By Carlton E. Spitzer
Three years ago Iraqi Ambassador Ryan Crocker told Congress that the bitter ethnic violence severely complicated efforts to stabilize daily life in Iraq and restore its infrastructure. “It’s very complicated,” he lamented. He makes similar statements today regarding Afghanistan.
Seated beside him three years ago, General David Petraeus told Congress that progress in Iraq was “fragile and reversible,” and urged that another 10,000 troops be added to the 140,000 already on the ground to buy time for a splintered Iraqi government to reconcile differences. Differences have not been reconciled. Now Petraeus urges us to stay the course in Afghanistan as he takes the reigns of the CIA. A course to more of the same.
Definitions of America’s enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have changed with each passing year, from finding the now deceased Osama bin Laden and his terrorists to putting down the Shiite insurgents, to eliminating “special groups” allegedly backed by Iran. We have invested blood and treasure in two wars that should not have been fought, yet out leaders seem determined to struggle on, with ever changing justifications.
Invading Iraqi was a grievous error, compounded by abysmal management following the 2003 invasion that permitted militias to develop and ignited bitter ethnic violence. Unmentioned today are the huge payments to militias to have them side with our cause. They did, as long as payments continued. Billions in cash that flowed into Iraq cannot be accounted for. We were conned. And leaders at that time forgot that loyalty cannot be purchased and democracy cannot be imposed.
We continue to challenge Iran’s motives but refuse to talk to its officials as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton Report, which still gathers dust and is rarely mentioned in the halls of Congress.
We have lost our way. As a measure of progress, Petraeus told Congress in 2008 that 50,000 Iraqis driven from Iraq by the invasion, and literally starving in Syria, had returned to their homes in Iraq, but he failed to mention that several million remained in exile, that Iraqi hospitals lacked basic medicines, or that electricity throughout Baghdad was spasmodic at best. Electrical power is still available only a few hours each day.
Ethnic violence has resurfaced in Iraq. Makeshift roadside bombs continue take the lives of our troops and Iraqi citizens. We have had thousands of troops on the ground there for almost nine years. Keeping them there for another year, or two, or three will not change the historic ethnic divisions within Iraq.
The people protesting peacefully for freedom in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria were met with violent opposition from fearful despots who had controlled their lives for decades. Our assistance to their people makes sense and supports the American values so often proclaimed. Billions lost in fighting unnecessary wars might have been devoted to working with those nations to improve education, health, and more democratic forms of government of their own choosing.
The lives of thousands of our fighting men and women might have been saved, and our hospitals would not be filled today with amputees and brain damaged young men and women. The lives of innocent civilians caught up in war would have been saved, and infrastructure and museums in Iraq would have been untouched. We might have built new alliances rather than new enemies.
Truth-telling is a necessary perquisite to intelligent dialogue that might lead to realistic decision-making. Petraeus and Crocker are honorable men, but in 2008 they responded to Congress precisely within the parameters of their responsibilities at that time. The result was incomplete and misleading analyses of a war without end. Now two wars seemingly without end.
The past decade has divided our nation. We were united immediately after September 11, 2001, and much of the world stood with us. Even Iran. We squandered that support by labeling countries good or evil, for us or against us. And followed con man Ahmad Chalabi’s illusion of a new Iraq under his leadership for eight traumatic years while losing American lives every week trying to win some indefinable victory. Chalabi was strongly supported by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush, and endorsed by a cowed, acquiescent Congress.
Ten years after 9/11 we are a divided nation, weakened economically and philosophically,
Iraq and Afghanistan have been a cruel charade in the name of democracy. Profits of the five largest oil companies have tripled since war began in Iraq. Halliburton and its satellite companies have reaped billions in profits, even for shoddy work and some work never completed. Iraqi oil profits that Wolfowitz claimed would pay for invasion and occupation have been funneled to the black market. Control of oil fields continues to be debated in a fractured Iraqi legislature, whose members are lobbied intensely by America’s largest oil companies to make sure they have a large piece of the action.
In his book, AMERICA: The Next Chapter, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska reminded us that the U.S. handed Chalabi tens of millions of dollars to feed his boastful ambitions. The man who was to be our champion in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s removal has since been convicted in absentia of bank fraud in Jordan. The Bush administration was conned and America has paid handsomely for the embarrassment.
Subsequent uprisings of people in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya for peace have changed the rules of the game. Their bravery in marching for freedom against tanks and mortar shells should inspire support from all freedom loving nations. Not simply weapons to defend themselves, for they mean to protest peacefully, but structural support for the creation of democracies designed by the people of those nations, without strings or conditions. How much wiser for America to invest in freedom than in weapons of war. Those billions of dollars lost and unaccounted for in Iraq alone would be most helpful today.
The Obama administration should face up to unintended consequences of this terrible folly and study the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, still valid and compelling. Let’s talk to our alleged and self-proclaimed adversaries. We have dealt smilingly with despots for oil. We can deal intelligently with all nations for peace, never capitulating but always negotiating in good faith. The bottom up crusade is already underway.
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