''America will lose the war in Iraq''
By Frank Deliu, J.D.
02/17/04: (YellowTimes.org) – Now that is a bold claim to make, considering America's overwhelming military victory that took about less than a month.
However, one must remember that wars are ultimately a tool of politics, a way to get your opponent to agree with your point of view (albeit a nasty one that should be used as a last resort).
Bearing that in mind, wars that have been militarily "won" have ultimately been considered "losses" due to their failure to achieve their political objectives.
An example of this anomaly is Vietnam. If you look back at the casualty figures for the U.S. war there you will see that for every American that died at least 20 times that many North Vietnamese died. In theory, had the war gone on another x number of years America would have won by attrition.
However, that is exactly why the war was a failure, and ultimately a defeat. Its political objectives of pacification, reunification and the like never caught on, so to speak.
Thus, the resistance continued, and continued, and continued until finally the will of the Viet Cong was stronger than the will of the American public. Then came the withdrawal.
The same will happen in Iraq and the war will have been a defeat for the Americans. A review of the four major pre-war objectives will evince this.
One goal of the war was to prevent a despotic dictator/regime from maintaining its WMDs. Based on present evidence this was an impossible goal, because the dictator/regime in question did not in fact have WMDs. Moreover, the credibility of America has been shattered as this becomes plain to the rest of the world (and the millions of pre-war protestors, Hans Blix, Scott Ritter and the others who predicted no WMDs would be found).
Another stated goal of the war was to prevent Iraq from working with terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. Considering the amount of attacks being launched against U.S.-led coalition troops, the war actually increased terrorism in Iraq.
Yet another purpose of the war was to democratize Iraq and make it a model for the Arab world, an ambitious plot that would have made T.E. Lawrence envious. Ignoring America's lack of credentials in this arena (less than 50 percent voter turnout in the Republic ranks the United States #139 in the world in this category), the plan has now shifted into not allowing direct elections but instead forcing a Caucus Electoral College System on the Iraqi people (and we know how well that worked in America in 2000). Another point worth making is that Iraq is in real danger of breaking up into a civil war, again another possible opposite effect.
The final "official" goal of the war was to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam and his sycophants. In this regard, the Bush administration cites palaces contrasted with torture cells and mass graves to show the evil of the former regime, as if someone had even questioned this. So whilst it is true that the Iraqi people are not subject to such arbitrary and capricious punishment anymore, what they are instead subjected to are bombings, kidnappings, unemployment, etc. Before the government was killing and starving them, now it is more random, coming from all directions.
Now we get into a few of the "unofficial" motives for the war and these are where the impending departure from Iraq really hurts America most (as the non-accomplishment of the official reasons essentially only hurts the Iraqi people).
The most obvious nefarious aim of the war was oil, as the millions of anti-war protestors highlighted with varying levels of ingenuity. With an unstable theocracy in Saudi Arabia, Iraq would make a good backup for the #1 consumer of oil in the world. However, should the U.S. pullout without having installed a puppet to protect American interests (and it appears the Shi'a will not stand for a puppet and they have a track record of having overthrown the Shah in Iran), then this silent purpose of the war will go unmet as well.
Another unnamed reason for the war was to re-shape the Middle East using Iraq as a model. The Kurds are interested in their own state, or a federation with autonomy for them at worst. The Shiites want direct elections that will virtually assure their ascension to power. The Sunnis want a return to the good ole' days of Saddam when they ruled and prospered. Thus, the only likely outcomes are a civil war or breakup of the country. If this is the plan for a new Middle East, then the problems fomenting in that region that are hurting Western interests are only in their infancy.
One other plausible reason for the war was that the American hyper-power needed to throw its muscle around and a weakened Iraq (by over a decade of sanctions) would be just the place to do so with minimum casualties. By any account, the resistance has been stronger than expected and proven itself adept at fighting the Americans in a guerilla war. Should America leave Iraq having failed in most or all of the patent and latent purposes of war, then the fundamentalist Islamic and Pan-Arabic movement will only grow bolder at having helped send home another empire bloody.
Conspiracy theorists can put forth errata on the other masked reasons for war (government contracts, etc.). I tried to focus on the generally consensus of the obvious hidden reasons.
Perhaps things will change and all the neo-con predictions about WMDs, terrorist links, flowers, candies and hugs for the "coalition," democracy, and freedom will come true; and maybe the industrial war machine and American resolve will still win the day. Nevertheless, judging from the past 10 months, the downward spiral is the trend.
[Frank Deliu is an American/Romanian lawyer educated both inside and outside of the United States