The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 31
November 24, 2003
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org). He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Editor: John Gershman (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
NOBLE RHETORIC SUPPORTS DEMOCRACY WHILE IGNOBLE POLICIES SUPPORT REPRESSION
By Stephen ZunesTHE CRISIS OF FEITH
By Jim LobeRUMSFELD'S NEW MODEL ARMY
By Conn HallinanUNSOLICITED ADVICE: A RESPONSE TO RUMSFELD'S OCTOBER 16TH MEMO
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)APPEARANCE AND REALITY IN MADRID
By Ian WilliamsSPOILERS GATECRASH THE IRAQ SPOILS PARTY
By Herbert Docena
II. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-Takes
NOBLE RHETORIC SUPPORTS DEMOCRACY
WHILE IGNOBLE POLICIES SUPPORT REPRESSION
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor's Note: In a new special report FPIF's Middle East editor Stephen Zunes deconstructs President George W. Bush's November 6 speech on democracy and the Middle East. The report, excerpted below, is available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/nedspeech2003.html .)
President George W. Bush's November 6 speech before the National Endowment for Democracy emphasizing the need for greater democracy and freedom in the Arab world, while containing a number of positive aspects, was nevertheless very misleading and all-too characteristic of the longstanding contradictory messages that have plagued U.S. policy in the Middle East.
On the positive side, President Bush challenged the racist mythology that Islamic societies were somehow incapable of democracy and recognized that greater political pluralism need not follow a U.S. model. Yet he failed even once to say a critical word about any non-democratic U.S. ally in the region. It is noteworthy, for example, that he called for spreading freedom "from Damascus to Tehran" but not from Riyadh to Cairo.
President Bush praised Morocco for recently allowing for relatively-competitive parliamentary elections, but said nothing about the regime's ongoing savage repression in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. His praise for reforms in the U.S.-backed sultanates in Bahrain and Oman ignored ongoing suppression of peaceful demonstrators, unfair trials, the use of torture by security services and the jailing of political dissidents.
In citing the enormous poverty and political repression in the Middle East, President Bush correctly observed that, "These are not the failures of a culture or a religion. These are the failures of political and economic doctrines." However, some of the most damaging doctrines have come from the United States. For example, the neo-liberal economic doctrines imposed by the United States on a number of Middle Eastern countries in return for foreign aid or the restructuring of debts have in many cases actually increased poverty and in virtually every case greatly exacerbated economic inequality. Similarly, through the Truman Doctrine and Eisenhower Doctrine to the Carter Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine and Bush Doctrine, U.S. policy has propped up scores of repressive regimes against their own people through large-scale military, financial and diplomatic support.
President Bush's review of history was also incredibly misleading. He referred to worldwide trends in democratization that began in the 1970s, when "Portugal and Spain and Greece held free elections. Soon, there were new democracies in Latin America and free institutions were spreading in Korea and Taiwan and in East Asia." What the president failed to mention was that the United States was a major supporter of the Portuguese, Spanish and Greek dictatorships, as well as dictatorial regimes in Taiwan, South Korea and Latin America, thereby retarding their long-overdue transitions to democracy.
President Bush even claimed that the United States, particularly under President Ronald Reagan, was somehow responsible for these democratic trends in that the U.S. "created the conditions in which new democracies could flourish." In reality, during this period the United States sent more military and police aid to more dictatorships than any other nation.
He cited "the difficult battles of Korea and Vietnam" as examples of Americans' willingness to "sacrifice for liberty," even though Syngman Rhee's regime in South Korea and Nguyen Van Thieu's regime in South Vietnam, for which U.S. forces were fighting, were actually brutal military dictatorships.
Such mythology was used as backdrop to President Bush's claim that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was for "the peace of Iraq and for the security of free nations." Despite growing opposition to the U.S. occupation within Iraq and around the world and demands that the United States quickly turn administration of the country over to the United Nations or to the Iraqis themselves, President Bush claimed that any failure of the U.S. mission "would embolden terrorists around the world and increase dangers to the American people and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region."
In reality, Amnesty International recently reported, "Since the rhetoric about war in Iraq began, and through the war itself, human rights have suffered significantly worldwide" and that "the politics around the war have ensnared millions of people, rendering them pawns as relationships between nations were forged into new strategic alliances." In announcing its 2003 human rights report, Amnesty reported, "While the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has brought greater freedom for the Iraqi people, the politics and distraction of the war in Iraq have had unintended, negative consequences for millions of people worldwide."
In what some segments of the media have indicated may be a significant shift in policy, President Bush stated that,
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export… . Therefore the United States has adopted a new policy: a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."
Few people familiar with the Middle East could disagree with his observation that support for dictatorial regimes has not led to greater stability. However, there are no indications that the Bush Administration is planning to stop its support for governments that deny freedom or otherwise promote freedom in the region.
It is hypocritical in the extreme to state that "Many Middle Eastern governments now understand that military dictatorship and theocratic rule are a straight, smooth highway to nowhere, but some governments still cling to the old habits of central control" when the United States is the primary backer of such regimes in the region.
(Stephen Zunes is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and an associate professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press.).)
THE CRISIS OF FEITH
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0311feith.html .)
In light of falling poll numbers, pressure is building for a top-level scapegoat to be sacrificed at the Pentagon as a sign that someone is being held accountable for what have become widely acknowledged failures in the Bush administration's occupation of Iraq.
The leading candidate is Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and "What's gonna happen with Feith?" is the question animating the Washington cogniscenti as the debate heats up over whether a major shift in the Bush administration's unilateralist and ultra-hawkish foreign policy is or is not underway. Feith, who occupies an obscure but nonetheless strategic position, reports directly to the deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.
If the administration is looking for a scapegoat for the situation it faces in Iraq, Feith is the most likely candidate because of both his relative obscurity compared to other administration hawks and the fact that, of virtually all of them, his ideas, particularly on the Middle East, may be the most radical.
A protege of Richard Perle, the former chairman of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) who stands at the center of the neoconservative foreign policy network in Washington, Feith has long opposed territorial compromise by Israel and was an outspoken foe of the Oslo process and even the Camp David peace agreement mediated by former President Jimmy Carter between Egypt and Israel. His former law partner, L. Marc Zell, is a spokesman for the Jewish settlers' movement on the occupied West Bank.
But, more to the point, virtually everything that has gone wrong in Iraq--especially those matters that Congress is either investigating or is poised to investigate--is linked directly to his office. "All roads lead to Feith," noted one knowledgeable administration official this week.
It was his now-defunct Office of Special Plans (OSP) that is alleged to have collected--often with the help of the neoconservatives' favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi--and "cooked" the most alarmist pre-war intelligence against Saddam Hussein and then "stovepiped" it to the White House via Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney unvetted by the intelligence agencies.
It was also his office that was in charge of post-war planning and rejected the product of months of work by dozens of Iraqi exiles and Mideast experts in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who anticipated many of the problems that have wrong-footed the occupation. It also excluded many top Mideast experts from the State Department from playing any role in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq.
And it is his office that, with the CPA, has recommended companies for huge and, in some cases, no-bid contracts in Iraq that have amounted, in the eyes of some critical lawmakers, to flagrant profiteering.
(Jim Lobe is a political analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
RUMSFELD'S NEW MODEL ARMY
By Conn Hallinan
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new commentary produced by our Project on the Present Danger and available in full online at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0311transf.html .)
War is the ultimate test of reality and illusion.
On the eve of World War I, the French General Staff was convinced victory would go to the attacker, that massed soldiers marching together into battle could overcome technology with courage and élan. German machine guns and artillery swiftly shattered that illusion, along with several hundred thousand young Frenchmen.
Today, the United States is engaged in a very similar application of theory and warfare, albeit the opposite of the one the French tried.
Even the final victory in Iraq was not exactly a triumph for the "revolution." It wasn't swift moving, light troops that took Baghdad and Basra, but the conventional, tank-heavy U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, and the British 7th Armored Division. In short, the "old model army." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's military is a swift moving, micro-chipped, killing machine, where electronics turn night into day, and satellites and laser-guided weapons slice and dice enemy armor and artillery. President George W. Bush called it a "revolution," that has "shown that an innovative doctrine and high-tech weaponry can shape and then dominate an unconventional conflict."
Has it? With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under our belt, isn't it time to tote up the bill and separate reality from illusion?
On the plus side for the "revolution," we won. On the minus side, it was hardly a fair fight. In Afghanistan it was the 21st century verses the 12th, and we're not out of the tunnel yet. Iraq had a 20th century army, but one hollowed out by a decade of sanctions and with little loyalty to the brutal dictatorship it served. And that war, too, is far from over.
The latest "revolution" in warfare, the brainchild of the late Air Force Col., John Boyd, goes by the name "transformation" and combines high tech and maneuverability. Its model was the German Blitzkrieg. But Rumsfeld's New Model Army is discovering that the very instruments that make it so invincible on a conventional battlefield are of little use in the non-conventional war the Bush administration finds itself embroiled in. As long as the enemy was the Iraqi army, the "revolution" works just fine. It has done less well against roadside explosives, ambushes, and suicide bombs.
Part of the problem is the "transformation" army itself.
The U.S. military looks increasingly like a temp agency on steroids: a massive organization of part-time workers armed with the latest in firepower.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, some 292,000 National Guard and reserve troops have been called to active duty, and more than 190,000 are still serving. The Pentagon just announced a further call-up of 30,000. Reserve and National Guard units now make up 46% of the military.
Reserves have always been an important component of the U.S. military, but they are only supposed to be called up in times of national emergency. From World War I to Gulf War I--75 years--they were called up nine times. In the past 12 years they have been mobilized 10 times.
Normally such troops work behind the front lines and serve for shorter periods than regular troops. However, under "transformation," their deployment has been stretched to 12, and sometimes 15 months. And the front line in Iraq and Afghanistan is anyplace a soldier happens to be.
(Conn Hallinan is a provost at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a political analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
UNSOLICITED ADVICE: A
RESPONSE TO RUMSFELD'S OCTOBER 16TH MEMO
By Col. Dan Smith (Ret.)
(Editor's Note: In a memo dated October 16, 2003 distributed to his senior staff, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld raised a number of questions with respect to military transformation, inspired in part by the conduct of the war on terror and the U.S invasion and occupation of Iraq. Much media commentary focused upon the contrast between Rumsfeld's positive public pronouncements on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and his characterization of a victory in those countries as likely but only as a result of a "long, hard slog." Receiving less focus were his questions with respect to broader U.S. plans for military transformation in the context of the war on terror. FPIF analyst Dan Smith answers these questions, answers that Rumsfeld is unlikely to receive from his subordinates. What follows is an excerpt of a new policy report, the full version of which is available at http://www.fpif.org/papers/rumsfeldqa2003.html .)
TO: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
CC: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith
FROM: Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)
Senior Fellow on Military Affairs
Friends Committee on National Legislation
SUBJECT: Your October 16, 2003 Memo Re: Global War on Terrorism
A copy of subject Memo came to my attention even though I am not on the "To" or "CC" list. Obviously, you or a senior member of your staff anticipated that I would be able to provide a thoughtful, practical reply based on independent, unbiased research. My responses follow each of your queries.
Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip, and focus to deal with the global war on terror?
Definitely. The first step is to declare the end of the global war on terror. Next, the Pentagon should shift from lead to supporting agency, with State becoming the new lead. Justice would assume a more prominent supporting role in keeping with the emphasis that terrorist incidents are criminal acts.
Al Qaeda has been dealt a blow and the regime that was most visible in its support of global terror, the Afghan Taliban, has been replaced. This is not to say that those Taliban and al Qaeda loyalists still at-large pose no residual threat, either to Afghanistan or, through other, loosely affiliated groups, to other governments. But these groups seem less interested in pressing a global jihad than in achieving specific goals within the countries in which they are operating. (This is true even in Iraq, where the U.S. presence acts as a magnet for jihadists.) They of course will always accept money, equipment, and training from any source, al Qaeda or not.
At least part of the current U.S. dilemma stems from an inability to see simultaneously the two levels of terror in the 21st century. The administration's emphasis on "global war" masks the reality that all terrorist acts are local. This suggests that the effort to stop or at least control acts of violence directed against non-combatants should remain at the local--or no more than a regional--context. Were this done, DoD would be able to re-form its plans and organization to support the police and justice systems when these civilian-oriented agencies determine they do not have the resources to track, apprehend, or where necessary, fight and defeat those committing acts of terror. Such cases generally will occur in failed or failing states.
This is a key point, for it goes right to the central questions of why military forces are needed and how they should be employed to achieve the stated goals.
In the ideal world, disputes and misunderstandings would be resolved without recourse to the threat of or actual use of armed conflict. In the obvious absence of this ideal, military organizations exist to provide the same sense of security from external attack that police forces provide on the national and local levels. This deterrent/defensive orientation is reinforced by various international conventions that seek to regulate and minimize war's effects. More significantly, the UN has as its primary mission "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," a continuing endeavor that involves first and foremost employing non-military measures.
The UN Charter does acknowledge that some threats to international peace and security will not be remedied by non-violent interventions. This reality points to the question of how military force should be used. The UN Charter calls for Member States "to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security" so as "to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest" as this is determined by the UN Security Council. Thus, in addition to their deterrent role, which contributes to avoiding the scourge of war, armed forces acting under UN mandates engage in peacekeeping, peace monitoring, and peace making, roles that enhance international security through cooperative actions in support of international law.
Currently in the U.S. military, there is a mismatch between the demands inherent in these roles and resources and capabilities to implement these roles. The Pentagon--and the entire U.S. government--seems trapped organizationally and conceptually in what might be termed the "cold war time warp." Tanks and armored troop carriers, the mainstays of classic warfare, send all the wrong signals to populations whose main security concerns are looting, murders, kidnappings, robberies, and car bombs.
Ironically, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have slowed efforts to transform the U.S. military into a lighter, more agile, and flexible force that could effectively participate in UN peace operations, including stabilization of failed states. Changes that have been made include:
- the Army's shift to the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, a new combat grouping that relies on speed and agility to perform its mission;
- the Air Force plan to organize wings that mix various aircraft types (as well as Reserve and active duty component personnel), giving combatant commanders the full range of capabilities in one well-trained operational package; and
- the Navy's new "sea base" proposal and existing cooperative engagement capability (CEC) system are prototypes for what could be a shared joint command and total battlespace awareness system.
The one area that ultimately has to remain globally centralized is intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination, with the latter being tailored for and directed to commanders at all levels from unified combatant commanders to platoon level. This structure must truly be "all source" both in terms of collection methods and sources, including open source information. Moreover, given the power inherent in organizations charged with interpreting and disseminating information on which national policy is based, continuous review of intelligence activities and the rationale supporting intelligence community conclusions is required.
(Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) is a retired U.S. army colonel and Senior Fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)
APPEARANCE AND REALITY
IN MADRID
By Ian Williams
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new commentary produced by our Project on the Present Danger and available in full online at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0311donor.html .)
With Congress's agreement to the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan requested by the White House, it may seem that that Colin Powell was justified in chiding France and Germany for not coming up with cash for Iraq at the Madrid donors' conference held last week.
Like the $87 billion being in the form of grants rather than loans, the Madrid conference was presented as a triumph of altruism. Of course, neither was any such thing. Only a quarter of the $87 billion is for Iraqi reconstruction, the rest is military appropriations, while insisting on loans would have been totally counterproductive. It would have set a bad example to all the other countries that the White House is hoping will forgive Iraqi debt--and any repayments would have been at the end of a very long queue.
In fact, there is a very real question of why, uniquely, the world should dip into its pockets for Iraq--when Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Congo, for example, have much greater poverty and disruption to their social and physical infrastructures. The answers, that these places do not have oil, are a long way from Israel, and do not have a large garrison of GI's being plinked at by passers-by are not that convincing when looked at in the cold global light of day. Any arguments that apply to debt forgiveness for Iraq surely apply to South Africa or Nigeria, whose previous regimes ran up large debts that their democratic successors have inherited and even more so to impoverished countries without oil for collateral.
One issue that remains unresolved is the continuing 5% of oil revenues earmarked for the UN's Iraq Compensation Committee, with the lion's share going to Kuwait. Not since the treaty of Versailles has such a burden been heaped on a defeated country. Over $18 billion has been handed over so far, and the current drain is $200 million a quarter.
The head of the UN relief effort in Iraq, UNDP's chief Mark Malloch Brown, actually pointed out to the Madrid conference that the $56 billion that Iraq allegedly needs was "rather more than the world gave sub-Saharan Africa over the last four years, a region with a population some 25 times bigger than Iraq's."
He cautioned that the plans, which did not take into account Iraq's ability to generate its own capital funding, "would surely be an unsustainable distortion of aid flows from poor countries and other crises." However, he predicated his solution on "full progress towards Iraqi sovereign government by the end of 2004," which would allow debt renegotiation and long term foreign investment.
Perhaps equally dampening for Halliburton & Co was the statement by the UN's acting head in Iraq, Lopes da Silva, who pointed out that the UN had "incorrectly assumed that the professional classes would be displaced, and they have not." What he was alluding to was the huge proportion of the cost of previous nation-building operations that was eaten up by expensive international experts and contractors.
Iraq has little or no need of them, which is of course, yet another reason to hasten the empowerment of an indigenous Iraqi government. Such an administration would be more likely to hire Iraqis than Texans by allowing the Iraqi professionals in ministries and state institutions to make policy and technical choices, decide priorities, develop strategies, and take the relevant decisions, said da Silva. Indeed most UN speakers took pains to point out the long relationships that the organization had had at every level with the Iraqis, and the competence of the locals. Once again--a not so subtle subtext on the superfluity of Occupation.
(Ian Williams contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
SPOILERS GATECRASH THE IRAQ
SPOILS PARTY
By Herbert Docena
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new policy report available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/donor2003.html .)
Despite new offers for broader participation in Iraq's reconstruction bonanza, the United States-convened donors' conference on Iraq ended in stifled disappointment, with only $13 billion raised--a far cry from the $36 billion target. To dampen expectations further, up to two-thirds of the total pledges will take the form of loans, not grants. And if the Afghanistan fundraising experience is any indication, many of the pledges could still end up being just more broken multi-million-dollar promises.
Most of the contributions came from those who were already expected to give anyway: Japan handed over $5 billion, Spain $300 million, and Kuwait another $300 million. As expected, France and Russia gave nothing. Germany donated only $100 million, half of which was its share in the European Union's contribution. The Philippines pitched in $1million it can hardly afford to give; Vietnam offered rice; while Sri Lanka promised tea. Arab nations, which the U.S. was counting on to save the day, turned out to be the biggest spoilers.
To underscore just how seriously they thought of the fund-raising event, many of the governments sent only low-ranking bureaucrats; others just assigned their Madrid-based diplomats to drop by and say hello.
"Here we are and we've had a very successful conference," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the end of the two-day event on Friday, tying to put on a brave front. Even before the conference could start, however, Powell was already trying to lower expectations saying, "I have never approached [the $36 billion figure] as a goal that has to be reached," even as he later on sternly urged the participants to give "substantially."
So successful was the conference that, in order to magnify the final figure, the organizers had to keep repeating that they had raised $33 billion--a total which includes the U.S.'s $20 billion pledge, even if this amount was never really planned to be included as part of the money raised for the meeting in the first place.
The U.S.'s plea for money fell on many deaf ears, despite a fundraising strategy that entailed trying to convince the world that there's no other way to rebuild Iraq but to continue the occupation. In asking countries to donate, the U.S. wanted the world to resign itself to the fact that it will not be leaving Iraq any time soon and that the only way to help the devastated Iraqis would be to finance the occupation.
Such was the line of reasoning adopted by the "international community" in the recent 15-0 United Nations Security Council resolution that effectively legitimizes the occupation and calls on countries to lend a helping hand. Armed with this resolution, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan opened the Madrid conference urging other countries "to give and to give generously."
"We all look forward to the earliest possible establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government, but a start to reconstruction cannot be deferred until that day," Annan said, reinforcing the argument of the occupation forces.
The U.S. and the other governments that needed political cover to convince their taxpayers to donate money hoped to use as a bargaining weapon a kind of emotional blackmail, using the misery and the suffering of the Iraqi people to hold hostage anyone who professes to care about them.
Under this line of argument, those who call for an end to the occupation and who object to funding it are not only naive and unreasonable, but also heartless and cold-hearted people who are not genuinely concerned for the Iraqis. Those who will actively or passively support the occupation, on the other hand, are to be portrayed as helping the Iraqis out of the kindness of their hearts.
Aside from holding the world hostage to the plight of the Iraqis, the U.S. was forced to give up certain concessions and dangle sweeteners in order to encourage more generosity. Three days before the conference, the U.S. finally agreed to set up the Iraq International Reconstruction Fund (IIRF) that will be independently handled by the World Bank and the UN separately. "I need the money so bad we have to move off our principled opposition to the international community being in charge," the U.S.'s chief administrator in Iraq, L Paul Bremer, was quoted as saying. If only it were not as desperate for cash, the U.S. would have chosen to keep its grip on how all of the reconstruction money would be spent and to whom contracts will be given.
This exclusive control had so far allowed the U.S. to corner most of the billion-dollar reconstruction deals because federal laws require contracts to be granted only to American corporations. U.S. Treasury Undersecretary John Taylor recently stressed that for as long as the money comes from American taxpayers, the U.S. will reserve the right to prevent non-U.S. companies from securing contracts financed through bilateral aid.
The reports from Iraq are certainly not the sort that will make the country very popular among businessmen who have no serious thrill issues. This insecurity ultimately explains why, as the spoils got divided in Madrid, there were few takers. With the continuing resistance, Iraq will remain--as a Washington businessman who has organized several investors' conferences puts it--a "pending bonanza."
Ironically then, those on whose behalf funds were being raised, those who are being made to borrow without their consent, and those who will have no say over how these funds will be spent--still managed to register their positions at the donors' conference, even if they were not invited. In the end, those who had no seat at the table--those who had the most to lose--also had the most to say.
(Herbert Docena works with the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South (www.focusweb.org) and the Baghdad-based International Iraq Occupation Watch Center. He was in Madrid for the donors' conference. He writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
II. Letters and Comments
Re: The Long and Hidden History of the U.S in Somalia
A simple question: In an unwinnable situation, one where domestic (Somalian) politics ends at the barrel of a gun, should we have expected anything but all out aggression from a country that has divided and torn apart their country for years on end. Had we not "funded" one dictator, another would have risen in his place, leading to the end conclusion that maybe, just maybe, we should not get involved at all?
- James King <wedge1183@aol.com>
WHAT ABOUT U.S.-CANADA RELATIONS
I was curious and a little distraught to see you have no articles on U.S.-Canada relations. We are supposed to be best friends and all and our two countries' relations are at an all time low. It disturbs me that Canada is the victim of a hostile U.S. foreign policy and nobody is saying anything about it.
- Craig Robertson <muslimcraig@hotmail.com>
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