The Poisonous Dregs of War

By Joseph Wakelee-Lynch

There comes a time when a wrong policy must be called a failed policy. The month of April 2004 appears likely to become the turning point, when the U.S. plan for Iraq unraveled.

For more than a year, the United States pursued a policy in Iraq that many said was wrong. The Bush administration's intent was to establish a pro-Western, non-Islamic fundamentalist regime in Baghdad that would be the pre-cursor to a secular democratic government ready to participate in the international economy, especially its oil markets. April was the month that threw that plan into a shambles.

The reversals experienced by the U.S. government came on almost every front:

•  increased attacks on U.S. soldiers, making April the deadliest month for U.S. forces with 140 U.S. fatalities, and more than 1,300 Iraqis;

•  uprisings by both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, most notably in Fallujah and Najaf;

•  unwillingness by Iraqi security forces to confront insurgents;

•  decisions by allies Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic to withdraw troops;

•  criticisms at home for deploying soldiers in too few numbers and without proper equipment

•  withdrawal of reconstruction workers for safety reasons by multinational corporations;

•  an increase in international terrorist attacks;

•  heightened enmity in the Muslim world toward the United States.

In the face of these major setbacks, the Bush administration has begun to welcome United Nations involvement, despite previously dismissing it. Washington also has begun to consider granting some of Saddam's military leadership a role in post-war Iraq. And it appears ready to back away from a standoff with Muqtada al-Sadr's forces in Fallujah.

But it was a statement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that signaled the collapse of the U.S. policy. He told the U.S. public, after it finally became clear that there were too few U.S. forces in Iraq to accomplish their mission, that whatever American commanders in Iraq told him they needed to him provide, they now would get. At the start of the war, Rumsfeld famously defended his troop assignments in the face of criticism from both inside and outside the U.S. government. His promise in April, which for its import was rather unnoticed, constituted an admission that his plan was poorly conceived, poorly executed, and mismanaged.

It is both cynical and reasonable to conclude that the June 30 target is primarily a plank in the Bush re-election platform. Topple Saddam, set up a new regime, hand over power just days before our own Independence Day celebration, and leave the war behind looks like a winning strategy in the run-up to November. But that target date now looks a noose around the neck of the administration.

Now, as the administration attempts to cobble together a semblance of a policy, the promised June 30 deadline for handing sovereignty over to an as yet undetermined Iraqi governing body looms. It is both cynical and reasonable to conclude that the June 30 target is primarily a plank in the Bush re-election platform. Topple Saddam, set up a new regime, hand over power just days before our own Independence Day celebration, and leave the war behind looks like a winning strategy in the run-up to November. But that target date now looks a noose around the neck of the administration. No government with any authority will be capable of assuming governance at that point; yet, President Bush has cast the date in stone. We can expect a ceremony with officials present, and the handing over of a symbolic artifact of empty sovereignty, and vague words giving testimony to elusive accomplishment. And, certainly, the ritual will not take place on an aircraft carrier.

As April came to a close, the Bush administration was shaken by news that some U.S. troops tortured and humiliated Iraqi captives in prisons, a development with explosive impact in the Muslim world.

Those soldiers will be prosecuted, so the administration promises, and they should be. But the Bush team must also be held responsible. From the outset of the war, the highest U.S. officials – from Cabinet members up to the vice president and the president himself – have described the enemy in thoroughly dehumanizing terms and have labeled the war against terrorism as a campaign to bring terrorists to justice or death. The administration's apocalyptic language, which asserts that others are either for us or against us and which asserts that terrorists may be anywhere and anyone, has granted tacit permission to U.S. troops to see the enemy, or the suspected enemy as subhuman.

Although the collapse of the Bush plan for Iraq offers the hope that things may improve, it is difficult to be anything profoundly depressed at the cost. Thousands of Iraqis dead, a nation occupied and its people's right to self-determination stifled, decades of enmity toward the United States in the future, to name a few. And, at least in the short term, U.S. soldiers will continue being sent to fight a war that their government has never understood. When a war is waged that poisons the peace that follows, the victor and the vanquished drink from the same cup.

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a Witness contributing editor, and his regular online column is The View from Sardis . He lives in Berkeley, California, and may be reached by email at wakeleelynch@earthlink.net .