Why
American Troops Can't Go Home
By Michael Schwartz
30 November, 2007
TomDispatch.com
Every
week or so, the Department of Defense conducts a video-conference press
briefing for reporters in Washington, featuring an on-the-ground officer
in Iraq. On November 15th, that briefing was with Col.
Jeffrey Bannister, commander of the Second Brigade of the
Second Infantry Division. He was chosen because of his unit's successful
application of surge tactics in three mainly Shia districts in eastern
Baghdad. He had, among other things, set up several outposts in these
districts offering a 24-hour American military presence; he had also
made generous use of transportable concrete walls meant to separate
and partition neighborhoods, and had established numerous checkpoints
to prevent unauthorized entry or exit from these communities.
As Col. Bannister summed
up the situation:
"We have been effective, and we've seen violence significantly
reduced as our Iraqi security forces have taken a larger role in all
aspects of operations, and we are starting to see harmony between Sunni
and Shi'a alike."
The briefing seemed uneventful
-- very much a reflection of the ongoing mood of the moment among American
commanders in Iraq -- and received no significant media coverage. However,
there was news lurking in an answer Col. Bannister gave to a question
from AP reporter Pauline Jelinek (about arming volunteer local citizens
to patrol their neighborhoods), even if it passed unnoticed. The colonel
made a remarkable reference to an unexplained "five-year plan"
that, he indicated, was guiding his actions. Here was his answer in
full:
"I mean, right now we're focused just on security augmentation
[by the volunteers] and growing them to be Iraqi police because that
is where the gap is that we're trying to help fill capacity for in the
Iraqi security forces. The army and the national police, I mean, they're
fine. The Iraqi police is -- you know, the five-year plan has -- you
know, it's doubling in size. … [We expect to have] 4,000 Iraqi
police on our side over the five-year plan.
"So that's kind
of what we're doing. We're helping on security now, growing them into
IP [Iraqi police]…. They'll have 650 slots that I fill in March,
and over the five-year period we'll grow up to another 2,500 or 3,500.
Most astonishing in his comments is the least astonishing word in our
language: "the." Colonel Bannister refers repeatedly to "the
five-year plan," assuming his audience understands that there is
indeed a master plan for his unit -- and for the American occupation
-- mandating a slow, many-year buildup of neighborhood-protection forces
into full fledged police units. This, in turn, is all part of an even
larger plan for the conduct of the occupation.
Included in this implicit
understanding is the further assumption that Col. Bannister's unit,
or some future replacement unit, will be occupying these areas of eastern
Baghdad for that five-year period until that 4,000 man police force
is finally fully developed.
Staying the Course,
Any Course
A recent Washington Post
political cartoon by Tom
Toles captured the irony and tragedy of this "five-year
plan." A big sign on the White House lawn has the message "We
can't leave Iraq because it's going…" and a workman is adjusting
a dial from "Badly" to "Well."
This cartoon raises the relevant
question: If things are "going well" in Iraq, then why aren't
American troops being withdrawn? This is a point raised persuasively
by Robert Dreyfuss in a recent Tomdispatch
post in which he argues that the decline in three major
forms of violence (car bombs, death-squad executions, and roadside IEDs)
should be the occasion for a reduction, and then withdrawal, of the
American military presence. But, as Dreyfuss notes, the Bush administration
has no intention of organizing such a withdrawal; nor, it seems, does
the Democratic Party leadership -- as indicated by their refusal to
withhold funding for the war, and by the promises of the leading presidential
candidates to maintain significant levels of American troops in Iraq,
at least through any first term in office.
The question that emerges
is why stay this course? If violence has been reduced by more than 50%,
why not begin to withdraw significant numbers of troops in preparation
for a complete withdrawal? The answer can be stated simply: A reduction
in the violence does not mean that things are "going well,"
only that they are going "less badly."
You can tell things can't
be going well if your best-case plan is for an armed occupation force
to remain in a major Baghdad community for the next five years. It means
that the underlying causes of disorder are not being addressed. You
can tell things are not going well if five more years are needed to
train and activate a local police force, when police training takes
about six months. (Consider this an indication that the recruits exhibit
loyalties and goals that run contrary to those of the American military.)
You can tell things are not going well when communities have to be surrounded
by cement walls and checkpoints that naturally disrupt normal life,
including work, school, and daily shopping. These are all signs that
escalating discontent and protest may require new suppressive actions
in the not-so-distant future.
The American
military is well aware of this. They keep reminding us
that the present decline in violence may be temporary, nothing more
than a brief window of opportunity that could be used to resolve some
of the "political problems" facing Iraq before the violence
can be reinvigorated. The current surge -- even "the five year
plan" -- is not designed to solve Iraq's problems, just to hold
down the violence while others, in theory, act.
What Does the Bush
Administration Want in Iraq?
What are the political problems
that require resolution? The typical mainstream media version of these
problems makes them out to be uniquely Iraqi in nature. They stem --
so the story goes -- from deeply engrained friction among Shiites, Sunnis,
and Kurds, frustrating all efforts to resolve matters like the distribution
of political power and oil revenues. In this version, the Americans
are (usually inept) mediators in Iraqi disputes and are fated to remain
in Iraq only because the Bush administration has little choice but to
establish relatively peaceful and equitable solutions to these disputes
before seriously considering leaving.
By now, however, most of
us realize that there is much more to the American purpose in Iraq than
a commitment to an elected government in Baghdad that could peacefully
resolve sectarian tensions. The rhetoric of the Bush administration
and its chief democratic opponents (most notably Senators Hillary
Clinton and
Barack Obama) is increasingly laced with references --
to quote Clinton -- to "vital national security interests"
in the Middle East that will require a continuing "military as
well as political mission." In Iraq, leading Washington politicians
of both parties agree on the necessity of establishing a friendly government
that will welcome the presence of a "residual" American military
force, oppose Iran's regional aspirations, and prevent the country from
becoming "a petri dish for insurgents."
Let's be clear about those
"vital national security interests." America's
vital interests in the Middle East derive from the region's status as
the world's principle source of oil. President Jimmy Carter enunciated
exactly this principle back in 1980 when he promulgated the Carter Doctrine,
stating that the U.S. was willing to use "any means necessary,
including military force," to maintain access to supplies of Middle
Eastern oil sufficient to keep the global economy running smoothly.
All subsequent presidents have reiterated, amplified, and acted on this
principle.
The Bush administration,
in applying the Carter Doctrine, was faced with the need to access increasing
amounts of Middle Eastern oil in light of constantly escalating world
energy consumption. In 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney's Energy Task
Force responded to this challenge by designating Iraq as the linchpin
in a general plan to double Middle Eastern oil production in the following
years. It was reasonable, task force members decided, to hope for a
genuine spurt in production in Iraq, whose oil industry had remained
essentially stagnant (or worse) from 1980 to that moment. By ousting
the backward-looking regime of Saddam Hussein and transferring the further
development, production, and distribution of Iraq's bounteous oil reserves
to multinational oil companies, they would assure the introduction of
modern methods of production, ample investment capital, and an aggressive
urge to increase output. Indeed, after removing Saddam via invasion
in 2003, the Bush administration has made repeated (if so far unsuccessful)
efforts to implement
this plan.
The desire for such an endpoint
has hardly disappeared. It became increasingly clear, however, that
successful implementation of such plans would, at best, take many years,
and that the maintenance of a powerful American political and military
presence within Iraq was a necessary prerequisite to everything else.
Since sustaining such a presence was itself a major problem, however,
it also became clear that America's plans depended on dislodging powerful
forces entrenched in all levels of Iraqi society -- from public opinion
to elected leaders to the insurgency itself.
American ambitions -- far
more than sectarian tensions -- constitute the irresolvable core of
Iraq's political problems. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis oppose
the occupation. They wish the Americans gone and a regime in place in
Baghdad that is not an American ally. (This is true whether you are
considering the Shiite majority or the Sunni minority.) As for a "residual"
American military presence, the
Iraqi Parliament recently passed a resolution demanding
that the UN mandate for a U.S. occupation be rescinded.
Even the issue of terrorism
is controversial. The American propensity to label as "terrorist"
all violent opposition to the occupation means that most Iraqis (57%
in August 2007), when asked, support terrorism as defined by the occupiers,
since majorities in both the Sunni and Shia communities endorse using
violent means to expel the Americans. Hillary Clinton's ambition that
the U.S. must prevent Iraq from becoming a "petri dish for insurgency"
(like the President's stated fear that the country could become the
center of an al-Qaedan "caliphate") will require the forcible
suppression of most resistance to the American presence.
As for opposition to Iran,
60% of Iraqi citizens are Shiites, who have strong historic, religious,
and economic ties to Iran, and who favor friendly relations with their
neighbor. Even Prime Minister Maliki -- the Bush administration's staunchest
ally -- has repeatedly strengthened political, economic, and even military
ties with Iran, causing numerous confrontations with American diplomats
and military officials. As long as the Shia dominate national politics,
they will oppose the American demand that Iraq support the United States
campaign to isolate
and control Iran. If the U.S. insists on an ally in its
anti-Iran campaign, it must find a way in the next few years to alter
these loyalties, as well as Sunni loyalties to the insurgency.
Finally there is that unresolved
question of developing Iraqi oil reserves. For four years, Iraqis of
all sectarian and political persuasions have (successfully) resisted
American attempts to activate the plan first developed
by Cheney's Energy Task Force. They have wielded sabotage of pipelines,
strikes by oil workers, and parliamentary maneuvering, among other acts.
The vast majority of the population -- including a large minority of
Kurds and both the Sunni and Shia insurgencies -- believes that Iraqi
oil should be tightly controlled by the government and therefore support
every effort -- including in many cases violent resistance -- to prevent
the activation of any American plan to transfer control of significant
aspects of the Iraqi energy industry to foreign companies. Implementation
of the U.S. oil proposal therefore will require the long-term suppression
of violent and non-violent local resistance, as well as strenuous maneuvering
at all levels of government.
Foreigners (Americans
Excepted) Not Welcome
This multidimensional opposition
to American goals cannot be defeated simply by diplomatic maneuvering
or negotiations between Washington and the still largely powerless government
inside Baghdad's Green Zone. The Bush administration has repeatedly
gained the support of Prime Minister Maliki and his cabinet for one
or another of its crucial goals -- most recently for the public announcement
that the two governments had agreed that the U.S. would maintain
a "long-term troop presence" inside Iraq. Such an embrace
is never enough, since the opposition operates at so many levels, and
ultimately reaches deep into local communities, where violent and nonviolent
resistance results in the sabotage of oil production, attacks on the
government for its support of the U.S. presence, and direct attacks
on American troops.
Nor can the pursuit of these
goals be transferred -- any time soon -- to an American-trained Iraqi
army and police force. All previous attempts at such a transfer have
yielded Iraqi units that were reluctant to fight for U.S. goals and
could not be trusted unsupervised in the field. The "five year
plan" Colonel Bannister mentioned is an acknowledgement that training
an Iraqi force that truly supports an American presence and would actively
enforce American inspired policies is a distant hope. It would depend
on the transformation of Iraqi political attitudes as well as of civic
and government institutions that currently resist U.S. demands. It would
involve a genuine, successful pacification of the country. In this context,
a decline in the fighting and violence in Iraq, both against the Americans
and between embittered Iraqi communities, is indeed only a first step.
So surge "success"
doesn't mean withdrawal -- yes, some troops will come home slowly --
but the rest will have to embed themselves in Iraqi communities for
the long haul. This situation was summarized well by Captain Jon Brooks,
the commander of Joint Security Station Thrasher in Western Baghdad,
one of the small outposts that represent the front lines of the surge
strategy. When asked by New
Yorker reporter Jon Lee Anderson how long he thought the
U.S. would remain in Iraq, he replied, "I'm not just blowing smoke
up your ass, but it really depends on what the U.S. civilian-controlled
government decides its goals are and what it tells the military to do."
As long as that government
is determined to install a friendly, anti-Iranian regime in Baghdad,
one that is hostile to "foreigners," including all jihadists,
but welcomes an ongoing American military presence as well as multinational
development of Iraqi oil, the American armed forces aren't going anywhere,
not for a long, long time; and no relative lull in the fighting -- temporary
or not -- will change that reality. This is the Catch-22 of Bush administration
policy in Iraq. The worse things go, the more our military is needed;
the better they go, the more our military is needed.
Michael Schwartz,
professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, has written extensively
on popular protest and insurgency. Among other books, he has written
Radical Protest and Social Structure (with Beth Mintz). His
work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites, including Tomdispatch,
Asia Times, Mother Jones, and ZNET. His forthcoming Tomdispatch book,
War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context, will
be published in the spring by Haymarket. His email address is [email protected].
Copyright 2007 Michael Schwartz
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