetoric from action.
While there should never have been much controversy over the true motivations behind US policy given the long, clear documentary record, recent events make the logical conclusion almost painfully obvious. Since World War II, when the US began planning the construction an international order in which, according to planning documents, it would “hold unquestioned power,”4 US planners have recognized the oil reserves of the Gulf region as “a stupendous source of strategic power.”5 That control of energy is an important lever of world control has not been lost on state managers, who realize that the US owes a good portion of its dominance to its control of this vital resource.6 In fact, these principles are by now deeply institutionalized, and we can readily observe them in practice. On two occasions this year, President Bush has issued signing statements which declare the right of US state and corporate power to secure “United States control of the oil resources of Iraq,” as well as protecting efforts to “provide for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.”7 These permanent military bases will allow the US to project its power throughout the whole of the crucial energy-producing region of the world, further subordinating it to US state and corporate interests. The illegal US attack on Iraq, which has the third largest oil reserves in the world, against massive public outcry from around the world, must be seen in this context. Despite the mountain of evidence revealing the nature of US intentions, mainstream accounts routinely dismiss as “conspiracy theories” arguments that the war was over control of oil, in defense of the doctrinal system which they have internalized.8 Adopting the uncritical approach of Chandrasekaran and so many others, accepting standard assumptions at face value, has only one merit: it prevents us from having to see what is happening right before our eyes. While we can set aside the first assumption on grounds of predictability, it does not stand up to scrutiny in any event.
Removing the mask of “good intentions” and revealing the true motivations and goals of US foreign policy has grave implications for the latter assumption as well. If the US is not universally guided by noble and virtuous goals, then from where does it derive the right to impose its will on others? Stripped of doublespeak, the operative principle behind these standard assumptions is now revealed: the United States is a lawless rogue state that has the right to compel others to act in accordance with its wishes, through the use of terror and violence if it deems such methods necessary. The “comprehensive U.S. campaign to undermine the [International Criminal Court],” in the words of Human Rights Watch, as well as other institutions and structures which may restrict its ability to use force to impose its will, is particularly disturbing when cast in this light.9 It is morally unacceptable, let alone illegal, for a state to impose its naked self-interest using any means that it deems necessary, inflicting destruction, pain and suffering on a colossal scale.
Now that the folly of both primary assumptions has been made clear, we can observe that there are actually three questions which must be answered: 1) what were the objectives of the Coalition Provisional Authority; 2) how well did it succeed in fulfilling these objectives, and; 3) how could it meet them more effectively? Given the understanding of US policy reached earlier, the objectives of the CPA should not be difficult to identify. It should rule Iraq for as long as possible, directly implementing the US-directed transformation of Iraqi economic and social life to meet the needs, interests, and desires of the occupier with as little interference as possible from the trivial concerns of the natives. Perhaps most important among these objectives is to ensure that the legal and social conditions are optimized for the creation of a reliable client regime that will house permanent US military bases and permit western multinational corporations to control Iraq's economy, in particular its vast resource wealth. Since polls taken throughout the period of CPA rule (and right up until the present) reveal the Iraqi population to have been resoundingly opposed to each these vital goals, democracy is thus a major threat which must be suppressed and destroyed if possible.
Turning to the actual record of the CPA, it does not take long to realize that these were, in fact, its primary objectives. Resisting pressures for democracy and representation, and implanting itself for as long as possible were at the top of the list. After the invasion, the US and UK announced at once that they would not accept any timetable for withdrawal.10 Likewise, the CPA leadership remained steadfastly opposed to elections and any other form of direct Iraqi participation until its hand was forced by the growing Iraqi resistance, which eventually succeeded in driving the CPA out of the country far earlier than had been planned.11 US Proconsul Paul Bremer's arrogance toward even his “handpicked”12 council of advisors, the Iraqi Governing Council, was such that he eventually drove them to go before the UN to demand an end to the direct US occupation, winning a deadline for the Council to present a timetable and hold elections.13
The conflict which emerged during the tenure of the CPA was between Iraqis, overwhelmingly demanding freedom, democracy, and independence, and the US authorities, who were engaged in a desperate effort to stifle these demands. Early in the occupation, a large nonviolent resistance movement took root, lead in part by Ayatollah Sistani, which demanded “that Iraq's constitution had to be written by elected representatives,” insisting that “an American-selected drafting committee is 'unacceptable',” views that were “all but ignored by the CPA.”14 The reasons for this opposition were clear. While the CPA leadership officially rejected elections “because voter rolls and election laws didn't exist,” the “real reason was that [Bremer] feared Baathists or religious extremists might triumph.”15 As Rory Stewart, former Provisional Governor of the Maysan province put it, expressing the conventional logic, “if councils were elected, we would lose control.”16 If there are going to be elections, the CPA would first have to ensure that its favored parties would win. The definition of a “free democratic election” is thus one which serves the interests of the US.17 When scrutinized, the level of contempt for democracy is startling.
While the resistance intensified, the CPA even ended up struggling against the US-appointed Governing Council, which began to push back and demand elections, encouraged by the massive public outcry.18 Yet it was crucial that elements be included in the new Constitution which would allow the privatization of Iraq's economy and allow the long-term stationing of foreign forces on Iraqi soil, objectives which could not safely be left to elected representatives, who may respond to the will of the masses and reject these measures. Unable to get the Governing Council to agree to appoint drafters, the CPA, in concert with Washington, decided to simply write an interim Constitution itself called the “Transitional Administrative Law.” It was “drafted primarily by the Americans,” with “little Iraqi control of the process, which provided no real opportunity for public debate or participation.”19 While the TAL originally called for elections to be held almost a full year later, even this provision was “deleted” after “Rice and Powell voiced concerns.”20
The plan, as Bremer presented it to the Governing Council, involved three parts, very revealing of the US agenda. First, the interim Constitution would be drafted by the CPA; second, “allowing American troops to remain in Iraq after the transfer of sovereignty”; and third a caucus system for choosing the interim government that would oversee the drafting of the Constitution.21 As expected, the members of the Governing Council accepted the first two points, without a problem, but they were unable to accept the third due to tremendous pressure from the population. The Iraqi resistance, represented by Sistani, strongly rejected the caucus system, which would “not meet the expectations of the people of Iraq,” because “the mechanism in place to choose members of the transitional assembly does not guarantee the establishment of an assembly that truly represents the Iraqi people.”22 The nonviolent movement demanded that “the mechanism must be replaced which guarantees the aforesaid, which is elections, so the assembly will emanate from the desire of the Iraqi people and will represent them fairly” and continued to reject proposals from Bremer that offered much less.23 Sistani's plan, supported by the resistance movement, was to hold elections using the food ration cards as voter registration cards, a plan Bremer insisted was unworkable, even long after it had already been employed in Maysan and Dhi Qar, in defiance CPA orders.24 Furthermore, after his experience in both of these provinces, Rory Stewart concluded in his book that “we should have held elections all over Iraq.”25
Eventually, the UN became involved, sending Lakhdar Brahimi to Iraq to determine whether or not it was possible for elections to be held, as way of settling the dispute between the US occupation and the Iraqi people. Of course, it is extremely rare for the UN to stare down the US so directly. Before long, Brahimi “announced that it would not be possible to hold elections,” and Sistani dropped his demands.26 Rather than elections, the interim government would be “picked in the equivalent of a smoke-filled room,” which would “give [the US] the influence [it] sought,” as it would have “veto power over who was chosen.”27 It was a huge victory toward the US goal of opposing democracy for as long as possible, allowing it to build institutions and establish laws that would protect its interests even after it was forced to hold formal elections. “America's guy,” former CIA asset Iyad Allawi, was made Prime Minister of the appointed government, packed with supporters of the occupation and the US-sponsored political-economic order.28 The appointed government was a transparent US attempt to buy time, while the TAL was clearly an attempt to ensure as much US control over future legal arrangements in Iraq as possible, free from unwarranted Iraqi interference. The appointed government was to remain in place for seven months, after which elections would finally be held in January 2005.29
Another CPA priority was an economic transformation which would damage, hopefully permanently, democracy and independence by destroying economic sovereignty.30 The key objective in this regard was to advance and permanentize the transformation desired by the US to the furthest extent possible.31 “An integral part of the US mission,”32 opposed by the vast majority of Iraqis,33 was for an “economic restructuring” that would subject Iraq's battered economy to the “globalized, free market system” after it had been pulverized by war and crippled by a decade of brutal sanctions.34 The Bremer Laws, as they became known, were promulgated by decree and targeted toward encouraging the takeover of Iraq's economy by western banks and multinational corporations while cutting vital subsidies to the desperately impoverished population, the same program of “shock therapy” promoted by the US and international institutions connected to it which has proven to be catastrophic for people in dozens of countries all over the world.35 Under Saddam, “the cost of most goods and services were subsidized by the government” to make up for the fact that “paychecks were low.”36 It was decided by the neoliberals in Washington and now Baghdad, who had an “unshakeable faith in the power of the free market,” that these measures were inefficient and a waste of resources, despite their own predictions that their proposed “bitter medicine” would be a disaster for the Iraqi people and economy.37 “Instead of using government money to create jobs,” the US plan would “reduce the role of government in industry through privatization, eliminate subsidies” to the struggling population for food, fuel, electricity, and other vital items, “cut tariffs, lower taxes, promote foreign investment, and enact pro-business laws.”38 The US plan to “dismantle the safety net” even included destroying Iraq's public healthcare system, making Iraqis “pay a fee every time they saw a doctor,”39 and instituting a “market-based system to distribute drugs” as “part of the strategy to refashion Iraq's socialist healthcare system Iraq's socialist healthcare system into one that looked more American,” the most wasteful, inefficient, and least effective model in the industrialized world.40
With the clock ticking on the period of direct rule by the US, during which it could implement such measures without fear of the Iraqi people gaining too much of a voice in the process, the measures would have to be enacted quickly.41 USAID and the Treasury Department instructed their contractors to “promote private sector involvement... especially in the oil and supporting sectors.”42 Private control of oil resources (and the rest of the economy for that matter) was crucial to attaining US objectives, as it would remove control of Iraqi resources from the public arena, accountable to the will of the people (at least in theory), and place it in the hands of private oligarchs who would naturally be much more susceptible to the imperial will.
All told, with Bremer's economic program, the US enacted laws that gave foreign investors equal rights with Iraqis in the domestic market, allowing foreign ownership of 100% of Iraqi assets, permitted the full repatriation of profits, instituted a flat tax, abolished tariffs, instituted strict intellectual property rights, sold off a wide range of state-owned companies, opened the banking system to foreign takeover, reduced much-needed fuel and food subsidies to the struggling population, and privatized many of Iraq's social services, such as health, education, and water delivery.43 In accordance with the key US objectives discussed above, these measures were enshrined and protected in the TAL, and later in the permanent Constitution as well.44 Early handover of sovereignty, forced on the CPA by the Iraqi resistance, seriously obstructed these programs and blocked privatization.
All of these measures are fundamentally wrong and immoral, not merely “tactical errors,” enough reason for them to be rescinded immediately. They are also part of a series of war crimes which the US has knowingly and deliberately committed in Iraq. As Middle East expert Juan Cole put it, writing in October 2003,
In this, he was echoing the opinion of Lord Goldsmith, the top legal advisor to Tony Blair, who suggested that the entire CPA was illegal, writing in a memo to the PM that “the general principle is that an Occupying Power does not become the government of the occupied territory,” adding that “wide-ranging reforms of governmental and administrative structures would not be lawful” and that “imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be lawful.”46
In fact, the invasion itself is a war crime, a textbook case of aggression. In the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried Nazi leaders for crimes such as preventive war, such an act is “essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."47 The war constituted such an act as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgement (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as paragraph 498 of US Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).
The subsequent terror bombing of Baghdad is characterized in the “shock and awe” doctrine as follows:
Article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defined the term “war crimes” to include “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.” The infliction of “shock and awe” on the residents of Baghdad most certainly constitutes wanton destruction, and is not excused by “military necessity,” which is of course always defined by the laws of war. On May 1, 2003, when the President landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier and announced “Mission Accomplished” in a carefully choreographed media event, the United States officially became the belligerent occupant of Iraq under international law, a legal role affirmed by the United Nations in Security Council Resolution 1483. This confers several legal responsibilities on the United States, to which it has consistently failed to live up, explored below.
As we have seen, we can discard the claims of “spreading democracy” uncritically accepted and repeated in mainstream scholarship and news reports about the war, itself a serious war crime. Our original question, “how could the US more effectively carry out its role of democratizing Iraq,” can thus be better expressed as “how can we more effectively carry out an illegal war of aggression and subsequent occupation, and more successfully repress the population?” Intellectuals in criminal states throughout history have been faced with the very same question. Yet it is immoral, and even inhuman, to accept these parameters for discussion. As Noam Chomsky wrote in 1967,
By framing our inquiry in this fashion, we are ignoring the crucial moral question – should the US behave in a criminal fashion and engage in exploitation, violence, and oppression. There is no virtuous solution to the “supreme international crime.” As a result, we are left to find the solution that is the least awful.
The task of identifying what the United States should do from this point is made significantly easier by observing elementary moral principles. The primary responsibility of an occupying force is to withdraw as quickly as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population. Any occupying force has a moral responsibility to act in accordance with the wishes and needs of the occupied. With this in mind, we can observe that not only is the very existence of the CPA probably illegal, but it is also immoral and illegitimate. It therefore follows that the measures it enacted should be rescinded as soon as possible, leaving a body of Iraqis' choosing to craft a legal system which they believe best for their country. It is simply unacceptable for the United States to attack and destroy Iraq, then transform its laws and society in accordance with our wishes.50 In the case of Iraq, the will of the occupied was clear from very early on: they demanded elections, real sovereignty, and independence.
A good place to start would be following the legal responsibilities conferred upon the United States as a belligerent occupier. One such responsibility is to provide for the general well-being of the population, including food, healthcare, and education. Cutting vital subsidies which ensure that most of the population has the basic means to survive is thus a serious breach of this responsibility. The CPA should have preserved, and even enhanced if possible, Iraq's public healthcare system to ensure that everyone has access to the best care resources allow. In fact, subsidy programs should have been dramatically increased to make up for the hardship undergone as a result of the barbaric US attacks on population centers and the general despair among Iraqis as a result of the economic collapse from a decade of “genocidal” US-sponsored sanctions, in the words of Dennis Halliday, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Baghdad who resigned after more than 30 years of service in disgust.51 Instituting the flat tax, apart from its obvious economic injustice, helped prevent much-needed social spending as well.
Elections should have been encouraged, controlled not by a US controlled occupation administration but by impartial international institutions such as the UN General Assembly, with the United States bearing all the costs and providing security, without interfering in the political process or economic affairs any more than is necessary for that purpose. Withdrawal and the restoration of full sovereignty should then follow, by definition negating the need for the construction of the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad or any of the permanent military bases currently being built across the country. Finally, those states responsible for destroying Iraqi society with cruel sanctions, military actions, and supporting Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities must pay massive reparations and supply other aid as needed. This would hardly be an ideal solution, just the least awful. As Nir Rosen, a top Iraq expert, recently wrote, "Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols, who sacked Baghdad in the 13th century Only fools talk of 'solutions' now. There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained."52
And so we turn to the question so often pondered among those who hope to prevent repetition of some perceived calamity in the future: what lessons can be learned from this experience? This question is more complicated than it may at first appear, and actually has three parts: 1) what lessons were learned; 2) what lessons should be learned; and 3) who should learn them? The world has indeed learned a lesson from the US attack on Iraq and subsequent occupation: that the US is a fiercely aggressive, lawless “rogue state,” intent on pursuing the interests of its ruling elite through the use of violence, terror, and repression if it deems such measures necessary and feasible. It has proclaimed and demonstrated that its actions cannot be restrained by any laws, norms, or public outcry worldwide. It will act as it chooses, when it chooses, and will continue to do so, along with whatever pain and suffering that entails. This is the lesson the US wanted to drive home.
Americans should learn an important lesson about the position of their government on issues like democracy, freedom, self-determination, and the rule of law. The hatred and contempt for democracy displayed by the Bush administration, not just in Iraq but in the US as well, has been stunning. They would be well served to learn from the Iraqis, who have learned that if they stand together, they can force the US occupation to bend to their will. They fought for elections, and eventually got them. They fought for the end of US “direct rule,” despite the CPA plan “not to hold elections in the foreseeable future,” and they won, driving out the American dictator, Bremer, and his cohorts. They have stood together as unionists, religions people, and all sects to block the oil law, and have so far succeeded. They have gathered by the tens of thousands to resist the SOFA, which would allow for the continued occupation of their country by US forces, and have successfully prevented the passage of this measure as well, despite intense pressure from the US and its Iraqi allies. Indeed, it is the courageousness of the Iraqi resistance which has so far made the most progress toward ending the grotesque injustice perpetuated on them.
Like the incredible Vietnamese resistance of the previous generation, they have taught US leaders that they cannot go marauding around the planet torturing, maiming, killing, and imprisoning those who stand in their way. US state managers will find increased resistance all around the world to such acts of naked aggression, and it will become more difficult to act against the wishes of what the New York Times has referred to as a “second superpower” - global public opinion, which is becoming increasingly outspoken, perhaps to unprecedented levels. The next victims of American violence should take notice of the Iraqi example. The limits of American power are openly on display at the moment. They should learn it is not invincible. By struggling against the oppression of the mighty empire, people should take notice that they can win.
Any degree of justice requires intense, relentless, organized struggle. Not only can this lesson be applied universally, to victims of oppression and injustice worldwide, it must – our future depends on it. Through popular struggle, all around the world, US elites can be taught the most important lesson of all: respect for law, democracy, and human dignity, and an end to the barbaric use of wanton violence as an instrument of policy.
__________________________________________________
Endnotes:
1. Schlesinger Jr., Arthur, “Good Foreign Policy a Casualty of War: Today, It is We Americans Who Live in Infamy.” Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar 2003.
2. He does so without providing argument or evidence. He writes: “in the pentagon, the view was that Chalabi and his colleagues were going to lead the way in creating a secular, stable democracy” (pg 37); “State Department personnel... [organized] working groups to study issues of critical importance in the postwar period... most important, the formation of a democratic government” (pg 40); “if the old guard were allowed to stick around, [the US-backed Iraqi elites] maintained, there would be no way a democracy would bloom” (pg 80); “veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to democratizing the region” (pg 97); “America was working in the best interests of the Iraqi people” (pg 142); “the President had expressed an impassioned desire to transform Iraq into a model democracy in the Middle East” (pg 179). Chandrasekaran absurdly and illogically insists that “Bremer was bringing democracy to Iraq” (pg 130), despite evidence and statements by Chandrasekaran himself which contradict this conclusion, presented without comment or discussion. He describes how one main problem pre-war planners were dealing with was “how to install Chalabi and other trusted exiles as national leaders” (pg 34); despite his earlier insistence on the truly democratic tendencies of the Defense Department, he writes that “the military did not appear to care about helping ORHA” (pg 56) and that the ORHA had gone to Iraq with “no plan, no money, and a skeletal staff” (pg 58). He describes in detail how the US handpicked those who were to lead Iraq, “a small council comprised of the most prominent exiled politicians,” making sure they were all “people the US had worked with before” and who “had impeccable anti-Saddam credentials,” although that was not the only ideological test these leaders had to pass (pg 58). These leaders were backed even after “it became clear that most of the [US-supported] internals did not want the exiles to be in charge” (pg 60). According the Chandrasekaran, while the Pentagon supported these leaders, as part of its policy of “creating a secular, stable democracy,” the State Department “believed that authority should rest with the United States, either through a military commander or civilian governor, until a representative group of Iraqis, internals as well as exiles, formed a government” (pg 59). As further evidence of the efforts the Pentagon was making to create a democracy, Chandrasekaran writes that when Jay Garner mentioned that elections could be held within 90 days “it infuriated his bosses at the Pentagon, who feared that an election would not be in the best interests of the exiles,” who had been picked by the US and vetted to ensure their compliance with US policy (pg 59). Similarly, his proposal “alarmed Rice” (pg 61). Initiatives were started to “make the process appear participatory” (pg 60), while “the plan all along was to have a 'man of stature' take charge in Baghdad” (pg 61); “Bremer had come to Iraq to build not just a democracy but a free market” (pg 70); “Bremer needed only put down his signature to impose a new law, or abolish an old one,” and “wasn't required to consult with Iraqis or even seek their consent” (pg 71); he refers to Bremer as a “dictator” (pg 74); he credits Bremer with saying “there would be no interim government. The United States was not going to end its occupation anytime soon. When one of the exiles interrupted him to say that Iraqis wanted Iraqis in charge, not Americans, he bristled” (pg. 89); “questions about government services were punted to the Governing Council, to perpetuate the myth that it had real authority” (pg 147); Bremer had “rejected the idea of holding early elections, he said, because voter rolls and election laws didn't exist. But the real reason was that he feared Baathists or religious extremists might triumph” (pg 186); “the selection of the government, the most significant step on Iraq's path to democracy” - assumed to be the path that Iraq is indeed traveling down - “was anything but democratic” (pg 276). This in addition to Chandrasekaran's lengthy description of the depserate US struggle to prevent elections from happening, in defiance of the increasingly outspoken will of the Iraqi people. Of course, there is much documentary evidence which further reveals the actual intentions of the US, not mentioned by Chandrasekaran.
3. See fn.2. Chandrasekaran apparently found unimportant the incessant declarations from Washington and London that the “single question” in which they were interested was whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or if he had fully disarmed in accordance with UN Resolution 1441 (see “President George Bush Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference,” Office of the Press Secretary, 6 Mar 2003, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html). They did not announce democracy promotion as an objective until after this earlier pretext began to crumble. Yet a look through the index of Chandrasekaran's book yields not a single entry for “weapons of mass destruction,” and only one for the Iraq Survey Group, in which Chandrasekaran casually describes it as “the CIA team searching for weapons” (pg 288). He does say that “by 2004, leaders of the CIA-led team searching for weapons of mass destruction had all but concluded that Iraq didn't possess nuclear, biological, or chemical munitions,” but quickly qualifies the statement by adding that “what Iraq did have, and there was no doubt about it, was the knowledge to manufacture anthrax, nerve gas, and quite possibly, a crude nuclear device” (pg 284). Chandrasekaran does not mention that the supposed authorization to use force in UN Resolution 678, which was used to justify the attack on Iraq, “must be limited to what is necessary to achieve the objectives of that resolution, namely Iraqi disarmament, and must be a proportionate response to that objective” as Lord Goldsmith, top legal advisor to Tony Blair, expressed in a memo to the Prime Minister just as the war was beginning (Goldsmith's memo is available at http://www.juancole.com/2003/10/anglo-american-occupation-committing.html). Naturally, the fact that scientists in Iraq have knowledge which they could theoretically use to make WMDs is not enough justification to invade, destroy, occupy, and transform it, in violation of international law, norms, and any code of morality.
4. Shoup, Lawrence and William Minter, “Imperial Brain Trust.” Monthly Review, 1977, 130. Shoup and Minter's study of the War and Peace Studies project of the Council on Foreign Relations and State Department from 1939 to 1945.
5. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1945, viii, 45.
6. As Roosevelt Administration “oil czar” Harold Ickes advised the President, the “Middle East presented an important key to postwar economic problems and to basic international political arrangements.” (Bronson, Rachel. Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership With Saudi Arabia. Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 39 – 40). In other words, control over this oil would give the US the ability to shape those political arrangements. This realization continues right up to the present. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recognized this recently, writing “America's security role in the region gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region” (Brzezinski, Zbignew. “Hegemonic Quicksand,” The National Interest Winter 2003-04. www.kas.de/upload/dokumente/brzezinski.pdf). Since the US is able to control the flow of energy (who gets it, and who doesn't) it is able to exert tremendous influence over international affairs.
7. Most recently see Savage, Charlie “Bush Declares Exceptions to Sections of Two Bills He Signed Into Law,” New York Times. 14 October 2008. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/washington/15signing.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin. He had previously issued a similar statement in January, “President Bush Signs H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 into Law.” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, January 28, 2008. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/print/20080128-10.html
8. Rajiv Chandrasekaran echoed this charge more than once during the same Q&A session described earlier. He also refers in his book to “conspiratorial, xenophobic fears” of Iraqi workers that their economy would be taken over by foreigners (Chandrasekaran, 141). Rory Stewart, who served as the Provincial Governor of Maysan and also worked in Dhi Qar, writes “I asked [the soldiers on guard duty outside the CPA] why they thought they were there. 'To take their oil, right?' said the Puerto Rican, laughing. And I smiled. Later I heard a British soldier say the same, and I wondered whether some soldiers didn't half wish that the conspiracy theorists had been right and that their country was at least getting free oil out of the invasion” [Stewart, Rory. The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. Harcourt Books, 2006. pg 104]. It is important to mention that the soldiers comments also reveal an important distinction which is worth pointing out: the difference between access and control. If it was simply “free oil” that the US/UK was looking for in Iraq, he invasion would never be worth it. Rather, it would make more sense to just buy the oil from Saddam – he was certainly selling, given the dire straits in which Iraq found itself as a result of the sanctions. Rather, they seek control of the oil, deciding who is and is not able to access the vital resource. In the words of George Kennan, this gives the US “veto power” over the actions of other states, always poised with its hand on the light switch. Should that state pursue policy which the US finds unfavorable, it can turn off the lights. Obviously, control of Iraq's substantial oil resources would be a substantial source of strategic leverage for the United States.
9. It is interesting to note that the US effort to destroy the ICC intensified in the period before the Iraq war, eliminating an instrument of the rule of law under which they could be held accountable for their many crimes. The hypocrisy of CPA attempts to establish the “rule of law” in Iraq is made startlingly clear when juxtaposed with these efforts. “The Bush administration's hostility to the ICC has increased dramatically in 2002,” Human Rights Watch recently reported, adding that “U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of America's closest allies.” The United States was also one of only “7 nations (joining China, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar and Israel) to vote against the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998.” In this, the US finds itself in interesting company, in league with some of the worst human rights violators in the world. Building on Clinton's early rejection of the court, “in an unprecedented diplomatic maneuver on 6 May,” Bush “effectively withdrew the U.S. signature on the treaty,” which “has paved the way for a comprehensive U.S. campaign to undermine the ICC.” This campaign has included 3 main elements, a Human Rights Watch has reported. First, the US has “negotiated a Security Council resolution to provide an exemption for U.S. personnel operating in U.N. peacekeeping operations” after the failure of which the US strong armed the UN, vetoing “an extension of the UN peacekeeping mission for Bosnia-Herzegovina unless the Security Council granted a complete exemption.” By using this bullying tactic, the US was able to secure “a limited, one year exemption for U.S. personnel participating in UN peacekeeping missions or UN authorized operations,” which the “Security Council has expressed its intention to renew” on June 30. The second element of the US war on the international justice system is “requesting states around the world to approve bilateral agreements requiring them not to surrender American nationals to the ICC,” with the goal of “exempting U.S. nationals from ICC jurisdiction” and create “a two-tiered rule of law for the most serious international crimes: one that applies to U.S. nationals; another that applies to the rest of the world's citizens.” Thirdly, the US Congress has assisted these efforts at achieving legal impunity. On August 3, President Bush signed the “American Servicemembers Protection Act,” which includes several shocking provisions. These include a prohibition on US cooperation with the ICC; “an 'invasion of the Hague' provision authorizing the President to 'use all means necessary and appropriate' to free U.S. personnel (and certain allied personnel) detained or imprisoned by the ICC”; punishment for states that join the treaty, including the refusal to send aid to states that become signatories; and “a prohibition on U.S. participation in peacekeeping activities unless immunity from the ICC is guaranteed for U.S. Personnel.” (See the “The United States and the International Criminal Court,” Human Rights Watch. Available at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm).
10. On March 28, 2003, almost immediately after the invasion, the New York Times reported that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair “could not put a timetable on the war” at a joint press conference, with President Bush declaring that the US will stay in Iraq “however long it takes to win.” (Bumiller, Elisabeth “A NATION AT WAR: THE LEADERS; Standing Together, Blair Is Expansive and Bush Is Terse.” 28 Mar 2003).
11. “Baghdad had written an email saying that 'we agreed from the moment of the invasion that there were to be no elections in Iraq in the foreseeable future” (Stewart, 296). According to Chandrasekaran, very shortly after the CPA was formed, in a meeting with the US-backed exiles who were to take power, Bremer “got right to the point” and declared that “there would be no [appointed] interim government [of Iraqis],” adding that “the United States was not going to be ending its occupation anytime soon.” (Chandrasekaran, 88). Chandrasekaran traces the roots of this approach back to the President, who allegedly “told Bremer to slow it down” (Chandrasekaran, 89). Bremer agreed to “form a council of twenty-five Iraqis strictly to advise him on policy matters,” on the condition that they be “handpicked by the viceroy” (Chandrasekaran, 89 – 90). The council had so little sway over policy that it did not take long before the members, whom Bremer “viewed as lackeys” (Chandrasekaran, 210), simply “stopped attending meetings” (Chandrasekaran, 185).
12. Chandrasekaran, 90
13. Ibid, 215. According to Chandrasekaran, “the resolution turned out to be no more than words on paper,” since “the Governing Council did not receive any additional power from Bremer.”
14. Chandrasekaran, 191. One of Bremer's aides later stated in an interview that Sistani's demand that the vital task of Constitution-writing be trusted with elected representatives “didn't register.”
15. Chandrasekaran, 186
16. Stewart, 296
17. As Rory Stewart wrote in his book, the US and UK were seeking a government that was “democratic in the widest sense: better for Iraqis and stable and friendly towards us.” (Stewart, 258).
18. After Bremer “met with the Council members to make one last attempt to get them to agree on something other than elections to select the drafters” and they refused, he decided he would just have the CPA itself “draft an interim Constitution.” (Chandrasekaran, 223).
19. Stewart, 339
20. Chandrasekaran, 224 – 225
21. Chandrasekaran, 227
22. Chandrasekaran, 231 – 232
23. Chandrasekaran, 232
24. “Toby Bradley [Political Officer in Dhi Qar]... had disobeyed Baghdad over the district councils and held elections in fifteen districts. He was planning to hold one more in this district. His elections were rough and ready affairs, with the voter rolls drawn from lists of ration-card holders” [Stewart, 296]. For Sistani's suggestion, see Chandrasekaran, 232. Once it came time to figure out how elections would be held “several CPA staffers maintained that a national database used to dole out monthly food rations could be used to provide a reasonably accurate estimate of how many people lived in each province,” the exact system the CPA had been publicly insisting was unworkable (Chandrasekaran, 280).
25. Stewart, 305
26. Chandrasekaran, 233
27. Chandrasekaran, 234. Even though the government was technically chosen by Brahimi, in practice it was formed by the US and forced on him. As Chandrasekaran writes, “Brahimi felt used. The Americans didn't want his advice, just his imprimatur” (Chandrasekaran, 278).
28. Chandrasekaran, 227
29. There was a debate between those who wanted to use Sistani's suggestion of the ration card database to figure out how many people lived in each province (the very system which the CPA had insisted would not work), and those who wanted to make the whole country a single-district. Despite the success of the elections based on the ration-card system in Dhi Qar and Maysan, ultimately the US opted to go with the vastly inferior method of making Iraq into a single district. It is unclear why this decision was made, and Chandrasekaran does not offer a satisfying explanation. It seems likely therefore that the main reason for this decision was for the CPA to save face after its loud public claims about the validity of the ration-card system. Indeed, using the ration-card system would be tantamount to an admission that elections could have been held all along (see Chandrasekaran, 279 – 280).
30. As Noam Chomsky wrote, “without economic sovereignty, prospects for healthy development are slight, and political independence verges on formality” [See Chomsky, Noam. “How to Get Out of Iraq?” The Nation, May 6, 2004].
31. In Bremer's own words, his “top priority” in Iraq was “economic reform,” which meant a mission to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises” and eliminate subsidies Saddam had provided for his people for food, gasoline, electricity and other vital items. Chandrasekaran writes that after hearing the US plan to cut crucially important subsidies to the people for food, Chandrasekaran writes that he “was struck by [Bremer's] zeal to help the people of Iraq,” and found his “emphasis on the future refreshing.” “I found myself believing in Bremer,” he wrote. (Chandrasekaran, 70 – 71).
32. Chandrasekaran, 130
33. Chandrasekaran writes that it “had little resonance on Iraqi streets (Chandrasekaran, 124). See also opinion polls taken throughout the course of the occupation.
34. Chandrasekaran, 124
35. Quotation from Chandrasekaran, 142. “The plan envisioned the sale of state-owned enterprises through a broad-based privatization program,” while despite the fact that “Iraqis were wary of full foreign ownership,” the US implemented “investment laws that were blind as to whether the investor is from that country or elsewhere” (Chandrasekaran, 131). The programs were designed to “lure multinational firms into Iraq with the promise that they could own not just 49 percent, but 100 percent , of the businesses they established” (Chandrasekaran, 141).
36. Chandrasekaran, 125
37. It was acknowledged internally that the policy may allow “tens of thousands of workers to be fired by private investors” (Chandrasekaran, 254). One CPA staffer said the plan was “nothing short of a death sentence for all but the strongest state-owned enterprises” which would lead to the “destruction of otherwise viable companies” (Chandrasekaran, 139). The CPA also predicted that “dismantling the safety net could spark unrest,” as the population may not be able to afford the basic means to survive. (Chandrasekaran, 178). Offensively, in light of these facts, and ignorant of the long, sad history of these programs all around the world, Chandrasekaran dismisses fears among the population over their implementation as “conspiratorial” and “xenophobic” (Chandrasekaran, 141).
38. Chandrasekaran, 132
39. Chandrasekaran, 242
40. Chandrasekaran, 245
41. “[Bremer] wanted to move forward right away with privatization and the elimination of subsidies,” [Chandrasekaran, 132]; “[Investment banker in charge of privatization Thomas] Foley told a contractor from Bearing-Point that he intended to privatize all of Iraq's state-owned enterprises within thirty days” [Chandrasekaran, 142].
42. Chandrasekaran, 131
43. Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. 2007, Cambridge University Press. pg. 290; Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 39, Foreign Investment. September 19, 2003. Available at http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/index.html#Regulations
44. For a critical analysis of the permanent Constitution and the process of writing it, see my “Embedding Imperialism,” available at http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/10/embedding-imperialism-iraqi.html
45. Cole, Juan. "Anglo-American Occupation Committing Illegalities?" Informed Comment, 1 Oct 2003. http://www.juancole.com/2003/10/anglo-american-occupation-committing.html
46. Available at http://www.juancole.com/2003/10/anglo-american-occupation-committing.html
47. Article 3 of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 states that “any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of article 2, qualify as an act of aggression: (a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State on the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof; (b) Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State; (d) An attack by the armed forces of a State on the land, sea or air forces, or marine and air fleets of another State.”
48. Bud Edny, “Appendix A: Thoughts on Rapid Dominance,” in Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: NDU Press Book, 1996), pg 110.
49. Chomsky, Noam. American Power and the New Mandarins, Pantheon; 1967. pg. 9
50. For a witty, yet interesting account of some of these activities, see [Lemoine, Ray and Neumann, Jeff. Babylon by Bus. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006]
51. Pilger, John. “John Pilger on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s,” New Statesman, 4 October 2004
52. Rosen, Nir. “The Death of Iraq,” Current History, Volume 106, Issue 704. pg 409
- Arthur Schlesinger Jr.1
Academics and journalists observing the situation in Iraq routinely ask the question “how could the US have more effectively carried out its role of democratizing Iraq?” They then proceed to outline, in essays and articles, the many “mistakes” made by the United States in its noble quest for democracy and freedom. Commentators at the critical extreme conclude that the war itself was a “tactical error,” a “misguided,” though well-intentioned, effort that is unlikely to achieve the goals of the United States. Many have analyzed the tenure of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an authoritarian body assembled through which the US ruled Iraq directly, by decree, in order to advance its quest to bring democracy and liberty to the backward land of Iraq, a notion expressed without irony in mainstream circles. These “critical” investigations generally conclude that individual personalities, specific management styles, and a few poor decisions are to blame for the body's radical unpopularity, eventually resulting in its being forced to abrogate rule of Iraq to a more Iraqi-looking governing institution.
In order to even engage in a discussion so framed, one must accept two crucial assumptions: 1) that US policy is guided by a yearning for democracy and general good intentions, and 2) that no state has the right to defend itself from US attack, including the important corollary that the US has the natural right to impose its will, by force if necessary and feasible. The first assumption totally unsubstantiated; like most acts of aggression, the invasion of Iraq was portrayed as an act of self-defense against an ominous and threatening enemy, guided by noble and selfless objectives. Some of the worst crimes in history have been accompanied by loud proclamations of benevolent intent from the criminals, from the Nazis in World War II to the US in Vietnam, Joseph Stalin to Tony Blair. Since it is predictable that this will be the case, basic tenets of rational inquiry dictate that we should set this rhetoric aside, and look at the facts of the case. Unfortunately, this basic logic is rarely followed in mainstream accounts of the Iraq war.
Such passive compliance was displayed rather starkly in a recent exchange I had with Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post editor and author of the national bestseller Imperial Life in the Emerald City. In the book, an account of the workings of the CPA, he asserts on several occasions and assumes throughout that the objective of US policy is to “create a secular, stable democracy” in Iraq.2 During a Q&A session with the author, I asked him how he had arrived at this conclusion, pointing out the substantial volume of evidence contained in his own book contradicting this claim.3 With the look of a deer in headlights, Chandrasekaran eventually managed to stammer out “because it's the policy,” which he had faithfully recorded at press conferences and subsequently parroted in his book. His was response was deeply revealing of the degree to which he had internalized the Party Line – our objectives are noble, and it is our right to carry them out all over the world, however we deem necessary. However, in order to conduct a rational inquiry, we must examine the facts. To do so requires separating fact from fiction, rhetoric from action.
While there should never have been much controversy over the true motivations behind US policy given the long, clear documentary record, recent events make the logical conclusion almost painfully obvious. Since World War II, when the US began planning the construction an international order in which, according to planning documents, it would “hold unquestioned power,”4 US planners have recognized the oil reserves of the Gulf region as “a stupendous source of strategic power.”5 That control of energy is an important lever of world control has not been lost on state managers, who realize that the US owes a good portion of its dominance to its control of this vital resource.6 In fact, these principles are by now deeply institutionalized, and we can readily observe them in practice. On two occasions this year, President Bush has issued signing statements which declare the right of US state and corporate power to secure “United States control of the oil resources of Iraq,” as well as protecting efforts to “provide for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq.”7 These permanent military bases will allow the US to project its power throughout the whole of the crucial energy-producing region of the world, further subordinating it to US state and corporate interests. The illegal US attack on Iraq, which has the third largest oil reserves in the world, against massive public outcry from around the world, must be seen in this context. Despite the mountain of evidence revealing the nature of US intentions, mainstream accounts routinely dismiss as “conspiracy theories” arguments that the war was over control of oil, in defense of the doctrinal system which they have internalized.8 Adopting the uncritical approach of Chandrasekaran and so many others, accepting standard assumptions at face value, has only one merit: it prevents us from having to see what is happening right before our eyes. While we can set aside the first assumption on grounds of predictability, it does not stand up to scrutiny in any event.
Removing the mask of “good intentions” and revealing the true motivations and goals of US foreign policy has grave implications for the latter assumption as well. If the US is not universally guided by noble and virtuous goals, then from where does it derive the right to impose its will on others? Stripped of doublespeak, the operative principle behind these standard assumptions is now revealed: the United States is a lawless rogue state that has the right to compel others to act in accordance with its wishes, through the use of terror and violence if it deems such methods necessary. The “comprehensive U.S. campaign to undermine the [International Criminal Court],” in the words of Human Rights Watch, as well as other institutions and structures which may restrict its ability to use force to impose its will, is particularly disturbing when cast in this light.9 It is morally unacceptable, let alone illegal, for a state to impose its naked self-interest using any means that it deems necessary, inflicting destruction, pain and suffering on a colossal scale.
Now that the folly of both primary assumptions has been made clear, we can observe that there are actually three questions which must be answered: 1) what were the objectives of the Coalition Provisional Authority; 2) how well did it succeed in fulfilling these objectives, and; 3) how could it meet them more effectively? Given the understanding of US policy reached earlier, the objectives of the CPA should not be difficult to identify. It should rule Iraq for as long as possible, directly implementing the US-directed transformation of Iraqi economic and social life to meet the needs, interests, and desires of the occupier with as little interference as possible from the trivial concerns of the natives. Perhaps most important among these objectives is to ensure that the legal and social conditions are optimized for the creation of a reliable client regime that will house permanent US military bases and permit western multinational corporations to control Iraq's economy, in particular its vast resource wealth. Since polls taken throughout the period of CPA rule (and right up until the present) reveal the Iraqi population to have been resoundingly opposed to each these vital goals, democracy is thus a major threat which must be suppressed and destroyed if possible.
Turning to the actual record of the CPA, it does not take long to realize that these were, in fact, its primary objectives. Resisting pressures for democracy and representation, and implanting itself for as long as possible were at the top of the list. After the invasion, the US and UK announced at once that they would not accept any timetable for withdrawal.10 Likewise, the CPA leadership remained steadfastly opposed to elections and any other form of direct Iraqi participation until its hand was forced by the growing Iraqi resistance, which eventually succeeded in driving the CPA out of the country far earlier than had been planned.11 US Proconsul Paul Bremer's arrogance toward even his “handpicked”12 council of advisors, the Iraqi Governing Council, was such that he eventually drove them to go before the UN to demand an end to the direct US occupation, winning a deadline for the Council to present a timetable and hold elections.13
The conflict which emerged during the tenure of the CPA was between Iraqis, overwhelmingly demanding freedom, democracy, and independence, and the US authorities, who were engaged in a desperate effort to stifle these demands. Early in the occupation, a large nonviolent resistance movement took root, lead in part by Ayatollah Sistani, which demanded “that Iraq's constitution had to be written by elected representatives,” insisting that “an American-selected drafting committee is 'unacceptable',” views that were “all but ignored by the CPA.”14 The reasons for this opposition were clear. While the CPA leadership officially rejected elections “because voter rolls and election laws didn't exist,” the “real reason was that [Bremer] feared Baathists or religious extremists might triumph.”15 As Rory Stewart, former Provisional Governor of the Maysan province put it, expressing the conventional logic, “if councils were elected, we would lose control.”16 If there are going to be elections, the CPA would first have to ensure that its favored parties would win. The definition of a “free democratic election” is thus one which serves the interests of the US.17 When scrutinized, the level of contempt for democracy is startling.
While the resistance intensified, the CPA even ended up struggling against the US-appointed Governing Council, which began to push back and demand elections, encouraged by the massive public outcry.18 Yet it was crucial that elements be included in the new Constitution which would allow the privatization of Iraq's economy and allow the long-term stationing of foreign forces on Iraqi soil, objectives which could not safely be left to elected representatives, who may respond to the will of the masses and reject these measures. Unable to get the Governing Council to agree to appoint drafters, the CPA, in concert with Washington, decided to simply write an interim Constitution itself called the “Transitional Administrative Law.” It was “drafted primarily by the Americans,” with “little Iraqi control of the process, which provided no real opportunity for public debate or participation.”19 While the TAL originally called for elections to be held almost a full year later, even this provision was “deleted” after “Rice and Powell voiced concerns.”20
The plan, as Bremer presented it to the Governing Council, involved three parts, very revealing of the US agenda. First, the interim Constitution would be drafted by the CPA; second, “allowing American troops to remain in Iraq after the transfer of sovereignty”; and third a caucus system for choosing the interim government that would oversee the drafting of the Constitution.21 As expected, the members of the Governing Council accepted the first two points, without a problem, but they were unable to accept the third due to tremendous pressure from the population. The Iraqi resistance, represented by Sistani, strongly rejected the caucus system, which would “not meet the expectations of the people of Iraq,” because “the mechanism in place to choose members of the transitional assembly does not guarantee the establishment of an assembly that truly represents the Iraqi people.”22 The nonviolent movement demanded that “the mechanism must be replaced which guarantees the aforesaid, which is elections, so the assembly will emanate from the desire of the Iraqi people and will represent them fairly” and continued to reject proposals from Bremer that offered much less.23 Sistani's plan, supported by the resistance movement, was to hold elections using the food ration cards as voter registration cards, a plan Bremer insisted was unworkable, even long after it had already been employed in Maysan and Dhi Qar, in defiance CPA orders.24 Furthermore, after his experience in both of these provinces, Rory Stewart concluded in his book that “we should have held elections all over Iraq.”25
Eventually, the UN became involved, sending Lakhdar Brahimi to Iraq to determine whether or not it was possible for elections to be held, as way of settling the dispute between the US occupation and the Iraqi people. Of course, it is extremely rare for the UN to stare down the US so directly. Before long, Brahimi “announced that it would not be possible to hold elections,” and Sistani dropped his demands.26 Rather than elections, the interim government would be “picked in the equivalent of a smoke-filled room,” which would “give [the US] the influence [it] sought,” as it would have “veto power over who was chosen.”27 It was a huge victory toward the US goal of opposing democracy for as long as possible, allowing it to build institutions and establish laws that would protect its interests even after it was forced to hold formal elections. “America's guy,” former CIA asset Iyad Allawi, was made Prime Minister of the appointed government, packed with supporters of the occupation and the US-sponsored political-economic order.28 The appointed government was a transparent US attempt to buy time, while the TAL was clearly an attempt to ensure as much US control over future legal arrangements in Iraq as possible, free from unwarranted Iraqi interference. The appointed government was to remain in place for seven months, after which elections would finally be held in January 2005.29
Another CPA priority was an economic transformation which would damage, hopefully permanently, democracy and independence by destroying economic sovereignty.30 The key objective in this regard was to advance and permanentize the transformation desired by the US to the furthest extent possible.31 “An integral part of the US mission,”32 opposed by the vast majority of Iraqis,33 was for an “economic restructuring” that would subject Iraq's battered economy to the “globalized, free market system” after it had been pulverized by war and crippled by a decade of brutal sanctions.34 The Bremer Laws, as they became known, were promulgated by decree and targeted toward encouraging the takeover of Iraq's economy by western banks and multinational corporations while cutting vital subsidies to the desperately impoverished population, the same program of “shock therapy” promoted by the US and international institutions connected to it which has proven to be catastrophic for people in dozens of countries all over the world.35 Under Saddam, “the cost of most goods and services were subsidized by the government” to make up for the fact that “paychecks were low.”36 It was decided by the neoliberals in Washington and now Baghdad, who had an “unshakeable faith in the power of the free market,” that these measures were inefficient and a waste of resources, despite their own predictions that their proposed “bitter medicine” would be a disaster for the Iraqi people and economy.37 “Instead of using government money to create jobs,” the US plan would “reduce the role of government in industry through privatization, eliminate subsidies” to the struggling population for food, fuel, electricity, and other vital items, “cut tariffs, lower taxes, promote foreign investment, and enact pro-business laws.”38 The US plan to “dismantle the safety net” even included destroying Iraq's public healthcare system, making Iraqis “pay a fee every time they saw a doctor,”39 and instituting a “market-based system to distribute drugs” as “part of the strategy to refashion Iraq's socialist healthcare system Iraq's socialist healthcare system into one that looked more American,” the most wasteful, inefficient, and least effective model in the industrialized world.40
With the clock ticking on the period of direct rule by the US, during which it could implement such measures without fear of the Iraqi people gaining too much of a voice in the process, the measures would have to be enacted quickly.41 USAID and the Treasury Department instructed their contractors to “promote private sector involvement... especially in the oil and supporting sectors.”42 Private control of oil resources (and the rest of the economy for that matter) was crucial to attaining US objectives, as it would remove control of Iraqi resources from the public arena, accountable to the will of the people (at least in theory), and place it in the hands of private oligarchs who would naturally be much more susceptible to the imperial will.
All told, with Bremer's economic program, the US enacted laws that gave foreign investors equal rights with Iraqis in the domestic market, allowing foreign ownership of 100% of Iraqi assets, permitted the full repatriation of profits, instituted a flat tax, abolished tariffs, instituted strict intellectual property rights, sold off a wide range of state-owned companies, opened the banking system to foreign takeover, reduced much-needed fuel and food subsidies to the struggling population, and privatized many of Iraq's social services, such as health, education, and water delivery.43 In accordance with the key US objectives discussed above, these measures were enshrined and protected in the TAL, and later in the permanent Constitution as well.44 Early handover of sovereignty, forced on the CPA by the Iraqi resistance, seriously obstructed these programs and blocked privatization.
All of these measures are fundamentally wrong and immoral, not merely “tactical errors,” enough reason for them to be rescinded immediately. They are also part of a series of war crimes which the US has knowingly and deliberately committed in Iraq. As Middle East expert Juan Cole put it, writing in October 2003,
[the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949] and international legal tradition forbid introducing major changes into the character of an occupied society, including making major alterations in civil and commercial law. It is now clear that the US intends to impose of the Iraqi economy a shock therapy of the sort that was so disastrous in post-Soviet Russia. This move, in the absence of a sovereign Iraqi government, is simply illegal.45
In this, he was echoing the opinion of Lord Goldsmith, the top legal advisor to Tony Blair, who suggested that the entire CPA was illegal, writing in a memo to the PM that “the general principle is that an Occupying Power does not become the government of the occupied territory,” adding that “wide-ranging reforms of governmental and administrative structures would not be lawful” and that “imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be lawful.”46
In fact, the invasion itself is a war crime, a textbook case of aggression. In the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried Nazi leaders for crimes such as preventive war, such an act is “essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."47 The war constituted such an act as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgement (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as paragraph 498 of US Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).
The subsequent terror bombing of Baghdad is characterized in the “shock and awe” doctrine as follows:
Shock and awe are actions that create fears, dangers, and destruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the threat society, or the leadership. Nature in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, uncontrolled fires, famine, and disease can engender shock and awe.48
Article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defined the term “war crimes” to include “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.” The infliction of “shock and awe” on the residents of Baghdad most certainly constitutes wanton destruction, and is not excused by “military necessity,” which is of course always defined by the laws of war. On May 1, 2003, when the President landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier and announced “Mission Accomplished” in a carefully choreographed media event, the United States officially became the belligerent occupant of Iraq under international law, a legal role affirmed by the United Nations in Security Council Resolution 1483. This confers several legal responsibilities on the United States, to which it has consistently failed to live up, explored below.
As we have seen, we can discard the claims of “spreading democracy” uncritically accepted and repeated in mainstream scholarship and news reports about the war, itself a serious war crime. Our original question, “how could the US more effectively carry out its role of democratizing Iraq,” can thus be better expressed as “how can we more effectively carry out an illegal war of aggression and subsequent occupation, and more successfully repress the population?” Intellectuals in criminal states throughout history have been faced with the very same question. Yet it is immoral, and even inhuman, to accept these parameters for discussion. As Noam Chomsky wrote in 1967,
By entering into the arena of argument and counterargument, of technical feasibility and tactics, of footnotes and citations, by accepting the presumption of legitimacy of debate on certain issues, one has already lost one's humanity. This is the feeling I find almost impossible to repress when going through the motions of building a case against the American war in Vietnam. Anyone who puts a fraction of his mind to the task can construct a case that is overwhelming; surely this is now obvious. In an important way, by doing so he degrades himself, and insults beyond measure the victim of our violence and our moral blindness... The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men, including all of us who have allowed it to go on and on with endless fury and destruction – all of us who would have remained silent had stability and order been secured. It is not pleasant to use such words, but candor permits no less.49
By framing our inquiry in this fashion, we are ignoring the crucial moral question – should the US behave in a criminal fashion and engage in exploitation, violence, and oppression. There is no virtuous solution to the “supreme international crime.” As a result, we are left to find the solution that is the least awful.
The task of identifying what the United States should do from this point is made significantly easier by observing elementary moral principles. The primary responsibility of an occupying force is to withdraw as quickly as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population. Any occupying force has a moral responsibility to act in accordance with the wishes and needs of the occupied. With this in mind, we can observe that not only is the very existence of the CPA probably illegal, but it is also immoral and illegitimate. It therefore follows that the measures it enacted should be rescinded as soon as possible, leaving a body of Iraqis' choosing to craft a legal system which they believe best for their country. It is simply unacceptable for the United States to attack and destroy Iraq, then transform its laws and society in accordance with our wishes.50 In the case of Iraq, the will of the occupied was clear from very early on: they demanded elections, real sovereignty, and independence.
A good place to start would be following the legal responsibilities conferred upon the United States as a belligerent occupier. One such responsibility is to provide for the general well-being of the population, including food, healthcare, and education. Cutting vital subsidies which ensure that most of the population has the basic means to survive is thus a serious breach of this responsibility. The CPA should have preserved, and even enhanced if possible, Iraq's public healthcare system to ensure that everyone has access to the best care resources allow. In fact, subsidy programs should have been dramatically increased to make up for the hardship undergone as a result of the barbaric US attacks on population centers and the general despair among Iraqis as a result of the economic collapse from a decade of “genocidal” US-sponsored sanctions, in the words of Dennis Halliday, the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Baghdad who resigned after more than 30 years of service in disgust.51 Instituting the flat tax, apart from its obvious economic injustice, helped prevent much-needed social spending as well.
Elections should have been encouraged, controlled not by a US controlled occupation administration but by impartial international institutions such as the UN General Assembly, with the United States bearing all the costs and providing security, without interfering in the political process or economic affairs any more than is necessary for that purpose. Withdrawal and the restoration of full sovereignty should then follow, by definition negating the need for the construction of the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad or any of the permanent military bases currently being built across the country. Finally, those states responsible for destroying Iraqi society with cruel sanctions, military actions, and supporting Saddam Hussein's worst atrocities must pay massive reparations and supply other aid as needed. This would hardly be an ideal solution, just the least awful. As Nir Rosen, a top Iraq expert, recently wrote, "Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols, who sacked Baghdad in the 13th century Only fools talk of 'solutions' now. There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained."52
And so we turn to the question so often pondered among those who hope to prevent repetition of some perceived calamity in the future: what lessons can be learned from this experience? This question is more complicated than it may at first appear, and actually has three parts: 1) what lessons were learned; 2) what lessons should be learned; and 3) who should learn them? The world has indeed learned a lesson from the US attack on Iraq and subsequent occupation: that the US is a fiercely aggressive, lawless “rogue state,” intent on pursuing the interests of its ruling elite through the use of violence, terror, and repression if it deems such measures necessary and feasible. It has proclaimed and demonstrated that its actions cannot be restrained by any laws, norms, or public outcry worldwide. It will act as it chooses, when it chooses, and will continue to do so, along with whatever pain and suffering that entails. This is the lesson the US wanted to drive home.
Americans should learn an important lesson about the position of their government on issues like democracy, freedom, self-determination, and the rule of law. The hatred and contempt for democracy displayed by the Bush administration, not just in Iraq but in the US as well, has been stunning. They would be well served to learn from the Iraqis, who have learned that if they stand together, they can force the US occupation to bend to their will. They fought for elections, and eventually got them. They fought for the end of US “direct rule,” despite the CPA plan “not to hold elections in the foreseeable future,” and they won, driving out the American dictator, Bremer, and his cohorts. They have stood together as unionists, religions people, and all sects to block the oil law, and have so far succeeded. They have gathered by the tens of thousands to resist the SOFA, which would allow for the continued occupation of their country by US forces, and have successfully prevented the passage of this measure as well, despite intense pressure from the US and its Iraqi allies. Indeed, it is the courageousness of the Iraqi resistance which has so far made the most progress toward ending the grotesque injustice perpetuated on them.
Like the incredible Vietnamese resistance of the previous generation, they have taught US leaders that they cannot go marauding around the planet torturing, maiming, killing, and imprisoning those who stand in their way. US state managers will find increased resistance all around the world to such acts of naked aggression, and it will become more difficult to act against the wishes of what the New York Times has referred to as a “second superpower” - global public opinion, which is becoming increasingly outspoken, perhaps to unprecedented levels. The next victims of American violence should take notice of the Iraqi example. The limits of American power are openly on display at the moment. They should learn it is not invincible. By struggling against the oppression of the mighty empire, people should take notice that they can win.
Any degree of justice requires intense, relentless, organized struggle. Not only can this lesson be applied universally, to victims of oppression and injustice worldwide, it must – our future depends on it. Through popular struggle, all around the world, US elites can be taught the most important lesson of all: respect for law, democracy, and human dignity, and an end to the barbaric use of wanton violence as an instrument of policy.
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Endnotes:
1. Schlesinger Jr., Arthur, “Good Foreign Policy a Casualty of War: Today, It is We Americans Who Live in Infamy.” Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar 2003.
2. He does so without providing argument or evidence. He writes: “in the pentagon, the view was that Chalabi and his colleagues were going to lead the way in creating a secular, stable democracy” (pg 37); “State Department personnel... [organized] working groups to study issues of critical importance in the postwar period... most important, the formation of a democratic government” (pg 40); “if the old guard were allowed to stick around, [the US-backed Iraqi elites] maintained, there would be no way a democracy would bloom” (pg 80); “veteran Middle East hands were regarded as insufficiently committed to democratizing the region” (pg 97); “America was working in the best interests of the Iraqi people” (pg 142); “the President had expressed an impassioned desire to transform Iraq into a model democracy in the Middle East” (pg 179). Chandrasekaran absurdly and illogically insists that “Bremer was bringing democracy to Iraq” (pg 130), despite evidence and statements by Chandrasekaran himself which contradict this conclusion, presented without comment or discussion. He describes how one main problem pre-war planners were dealing with was “how to install Chalabi and other trusted exiles as national leaders” (pg 34); despite his earlier insistence on the truly democratic tendencies of the Defense Department, he writes that “the military did not appear to care about helping ORHA” (pg 56) and that the ORHA had gone to Iraq with “no plan, no money, and a skeletal staff” (pg 58). He describes in detail how the US handpicked those who were to lead Iraq, “a small council comprised of the most prominent exiled politicians,” making sure they were all “people the US had worked with before” and who “had impeccable anti-Saddam credentials,” although that was not the only ideological test these leaders had to pass (pg 58). These leaders were backed even after “it became clear that most of the [US-supported] internals did not want the exiles to be in charge” (pg 60). According the Chandrasekaran, while the Pentagon supported these leaders, as part of its policy of “creating a secular, stable democracy,” the State Department “believed that authority should rest with the United States, either through a military commander or civilian governor, until a representative group of Iraqis, internals as well as exiles, formed a government” (pg 59). As further evidence of the efforts the Pentagon was making to create a democracy, Chandrasekaran writes that when Jay Garner mentioned that elections could be held within 90 days “it infuriated his bosses at the Pentagon, who feared that an election would not be in the best interests of the exiles,” who had been picked by the US and vetted to ensure their compliance with US policy (pg 59). Similarly, his proposal “alarmed Rice” (pg 61). Initiatives were started to “make the process appear participatory” (pg 60), while “the plan all along was to have a 'man of stature' take charge in Baghdad” (pg 61); “Bremer had come to Iraq to build not just a democracy but a free market” (pg 70); “Bremer needed only put down his signature to impose a new law, or abolish an old one,” and “wasn't required to consult with Iraqis or even seek their consent” (pg 71); he refers to Bremer as a “dictator” (pg 74); he credits Bremer with saying “there would be no interim government. The United States was not going to end its occupation anytime soon. When one of the exiles interrupted him to say that Iraqis wanted Iraqis in charge, not Americans, he bristled” (pg. 89); “questions about government services were punted to the Governing Council, to perpetuate the myth that it had real authority” (pg 147); Bremer had “rejected the idea of holding early elections, he said, because voter rolls and election laws didn't exist. But the real reason was that he feared Baathists or religious extremists might triumph” (pg 186); “the selection of the government, the most significant step on Iraq's path to democracy” - assumed to be the path that Iraq is indeed traveling down - “was anything but democratic” (pg 276). This in addition to Chandrasekaran's lengthy description of the depserate US struggle to prevent elections from happening, in defiance of the increasingly outspoken will of the Iraqi people. Of course, there is much documentary evidence which further reveals the actual intentions of the US, not mentioned by Chandrasekaran.
3. See fn.2. Chandrasekaran apparently found unimportant the incessant declarations from Washington and London that the “single question” in which they were interested was whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or if he had fully disarmed in accordance with UN Resolution 1441 (see “President George Bush Discusses Iraq in National Press Conference,” Office of the Press Secretary, 6 Mar 2003, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030306-8.html). They did not announce democracy promotion as an objective until after this earlier pretext began to crumble. Yet a look through the index of Chandrasekaran's book yields not a single entry for “weapons of mass destruction,” and only one for the Iraq Survey Group, in which Chandrasekaran casually describes it as “the CIA team searching for weapons” (pg 288). He does say that “by 2004, leaders of the CIA-led team searching for weapons of mass destruction had all but concluded that Iraq didn't possess nuclear, biological, or chemical munitions,” but quickly qualifies the statement by adding that “what Iraq did have, and there was no doubt about it, was the knowledge to manufacture anthrax, nerve gas, and quite possibly, a crude nuclear device” (pg 284). Chandrasekaran does not mention that the supposed authorization to use force in UN Resolution 678, which was used to justify the attack on Iraq, “must be limited to what is necessary to achieve the objectives of that resolution, namely Iraqi disarmament, and must be a proportionate response to that objective” as Lord Goldsmith, top legal advisor to Tony Blair, expressed in a memo to the Prime Minister just as the war was beginning (Goldsmith's memo is available at http://www.juancole.com/2003/10/anglo-american-occupation-committing.html). Naturally, the fact that scientists in Iraq have knowledge which they could theoretically use to make WMDs is not enough justification to invade, destroy, occupy, and transform it, in violation of international law, norms, and any code of morality.
4. Shoup, Lawrence and William Minter, “Imperial Brain Trust.” Monthly Review, 1977, 130. Shoup and Minter's study of the War and Peace Studies project of the Council on Foreign Relations and State Department from 1939 to 1945.
5. US Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States. 1945, viii, 45.
6. As Roosevelt Administration “oil czar” Harold Ickes advised the President, the “Middle East presented an important key to postwar economic problems and to basic international political arrangements.” (Bronson, Rachel. Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership With Saudi Arabia. Oxford University Press, 2006. pp. 39 – 40). In other words, control over this oil would give the US the ability to shape those political arrangements. This realization continues right up to the present. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recognized this recently, writing “America's security role in the region gives it indirect but politically critical leverage on the European and Asian economies that are also dependent on energy exports from the region” (Brzezinski, Zbignew. “Hegemonic Quicksand,” The National Interest Winter 2003-04. www.kas.de/upload/dokumente/brzezinski.pdf). Since the US is able to control the flow of energy (who gets it, and who doesn't) it is able to exert tremendous influence over international affairs.
7. Most recently see Savage, Charlie “Bush Declares Exceptions to Sections of Two Bills He Signed Into Law,” New York Times. 14 October 2008. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/washington/15signing.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin. He had previously issued a similar statement in January, “President Bush Signs H.R. 4986, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 into Law.” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, January 28, 2008. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/01/print/20080128-10.html
8. Rajiv Chandrasekaran echoed this charge more than once during the same Q&A session described earlier. He also refers in his book to “conspiratorial, xenophobic fears” of Iraqi workers that their economy would be taken over by foreigners (Chandrasekaran, 141). Rory Stewart, who served as the Provincial Governor of Maysan and also worked in Dhi Qar, writes “I asked [the soldiers on guard duty outside the CPA] why they thought they were there. 'To take their oil, right?' said the Puerto Rican, laughing. And I smiled. Later I heard a British soldier say the same, and I wondered whether some soldiers didn't half wish that the conspiracy theorists had been right and that their country was at least getting free oil out of the invasion” [Stewart, Rory. The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. Harcourt Books, 2006. pg 104]. It is important to mention that the soldiers comments also reveal an important distinction which is worth pointing out: the difference between access and control. If it was simply “free oil” that the US/UK was looking for in Iraq, he invasion would never be worth it. Rather, it would make more sense to just buy the oil from Saddam – he was certainly selling, given the dire straits in which Iraq found itself as a result of the sanctions. Rather, they seek control of the oil, deciding who is and is not able to access the vital resource. In the words of George Kennan, this gives the US “veto power” over the actions of other states, always poised with its hand on the light switch. Should that state pursue policy which the US finds unfavorable, it can turn off the lights. Obviously, control of Iraq's substantial oil resources would be a substantial source of strategic leverage for the United States.
9. It is interesting to note that the US effort to destroy the ICC intensified in the period before the Iraq war, eliminating an instrument of the rule of law under which they could be held accountable for their many crimes. The hypocrisy of CPA attempts to establish the “rule of law” in Iraq is made startlingly clear when juxtaposed with these efforts. “The Bush administration's hostility to the ICC has increased dramatically in 2002,” Human Rights Watch recently reported, adding that “U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of America's closest allies.” The United States was also one of only “7 nations (joining China, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Qatar and Israel) to vote against the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998.” In this, the US finds itself in interesting company, in league with some of the worst human rights violators in the world. Building on Clinton's early rejection of the court, “in an unprecedented diplomatic maneuver on 6 May,” Bush “effectively withdrew the U.S. signature on the treaty,” which “has paved the way for a comprehensive U.S. campaign to undermine the ICC.” This campaign has included 3 main elements, a Human Rights Watch has reported. First, the US has “negotiated a Security Council resolution to provide an exemption for U.S. personnel operating in U.N. peacekeeping operations” after the failure of which the US strong armed the UN, vetoing “an extension of the UN peacekeeping mission for Bosnia-Herzegovina unless the Security Council granted a complete exemption.” By using this bullying tactic, the US was able to secure “a limited, one year exemption for U.S. personnel participating in UN peacekeeping missions or UN authorized operations,” which the “Security Council has expressed its intention to renew” on June 30. The second element of the US war on the international justice system is “requesting states around the world to approve bilateral agreements requiring them not to surrender American nationals to the ICC,” with the goal of “exempting U.S. nationals from ICC jurisdiction” and create “a two-tiered rule of law for the most serious international crimes: one that applies to U.S. nationals; another that applies to the rest of the world's citizens.” Thirdly, the US Congress has assisted these efforts at achieving legal impunity. On August 3, President Bush signed the “American Servicemembers Protection Act,” which includes several shocking provisions. These include a prohibition on US cooperation with the ICC; “an 'invasion of the Hague' provision authorizing the President to 'use all means necessary and appropriate' to free U.S. personnel (and certain allied personnel) detained or imprisoned by the ICC”; punishment for states that join the treaty, including the refusal to send aid to states that become signatories; and “a prohibition on U.S. participation in peacekeeping activities unless immunity from the ICC is guaranteed for U.S. Personnel.” (See the “The United States and the International Criminal Court,” Human Rights Watch. Available at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/icc/us.htm).
10. On March 28, 2003, almost immediately after the invasion, the New York Times reported that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair “could not put a timetable on the war” at a joint press conference, with President Bush declaring that the US will stay in Iraq “however long it takes to win.” (Bumiller, Elisabeth “A NATION AT WAR: THE LEADERS; Standing Together, Blair Is Expansive and Bush Is Terse.” 28 Mar 2003).
11. “Baghdad had written an email saying that 'we agreed from the moment of the invasion that there were to be no elections in Iraq in the foreseeable future” (Stewart, 296). According to Chandrasekaran, very shortly after the CPA was formed, in a meeting with the US-backed exiles who were to take power, Bremer “got right to the point” and declared that “there would be no [appointed] interim government [of Iraqis],” adding that “the United States was not going to be ending its occupation anytime soon.” (Chandrasekaran, 88). Chandrasekaran traces the roots of this approach back to the President, who allegedly “told Bremer to slow it down” (Chandrasekaran, 89). Bremer agreed to “form a council of twenty-five Iraqis strictly to advise him on policy matters,” on the condition that they be “handpicked by the viceroy” (Chandrasekaran, 89 – 90). The council had so little sway over policy that it did not take long before the members, whom Bremer “viewed as lackeys” (Chandrasekaran, 210), simply “stopped attending meetings” (Chandrasekaran, 185).
12. Chandrasekaran, 90
13. Ibid, 215. According to Chandrasekaran, “the resolution turned out to be no more than words on paper,” since “the Governing Council did not receive any additional power from Bremer.”
14. Chandrasekaran, 191. One of Bremer's aides later stated in an interview that Sistani's demand that the vital task of Constitution-writing be trusted with elected representatives “didn't register.”
15. Chandrasekaran, 186
16. Stewart, 296
17. As Rory Stewart wrote in his book, the US and UK were seeking a government that was “democratic in the widest sense: better for Iraqis and stable and friendly towards us.” (Stewart, 258).
18. After Bremer “met with the Council members to make one last attempt to get them to agree on something other than elections to select the drafters” and they refused, he decided he would just have the CPA itself “draft an interim Constitution.” (Chandrasekaran, 223).
19. Stewart, 339
20. Chandrasekaran, 224 – 225
21. Chandrasekaran, 227
22. Chandrasekaran, 231 – 232
23. Chandrasekaran, 232
24. “Toby Bradley [Political Officer in Dhi Qar]... had disobeyed Baghdad over the district councils and held elections in fifteen districts. He was planning to hold one more in this district. His elections were rough and ready affairs, with the voter rolls drawn from lists of ration-card holders” [Stewart, 296]. For Sistani's suggestion, see Chandrasekaran, 232. Once it came time to figure out how elections would be held “several CPA staffers maintained that a national database used to dole out monthly food rations could be used to provide a reasonably accurate estimate of how many people lived in each province,” the exact system the CPA had been publicly insisting was unworkable (Chandrasekaran, 280).
25. Stewart, 305
26. Chandrasekaran, 233
27. Chandrasekaran, 234. Even though the government was technically chosen by Brahimi, in practice it was formed by the US and forced on him. As Chandrasekaran writes, “Brahimi felt used. The Americans didn't want his advice, just his imprimatur” (Chandrasekaran, 278).
28. Chandrasekaran, 227
29. There was a debate between those who wanted to use Sistani's suggestion of the ration card database to figure out how many people lived in each province (the very system which the CPA had insisted would not work), and those who wanted to make the whole country a single-district. Despite the success of the elections based on the ration-card system in Dhi Qar and Maysan, ultimately the US opted to go with the vastly inferior method of making Iraq into a single district. It is unclear why this decision was made, and Chandrasekaran does not offer a satisfying explanation. It seems likely therefore that the main reason for this decision was for the CPA to save face after its loud public claims about the validity of the ration-card system. Indeed, using the ration-card system would be tantamount to an admission that elections could have been held all along (see Chandrasekaran, 279 – 280).
30. As Noam Chomsky wrote, “without economic sovereignty, prospects for healthy development are slight, and political independence verges on formality” [See Chomsky, Noam. “How to Get Out of Iraq?” The Nation, May 6, 2004].
31. In Bremer's own words, his “top priority” in Iraq was “economic reform,” which meant a mission to “corporatize and privatize state-owned enterprises” and eliminate subsidies Saddam had provided for his people for food, gasoline, electricity and other vital items. Chandrasekaran writes that after hearing the US plan to cut crucially important subsidies to the people for food, Chandrasekaran writes that he “was struck by [Bremer's] zeal to help the people of Iraq,” and found his “emphasis on the future refreshing.” “I found myself believing in Bremer,” he wrote. (Chandrasekaran, 70 – 71).
32. Chandrasekaran, 130
33. Chandrasekaran writes that it “had little resonance on Iraqi streets (Chandrasekaran, 124). See also opinion polls taken throughout the course of the occupation.
34. Chandrasekaran, 124
35. Quotation from Chandrasekaran, 142. “The plan envisioned the sale of state-owned enterprises through a broad-based privatization program,” while despite the fact that “Iraqis were wary of full foreign ownership,” the US implemented “investment laws that were blind as to whether the investor is from that country or elsewhere” (Chandrasekaran, 131). The programs were designed to “lure multinational firms into Iraq with the promise that they could own not just 49 percent, but 100 percent , of the businesses they established” (Chandrasekaran, 141).
36. Chandrasekaran, 125
37. It was acknowledged internally that the policy may allow “tens of thousands of workers to be fired by private investors” (Chandrasekaran, 254). One CPA staffer said the plan was “nothing short of a death sentence for all but the strongest state-owned enterprises” which would lead to the “destruction of otherwise viable companies” (Chandrasekaran, 139). The CPA also predicted that “dismantling the safety net could spark unrest,” as the population may not be able to afford the basic means to survive. (Chandrasekaran, 178). Offensively, in light of these facts, and ignorant of the long, sad history of these programs all around the world, Chandrasekaran dismisses fears among the population over their implementation as “conspiratorial” and “xenophobic” (Chandrasekaran, 141).
38. Chandrasekaran, 132
39. Chandrasekaran, 242
40. Chandrasekaran, 245
41. “[Bremer] wanted to move forward right away with privatization and the elimination of subsidies,” [Chandrasekaran, 132]; “[Investment banker in charge of privatization Thomas] Foley told a contractor from Bearing-Point that he intended to privatize all of Iraq's state-owned enterprises within thirty days” [Chandrasekaran, 142].
42. Chandrasekaran, 131
43. Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. 2007, Cambridge University Press. pg. 290; Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 39, Foreign Investment. September 19, 2003. Available at http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/index.html#Regulations
44. For a critical analysis of the permanent Constitution and the process of writing it, see my “Embedding Imperialism,” available at http://rationalmanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/10/embedding-imperialism-iraqi.html
45. Cole, Juan. "Anglo-American Occupation Committing Illegalities?" Informed Comment, 1 Oct 2003. http://www.juancole.com/2003/10/anglo-american-occupation-committing.html
46. Available at http://www.juancole.com/2003/10/anglo-american-occupation-committing.html
47. Article 3 of UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 states that “any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of article 2, qualify as an act of aggression: (a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State on the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof; (b) Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State; (d) An attack by the armed forces of a State on the land, sea or air forces, or marine and air fleets of another State.”
48. Bud Edny, “Appendix A: Thoughts on Rapid Dominance,” in Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: NDU Press Book, 1996), pg 110.
49. Chomsky, Noam. American Power and the New Mandarins, Pantheon; 1967. pg. 9
50. For a witty, yet interesting account of some of these activities, see [Lemoine, Ray and Neumann, Jeff. Babylon by Bus. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2006]
51. Pilger, John. “John Pilger on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s,” New Statesman, 4 October 2004
52. Rosen, Nir. “The Death of Iraq,” Current History, Volume 106, Issue 704. pg 409
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