All the world its battlefield
May 6th, 2003
US President George W. Bush last week fell short of declaring the US war on Iraq over, but only because the US military did not want to release the 6,000 prisoners of war it is holding. Instead Bush declared victory by saying that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” and that “in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
And prevailed they have, overthrowing within weeks a regime the US-UK tandem had described as a threat to the world because it possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links with al-Qaeda.
The weapons have not been found, though Bush’s pledge that they will be found does sound like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Neither have the al-Qaeda links of Saddam Hussein’s late regime been found. But leave it to the US to make claims it can’t substantiate for now, but which it will, later.
The US and company did more than overthrow Saddam Hussein, however. With Saddam Hussein’s fall the looters and criminal gangs have also flourished in the ruins of Iraqi society and its major cities. The clerics of the Shi’ite majority Saddam Hussein suppressed are flexing their muscles and demanding an Islamic state to replace Saddam’s secular one, with the encouragement of the ayatollahs of Iran, who have sent agents into Iraq to help them.
Much of Iraqi and world heritage has either been destroyed or shipped off for auction abroad. Normal life has far from resumed in Iraqi cities, where, because of the continuing pillaging and sporadic gunfights, and the lack of electricity, piped water, and adequate health services, people continue to live in gloom, despair and uncertainty.
All these notwithstanding, Bush has declared victory because he has achieved his aim, which was to overthrow Saddam Hussein—not because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or links to al-Qaeda, but because Iraq was a convenient excuse for projecting a sizable US force in the region, according to the blueprint for a 21st-century Pax Americana to which the Bush administration is committed.
The blueprint—outlined and fleshed out in a report by the neoconservative Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in September 2000 in anticipation of a Bush victory in November of the same year—envisions a world of total US dominance on air, land, sea and space, and was prepared for now US Vice President Dick Cheney, now Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz, among others.
“Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources for a New Century” declared the necessity for a credible US military presence in the Gulf region, and identified “the unresolved conflict with Iraq” as providing “the immediate justification” for deploying a sizable number of US troops in the region in addition to those already there.
“The need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf,” said the report, “transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”
Bush thus issued his victory statement with Part 1 of the PNAC blueprint realized—i.e., with 130,000 US troops on the ground in Iraq and tens of thousands more in the carrier task forces deployed in the Gulf. Appropriately enough, the Bush speech was also delivered before US soldiers on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. (He also praised the troops in that speech, but did not mention that the Republican-dominated US Congress had also slashed veterans’ benefits.) Bush also vowed to continue the search for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and linked the latter’s overthrow to the US “war on terror,” of course to justify the US invasion.
At about the same time that Bush was declaring victory in Iraq, the US Defense Department announced that it was planning to withdraw some 100,000 US occupation troops from that country, despite the continuing chaos—so far the most visible accomplishment of the US invasion—that its 130,000 ground troops seem unable to control.
The US has loudly proclaimed a commitment to rebuilding what it has destroyed, in seeming compliance with the retail store injunction that “if you break it, you bought it.” But that commitment makes little sense unless it can reestablish some kind of order in Iraq, neutralize the criminal gangs, rein in the Shi’ite clerics, restore basic services in the cities, and along the way establish a government independent of its control.
The Iraqis should be so lucky. The announced plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq contradicted Bush’s pledge that US troops will stay in Iraq as long as necessary, and makes as much sense as Bush’s claim that the US attack on Iraq was part of its war on al-Qaeda. The contradiction, however, may be more apparent and real.
“As long as necessary” does not mean “as long as necessary for the Iraqis,” but for the United States. It may also defy reason only in the context of US claims that it will rebuild Iraq—a process that would constitute the “nation building” that Bush disdains, and to which he pledged opposition before and after his supposed election to the US presidency (he lost the popular vote in 2000 and was installed in the White House by five Republican-appointed justices of the Supreme Court).
It does make sense within the framework of the PNAC blueprint, however.
The planned US withdrawal is premised on the commitment of troops by America’s fellow invaders—the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland—which would free US troops for deployment in other areas. In any event, the US would still have 30,000 troops in the region which could quickly be augmented should the need to once more demonstrate US military might to countries like Syria arise.
The PNAC blueprint anticipates the need for US forces to fight “multitheater wars” simultaneously, and right now one of those likely theaters is the Korean Peninsula.
US planners appear to regard the “threat” from Iraq and Syria (both of which it accuses of possessing, like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, weapons of mass destruction as well as links with terrorist groups, most of them linked to the Palestinian struggle for a homeland) as currently less critical than the “threat” from North Korea, which has acknowledged possession of nuclear weapons and announced plans to continue their development.
North Korea has not concealed its determination to resist any US attack, which it regards as inevitable now that the US has successfully tested the Bush doctrine of preemptive strikes against actual and potential threats to it. Although the North Korean regime is widely derided for its supposed paranoia, its fears do seem well-founded, given the demonstration effect of the US attack on Iraq.
The attack on Iraq in fact demonstrates the three cardinal elements of the Bush doctrine identified by PNAC’s Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly as early as January, 2002:
The first is that all the world is the US battlefield, and the US will attack any country (in Bush’s words, “any outlaw regime that has ties with terrorist groups and seeks or possesses weapons of mass destruction” is fair game) that in its view is either a present or future danger to it.
The second is that “rogue regimes” are legitimate targets for “regime change,” especially “the axis of evil”—Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
The third is that the US will “promote democracy” all over the world in furtherance of its “greater purpose” of spreading American political principles everywhere, especially the Muslim world.
The means to achieve this are varied—“muscle” diplomacy including the use of threats and intimidation, for example—but do not preclude, and in fact has for its apex, the use of military force. The doctrine nowhere suggests any lasting US commitment in terms of time, money and effort to rebuilding what it destroys. It does suggest special attention to the Muslim world, the transformation of which conservative US think tankers regard as paramount to US security and economic interests.
In short: Korea may be next, which is why US troops are being withdrawn from Iraq. What of the need to retain a sizable force in the Gulf? Give the US time. Eventually its troops will return to the Middle East and, in the words of a US academic close to Bush circles, “take care” of Syria and Iran as well, in the same way that it is currently “taking care” of Iraq.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, May 6, 2003)