“A war in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.”
That was the verdict delivered by Senator Robert C. Byrd (WV) on April 29, 2004, two days before the first anniversary of President Bush’s declaration that major combat in Iraq was over.
Events of this past April and the obvious confusion in the first days of May reinforce Senator Byrd’s judgment:
* a total of 137 U.S. service personnel died in Iraq in April, one less than the number who died in the six weeks of war between March 20 and April 30, 2003—and 14 more were killed in the first three days of May;
* casualties among Iraqis—those the coalition came to liberate—were at least 600 in April, compared to a conservatively estimated 5,000 in the six weeks of war;
* the Bush Administration abandoned its thrice-modified blueprint for Iraqi democracy and threw all responsibility (but not matching authority) on the UN for Iraq’s transition by June 30 from an occupied country to one with “limited” sovereignty;
* insurgents—those the Pentagon describes as “dead-enders,” foreign fighters, and former regime loyalists—emerged in strength in the “Sunni Triangle,” forcing the closure of significant stretches of main highways running from Jordan and Kuwait;
* coalition authorities threatened a full-scale assault on Fallujah if the insurgents did not meet timelines to cease their attacks on U.S. Marines and surrender all heavy weapons, only to extend the deadlines, negotiate with civic and tribal leaders, and finally create an Iraqi “Fallujah Brigade” to take on the insurgents when U.S.-trained Iraqi units refused to confront the insurgents or even accompany U.S. forces on patrols;
* General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contradicted the Marine Corps commander in Iraq about who would command the “Fallujah Brigade” (a new Iraqi commander was “found”) and also insisted that Marine units had not pulled back from the city even though media representatives on the ground in Iraq confirmed the relocations;
* around Najaf, a second locus of armed opposition emerged after coalition authorities declared that Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr would be captured or killed for inciting his Mahdi militia to violent confrontation (and belatedly revealed there was an “Iraqi” arrest warrant for al-Sadr, for murder);
* the coalition’s turn-about on total exclusion of former Ba’athist party members from public employment has prompted objections from Shi’ite secular and clerical leaders and foreshadows a post-June 30 struggle that could undermine attempts to preclude heightened violence and even the dismemberment of Iraq;
* the U.S. retained 20,000 troops in Iraq because of the upsurge in violence, Spain and two other countries announced total troop withdrawals, others are reviewing their commitments, NATO has declined to get involved, while the UK reportedly will commit an additional 4,000 troops for as long as two years—all of which points to shrinkage in the “internationalization” of the coalition;
* the White House, the Pentagon, and Coalition authorities in Baghdad hesitated or, when they did react were too passive, over the serious human rights abuses by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison.
Senator Byrd closed his remarks by asking “how long” the war will last and the casualties continue to climb. No one knows, of course, in part because Iraq is only one “front” of the larger worldwide “war on terror” that the Administration has declared. Moreover, Senator Byrd chose to highlight only the direct U.S. involvement and the consequences for broader U.S. interests.
The Human Costs of War and Occupation
In trying to answer Senator Byrd’s query, there is at least one other very significant perspective that the Administration, the Congress, and the public need to consider: the national interests of the Iraqi people. By invading Iraq and overthrowing the regime, the U.S. destroyed the existing relationship—however despicable it was—between rulers and ruled.
International law imposes on occupiers a number of obligations, such as providing public order and security, and prohibitions, such as wantonly destroying public property, annexing occupied territory, or changing laws. Each of these implies occupation is a short-term condition at whose end control will be returned to the previous sovereign. Under UN Resolution 1483 (May 22, 2003), this clearly is not Saddam Hussein but the Iraqi people. The resolution calls on the coalition to create “conditions in which the Iraqi people can freely determine their own political future” (paragraph 4) and “establish national and local institutions for representative governance” (paragraph 8).
The current muddle of the Bush Administration (and equally of some of its political opponents) stems from an inability to understand that “creating conditions” is not the same as “creating.” Washington’s avowed aim in going to war was freedom, democracy, and free markets in Iraq. But Iraq is not the United States; what worked in the New World will not necessarily work in the Old—especially in a land whose history and culture are among the most ancient on the globe.
Until the United States relinquishes and, through the UN, returns to the Iraqi people the power to shape and implement their own institutions of governance, law, and politics, the time horizon for “how long”—like a road stretching as far as the eye can see—potentially will continue to recede forever. However much the U.S. might want a “democratic” Iraq, interfering with the transitional technocratic administration or the National Consultative Council could well unite Iraqis behind an effort to expel coalition troops—including armed attacks.
Ironically, this tact would shorten “how long.” But the cost in lives—and the cost to the future of Iraq—would be incalculably high.
Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org), a retired U.S. army colonel and a senior fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
