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Iraq From the Moon: Is the West Set to Leave?
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
By Philip Shaw M.Sc.
There is a sea change going on. In the west you can almost feel it. After all the money and energy spent and lives lost the west wants out of Iraq. There might be stragglers who still believe, but I think even at the very top of the American administration, there are no more believers. The west wants out, and the Americans are set to leave possibly within 18 months.
Some of you surely think I must be crazy. Iraq it would seem has descended into sectarian violence, weapons of mass destruction only a footnote on history. In preparation of writing for this column I went back and looked at what I had written when the "Iraq war" was ten days old. This is how I finished my friend's piece, "When Might Is Right Until When?"
"On my recent trip to the United States, I had the opportunity to visit the Kennedy Space Centre. While there I got to touch a moon rock and listen to some testimonials from some of the American astronauts who walked on the moon. One of the astronauts noted when he looked back at earth, he felt so bad about what was happening back there. From his perch on the moon, he found it hard to believe that people on that tiny dot in space could spend so much energy fighting each other. If you think about that for a minute, it might seem for a fleeting second to seem so silly. But back on earth, we live in the real world, both sides trying to gain the higher ground of morality. The coalition of the willing has all the firepower and resources. The Iraqi's have Baghdad and now suicide bombers. When the dust settles, the world will probably be more dangerous. But it will still look the same from the moon." (April 2003)
Are those prophetic words, or am I just lucky at predicting the future. Iraq now is a quagmire, with 3709 Iraqi civilians being killed in October 2006 alone. However, it still doesn't rival what has gone on in central Africa. But to the west, it is a much more dangerous place. Sometimes to pick up and leave Vietnam style makes more sense than to continue in a land where nobody is going to win. Sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims abounds. Even Syria and Iran are trying to get formally involved. The question I have is how did it ever get this way? Should we take another look from the moon?
The "raison d'etre" in many ways for this column is understanding each other from different parts of this world. So think about this one. There was a view from this part of the world that a flourishing democracy of a new Iraq with vast oil wealth would totally remake the Middle East fostering peace and economic prosperity into the future, maybe as soon as 2007. All that was needed was to replace Saddam Hussein and ride the joy of the Iraqi people to that ultimate goal. As we've said before in this column, where are those "bouquets of flowers" on Iraqi streets?
I must admit, I even thought about that. When I allowed myself to have "blurred western vision" that seemed to make some sense. Seeing the sectarian quagmire of a 2006/07 Iraq, many in the west could have never envisioned. Cleary that was the case for many in the George W. Bush administration. I think it is interesting now to see President George W. Bush looking toward people like former Secretary of State James Bakker who served under the first President Bush. It would seem Bush senior had a much better appreciation of Iraq and what war does, when he led a wider coalition liberating Kuwait in 1991. Bush junior now seems to be reaching out to some of those who were there.
Behind much of this in the west is the spectre of 9/11. Yes, the memory has faded somewhat since that terrible day five years ago. However, reasons for US foreign policy stem directly from that. As difficult as it is for some in the East to understand that, it's important to get around on it. Shattering "fortress North America" had results, which six years out nobody could envision. What's going on in Iraq right now is partly honed from that day.
I'm not trying to justify anything. It is easy to say the west will retreat from Iraq and Iraq will begin to fracture along ethnic and religious lines and more and more lives will be lost. Answers might come through some very strange bedfellows like maybe Iran, Turkey, Syria and the United States working together. As strange as it sounds to some in the west Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might be key. Even with his current nuclear problems with the west, he's been reaching out in his own somewhat overt way. Finding a way out for the Americans in Iraq might be his ticket to wider Iranian acceptance in the western global community.
In the meantime, Iraq will continue to be the muddle, which it is. It is the soup du jour of where our world's strategic interests seem to be merged. In a region where history has been harsh hopes for peace may seem slim for some time to come.
The Gainers and Losers of Iraq War
By A.K. Enamul Haque, PhD
Phil and I have written so much on Iraq but it did not bring any tangible changes in the life of the millions of Iraqis. As I have said, after the days of Saddam, Iraqis (who were previously oppressed by him) thought that they would now have an opportunity to express themselves. But as Mr. Kofi Annan put it on 4 December 2006 – "Iraq is in the grip of a civil war." In Washington the outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged in a memo just before he lost his job that US strategy in Iraq was not working and it might be better to reduce troop numbers. Yet US President George W Bush has repeatedly rejected recent assertions in the mainstream media that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war.
After the election in the USA it is now clear to many that the Anglo-American strategy to illegally invade Iraq was not only wrong but it has also violated the basic tenets of civil rights. After the war in Iraq, Iraqis are not better off but are the Brits and the Americans better off? The answer is no. This is what Phil and I were trying to put out in our column regularly but at times it seemed to me that the message was not getting through.
In one of my last columns on Lebanon in August this year titled "Lebanese People Playing Whose Card?" I did mention that the Lebanese people are not playing their own cards. They were playing the cards laid down by others. The western press is still "wrong" and is out there to prove that Syria is doing the "killing" but the latest information from Lebanon tells me a different story.
I still believe that Syria will come back to Lebanon (what I wrote on 1st August 2006) and until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved this might be the best interim solution. While the western media has been playing up the card that Syria is behind the killing in Lebanon, my own analysis tells me that Israel is doing so using its intelligent agents. Many years ago I was reading the book "By the Way of Deception" where it was revealed how Israeli agents killed many Arab scientists and they did so using knifes and cutting the throats of the victims to show to the world that the pattern of killing resembled an Arab type of killing.
It was a long book of serial killings done by Israeli agents. Israel was angry after the publication of the book and wanted to ban its distribution but it failed. However, they managed to buy the copies of the book so that the book quickly went "out of print" so that people cannot get to read it. That was then and I strongly believe that it is still the same. However, Israel and the US made several mistakes. First, when Harari was killed, the US wanted to take advantage and played the card such that Syria had to leave Lebanon. This was OK but then Israel thought that it is time to kill the flies – the Hezbollah fighters and so it attacked Lebanon. This was a major mistake. Second, after Syria left Lebanon, UN investigations failed to prove any direct link between Syrian agents and the killing of Harari but the smoke or the suspicion remained. This was OK. But the mistake was to continue to kill more leaders. Successive killings are now threatening the peace that existed between the Muslims and the Christians for many years. The recent uprising is an example.
In Iraq the problem is very similar. The US went into Iraq by lying to the world, moving its troops inside Iraq through deception under the veil of the Security Council’s seal of approval. Kofi Annan, now tells the world that it was illegal because the decision to invade Iraq was not approved by the Council. Years of lies and deception against the Iraqi people and its leader have weakened the morale of the world. It is now difficult to agree on many issues. Phil has mentioned before that many people are dying in Africa and the world is not doing anything. I agree, but the root cause is linked with the systematic behavior of lying and deception of the western press and its leaders. The common people of the west were also deceived. After many years they have understood the tragedy to some extent and I am happy that they have spoken out through their voting rights.
However, the problem of the world has now been extended to other parts of the world. Fiji has lost its PM recently and the military has taken over the power. Thailand lost its democracy too.
Finally, let me share a picture with you. In the 1980's Iraq used to take workers, doctors, engineers, nurses, mechanics, etc. from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Why? Because Iraqis had oil resources and they were living a life, which was far better than what it is today. Imagine the ordinary Iraqis then and today. Kofi Annan can see it but Bush cannot see it yet. The ordinary Iraqis are not engaged in a war – against the most powerful forces of the earth. They vow to kill and to be killed. They see no hope in their life and in their country. They see that despite their vast oil wealth and despite the fact that the price of oil has increased from 27$ to near 70$ their life has gone down. The question needs to be asked, because of whom, Saddam or Bush? Ordinary Iraqis can understand this easily and so they are providing shelters, helping the insurgents with information and killing (even Iraqis) those who are either occupying their country or helping the occupying forces. I mentioned in 2003 that in Bangladesh when the Pakistani army occupied us, many people started to give shelter to the freedom fighters to free the country from occupation. Fortunately, we were not fighting the US or Soviet army and so it was short. For Iraqis or for Afghanis the occupying forces are strong, powerful and have no respect for them. Our struggle was over in 9 months, Afghanis and Iraqis are fighting and they might need another few years to win the game.
Meanwhile, the world has become powerless to fight crimes against humanity. The trust that was built between the West and others does not exist anymore. Ordinary Indians, Chinese, Korean, Pilipino, Bangladeshi, Lebanese, Egyptian, Pakistani, Indonesian, and many others often see black spots when the west wants to address their problems like hunger, poverty, and discrimination. To me this is the biggest loss of this century.
East/West is a joint column written by A.K. Enamul Haque and Philip Shaw. Dr. A.K.Enamul Haque Ph.D, is a Professor of Economics at United International University. Philip Shaw M.Sc. is farmer, writer and broadcaster in Dresden, Ontario, Canada. Each month they will bring their uniquely East/West perspectives to specific topics of world interest.
