| |
COMMENTARY
Iraq under US military
rule?
Reports have been leaked that
the United States has a plan to occupy and govern Iraq as
it did with Japan after World War II. This report is as
worrisome as it is puzzling. The name of General Douglas
MacArthur, the then military governor of Japan, is being
bandied about as a model for ruling Iraq. But Iraq is
not Japan.
Not only historically are the two
nations different, but also in the matter of the facts
of the dispute. Iraq has committed no crime of attacking
the United States. And if possessing weapons of mass
destruction is a crime, then a number of other countries
also are committing this crime. If having a disarmed
Iraq under strict United Nations supervision is not a
satisfactory resolution to the impending crisis - which
CNN has already dubbed, somewhat jingoistically,
"Showdown Iraq" - then one can only hope that the United
States will not make the mistake of becoming a ruler and
an occupier of a Muslim country.
When the US
went into Afghanistan in 2001 it had a definite purpose
- to dismantle a transnational terrorist network, which
it did. But then, very astutely and correctly, it got
involved in allowing the Afghans to go through the
process of recreating their own governmental
infrastructures. It played a crucial role in the Bonn
accord, which described the evolution of a legitimate
government in Afghanistan. The US government was also
heavily involved in the making of the loya jirga
(grand council), which accorded some longevity to the
government of President Hamid Karzai. There were
credible reports that Washington was also behind
ensuring the ultimate abdication of former king Zahir
Shah, a very important ritual which formally passed on
the mantle of legitimacy to Karzai.
Even though
the Bush administration at present is not focused on
ensuring the emergence of a stable Afghanistan, its
mistakes in that theater are tactical. Strategically
speaking, the US government’s heart is in the right
place. Its chief objective is that a multiethnic
coalition should control the destiny of Afghanistan.
There is no US military governor in charge of that
country; only a commander with a different mission, that
of cleansing Afghanistan of the remnants of the
terrorist forces. In the meantime, the Karzai government
continues, with the help of international economic
assistance, to enhance its legitimacy.
It is
assiduously working to promote the emergence of a
moderate Muslim polity where women will not be deprived
of education and other opportunities, and where
educational curricula will emphasize, along with
religious education, the modern education that will
enable the new generations of Afghans to rebuild their
war-ravaged country. By ensuring the uninterrupted
functioning of the new Afghan government, the United
States is unambiguously signaling to the world that it
has no designs to be the occupying force in Afghanistan.
Why, then, is the Bush administration reportedly
considering a radically different approach to Iraq,
which is not only one of the most important countries of
the Arab world, but also the spiritual headquarters of
Shi'ite Islam? The published evidence thus far suggests
that no systematic thinking has been done to answer this
question. Was the plan developed by the same people
whose cynical frame of reference in the recent past has
described Saudi Arabia as an "enemy" of the United
States? Does it reflect the thinking of neocolonialists
who have recently argued for the return of "benign
colonialism" in the underdeveloped regions of the globe?
Or are the authors of the proposed US occupation of Iraq
the same superhawks in Washington who have consistently
failed to articulate why the Bush administration has to
invade Iraq, and why it would not be satisfied with a
disarmed Iraq?
Clear-cut answers to the
preceding questions are hard to find. But perhaps the
answer is, simply, "yes".
There is little doubt
that the Middle East is badly in need of democracy of
some sort, but certainly not of the Western liberal
brand, which is most suitable for the Western culture.
The United States, as the leading international
proselytizer for democracy, is certainly qualified for
discreetly urging Middle Eastern rulers to gradually
open up their political systems, allow the evolution of
loyal opposition and promote a variety of political
parties. Some or all these activities would be a welcome
way of promoting political pluralism in all Muslim
countries. Any such promotion - and this is the most
important point - should be highly respectful of Islamic
values. Value conflicts are best resolved through a
period of trial and error, and through patient endeavor.
Imposition of Western values on a Muslim country will be
a gross mistake, especially by militarily conquering and
then ruling it.
Since
post-Taliban Afghanistan remains a highly unstable country,
it appears the Bush officials are drawing wrong
lessons from that experience by concluding that a
credible alternative for post-Saddam Iraq would be its
occupation and the implementation of democracy, as was
done in Japan and Germany.
A
variety of guesstimates have been made of the economic
cost of invading Iraq. According to President George
W Bush’s unnamed top economic advisor, the cost of
war could be as much as US$200 billion, and the
American taxpayers will bear all of the cost at a time
when the federal deficit is projected to be $452 billion
over the next four years. According to the Congressional
Budget Office, the cost of war on Iraq could be as high
as $9 billion a month. As a matter of comparison, one
should be reminded that the total cost of the 1991 Gulf
War against Iraq was $61 billion, $48 billion of which
was contributed by other countries to the US treasury.
But has anyone calculated the price of
occupying and ruling Iraq from the perspective of loss of
American forces? Replacing Saddam Hussein through military
action gets high public support in opinion polls (58
percent support reported by the Washington Post of August 13).
But that support drops precipitously (to 40 percent, in
the same opinion poll) when a question is asked about
absorbing "significant" numbers of US casualties as a
result of a ground war. To that issue, one should also
add the amount of resentment that will be nurtured as a
direct outcome of America’s exercise of neocolonialism
in the Middle East.
It
is interesting that the "talking heads" in the United States
- the fast food version of instant experts on just about
all the regions of the world - frequently
observe that contrary to conventional wisdom, the Muslim world did
not rise up against the United States when
the Taliban were ousted. These instant experts have
a strange way of interpreting (rather misinterpreting)
the amount of extant resentment in Muslim countries of
different regions of the world. Even the recent attacks
against the US Marines in Kuwait, and the huge explosion in -
of all places - the island of Bali in Indonesia, are
not likely to convince them of the escalating tide of
anger against US policies in the Middle East and South
Asia.
No one is suggesting that the Taliban
should not have been ousted. Their ruling style
terrorized their fellow citizens, while their
association with the al-Qaeda terrorists escalated the
pace of transnational terrorism. Thus, their rule in
Afghanistan was allowed to continue entirely too long.
But constantly misreading the rising surge
of resentment against the policies of the US
government is likely to take the lone superpower in a
wrong direction, the direction of misadventure in the
Muslim world. Military invasion and occupation of Iraq
could well turn out to be the worst mistake in US
history.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
