Rene — BUSH & BLAIR: THE IRAQ FANTASY
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By Patrick Cockburn
Sunday Independent/UK
05 November 2006
Neither will admit that Iraq is a disaster. But while their state of
denial may cost votes in Washington and London, on the frontline in
the Middle East, it continues to cost lives
“When does the incompetence end and the crime begin?” asked an appalled
German Chancellor in the First World War when the German army commander
said he intended to resume his bloody and doomed assaults on the
French fortress city of Verdun.
The same could be said of the disastrous policies of George Bush and
Tony Blair in Iraq. At least 3,000 Iraqis and 100 American soldiers are
dying every month. The failure of the US and Britain at every level
in Iraq is obvious to all. But the White House and Downing Street
have lived in a state of permanent denial. On the Downing Street
website are listed 10 “Big Issues” affecting the Prime Minister,
but Iraq is not one of them.
The picture of what is happening in Iraq put out by Messrs Bush and
Blair no longer touches reality at any point. They claim US and British
troops are present because Iraqis want them there. But a detailed poll
of Iraqi attitudes by WorldPublicOpinion.org, published six weeks ago,
shows that 71 per of Iraqis want the withdrawal of US-led forces within
a year. No less than 74 per cent of Shia and 91 per cent of Sunni say
they want American and British troops out. Only in Kurdistan, where
there are few foreign troops, does a majority support the occupation.
Hostility to the American and British troops has a direct and lethal
consequence for the soldiers on the ground. The same poll shows that
92 per cent of Sunni and 62 per cent of Shia approve of attacks on
US-led forces. This is the real explanation for the strength of the
insurgency: it is widely popular.
For the past three-and-a-half years in Iraq, one needed to close both
eyes very hard or live in Baghdad’s Green Zone not to see that the
occupation was detested by most Iraqis. At places where US Humvees
had been blown up or US soldiers killed or wounded there were usually
Iraqis dancing for joy.
Supposedly, the centrepiece of American and British policy is to stay
“until the job is done” and hand over to Iraqi army and police who
will cope with powerful militias like the Mehdi Army. But in police
stations in many parts of southern Iraq, photographs pinned to the
wall include one of British armoured vehicles erupting in flames,
beside a portrait of Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mehdi Army.
In the first year of the occupation it could be argued that Bush and
Blair were simply incompetent: they did not understand Iraq, were
misinformed by Iraqi exiles, or were simply ignorant and arrogant. But
they must know that for two-and-a-half years they have controlled
only islands of territory in Iraq.
“The Americans haven’t even been able to take over Haifa Street [a
Sunni insurgent stronghold] though it’s only 400 yards from the Green
Zone,” a senior Iraqi security official exclaimed to me last week.
But the refusal to admit, as the British army commander Sir Richard
Dannatt pointed out, that the occupation generates resistance in Iraq,
means that no new and more successful policy can be devised. It is
this that is criminal.
And it is all the worse because the rational explanation for Mr Bush’s
persistence in bankrupt policies in Iraq is that he has always given
priority to domestic politics. Holding power in Washington was more
important than real success in Baghdad.
It is easy enough to say that Mr Bush lives in a world of fantasy
in Iraq.
His aides are notoriously averse to giving him bad news. Officials who
do so lose their jobs. But this probably underestimates the man. After
9/11 he successfully presented himself as the security president. For
the first time since the 1920s, the Republicans held the presidency
and both houses of Congress.
The war in Afghanistan was successful at little cost. He thought the
same would be true in Iraq.
There was a spurious series of highly publicised turning points in
the war, such as the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the return
of sovereignty to Iraq and the recapture of Fallujah in 2004, the
elections and referendum on the constitution of 2005.
In each case reality was always different. Nobody in Iraq thought
Saddam was the leader of the resistance, and his capture had no effect
on the insurgency. The return of sovereignty had little meaning:
last week the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, admitted that
he could not move a company of Iraqi troops without US permission.
Fallujah was very publicly stormed by the US Marines in November 2004,
but a few days later the insurgents, in an operation hardly mentioned
by the administration, captured the much larger city of Mosul in
northern Iraq, seizing arms worth $40m (£21m). The elections and
referendum in 2005 deeply divided Iraq’s communities along sectarian
and ethnic lines, and led directly to civil war in central Iraq.
The US media was under extreme pressure to report the non-existent
good news that the White House accused them of ignoring.
I used to think how absurd it was for me to risk my life by visiting
the Green Zone, the entrances to which were among the most bombed
targets in Iraq, to see diplomats who claimed that the butchery in
Iraq was much exaggerated.
But when I asked them if they would like to come and have lunch in
my hotel outside the zone, they always threw up their hands in horror
and said their security men would never allow it.
The fantasy picture of Iraq purveyed by Mr Bush and Mr Blair is
now being exposed. The Potemkin village they constructed to divert
attention from what was really happening in Iraq is finally going up
in flames.
But it is too late for the Iraqis, Americans and British who died
because they were unwitting actors in this fiction, carefully concocted
by the White House and Downing Street to show progress where there
is frustration, and victory where there is only defeat.
The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn has
just been published by Verso.