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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
As the war enters its final phase, Bush claims we won. But how can we ever repay Iraqis what we owe them?
By Gary Kamiya
Read more: George W. Bush, Iran, Gary Kamiya, Opinion, Iraq War, Barack Obama
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
President George W. Bush leaves the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Va., Dec. 8, 2008.
Dec. 9, 2008 | On Thursday, after months of parliamentary wrangling, Iraq's three-man presidential council finally approved the U.S.-Iraq security pact, known as the Status of Forces Agreement. The pact requires all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011, with all combat forces withdrawing from Iraq cities in six months. The pact is a milestone: It spells the beginning of the end of Bush's great Iraq adventure. But not surprisingly, no one agrees on just what it means.
The Bush administration and war supporters claim that the agreement is a great victory. Neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer declared in the Washington Post that the agreement represents "the single most important geopolitical advance in the region since Henry Kissinger turned Egypt from a Soviet client into an American ally." War opponents have cautiously welcomed its call for an end to the U.S. military presence in Iraq but remain skeptical about whether it really represents progress.
But most Americans have barely noticed the security pact. Like the solipsist's tree falling on the moon, wars only exist when you notice them, and the American people tuned out the Iraq war long ago. This is a troubling fact, because war is a vast and terrible thing, the most momentous action a state can undertake. Whether you're a war supporter or a war opponent, you should be paying attention. The end of the war that bitterly divided America, cost thousands of American lives and an estimated 3 trillion dollars and wrecked the Bush presidency is in sight, and no one seems to have noticed.
So as we approach the beginning of the end of this war, it's worth drawing up a report card. Not a final one -- it may not be possible to issue a final historical grade on Iraq for decades, or even longer. But it is possible to make some judgments. The Iraq story isn't over yet, and whether we like it or not, we are deeply implicated in its outcome. When we invaded and shattered the country, we assumed a large measure of responsibility for its fate.
First, all sides, pro-war or anti-war, should agree that anything that helps Iraq and the Iraqi people is a good thing. The Iraqis should not be pawns in anyone's political game. George W. Bush's war may have been a catastrophic mistake, illegal, immoral and destructive in every way. But if something takes place on Bush's watch that helps the Iraqis, we should support it.
From that perspective, the security agreement does indeed provide some grounds for optimism that the next chapter in Iraq's story may not be as disastrous as the one written by Bush. That outcome is far from guaranteed. Iraq could still fall back into sectarian and ethnic chaos, and a thousand other disastrous or unpleasant or merely mixed outcomes could await it. The pact is unpopular with many Iraqis for different reasons, and it was only approved after massive U.S. arm-twisting and threats -- even though Bush had to make major, humiliating concessions in it. Nor is it a completely done deal: The Iraqi people will have their chance to approve or reject the agreement next June.
Still, the very fact that the Iraqi government has for now agreed on something -- anything -- is a good thing. Years ago, prescient analysts pointed out that the best and perhaps only way for the U.S. to exit Iraq would be if a relatively palatable nationalist leader kicked us out, thus salvaging Iraq's national honor and perhaps allowing both sides to emerge with at least a few shreds of dignity. In effect, that is precisely what has happened.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is at best barely palatable. He is determined to turn Iraq into a Shiite Islamic state, and he has yet to try to reconcile with Iraq's Sunni minority. But after the horrific civil war unleashed by the Golden Mosque bombing in 2006, even having a dubious, Iran-leaning zealot like Maliki in shaky control is better than anarchy.
While the security agreement provides reason for some cautious optimism, the claims made about it by the Bush administration and war supporters are wildly exaggerated. In a speech at the Brooking Institute's Saban Forum on Friday, President Bush declared that "Iraq has gone from an enemy of America to a friend of America, from sponsoring terror to fighting terror, and from a brutal dictatorship to a multi-religious, multi-ethnic constitutional democracy. Instead of the Iraq we would see if a Saddam Hussein were in power -- an aggressive regime vastly enriched by oil, defying the United Nations, bullying its Arab neighbors, threatening Israel, and pursuing a nuclear arms race with Iran -- we see an Iraq emerging peacefully with its neighbors, welcoming Arab ambassadors back to Baghdad, and showing the Middle East a powerful example of a moderate, prosperous, free nation."
Bush's statement, not to put too fine a point on it, is ludicrous. Polls show that most Iraqis regard Americans as occupiers, not liberators. In a 2006 poll, 61 percent said they approved of attacks on U.S. troops. The Iraqi government only agreed to the security pact -- which Iraqis call "the withdrawal agreement" -- because it ordered American troops out of their country. At some point in the future, it is possible that Iraq may have normal diplomatic relations with America, but to assert anything more than that is unjustified.
As for Iraq being peaceful, moderate, prosperous and free -- sadly, none of that is true now, and of the prospects that it will become true in the future, all one can say is in'shallah (Arabic for "God willing"). Many things stand in the way: the lack of Sunni-Shiite reconciliation, tensions with the Kurds, and Shiite-Shiite rivalries. Muqtada al-Sadr remains a wild card: His powerful militia is currently standing down, but could be reactivated at any time.
In a best-case scenario, Iraq will end up a fairly unstable state more or less closely aligned with Iran, with unequal oil revenue distribution and aggrieved Sunni and Kurdish minorities, but at least still unified, not plagued by major sectarian violence and not a declared enemy of the U.S. In a worst-case scenario, the country would become a failed state, descend again into violence on the scale of the civil war of 2006-2007 or worse and be a haven for jihadists and an open sore in the Middle East.
Remember Iraq?