|
Iraq: The End Is Not Near by
Leon Hadar
Americans overwhelmingly lack confidence that Iraq will have a stable government in place within the next year, and more than half say that the war has not been worth its cost, according to a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll. Fewer than one in five, or about 19 per cent, of the 1,003 adults quizzed said they believe the Iraqis can assemble a sound, democratic government in the next 12 months that is able to maintain order without the assistance of US troops. Seventy-five per cent said they didn't believe that would happen. The poll also suggested that most Americans remain skeptical about the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with 52 per cent telling pollsters it wasn't worth going to war. However, this is a marked decrease from a poll taken fewer than two months ago, indicating that 60 per cent of Americans didn't think the war was worth the cost. So, is it over? In fact, US Congressman Jack Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania is predicting the "vast majority of US troops to leave Iraq by year's end." Now, let's see . . . isn't that Jack Murtha from last year's "Murtha Moment" – the famous tipping point that should have marked the beginning of the end of the Bush presidency and the start of the US withdrawal from Iraq? That was at least the spin that was advanced last year when Murtha, a Vietnam War hero, suggested that the United States would not be able to win the war in Mesopotamia and urged the White House to consider setting a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops there. Some pundits compared Murtha's comments to those made by celebrated television anchorman Walter Cronkite whose 1967 observation that the US was losing the war in Vietnam forced then president Lyndon Johnson to conclude that US military involvement in Southeast Asia was over. Indeed, after Murtha criticized the Bush administration's conduct in Iraq, the left-of-center Nation magazine suggested that "history may well record that the beginning of the end of the American nightmare in Iraq came on Nov. 17, when an old warrior said it was time for the troops to come home." Well, that didn't happen. And I don't think it will be happening anytime soon. To be fair to the Nation and other the-Iraq-war-is-over crowd, the magazine as well as many pundits qualified their prediction by stressing that that rosy scenario would take place only if the Democrats seized the opportunity that Murtha offered them to become the tribune of popular sentiment against the war. But the critics of the Iraq war and the US imperial project should admit now that there was a lot of expectation – wishful thinking is probably the right term – that the tide was turning against the neoconservative ideologues and the other members of the War Party. Pundits were fantasizing about Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska emerging as a Republican presidential candidate, not to mention all the talk about the Democrats taking control of Capitol Hill in the coming midterm elections in November, followed by Congressional investigations of the war, and who knows? Impeachment? Perhaps the time has come for the members of the Reality-based Community to stop dreaming and conclude that it ain't gonna happen anytime soon. The Democrats may gain a small advantage in the House of Representatives, and even that isn't a certainty. Smoke-and-mirror spinning would create the impression that the Americans are starting to withdraw from Iraq. A few US troops will return home but others will be deployed to Iraq. But America is going to be there for a long time to come. The Bushies "did Iraq" because they could do it. In March 2003, there were no constraints operating on the Bush administration at home (no opposition in Congress) or abroad (no counterbalancing global player). Has anything changed since then? I don't think so. It's not only that the Democrats are still politically impotent. The fact is that the majority of the members of the Democratic establishment – those who supported going to war – are opposed to withdrawing from Iraq. They actually accept President George W Bush's rules for debate on the war, that only "honest criticism" – never challenging the need to remain in Iraq – should be applied. At the same time, no leading global power is ready to challenge the United States. The Europeans are divided and have failed to come up with alternative and coherent policy options on Iraq (although they still are not going to help the US there with troops and money); the Russians are weak; and the Chinese, whose central bank (together with those of Japan and South Korea) continues to finance the US current account deficit, are watching the Americans drowning in the Middle Eastern quagmire – and smiling. Their hope is that the "war on terrorism" will end – and they, the Chinese, will emerge as the winners. Bush's imperial project in Iraq and elsewhere will face serious challenges only when the global geo-strategic and geo-economic costs of the endeavor become obvious. Perhaps when the price of oil will reach the stratosphere. Or the Asian central banks and the oil-producing countries will stop buying dollar assets. Or the US current account deficit will not be sustainable. Perhaps when the US dollar sinks. Perhaps the housing bubble will pop – and will start impacting on the economic welfare of the white middle-class voter. She can't pay for the gas for my SUV? He can't borrow against capital gains on my home? She can't pay off my credit cards?
January 26, 2006 Leon Hadar [send him mail] is Washington correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore and the author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan). Visit his blog. Copyright © 2006 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of the author. |
