- So, it's a "truly remarkable achievement'', is it?
General Tommy Franks says so. Everything is going "according to plan'',
according to the British. So it's an achievement that the British still
have not "liberated" Basra. It is "according to plan"
that the Iraqis should be able to launch a scud missile from the Faw peninsula
ö supposedly under "British control" for more than a week.
It is an achievement, truly remarkable of course, that the Americans lose
an Apache helicopter to the gun of an Iraqi peasant, spend four days trying
to cross the river bridges at Nasiriyah and are then confronted by their
first suicide bomber at Najaf.
-
- One half of the entire Anglo-American force ö still
called 'the coalition' by journalists who like to pretend it includes 35
armies rather than two and a bit (the "bit" being the Australian
special forces) ö is now guarding and running the supply line through
the desert. And Baghdad is bombed but not besieged.
-
- The military "plan" is so secret, according
to General Franks, that very few people have seen it all or understand
it. But his plan he says, is "highly flexible''; it would have to
be, to sustain the chaos of the past 12 days, and, of course, we hold the
moral high ground. The Americans bomb a passenger bus close to the Syrian
border and don't even apologise. An Iraqi soldier kills himself attacking
US marines and it is an act of "terrorism''. And now Secretary of
State Colin Powell announces ö to the American-Israeli Public Affairs
Committee, the largest Israeli lobby group in the US who of course support
this illegal war ö that Syria and Iran are "supporting terror
groups'' and will have to "face the consequences''.
-
- So what's the plan? Are we going to forget Baghdad for
a few months and wheel our young soldiers west to surround Damascus? Where,
for heaven's sake, is all this going? We were going to "liberate"
Iraq. But the war could be "long and difficult'', Bush now tells us
ö he didn't tell us that before, did he? ö and, according to
Tony Blair, this is "only the beginning.'' Really?
-
- Strange, isn't it, how all that fuss about chemical and
biological warfare has been forgotten. The "secret" weapons,
the gas masks, the anti-anthrax injections, the pills and chemical suits
have been erased from the story ö because bullets and rocket-propelled
grenades are now the real danger to British and American forces in Iraq.
Even the "siege of Baghdad" ö a city that is 30 miles wide
and might need a quarter of a million men to surround it ö is fading
from the diary.
-
- Sitting in Baghdad, listening to the God-awful propaganda
rhetoric of the Iraqis but watching the often promiscuous American and
British air attacks, I have a suspicion that what's gone wrong has nothing
to do with plans. Indeed, I suspect there is no real overall plan. Because
I rather think that this war's foundations were based not on military planning
but on ideology.
-
- Long ago, as we know, the right wing pro-Israeli lobbyists
around Bush planned the overthrow of Saddam. This would destroy the most
powerful Arab state in the Middle East ö Israel's chief of staff,
Shoal Mofaz, demanded that the war should start even earlier ö and
allow the map of the region to be changed forever. Powell stated just this
a month ago. False intelligence information was mixed up with the desires
of the corrupt and infiltrated Iraqi opposition.
-
- Fantasies and illusions were given credibility by a kind
of superpower moral overdrive. Any kind of mendacity could be used to fuel
this ideological project ö 11 September (oddly unmentioned now), links
between Saddam and Osama bin Laden (unproven), weapons of mass destruction
(hitherto unfound), human rights abuses (at which we originally connived
when Saddam was our friend) and, finally, the most heroic project of all
ö the "liberation" of the people of Iraq.
-
- Oil was not mentioned, although it is the dominating
factor in this illegitimate conflict ö no wonder General Franks admitted
that his first concern, prior to the war, was the "protection'' of
the southern Iraqi oil fields. So it was to be "liberation" and
"democracy". How boldly we crossed the border. With what lordly
aims we invaded Iraq.
-
- Few Iraqis doubt ö even the ministers in Baghdad
speak about this ö that the Americans could, ultimately, occupy the
country. They have the force and they have the weapons to smash their way
into every city and rule the land by martial law. But can they make Iraqis
submit to that rule? Unless the masses rise up as Bush and Blair hope,
this is now a nationalist war against the most obvious kind of imperial
power. Without Iraqi support, how can General Franks run a military dictatorship
or find Iraqis willing to serve him or run the oilfields? The Americans
can win the war. But if their project fails they will have lost.
-
- Yet there is one achievement we should note. The ghastly
Saddam, the most revolting dictator in the Arab world, who does indeed
use heinous torture and has indeed used gas, is now leading a country that
is fighting the world's only superpower and that has done so for almost
two weeks without surrendering. Yes, General Tommy Franks has accomplished
one "truly remarkable achievement''. He has turned the monster of
Baghdad into the hero of the Arab world and allowed Iraqis to teach every
opponent of America how to fight their enemy.
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- http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=392756
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