Arab
Perspective: Playing US Politics With Iraqi Blood For Oil
By Nicola Nasser
06 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Bracing
for 2008 presidential election, US Democrats in opposition and the ruling
Republicans have embroiled the American public in a political crisis
between the executive and legislative powers over deadlines for combat
operations in Iraq that could develop into a constitutional showdown,
but for Arabs and Iraqis in particular it is merely playing electoral
politics with Iraqi blood for oil because the Democratic Alternative
for President George W. Bush’s strategy, when scrutinized, promises
them no fundamental change to the bloody status quo.
Building on the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group of
James Baker and Lee Hamilton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi engaged Syrian
leaders amid cautious Arab diplomatic and media welcome (1) after her
arrival in Damascus on Tuesday in a visit that enraged President George
W. Bush, in the latest manifestation of Democrat-Republican colliding
approaches to secure American national interests in Iraq. Pelosi said
she hoped to rebuild lost confidence between Washington and Damascus,
but American politicians of both mainstream parties have a long way
to go before they could win over the hearts and minds of the wider Arab
masses and redress the negative public image of their country among
Arabs, an image that the occupation of Iraq has damaged probably beyond
repair for a long time to come.
Democrats were perceived by Arabs as promising to offer an alternative
to Bush strategy in Iraq, but so far have merely proved themselves responsive
to their voters’ anti-war sentiments: 60 percent of the public
wants to get out of Iraq, the election defeat of the Republicans was
a strong indication of public sentiment, expectations have risen, yet
the killing goes on, and in some ways gets worse. Yet the Democrats’
supplemental budget bill provides funding to continue the war, while
setting a controversial date to end it, and there is disagreement on
its strategic effect. They could neither raise the “mission accomplished”
banner nor could promise to do so in the near future, not even after
Bush’s constitutional mandate expires. How do frustrated Iraqis
and Arabs make sense of “this” Democratic alternative?
Large majorities of Arabs want U.S. troops to leave Iraq sooner rather
than later. According to a recent survey conducted between late February
and early March in five pro-US Arab countries, namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon, and released in Washington
D.C. on March 28 by the Arab American Institute (AAI) and Zogby International,
a polling firm, 68 percent of Saudi respondents said they considered
Washington's influence in Iraq as negative, 83 percent in Egypt, 96
percent in Jordan. An earlier two surveys in late November and early
December conducted by Zogby International in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia, and Morocco found not only that Washington's standing
in the Arab world had hit rock bottom, but also that Iran was the principal
beneficiary.
Nearly three out of every four respondents in Egypt and Jordan said
they favoured an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, while large pluralities
in the other three countries favoured that option over withdrawal only
after Iraq's unity and stability are assured, maintaining current U.S.
troop strength, or increasing it, as the Bush administration is currently
doing. Indeed, support for the latter two options was less than ten
percent in every country except Saudi Arabia. In addition, 47 percent
of Jordanian and 38 percent of Egyptian respondents said they worried
more about the prospect of a permanent U.S. occupation of Iraq than
about its partition, the spread of its civil war, or about the strengthening
of Iran.
Similarly, 57 percent of Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq according
to a recent Newsweek poll. The findings from the Pew Research Center
earlier this week said 59 percent of Americans supported a withdrawal
deadline. The Democrats rode to power last November on the public's
discontent with the war in Iraq.
The growing public opposition in the United States to the war, the Democrats’
electoral victory on an exit platform, which led them to the control
of the Congress, and the American debate on the deadlines for exiting
Iraq are all indeed public knowledge in Iraq as well as in Arab countries.
However the Democratic “alternative” has yet to make its
impact felt in a way that could improve the US image among Arabs and
potentially this “alternative” will blacken that image further
if and when it receives more scrutiny.
Would the Democrats’ alternative end the occupation? Nothing is
concrete and on record so far to indicate it would. Would it end the
civil war? On the contrary it will make it worse as all statements by
Democrat leaders point only to a “military redeployment”
to extricate their troops out of the harm’s way. How could a sectarian
ruling elite, which is an integral part of the sectarian divide, end
a sect-based strife on its own when they were unable to do so with the
combined US-Iraqi forces? Moreover, is this so-called alternative essentially
different from the Republicans’ strategy? On the unity of Iraq,
oil, long-term US military presence, civil war and the “benchmarks”
set for the new Iraqi rulers both alternatives are essentially the same.
Their looming showdown over deadlines for combat operations in Iraq
would neither set a deadline for the end of Bush era in Iraq nor herald
an end to the US era in the country.
True the House on March 23 voted 218 to 212 to stop paying for U.S.
combat operations in Iraq as of August 31, 2008; on March 27 the Senate
voted 50-48 for a deadline on March 31, 2008. The narrow margin of both
votes emboldened Bush to confirm he will veto both. Congress obviously
doesn't have the two-thirds majority necessary to override his veto.
It is almost certain Bush is going to keep his combat troops in Iraq
for as long as he wants, until the deadline set by the US constitution
for his exit on January 20, 2009.
Only then the Bush era will end in Iraq to make room for carrying on
the US era in the country either by a new Republican or Democrat administration,
which will depend on the outcome of playing politics with more Iraqi
blood. The congress will continue the deadline play after its recess
for two weeks.
Meanwhile Bush, in defiance of American public opinion and his Democratic
rivals, is sending more troops to Iraq instead of bringing some back
home, in a race against time to achieve a military success on the ground
to pre-empt a Democratic electoral success next year, while the Democrats
are manoeuvring to bet on his failure in Iraq to secure a victory in
the US. Under the Bush administration's new Iraq policy announced earlier
this year, the Pentagon has increased force levels in Iraq by about
30,000 troops. The United States has about 145,000 troops in Iraq.
Arab observers could not miss facts like that the Democrat-approved
$124 billion supplemental funding was more than Bush himself requested;
“We gave him more than he asked for, we gave him every dime that
he asked for,” said House Majority Whip Democratic Rep. James
E. Clyburn. The Senate March 27 vote on a withdrawal schedule was nonbinding
on the President. Democrats only require Bush to seek Congressional
approval before extending the occupation and spending new funds to do
so. All these factors and more boil down to simply empowering Bush to
continue his bloody war for at least one more year, until the eve of
the next election; the Democratic leadership is viewed merely to appear
to oppose the war while continuing to fund it.
Common Ground on ‘Benchmarks’
Nor Arab observers, especially Iraqis, are missing the fact that the
Democrats have adopted the same benchmarks laid out by Bush for the
Iraqi government of Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki. The House bill of
March 23 mandates these benchmarks for the Iraqi government. If the
Iraqi government fails to meet those benchmarks, U.S. troops would be
withdrawn at an earlier date. These benchmarks and the bipartisan consensus
on them could only be interpreted as a bipartisan decision to empower
the pro-US ruling Iraqi coalition to serve as Washington’s proxy
to combat the Iraqi anti-occupation resistance and terrorism, which
boils down to nothing less than a decision to “Iraqize”
the war, forgetting that the “vietnamization” was a bad
precedent that failed to save the American neck in the Vietnam war.
“Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops
should begin to come home,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid of Nevada. The difference is only one of approach: Democrats seek
to extricate US troops from the civil war militarily by redeploying
them out of population centres and assigning their mission to Iraqis
and diplomatically by engaging regional powers particularly Syria and
Iran; Republicans want US military to enforce security first and install
their Iraqi protagonists in the secured community centres before redeploying.
A second Bush-set and Democrat-adopted benchmark that the government
of al-Maliki must meet concerns Iraq's oil industry and Iraqi multibillion-dollar
oil revenues. Both rivals agree that the new Iraqi oil law should be
adopted this year to favour investing foreign oil companies with 70
percent of oil revenue to recoup their initial outlay, then companies
can reap 20 percent of the profit without any tax or other restrictions
on their transfers abroad. Both parties seek to distribute the oil revenues
on ethnic and sectarian basis in accordance with the new draft hydrocarbon
law. The Democrats had proposed that by July 1 of this year Bush must
certify that progress is being made on these issues or US “withdrawal”
will begin within 180 days. The wide spread Iraqi opposition to this
law is a major contributor to the civil war.
On maintaining the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq there is
also a Democratic – Republican consensus on “federalism,”
which is also another contributor to civil war. Senator Joe Biden, the
top Democrat in the Senate on foreign relations matters and a presidential
prospect for 2008, envisions an Iraqi “confederation” and
not an Iraqi republic: “On Iraq, there is a Democratic alternative.
And the bottom line of the alternative is that we're going to have to
figure out how this president or the next president, whoever it is,
how long it goes, turns around and makes sure there's more autonomy
for each of the sectors that are there, the Sunni, the Shia and the
Kurds,” he said. (2) The Arab leaders during their summit meeting
in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh on March 29-30 demanded the US-sponsored
Iraqi constitution that stipulates federalism be reconsidered because
it adversely affects the Iraqi national unity and the Arab identity
of Iraq.
Similarly both electoral rivals want a US long-term military “presence”
in Iraq. The White House certainly isn't expecting to maintain 160,000
troops in Iraq indefinitely, but it is planning a long-term occupation
anchored in what the Pentagon has described as “enduring bases”
and continues to construct these huge, imposing bases. Democrats too
are on record as saying they want a long-term similar presence. The
March 27 Senate resolution provides for a “limited number”
of troops after the pullout date, which would be devoted to training
and to “targeted counterterrorism operations.” Democratic
presidential candidate Joe Biden had this to say: “I think we're
going to be left with the reality of something the size of a brigade,
somewhere in the region, to make sure that the terrorists cannot occupy
territory.”
Biden says the “least important part” of the Iraq spending
bill that recently cleared the U.S. House and Senate is its target date
for withdrawal of troops. More importantly “it redefines the mission
of our troops from fighting in the midst of a civil war to doing what
is rational for them to do, which is to continue to train Iraqi Army,
to deny al Qaida occupation of swaths of territory...and three for so-called
source protection -- protecting our own forces,” Biden says. (3)
Another presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, who voted for the Iraq
war resolution in October 2002, said she would retain a significant
residual occupying force in Iraq to “contain the extremists,”
“help the Kurds manage their various problems in the north,”
“provide logistical support, air support, training support”
to the Iraqi government, and to carry out larger geopolitical responsibilities
like trying “to prevent Iran from crossing the border and having
too much influence inside of Iraq.” Former Pentagon comptroller
Dov Zakheim, who has developed a strikingly similar plan, estimates
that 75,000 American troops would be needed to carry his plan out. That's
about half of the current force stationed in Iraq. (4)
Democrats, Republicans or whoever regardless, “the point in the
Middle East … is that this is center of the world’s energy
resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated
it, but after the Second World War, it’s been a U.S. preserve.
That’s been an axiom of U.S. foreign policy, that it must control
Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access as people
often say. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. In fact if
the United States used no Middle East oil, it’d have the same
policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it’d keep the same
policies. Just look at the internal record, or the logic of it, the
issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power.”
(5)
Bush remains delusional. He insists that he'll keep U.S. forces in Iraq
until they achieve “victory.” Democrats challenge him to
achieve the same “victory” differently! What does that mean?
Anti-war protesters in Washington and outside Pelosi’s home in
San Francisco were denouncing her and other congressional Democrats
for not cutting off the money to fight the war in Iraq. If the war in
Iraq is such an unnecessary and futile expenditure of blood and treasure
as Pelosi and other Democrats have been saying, why not put an end to
it? Their congressional resolutions put them on record as being against
the war without taking the responsibility for ending it, they said.
A successful conclusion of Bush’s new strategy in Iraq war before
the 2008 elections can be a political disaster for Democrats; his failure
can doom Republican electoral prospects. Many American analysts expect
the civil war in Iraq to seriously shape the U.S. presidential election
next year. Both Democratic and the Republican approaches simply seek
to leave it to the Iraqis to fight it out among themselves, which will
inevitably exacerbate “that” civil war: For Americans it
is the usual political power struggle. For Arabs it is playing American
politics with Iraqi blood for oil.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait,
Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Birzeit, West Bank of the
Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
Notes
(1) See for example the UAE’s Khaleej Times editorial on April
4, 2007.
(2) MSNBC, March 31, 2006.
(3) Ibid.
(4) John B. Judis, The New Republic, 03.30.07.
(5) Noam Chomsky, interviewed by Michael Shank, International Relations
Center (IRC), February 9, 2007.
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