Why does America need foreign support ?

An international one-day conference on rebuilding Iraq sponsored by the United States and the European Union, which has to drawn foreign ministers from the 25-nation European Union, the United States, Iraq and many others took place in Brussels on June 22. This raises several questions : why does the US want an international conference with the participation of European countries two years after its "victory" in Iraq ? What can be expected from this conference ? And how should the antiwar movement in Europe react ?

The answer to the first question was, paradoxically, given by Zalmay Khalilzad, nominated to be US ambassador to Iraq, speaking before the US Senate : "The degree of support for our policies, opinion polls indicate, is not very high," he said. This has partly to do with "the perception that what we are about in Iraq is occupation, what we’re about is to gain control of Iraqi resources. I think what we need to do is a better job of explaining our goals, the goal of an Iraq that’s self-reliant, an Iraq that’s successful. We want Iraq for the Iraqis, an Iraq that works for the Iraqi people." [1].

Whether Zalmay Khalilzad believes what he says or not, I don’t know, but certainly, very few people outside the United States believe him, and, what is more important, it is not rational to believe what he says.
Indeed, what would an "Iraq for the Iraqis" look like ? I am not an expert on the Middle East, but one does not have to be an expert to realize that a truly free and democratic Iraq would almost certainly seek to achieve these three goals :

– Control of its oil ressources, which would mean choosing its business partners and seeking agreements with other oil-producing countries in order to be able to limit production and raise prices.

– Full national sovereignty, without foreign troops on its soil (i.e. no "permanent US military bases").

– Freedom to use its wealth to build an effective military counterweight to the Israeli military hegemony in the region, including, if necessary, by acquiring nuclear weapons ; there is nothing scandalous or undemocratic about that : Israel has plenty of nuclear weapons and France acquired such weapons supposedly to counter a far less pressing Soviet threat.

None of these policies could conceivably be accepted by the United States, and this is the basic root of the present conflict in Iraq, whatever form it takes, from "elections" to "terrorism".

It is well known that things in Iraq don’t go as advertized. The population isn’t exactly welcoming the "liberators", and this fact becomes slowly known to the American public, whose support for the war is constantly waning. The latest damaging incident concerns the "secret Downing Street memos", recently published in London, but written in July 2002 for the Blair government, at least a month before Bush said that there was "no timetable" for war and his secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said that "the president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq"[2] . These memos clearly show that :

– the war was already decided, at least by July 2002, no matter what the Iraqis might do.

– the motive was regime change.

– it was recognized, most clearly by the British, that this motive was illegal under international law. ("The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.")

– the case for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was "thin". "Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Lybia, North Korea or Iran", and therefore "facts and intelligence were fixed" to give a legal basis for the war.

– finally, it was clear that the return of the inspectors was demanded in the hope that Iraq would refuse them, and therefore give the Anglo-Americans a casus belli ("It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject").

It means also that Bush lied to the US Congress, by pretending that the issue was Iraq’s WMD and is lying again by saying that his administration was misled into war by "intelligence failures" (fixing intelligence is hardly the same thing as intelligence failures). It is an odd feature of American democracy that its president can order his troops to go around half the world, invade a country with no valid reason, kill a lot of people and create a mess that nobody knows how to fix, and get away with it. But if he lies to Congress and to the "American people", then he might be in trouble. It is odd, but perhaps better than nothing. Of course, since Republicans control both Houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and, one might add, most of the media, it is impossible that Bush will be impeached [3] . But the memos may give a boost to the antiwar movement, and play a role similar to the one of the Pentagon papers during the Vietnam war, since both documents show the total contempt of US governments for such things as truth, democracy or accountability.

Already four congressmen, two Democrats and two Republicans, have introduced the Homeward Bound Act, on June 16, 2005, a resolution that calls for bringing the troops home no later than October 1, 2006. What is interesting is that one of the Republicans supporting the resolution is Walter Jones of North Carolina who made himself sort of famous, two years ago, by making the somewhat childish suggestion to rename the french fries sold on Capitol Hill, "freedom fries", to protest France’s opposition to war. Now, he claims that "we have done as much as we can" in Iraq, and that the funeral of a dead American soldier that he attended "has been on my mind and my heart ever since".

Let us come back to the Brussels conference. First of all, the mere fact that it takes place shows that the United States is in big trouble.When it invaded Iraq, it didn’t expect to come begging for support two years later from "Old Europe"; like the "freedom fries" congressman, the US government has received from the Iraqi resistance a serious lesson of humility. But all the Brussels Conference is likely to offer is moral support. Whether this will have any effect in Iraq, where people face facts, not symbols, remains to be seen. The real target of support is the US population- opposition to the war is mounting, the army has increasing recruitment problems (despite extra bonuses offered to soldiers), and the morale of the troops is low. Therefore, the US government wants to be able to show to its population that the "international community" supports its efforts in Iraq. This was also the entire purpose of the "coalition of the willing", the US allies at the time of the invasion, none of which, not even Britain, has played a significant military role. This war is purely a US war, but that fact has to be carefully hidden from the people in the United States, who might be very displeased if they knew how isolated their country is in the world.

What is striking is that the mainstream "peace movements", both in Europe and the United States, are rather lukewarm about the prospect of "bringing the troops home now". They may somehow ask for a timetable for withdrawal, but aren’t making much noise about it, or taking action. A common reaction is to say that, yes, we were opposed to the war, but now that it has taken place, we cannot abandon the Iraqis to their fate ; they might even say that we must help the Iraqis build a stable democracy (which presumably means crushing the resistance first). A reaction like the one of the "freedom fries" congressman ("we have done all we can") looks too selfish and too American-centered for the well meaning liberal branch of the peace movement. It is no small paradox of our time that opposition to this war is probably more vocal on the right, or among apolitical people, like the families of soldiers, than on the "left". The mainstream peace movement is scared to death of being accused of "supporting the resistance" (whatever that may mean), as it was scared to death before the war of being accused of "supporting Saddam". They have interiorized, what one might call the Pol Pot effect : the Vietnam war was kept going in large part on the pretext that Americans could not "abandon the Vietnamese to their fate" and because of the "bloodbath" that might happen when they left. When the Americans finally did leave, horrible things did happen, but in Cambodia rather than in Vietnam, and the blame for this has been laid, absurdly, at the feet of the peace movement, which, for the most part, has at least implicitly gone along with the accusation.

This argument can only be countered by taking a more global point of view. Indeed nobody knows what would happen in Iraq if the United States left (by the same token, nobody knows how long they would have to stay and how many people they would have to kill in order to create a stable Iraq to their liking). But the significance of this war goes far beyond the borders of that unfortunate land. From the 16th to the middle of the 20th century, we have seen the rise of European hegemony over the rest of the world. With the decolonization process, a whole new historical era began, which was a major progress for mankind, comparable to the fall of absolute monarchies or to the end of slavery.

War-loving, imperialist Europe was demoralized by its misadventures — and this has opened Europeans to the possibility of a more universal morality in relation to the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, a new imperial center emerged from the self-destruction of Europe, the United States, as well as a new mode of control, through economic and diplomatic pressures, embargoes, military coups and, if everything else fails, but only then, direct military intervention ; in other words, neo-colonialism instead of colonialism. The United States still convinces itself that imposing its will on the world is both profitable and moral, serving, as the standard phrase goes, "ideals and interests".

The deep meaning of the Porto Allegre "global justice movement", of the protests against the WTO, of the revolts and elections in Latin America, as well as of the Iraqi resistance is to reject this new mode of control ; the crisis of the neo-colonial system is likely to be the main crisis of the beginning of the 21st century. The goal of a genuine Western left and of the peace movement should be to help this process by demoralizing, as much as possible, the imperial powers from within. If the latter lack the "moral fiber" to fight, then the rest of world will free itself from the shackles of neo-colonialism, as it did with colonialism in the past. That is why we should oppose the Brussels Conference, even if, or rather, precisely because, its goal is purely to offer "moral support".

The most important difference between Europe and the US is that, in the former, there is no longer enthusiasm for foreign adventures (except, to some extent, in England). Losing wars has a had a civilizing effect on this most violent continent (of course, American neo-conservative consider this as a sign of European decadence-it all depends whether one thinks that willingness to wage aggressive wars is a sign of civilized behaviour). People are simply tired of wars and colonial expeditions. As the mother of Napoleon supposedly said when her son became emperor "pourvu que cela dure" ( let’s hope that it lasts ). More importantly, let’s hope that the Americans will finally be forced to follow this path.

Notes

1. Federal News Service, June 7, 2005, Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

2. For the full text of the first memo, see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607_1,00.html
The quotes below are taken from the memos.

3. The United States Senate can "impeach", i.e. destitute, the President for sufficiently grave offenses, like lying to Congress to drive the country to war. Nixon was impeached because of Watergate and related domestic matters, but not because of far greater crimes, like his "secret" bombing of Cambodia.

Thanks to Jean Bricmont and Hana Al Bayaty

See also:

– War Crimes and The ’Just War’ Theory
– War Crimes - The World Tribunal on Iraq (articles and links)
– Bush, War, Crimes - Protest Posters (Images, Messages)