|
Chicago Tribune August 15, 2003 Lethal Iraqi guerrillas are not just `loyalists' Author: Georgie Anne Geyer, Universal Press Syndicate
Coming from Iraq, the new realizations by our war planners ought to stun us with their sheer obviousness. For instance, the U.S. military has suddenly recognized that kicking in the doors of Iraqis' homes, blindfolding and kicking their husbands and fathers, and searching the women is not endearing them to all those they came to "liberate." As Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, chief commander of allied forces in Iraq, said last week, "I started to get multiple indicators that maybe our iron-fisted approach . . . was beginning to alienate Iraqis." (Odd Iraqis! Most people just love to have their doors kicked down in the middle of night!)
It also is dawning on some American policy-makers that although they have predicted after each seminal event a real letup of attacks on Americans, that simply is not happening. Take the killings of Saddam's two monster-pawns two weeks ago. Udai and Qusai are gone; but that has had little effect on the guerrilla war against the United States. Instead, it grows in ferocity--and complexity--every day.
Today, as during all of Iraq's brutal history, violence emerges from every type of often disorganized small group, and not always from above. As military historian William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation wrote in a recent commentary: "Contrary to the mythology of the neo-cons, the guerrillas are not controlled by Saddam, nor are they fighting primarily for him. It is likely that there is already more than one guerrilla movement, with more than one set of motives and ultimate objectives. Both will proliferate as time goes on." And in a recent Baghdad dispatch called "Random Death" published in The New Republic, the well-informed writer Hassan Fattah further debunks the comforting, but delusionary idea that the resistance in Iraq is only from "former regime loyalists."
Instead, he reports persuasively, Iraq is awash in new "armies" (tribal militias, Islamic fighters, brigades of former Baathists, gangs, money mafias, and people simply bent upon revenge). The Americans think these groups are organized vertically--that you can simply take out the heads and the bodies will collapse or implode, and the threat will eventually fade away. But most of these are organized horizontally and with many causes that feed upon themselves. These types of guerrillas simply keep re-emerging in different forms--just as they have throughout Iraq's history. Wouldn't it be prudent to consider that this is what we are really facing? The blithe idea that things will just get better in Iraq and that America's fortunes will blossom will surely be proven false. What you see today may well be what you'll get tomorrow. Despite the fact that they will get much of the blame for the lack of coherent management of Iraq after the invasion, the American military is not the responsible party here. Responsibility rests, as it always has, with the zealous group of neo-conservatives whose real interest is not democracy in Iraq but the exercise of raw American power in the world on behalf of their egomaniacal imperial ambitions and their dedication to the expansionist dreams of he far-right Likud party in Israel. In this group's grandiose plans, the American military, professional and voluntary, is looked upon simply as a force to be used for whatever purposes they divine. In fact, they have encouraged the "iron-fisted approach" on the part of the American military because it divides them from the local people and keeps our soldiers more under the neo-cons' control. To say they have no sentimental attachment to the American military is a grave understatement.
It was this group's decision--and fault--that there was no planning for "the day after" the invasion to stabilize Iraq. All the planning done by the State Department and the CIA was deliberately discarded by this group, situated around the secretary of defense and the vice president. Meanwhile, our American troops, the ones trying to do a serious and honorable job, endure a situation inside Iraq at least as serpentine and Machiavellian as the plotting of the neo-con cabal's here. Iraq was a "war of choice." We didn't have to be there. Our soldiers are smart, and they know this. But these circumstances make them feel that the Iraqis should be immediately grateful and that they should then be able to go home. As the whole operation instead explodes in their faces, they find the complete opposite.
Foreign Islamists are returning to Iraq to fight the "invaders." The "reconstruction" (whenever that can begin) is estimated to cost Americans $1 billion a day. And instead of Iraqi oil "paying for everything," oil is being imported into Iraq to try to get things moving. Even in Vietnam, America was not in such a labyrinthine and dangerous adventure as this.
|
