Should the US pull out its troops regardless of whether Iraq is ready to defend its people?

Yes

10 of 214

by Richard Grieveson

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There is an ongoing debate in the media and academia about whether or not the United States should leave Iraq right now, or whether they should resist the temptation to "cut and run", and stay to "get the job done". Here are some reasons why they have already outstayed their welcome.

The situation that we are currently witnessing was caused by the United States in the first place. In 2003 after the invasion the United States armed the Shias as a means of preventing a pro-Saddam Sunni backlash against them. The mainly Sunni army was broken-up, disengaging 1000s of armed Sunnis from the political process, and leaving them without jobs. The US has also repeatedly laid siege to Sunni towns such as Fallujah, cutting-off water and food supplies, and bombarding the towns nightly for several weeks in some cases, in an attempt to "flush" insurgents out. Homes were raided, fathers beaten in front of their families, orders issued to desperately poor people in English, and shots fired if they weren't understood and responded to.
Furthermore, Sunnis have been particular victims of the brutal torture methods dealt out by the Americans, and long, false imprisonments with no opportunity to speak to families. Both Sunnis and Shias have been victims of the Private Contractors employed by both the British and American militaries, who do not operate within the rules of international law, and as such have been accused of some horrific crimes. This is a huge problem, because to ordinary Iraqis these highly-trained, brutal mercenaries, are often indistinguishable from coalition troops. Their actions simply add to the general cycle of violence between the various warring factions within Iraq.

The domestic Sunni extremism (as opposed to foreign fighters) has been largely created by the United States. Their actions have led to humiliation, deprivation, desperation, and finally a violent insurgency which has lost all faith in any hope of peace. The Shia Iraqi army is a crucial part of the American occupation, accompanying US troops on many of the missions mentioned above, and wearing uniforms and killing Sunnis with weapons financed by the Americans. Therefore they are also a target, hence the market bombs, which have killed thousands of Shias, and in return prompt reprisals from the Iraqi army or al-Sadr's Mehdi army.

The US cannot stop the sectarian strife, not just because it had such a big role in starting it, but also because it cannot stop the Sunni suicide bombers or the Shia responses to them. A cycle of violence has been created, and history has shown that such cycles are extremely difficult to break. Al-Qaeda and other groups are fighting the Americans with weapons that they were allowed to loot at the start of the war, not just supplies from Iran. There is already a civil war, and the United States presence is certainly not stopping it.

Recently the US announced a "surge", flooding Baghdad with 30,000 fresh troops and a maze of concrete walls in one final attempt to stem the flow of blood in the capital. Yet General David Petraeus' policy is simply penning people into neighbourhoods where they feel trapped, alienated and scared. Sunni residents of Adhamiyah, the first community to be fenced-in, have complained bitterly of what they see as collective punishment, and have spoken of their fears of being "gated", with the only access to their homes being through check-points guarded by the Shia Iraqi Army. Even the New York Times now recognises that this measure has failed.

Some worry about the damage to US prestige should they leave and admit defeat, yet the spectre of burned-out Humvees, smoking helicopter wreckages, and bodies of US contractors hanging from bridges has already given resistance groups a huge propaganda victory. Al-Qaeda and other such organisations rely a great deal of fear to recruit, but they also enjoy a great deal of lukewarm support from ordinary Iraqis Sunnis, who see their presence as undesirable, yet necessary to resist their Americans. Their aims, if not their methods, are generally supported by Iraq's Sunnis, according to writers such as Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk, two of the very few Western journalists still reporting from outside Baghdad's Green Zone, who are not "embedded" with (censored by) US and British forces.

Nowadays it is difficult to find an Iraqi who has not lost at least one person that they loved since 2003, whilst millions are displaced and suffering from malnutrition. Mental stress, caused by the constant fear of death and daily gunfire, is increasingly common, and in conditions like this people do not act in the ways that they normally would. These factors are crucially important in creating resistance to the Americans: men feel ashamed and weak in front of their wives as they have lost their jobs and have their houses ripped apart in searches by coalition troops, or are stopped and searched in a belittling way on the street. Adolescents feel frustration at the loss of their fathers, or anger and revulsion at the arrogance of coalition troops or the torture marks found on murdered parents or older brothers.

Make no mistake about it, the United States has created an extremely fertile situation for resistance. When Shias who lost family members under Saddam say that "life was better before 2003", I think you can begin to see the scale of the problem. US prestige is already in tatters.

Others have spoken about the threat of a chaotic Iraq to regional allies, with Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in particular already being unstable. Yet when they speak of Iraq becoming a training camp for extremists, they fail to note that it probably already is. Patrick Cockburn has written that Baghdad is now ringed by Al-Qaeda-type camps, some of them less than 50 miles from the outskirts of the city, reflecting both the US' lack of control outside the capital, and the extent to which Iraq is already a "terrorist haven".

The point is that these groups are gaining a great deal of legitimacy from the US presence, because they are generally seen as the lesser evil of the two foreign invaders. Iraqi people, even Sunnis (maybe especially Sunnis) are scared of Al-Qaeda, yet their presence is, as I have already said, reluctantly accepted because the US is there. Most Iraqis just want an ordinary life; money, security, a house, opportunities for their children. The Americans gave people hope that these things could be achieved in a post-Saddam Iraq in 2003, yet have quickly taken away such possibilities. Therefore people fight, because that is what humans do when they have nothing left to lose. There is a great deal of non-Al-Qaeda Sunni resistance to the Americans, it must not be forgotten. Al-Qaeda gain their legitimacy from the American presence.

As for the American soldiers themselves, they were led into an illegal war by a group of draft-dodgers. Every day that the United States stays is an insult to them. The gap between civilians and the military is increasing in the America, with the removal of conscription creating an "army class", who are less and less represented in the higher echelons of politics. What you have now are young men without prospects or support structures almost being forced into the army to fight Dick Cheney's perpetual wars for resources. Every day that the United States stay in Iraq, they Bush administration are wrecking the lives of more American families.

The Americans are bystanders in all of this, they can do nothing but watch. Iraq's various warring factions hate each other, but they hate the Americans more, it is perhaps the one thing they have to unite around. The daily presence of American troops on the streets of Iraq frustrates men who have lost their jobs and their pride, and makes them want to strike out. When the Americans leave, the violence will subside.

The real solution to the violence is the involvement or Iraq's neighbours, including Syria and Iran, as recommended not so long ago in the Baker-Hamilton report. It is time to stop demonising these countries, and to realise that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem. All of them desire a stable Iraqi state (as long as there are no Americans there, who they fear will attack them once Iraq is pacified), although they obviously differ over what kind of government it should have. Yet their cooperation, preferably under UN guidance, offers the best chance of peace and an American withdrawal. American politicians have shown themselves largely unwilling and totally unable to force a withdrawal, and therefore the International Community, led by the UN and the EU, must act to involve the regional powers in dialogue and cooperation.

The Bush Administration, however, is not prepared to do this, and therefore they constantly talk about "handing over power" to local Iraqi forces. Yet anyone who has read half a page on Iraq in the non-American media knows how unfeasible "handing over power" is. The government and security forces are paralysed by sectarian divisions, leaving them incapable of doing their jobs.

The Shia army is just another Shia death squad for much of the time, as I have highlighted in earlier examples. They kidnap Sunnis off the streets whilst dressed in uniform, and then torture and kill them. Their neutrality is non-existent: to hand over more power to them would be to exacerbate, rather than help, the situation. The police are the same, and have been heavily infiltrated by terrorist groups.

As for the government, it is viewed as a bad joke by almost everyone, and was recently attacked in the cafeteria of its own parliament, after a Sunni bomber managed to bypass eight layers of security. They have no legitimacy, no power outside the Green Zone, and no chance of getting a grip on things anytime soon. The US talks of handing over power, yet on the same day will carry out arbitrary arrests, unknown and unapproved by Iraq's "sovereign" government. The Bush administration has been talking about passing things over to the Iraqi government since at least 2005, yet we have seen no evidence of this, and in the last two years the amount of the country controlled by the Americans and the Iraqi government has actually decreased. Therefore on what grounds can one talk about handing over power?

"Defeat" as the Cheney-Fox-CNN types unfortunately term it (always from the US point of view, not the Iraqi) will have to be accepted sooner or later. The United States is trying to force a new way of living onto people who just don't want them there. I'm sure that Iraqis would love some of our democracy and human rights, but that is not what has been given to them, right from the start. US arrogance, brutality, and cultural ignorance has led them to what we see today.

It would be very interesting to know what Mr Cheney would define as "victory". This is not the 18th century, armies do not line up against each other on the battlefield. In the 12th century Western European crusaders used to peer through tiny windows, made just big enough to fire their arrows out of, from their castles in areas not too far from Iraq. Nowadays, the government and American officials are flown by helicopter from Baghdad airport to the Green Zone, because the roads are too dangerous, from where they peer out at the country they rule. The windows they look out from, and the threat lurking outside, are not too different from those 900 years ago in the same region. It is time to accept that the crusade is over.

The "job" cannot be "done", "victory" is, and always was, impossible. The state has broken down so completely that the United States has no power left to hand over. The only thing remaining for them to do is to close the door as they leave.

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