- Here's a pop quiz.
-
- Question: Which of the following changes will take place
in Iraq on June 30, as part of the "transfer of sovereignty"?
-
- a. Iraqis will be given some or total control over their
military.
- b. Iraqis will be given some or total control over their
nation's purse strings.
- c. The United States will begin a phased withdrawal of
nits troops.
- d. Iraqis will hold elections to decide who will govern
the country.
- e. None of the above.
-
- Answer: None of the above.
-
- June 30 simply marks the selection of yet another "governing
council," picked by foreigners (some combination of the UN, U.S. and
UK) to act as a front for the U.S.-led occupation army. It will be just
business as usual, except for a new set of misleading titles. For example,
the "Coalition Provisional Authority" will be renamed the "United
States Embassy," staffed by some 2000 employees.
-
- That's about it. Really.
-
- For months we've been encouraged by spinmeisters in Washington
to believe that there is something momentous about the so-called handover.
The national media, too, has relentlessly trumpeted the event so often
and so simple-mindedly as a watershed moment that it has taken on the hue
of history in the making.
-
- In reality, the United States plans to send new troops
to Iraq. It is building 14 "enduring" bases in the Tigris and
Euphrates river basins. And we have appointed tough-guy Reagan-era hatchet
man John Negroponte to run the world's biggest embassy in the same building
that currently houses the CPA. The United States will continue to control
all the money, all the military forces (U.S., Iraqi, foreign mercenaries)
and all the key political appointments in Iraq. To call this "limited"
sovereignty is a bit like describing the situation in Iraq as "volatile."
-
- So, it came as a relief when Colin Powell deigned to
finally clarify this puzzling situation the other day. He said, "Some
of [Iraq's] sovereignty will have to be given back [after June 30], if
I can put it that way, or limited by them."
-
- Still confused? Wait, there's more.
-
- "[Some] of that sovereignty they are going to allow
us to exercise on their behalf and with their permission. It is not as
if we are seizing anything away from them. It is with the understanding
that they need our help and for us to provide that help we have to be able
to operate freely, which in some ways infringes on what some would call
full sovereignty."
-
- Got that? See, we invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi
people. Then when it seemed like they were saying, "Thank you for
getting rid of Saddam, now please leave," we promised to hand them
back their country on June 30, 2004. But now it's painfully clear that
Iraqis are not really ready to handle that kind of responsibility. So we
are just going to borrow back their sovereignty - with their permission,
of course. Sure, we'll give it back to them, but only when we're damn good
and ready (namely, when they stop acting all Islamic and anti-American
and stuff).
-
- But all this business of defining "sovereignty"
is really beside the point. The point, so to speak, is that nobody needs
to worry about what's going down there in Iraq because everything's cool
between us and the Iraqi people.
-
- All that the "handover" amounts to is a road
sign being waved at the world - and especially the American people - that
says, in effect, "Nothing to see here, keep moving." The Bush
administration is staging a "handover" so that potential voters
will no longer view Iraq as "our problem," but instead think
of it sort of like Afghanistan or Haiti, or all the other places where
we have dabbled in nation-building-at-gunpoint in the past. Which is to
say, not think of it at all.
-
- In testimony on Capitol Hill two weeks ago, Under-Secretary
of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman admitted as much when he noted
that June 30 would provide "a very important Iraqi face" on the
ground. Grossman also acknowledged that this veneer of independence would
indeed be very thin. "The arrangement would be, I think as we are
doing today, that we would do our very best to consult with that interim
government and take their views into account," he said, adding that
American commanders will "have the right, and the power, and the obligation"
to use force whenever they see fit.
-
- That is "sovereignty," done Bush administration
style.
-
- June 30 is also the Bush administration's attempt to
hit the "redo" button on its pitifully inadequate Iraq plan.
In just the month of April, a year after its initial march into Baghdad,
the United States has been forced to reconquer the country (which has taken
the lives of a hundred more dead soldiers and hundreds more Iraqi women
and children); ask the United Nations for help; and bring in Baath Party
thugs to keep a peace it cannot or will not secure.
-
- As they watch the Bush administration backtrack on one
policy after another, Iraqis probably feel like they're Bill Murray in
"Groundhog Day" - except they're reliving not a single day but
an entire bloody, violent, year, all over again.
-
- But some things have changed. Everyone who died in the
past 13 months is still, well, dead. Nearly all Iraqis (with the exception
of the Kurds) that once trusted the Americans to act in good faith as occupiers
have changed their minds; two-thirds of them recently told pollsters that
they want the United States to leave within the next few months (and this
before the instantly infamous torture photos were publicized).
-
- What hasn't changed, sadly, is the Bush administration's
immense capacity to lie about all things Iraq.
-
- Lastyear, I co-authored a book titled "The Five
Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq," which argued that the Bush
administration's case for invading Iraq was built on series of lies: Iraq
was aligned with Al Qaeda and therefore involved in 9/11 (Lie #1); Saddam
possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that threatened
the U.S. and our allies (#2); he had a functioning nuclear weapons program
(#3); the war would be a "cakewalk" (#4); and Iraq could easily
be remade in our image as a secular, capitalist democracy (#5).
-
- To this list of mega-whoppers, we can now add a sixth
lie: The Bush administration truly planned to "liberate" Iraq.
The neoconservative architects of this war were more blunt about the future
of a post-invasion Iraq. Sure, Iraq would be a "free" country,
but only if it agreed to pledge itself as an unquestioning ally of the
United States, completely privatize its economy, open itself to foreign
investment, and remain a secular state acceptable to the West.
-
- Our actions immediately following the invasion made this
agenda painfully clear.
-
- No post-Saddam elections were scheduled, even as the
United States-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority began make sweeping
decisions privatizing entire industries and defining how oil-revenue would
be spent. Construction quickly began on U.S. military bases that could
replace those in Saudi Arabia. They included the creation of at least one
massive airbase from which bombers could hit Iran or Syria in a matter
of minutes.
-
- The Iraqis appointed by the United States to the "governing"
council were not granted the means or the power to do more than talk. The
United Nations, with its considerable experience in building political
and civic structures in ravaged nations, was stiffed in favor of U.S. generals
and Republican political appointees without a clue.
-
- If the Bush administration had truly wanted a quick exit
strategy, then their priorities would have been different from day one
of the occupation. The CPA would have focused instead on stability (more
initial troops/MPs, greater UN involvement, better planning for potential
problems), dialogue (i.e., getting Iraq's true powerbrokers - think Ayatollah
Sistani not pretenders like Ahmed Chalabi - to draw up a plan for elections)
and firm deadlines for both partial and complete withdrawal of U.S. troops,
unless invited to stay by either Iraq's new government or the United Nations.
-
- We are told repeatedly by the president that there is
only one way forward in Iraq: "Get the job done right." For hawks
in the Bush administration, however, that means staying right where we
are, with the "permission" of a suitably friendly government
in Iraq.
-
- In other words, there is no exit strategy.
-
- - Christopher Scheer is a staff writer for AlterNet.
He is co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq.
-
- © 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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