Reflections of the End of the Iraq War

The US war in Iraq is now officially over. It will go down in history as the greatest US foreign policy fiasco since the Vietnam War. In my lifetime I witnessed two lengthy and illegal wars of choice that the US blundered into. Both the Vietnam and the Iraq wars ended in ignominy and disaster, both for the US and for the countries that we went to war to "save".

Along with millions of other Americans, mainly on the political left, I opposed these wars. But the people who thought like me were ignored, vilified, called unpatriotic, and our concerns about the immorality and folly of these conflicts were discounted. On the other hand, those who ordered our young men and women into unnecessary combat were lionized and were never punished for their crimes, war crimes, in particular, the crime of aggression. In neither case were the main objectives for going to war accomplished. We failed miserably in both cases and these failures were bought at great cost in terms of treasure and lives. 

The goal of the Vietnam war was to stop this country from becoming a socialist state and preventing a "domino effect" leading other Southeast Asian nations to fall into the Communist column. By the end of this stupid war, 58,000 Americans and an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese died. The conflict set up the conditions for a genocide in neighboring Cambodia in which another 1.7 million Cambodians died. In the end, the People's Socialist Republic of Vietnam won the war, but like its traditional enemy and neighbor to the north, the People's Republic of China, it is now a socialist state in name only. Vietnam is "open for business" and is in no way a threat to global capitalism. The irony is that this probably would have happened anyway and the war that was fought to prevent Vietnam from going communist merely delayed the transition of that nation to a market economy. Had the US done nothing instead of waging a stupid costly war, we probably would have ended up with the same result, a Vietnam that is hospitable to US businesses.

In the case of Iraq the Bush administration invaded this country in order to rid it of weapons of mass destruction (which did not exist) which it was feared might fall into the hands of terrorists groups such as Al Qaeda (which had no ties with the Iraqi government). The real underlying motive for this war was to surround and contain Iran by establishing a set of permanent US military bases on Iraqi soil and securing their vast oil reserves for exploitation by US and British companies such as Exxon and BP. The Bush-Cheney cabal thought we needed more US military bases in the region to guard "our oil", particularly after Saudi Arabia dis-invited us because of concerns raised by Osama bin Laden (among others) about having infidel soldiers stationed on holy land.

But in the end none of these objectives were achieved. The new Shiite-led Iraqi government has stronger ties to Iran that the Sunni-led regime of Saddam Hussein ever did or would have had. This government has also decided that there will be no permanent US military bases on Iraqi soil and has dis-invited us from maintaining any military presence in their country. They did this mainly because of the US insistence that our soldiers be immune from Iraqi law. The US will not allow other countries punish its citizens for war crimes, such as occurred in Haditha in 2005 and Nisour Square in 2007, and we do not punish them either. American insistence on impunity is the reason why American troops are now leaving Iraq.

Meanwhile, the oil fields are still not producing up to their potential and the leases for future production have been sold off to China, Malaysia, Russia and other countries that opposed the US-led war in the first place. It is true that some oil leases have been sold to US and British companies, but who would suggest that this "benefit" was worth the price paid in lives and treasure. If the costs of this war, estimated at over 1 trillion dollars, were factored into the price of gasoline at the pump when we fill up our SUVs, we Americans would appreciate the real cost of our dependence on oil.

Some will point out that we did succeed in toppling Saddam's murderous regime and killing both him and his odious sons. One must, however, wonder whether this would not have happened in due course anyway without US and British meddling. The Arab spring revolutions that took the region by storm in 2011 swept away murderous authoritarian dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Other middle eastern family dictatorships, such as the Assad regime in Syria, are now under siege from their own people. Historical counterfactuals are impossible to prove, but isn't it hard to believe that had the US not invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam, the Iraqi people themselves would not have risen up against him by 2011?  The irony in this case is that it might well have been the case that the Iraqi's themselves would have won their freedom from an oppressive dictator had we not decided to do the job for them.

Iraq is now "democratic", but the US is now far weaker, militarily, politically, economically, and morally, than it was before this war was launched. We Americans are victims of self-inflicted wounds.

China and other nations often accuse the US of improperly meddling in other countries' internal affairs. This criticism is correct as it concerns America's record of waging foolish wars of choice by invading other nations to save them from some threat, real or imagined. Political leaders in the United States need to think long and hard about these lessons of history before launching more such foolish wars. 

But curbing US military adventurism is not at all the same thing as arguing for US isolationism. The US must remain engaged in international affairs, but can do far more than it does currently to reshape the world to suit its interests and its values by dramatically increasing its humanitarian and development assistance, budget priorities that have been beggared by the gargantuan cost of maintaining our military dominance. We need to dramatically reduce the size of our bloated and wasteful military establishment. When people talk about shrinking the size of government to "starve the beast" I tend to agree with them if by the "beast" one means the Pentagon and the military industrial complex -- to this is one of the branches of government that does need to be starved and shrunken down to size.

But the question is, as it always has been, not whether our government is "too big" or "too small", but whether it is a good government. Like the overwhelming majority of Americans, I do not think our government has been all that good in either its foreign or domestic policies. To say this is not to be unpatriotic -- it is merely stating a truth that is obvious to all unbiased observers. This is why I always laugh to myself when people talk about exporting democracy to other nations. If our system of government is so great why are Congress's approval ratings so low?

The people in this country who think like me have been saying these things for more than fifty years. I have thought this way since I was twelve, in 1961. I am now 62 and have not changed my mind. Indeed the events of history I have witnessed in my lifetime have only strengthened my conviction and my willingness to speak my mind. Perhaps now, at the end of yet another stupid, immoral, and wasteful US military adventure, more people in this country will begin to listen and take action.  No more (stupid) wars. 

Death Squads, American Style

The term 'death squad' entered the lexicon back in the 1980s when it was used to refer to gangs of off-duty military personnel who were hired by right-wing military dictatorships in countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador to kidnap and murder people they suspected of sympathizing with the Marxist guerrillas who were fighting the army in the mountains.

In a story published in the New York Times this week it has been revealed that in 2004 the CIA hired the private military contractor Blackwater to organize a program to locate and assassinate suspected Al Qaeda operatives. The program was top secret and Vice President Cheney allegedly specifically ordered that Congressional oversight committees not be informed of its existence.

It seems like there might still be more surprises in store for those of us who have been paying attention to Bush and Cheney's little shop of horrors. The list of human rights violations and abuses that can be laid at the feet of the Bush administration is long and includes: the “disappearance” of suspected terrorists into CIA-run secret prisons, the denial of the right of habeas corpus of detainees, the use of ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods, a.k.a. torture, such as water-boarding, sleep deprivation, and auditory stimulus overload by military interrogators and the CIA, the indefinite detention without charges or trials of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo, the construction of the concept of “unlawful enemy combatants”, the use of Predator drones to assassinate suspected terrorists, the detention of an American citizen, Jose Padilla, without charges or trial for more than three years, the irregular renditions of persons such as Maher Arar to countries such as Syria, Egypt and Yemen where they have been tortured, the torture of persons such as Khalid Al Masri in secret CIA prisons, ill-treatment and deaths of detainees held at Baghram airbase in Afghanistan, and the secret and illegal eavesdropping on American citizens by the National Security Agency in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, among others.

A number of these human rights abuses have been the subject of several high-level special reports on U.S. human rights violations prepared by the charter-based bodies of the United Nations. In the report dealing with respect for civil and political rights while conducting counter-terrorism, the Special Rapporteur for the Mission to the United States of America, Martin Scheinin, identified, "serious situations of incompatibility between international human rights obligations and the counter-terrorism law and practice of the United States. Such situations include the prohibition against torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; the right to life; and the right to a fair trial” (Scheinin 2007). He has also identified deficiencies in United States law and practice pertaining to "the principle of non-refoulement; the rendition of persons to places of secret detention; the definition of terrorism; non-discrimination; checks in the application of immigration laws; and the obtaining of private records of persons and the unlawful surveillance of persons, including a lack of sufficient balances in that context"(23).

It is now clear that senior officials of the government of the United States conspired to break the law, and that the Department of Justice was complicit in these crimes and their cover-up. The New York Times stated unequivocally that "some of the very highest officials of the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed orders," and this was done "with President Bush's clear knowledge and support"(20 April 2008). The President’s top national security advisors, Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, held dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to enhanced interrogation methods, including brutal methods of abuse that all civilized nations consider to be torture.

A report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee on December 11, 2008, the day after the sixtieth anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of human rights, concluded that, “the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody,” saying also that, “The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees”.

These reports, and many others dealing with the human rights record of the Bush administration, demonstrate that there is ample reason to believe that senior officials of the George W. Bush administration, conspired to systematically violate human rights, broke U.S. laws, and authorized the commission of war crimes.

Yet calls for accountability for these crimes, even for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate them, have been pushed aside by the Obama administration again and again using the specious argument that it is better to look forward than back. But the only way we can hope for a American future in which these kinds of abuses will not be repeated is by fully investigating what happened during the Bush-Cheney administration and holding the architects of these policies accountable.

Rather than misinformed people screaming at their Congressmen about "death panels" that were never even contemplated, progressives should be screaming about the government-sponsored "death squads" that were authorized by the former administration. Where is the sense of moral outrage on the left? Why are progressives allowing themselves to be "slow-walked" into accepting the fact that the Obama adminstration is allowing political considerations to interfere with the investigation of these crimes and the administration of justice?

Addendum: August 31, 2009

We now learn that Blackwater was supposed to provide foreigners for surveillance and support for death squads so as to make sure there were no "American fingerprints" on these secret operations. Fortunately, the program never became operational and was downgraded and finally ended before anyone was assassinated.
See this report in the Huffington Post for details.