Hubris always has a price. The heavy burden of the Bush administration's quest for hegemony in the Middle East has taken its toll. The cost of maintaining our occupation of the desert nation of Iraq is estimated at well over $1 billion per week, a figure that can only be overshadowed by the human cost of this war; 13,000 Iraqi civilians and over 1,000 American soldiers have lost their lives so far. It has become clearer and clearer that the highest echelons of our government are plagued by a crisis of confidence, with their partisan blinders and ideological entrenchments serving to thicken the already dense fog of war.
The Bush administration is dangerously out of touch with the situation on the ground in Iraq. Its systemic intimidation and bullying of our allies has left America alone in a corner at a time when international cooperation is needed more than ever. The President has stated that freedom and democracy will prevail in Iraq. At a time when major population centers such as Falluja and Najaf exist entirely outside the control of the Iraqi government and U.S. occupation forces, however, this statement seems doubtful. The past 30 days have seen over 2,300 attacks by insurgents, and contrary to suggestions by the Bush administration, these attacks are not restricted to select pockets of resistance. The insurgency stretches from the Ninevah and Salahuddin provinces in the north, across the desert, through Baghdad and into Basra in the south. The geographic reach and depth of the insurgency reflects its widespread popular appeal, an appeal that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's government lacks the legitimacy and support to combat. Indeed, since the hand over of "sovereignty," the insurgency has made leaps and bounds in sophistication and intensity.
Most troubling, though, is the insurgency's ability to regenerate itself. The Bush administration contends that there are simply "x" number of insurgents, and once they are arrested or killed, the peace will be secured and the mission accomplished. Yet, the obvious enthusiasm of people to fill the ranks of those who are captured or killed has given the insurgency the ability to rapidly regenerate itself. The political culture in Iraq is one that is extremely hostile to the United States presence. The longer we stay, or worse, the more soldiers we have on the ground, the further we will radicalize the Iraqi people at large.
The violence has forced reconstruction in many areas of Iraq to ground to a halt. Of the $18.7 billion appropriated by Congress for civilian reconstruction, less than $1 billion has been spent. The gradual ceding of cities such as Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba, Samarra and Najaf to resistance groups has made it exceedingly difficult to guarantee free and fair elections by January.
At this point, there is no military solution in Iraq. The idea that we are going to train an Iraqi army to defeat an enemy that we ourselves cannot defeat, borders on the absurd. Any indigenous Iraqi force will be irreparably tainted by its very association with the foreign occupier. A political victory seems even less likely as long as the Bush administration refuses to cede control of Iraq's oil resources. Confronted by the realities of the situation, proponents of the war still argue that we must "stay the course," lest Iraq degenerate into a chaotic breeding ground for terrorists. Iraq already is a breeding ground for terrorists, though, and the economic policies pursued by the Bush administration have left millions jobless and lacking the most basic public services. "Staying the course" will only exacerbate the situation and further marry the cause of Islam fundamentalism to Iraqi liberation.
The obvious truth is that we cannot win this war, and by trying to win it we are only further radicalizing the Iraqi people and giving life to Islamic extremists by handing them the cause of Iraqi nationalism. Only through the phased withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq can any real victory can be achieved. We must halt offensive operations and re-direct our efforts towards engaging the international community, especially the rest of the Arab world, in election logistics.
After the destruction of Iraq's social infrastructure during the first Gulf War, constant aerial bombardment in no-fly zones, the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib, and over a decade of American-enforced United Nations sanctions that led to the death of over a million Iraqi civilians, the U.S. is in no position to simply ask for the trust of the Iraqi people; we must earn it.
Disengagement from Iraq requires that we end not only our military occupation of this sovereign nation, but also our economic occupation. We must pledge a platform of non-intervention and return the resources of Iraq to the people themselves. The decrees issued by L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, decrees that have the full force of law until elections are held, transformed Iraq into an ideological experiment in privatization. Protective tariffs were abolished, key sectors of the Iraqi economy were privatized and nearly unlimited foreign ownership of Iraqi municipalities was permitted and even encouraged. The dream was for multinational firms, mostly from the U.S., to swoop in and dazzle the Iraqis with their speed and efficiency.
Iraqis see something else, though: desperately needed jobs going to Americans, Europeans and South Asians, and roads crowded with trucks shipping in supplies produced in foreign plants, while Iraqi factories are not even supplied with emergency generators. As a result, the reconstruction is seen not as a recovery from war, but as an extension of the occupation; a foreign invasion of a different sort. And so, as the resistance grows, the reconstruction itself has became a prime target of frustration.
Contrary to the views of the occupation's critics, a U.S. withdrawal would not be a victory for terrorism, but instead for popular sovereignty and international law. Rather than acknowledge the serious tactical errors made in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, though, the president continues to proclaim a false triumphalism. The shadow of Election Day is moving across the Rose Garden, and for the Bush administration, it is more important to promote an image of a noble Iraq struggling to quell a handful of extremists than to tell the truth. Bush has centered his approach to Iraq on the hope that the American people will confuse stubbornness and arrogance with true leadership and vision. Unlike George W. Bush, the American people learn from their mistakes and will not be deceived by his administration yet again.
