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Iraqi Invasion is Ill-fated
Posted: Saturday, May 22, 2004
By STEPHEN KANGAL
The Anglo-American-led so-called liberating, democracy- establishing and Saddam- disarming and -crushing invasion of Iraq is swiftly panning out into a Pyrhhic victory resulting from gross miscalculation and deception about non-existent WMB's.
I predict that this ill-fated American Middle East foreign policy and military fiasco will climax with a Saigon-style humiliating exodus or hasty retreat. When the coffins returning from Iraq turn the tide of Anglo-American diminishing support, Washington and London will no longer be able to justify the cost (over $200bn for US alone) and magnitude of the carnage of this vicarious sacrifice of innocent Anglo- American lives for the so-called liberation of the Sunni-Shiia- Kurdish Bedouins of the Arabian Desert.
The political waterloo of the Bush-Blair special, "shoulder to shoulder" relationship is about to self-destruct firstly in The Presidential elections in November this year and the British elections of 2005. A lot is going wrong with this Bush war. The ostensible reasons given invite one to speculate that there might be more in the proverbial mortar than the traditional pestle. How much is Kuwait paying and to whom? Where are the WMD's, the liberation, the establishment of democracy and human rights and the energy security concerns in the face of the galloping price of crude above the $40 barrier? What is the exit strategy, the Allied post-Saddam contingency programme for restoring stability and the handing over of the governance of a united Iraq to civilian rule when the radical Shia cleric,Muqtada al-Sadr is staking his own leadership claims (Ayatollah Khoemini style) preparatory to the January elections and prosecuting his own freedom agend a? On top of this the Leader of the Interim Iraqi Council is brutally murdered? Iraq is in the grips of chaos and mayhem thanks to the hawkish Republicans in the White House.
The WMD deception has been pilloried to bits, Iraq pipelines have started to drip again. Hashemi Rafsanjani (Iran) has called for international Islamic outrage to be militarised against the infidel desecration of the holiest Islamic shrines in Fallujah.
Americans have historically and pathologically demonstrated that they do not and are unwillingly to understand the dynamics and complexities of non- Western models of conduct, governance and value-systems. The American War being conducted in Iraq is a mirror of military and diplomatic incompetence. Why try to impose Western-style democracy and human rights when the Middle Eastern countries regard royalty and monarchical dictatorships as the norm? Will the Kurds who control the north, the minority Ba'aathists ruling class Sunnis the central (Baghdad) and the traditionally majority- disenfranchised Shias the south of Iraq come together to participate in a political fabrication of the Coalition? This is an exercise in futility unless and until a loose federal system of government can be forged in Iraq that would provide the only viable and credible exit strategy.
The Bush-Blair Siamese twins miscalculated both short and long term internal Iraqi reactions as well those of their respective domestic constituencies and that of the international community. The extent of the carnage( 777 GI's, 67 Brits and 11,000 civilian Iraqi's) and the abuses perpetrated in the Abu Ghraib prison are sufficient to provoke an international outrage and call for UN intervention. This carnage is unsustainable, weakens Anglo- American and Anglo-Euro relations as well.
Blair has led Britain from being America's poodle to being America's door-mat. There is a growing crescendo of voices and even loud silence from Labour's back-benches for Blair to bow out to Chancellor Brown. He has shown weakness in being unable to influence either Washington or the Pentagon. In fact the marginalisation of both Colin Powell, Jack Straw and Robin Cook (British Foreign Secretaries) and S/G Koffie Anan and the dominance of The White House, No. 10 Downing Street and the Pentagon in prosecuting what is essentially a foreign policy demarche in a very complex, highly volatile and Islamic- sensitive theatre is the heart of the current debacle and a potential political and military catastrophe waiting to happen.
This war is not worth the enormous savage destruction of human life, the recessionary-prone destabilisation of the world's economy nor the limitless billions of green-backs being poured into the permanent scorching of the Iraqi desert leading to an environmental, human and cultural disaster of kilotonic proportions.
The Allies have no immediate proportionate legitimate response to the neutralise the growing influence of the radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who has transformed Iraqi resistance into a global Shiia jihad. The atrocities unleashed at the Abu Ghaib Jail have caused a flash point in this useless war. Anglo-American credibility is at on the line. President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Schroeder have been justified by their uncanny diplomatic foresight to stay out of this War. Anglo-American self-appointed liberators are now regarded as illegal, inhumane aggressors, invaders and foreign occupiers. Iraq is now an imploding conflagration that will suffocate and destroy the bush wars and blaring sirens.
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