U.S. Occupation of Iraq: Engine for Years of Chaos

U.S. occupation destroyed the ethnic unity of Iraqi society, provoked the rise of Islamic militancy, created a power vacuum that was naturally exploited by all manner of local tough guys, and thereby opened the door for al Qua’ida, which, in its own equally barbaric way, moved as efficiently as the U.S. to take advantage of events to sink its teeth into the carcass of Iraqi society.

Now we must prepare for the future that will arise from the foundation laid by this disastrous occupation.

Saddam, who turned himself into a monster with Reagan’s support, was a secular leader interested in building Iraq into the regional superpower. By the eve of the U.S. invasion, after suffering 11 years of low-grade U.S. military attack and crippling economic sanctions, not much was left of Saddam’s grandiose schemes. When the Bush Administration, staffed by the same key players who had aided Saddam’s rise to power during the Reagan Administration, finally decided to bring the agony to an end in 2003, Iraq was already an economically and militarily devastated country, but, if impoverished, still a fairly united, ethnically stable, and moderate secular society.

The lack of Bush Administration concern for the Iraqi people, the bias against academic thoughtfulness on the part of the testosterone-drunk action figures of the Administration, the idiotic idea of putting the Pentagon rather than State in charge of whatever passed in the shortsighted Bush Administration for post-war planning, the lust for Iraqi oil, the willingness of key officials to place protection of Israeli imperial plans ahead of U.S. national interest, the utter ignorance of the Administration about the sources and implications of Moslem complaints—not to mention Moslem politics, and the eagerness to exploit 9/11 to roll over helpless Iraq on the way to Tehran all contributed to the final blow to Iraq: the destruction--partly by and partly as a result of the incompetent, self-centered, and often barbaric U.S. occupation—of Iraqi society.

The Bush Administration may have lied and deceived the American people and--particularly at the U.N.--the whole world about the reasons for its attack, and that deception may have critical implications for American democracy and freedom, but from the perspective of the Iraqi people, the deception was a minor detail. The Iraqi people were cursed by a dictator; albeit not out of any concern for Iraqis, the U.S. invasion exorcised that curse.

Unfortunately, it cast new curses upon Iraqis. From the perspective of the Iraqi people, the problem was not the U.S. invasion but the post-invasion occupation. It almost immediately became obvious to everyone in the world, except the American people, still blinded by the shock of 9/11, that the Bush Administration’s occupation was being conducted not on behalf of the Iraqi people but for the benefit of the Bush Administration, its corporate allies, and the broad elite group in Israel favoring Israeli regional military dominance rather than learning to live with their neighbors. U.S. occupation destroyed the ethnic unity of Iraqi society, provoked the rise of Islamic militancy, created a power vacuum that was naturally exploited by all manner of local tough guys, and thereby opened the door for al Qua’ida, which, in its own equally barbaric way, moved as efficiently as the U.S. to take advantage of events to sink its teeth into the carcass of Iraqi society.

Five years of war have produced a shattered society, a destroyed economy, and a mirage of a state: fertile soil indeed for cultivating a new jihadist movement that truly will be a threat to the U.S. Although to date I know of no such movement in Iraq (aside from the remnants of al Qua’ida’s apparently failed effort, the longer American air war against Iraqi cities continues, the more likely it becomes. The longer groups that have formed to fill the power vacuum are prevented from participating as equals in the political process (be they Sunni Awakening forces or Moqtada al Sadr’s militia or others), the more likely it becomes. The longer the Iraqi oil industry remains structured for the benefit of the international oil industry rather than for Iraq’s benefit, the more likely it becomes. The longer U.S. military bases remain in Iraq, the more likely it becomes.

Al Qua’ida itself, although perhaps defeated at least momentarily in its effort to take control of Iraq, benefits in a far more significant manner: as long as American troops and bases remain in Iraq, they serve as a convenient target for al Qua’ida and represent an incredibly powerful motivational issue to aid in the recruitment of new members. For this reason, the termination of U.S. military operations in Iraq would constitute an immediate and very significant loss for al Qua’ida. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a gift to al Qua’ida, eliminating an Arab Sunni enemy, creating a convenient battleground, enhancing al Qua’ida’s reputation, and distracting attention from the shattered al Qua’ida headquarters organization. Five years later, al Qua’ida itself has gained time to reorganize, and the chaos flowing out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq has given the al Qua’ida message of global Sunni jihad a huge boost. That the U.S. succeeds in eliminating al Qua’ida from Iraq should come to Americans as little solace: such a victory would only return the situation to what it was after 9/11; Washington invites them into Iraq and then kicks them out. Iraq has been a sideshow for al Qua’ida, but one that brought al Qua’ida much profit.

The third major “accomplishment” of the U.S. invasion was the regional rise of Iran and the growing temptation for Iranian leaders to, in their turn, exploit these new conditions for their own benefit. The longer social chaos exists in Iraq, the more difficult it will be for any Iranian politician to resist the temptation of trying to do something about it; they will react to this degree just as American politicians would react if similar chaos existed in Mexico or Canada. But for Iran, the temptation will be even greater because of the intimate religious ties between the two societies, and because it is difficult to think of any Mideast country that is not intervening in Iraq. Iranian, Turkish, Israeli, Saudi Arabian, Syrian, and Lebanese interests will no doubt all be aggressively represented in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

In sum, the U.S. attack has created a tremendous opportunity for al Qua’ida, fertile ground for the next round of global jihad, and an irresistible temptation for regional politicians. These three bleeding wounds created by the nature of the U.S. occupation of Iraq form critical inputs to the future of the intensifying confrontation between Western and Moslem societies.

What are the long-term implications for the confrontation between Islam and the West that follow from these three effects of the U.S. occupation of Iraq?

Iraqi chaos will cause ferment throughout the Mideast for years to come as it draws country after country--as well as innumerable highly risk-accepting and controversial non-state actors--into highly competitive intervention in the Iraqi power vacuum. The Iraq-Iran relationship that attracts such American attention will be a microcosm of the broader regional situation. Iraq and Iran together make up a complex adaptive system, in which each state constitutes a smaller complex adaptive system. For one, this means that the two societies will evolve in response to each other. Neither has an immutable nature, nor will history repeat. Rather, each is evolving into something new, in part as a function of the evolution of the other. In a future post, I will explore how complexity theory may help us to anticipate the likely consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

New Pakistani Government Policy on Talking with "Terrorists:" Yes & No

According to Pakistan's Daily Times on Apr 8, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on Monday that "The new coalition government will not negotiate with “terrorists”, .“We will not negotiate with terrorists, but we will engage [them in dialogue] and we believe in political engagement."

How nice. He both will and will not. Simultaneously or in succession?

Long-Term Impact of the U.S. Surge in Iraq

As tensions in Iraq build and Washington focuses on that country once again, check out this important new article on the impact of U.S. policy:

The Price of the Surge
How U.S. Strategy Is Hastening Iraq’s Demise
Steven Simon

Simon warns:

The surge has changed the situation not by itself but only in
conjunction with several other developments: the grim successes of ethnic cleansing, the tactical quiescence of the Shiite militias, and a series of deals between U.S. forces and Sunni tribes that constitute a new bottom-up approach to pacifying Iraq. The problem is that this strategy to reduce violence is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state. If anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them against the central government and against one another. In other words, the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

General Odom: "Our Vice President...Aligned with al Qaeda"

William E. Odom, retired lieutenant general and director of NSA under Reagan, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 18, 2007, asserted that “The war has served primarily the interests of Iran and al Qaeda, not American interests.” He explained:

We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq. To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Baathist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shiite groups. The Baathist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi cooperation with Iran. At the same time, our democratization policy has installed Shiite majorities and pro-Iranians groups in power in Baghdad, especially in the ministries of interior and defense. Moreover, our counterinsurgency operations are, as unintended (but easily foreseeable) consequences, first, greater Shiite openness to Iranian influence and second, al Qaeda’s entry into Iraq and rooting itself in some elements of Iraqi society.

General Odom also discussed the international implications of the American war in Iraq:

It is a strategic error of monumental proportions to view the war as confined to Iraq. Yet this is the implicit assumption on which the president’s new strategy is based. We have turned it into two wars that vastly exceed the borders of Iraq. First, there is the war against the US occupation that draws both sympathy and material support from other Arab countries. Second, there is the Shiite-Sunni war, a sectarian conflict heretofore sublimated within the Arab world but that now has opened the door to Iranian influence in Iraq. In turn, it foreordains an expanding Iranian-Arab regional conflict.

On April 2, 2008, in a new testimony to the Committee, General Odom again underscored the significance of the U.S. presence in Iraq for al Qua’ida (al Qaeda):

The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.

Joint Plan to End Iraq War by Congressional Candidates

US Media Deception on Congress & the Iraq War

How the AP Lies About Iraq
MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Monday, 07 April 2008

© MWC News - A Site Without Borders -

The bottom line:

Every sane person understands that without the funding to continue the occupation, the Pentagon would bring everyone home rather than ceasing to provide them with weapons and food.

Yes, of course, Cheney-Bush would misappropriate funds to continue the occupation, but if THAT were blocked, the Pentagon would bring people home, not deprive them of uniforms or radios.

Yes, of course, the Pentagon dumps the bulk of our money into corrupt war profiteers while shortchanging the troops, including on body armor. But the Pentagon is not going to abandon them to their deaths to save the plane fuel to bring them home....

The Democrats in the House or the Senate could cut off the funding for prolonging the occupation, the funding for Halliburton, the funding for killing and dying, the funding for endangering us all with an
endless bloody hated occupation.

National Security Commons

The “commons,” taken from grazing land in old England held in common by the community for public use, refers to a public good, such as air. We live in an era of rising complexity of the international political system, which means that our mutual dependence is rising. The danger of forgetting that lesson was underscored by 9/11 and the events that have since flowed from it. In this situation, security needs to be viewed as a common good – shared by all mankind – because walls can no longer be built to protect one society from another.

Viewing national security as a common good entails an entirely new paradigm of national defense that implicitly rejects the three-century-long post-Westphalian Western tradition of state sovereignty. Rather than it being the duty of each state to maximize its own security at the expense of that of other states, if national security is viewed as a common good, it becomes the duty of each state to define national security in a comparative perspective that recognizes the impossibility of making one state truly secure in the modern age without providing security for other states as well. This is not at all a matter of alliances; alliances that compete with each other merely extend the outdated state sovereignty concept while in no way overcoming the fundamental issue of defining an opponent. According to the new perspective of international, rather than national, security, there are no enemies.

This is of course not to assert that in reality no enemies exist, but to set as a goal the achievement of an international political system that all mankind can buy into. Setting this as the goal instantly replaces the zero-sum concept of one state enhancing its security at the expense of another state with the question of how security can be defined inclusively. The slow rise of “international law” has constituted a halting series of initial steps in this direction via the establishment of rules that slowly chipped away at unrestrained state barbarism by attempting to persuade all states to accept certain actions (e.g., unprovoked aggression, wars of prevention, nuclear attacks on non-nuclear powers, collective punishment, attacking non-combatants, the use of particularly outrageous weapons such as poison gas and cluster bombs) as unacceptable. But international law, even as accepted by modern, “civilized” states before 9/11, was primarily negative – a definition of forbidden actions without a fundamentally new way of viewing world affairs that would replace national sovereignty.

Security as a common good provides this new perspective by defining this most basic state function as something too basic to be left in the hands of individual states for their own selfish purposes. It asserts that, just as a state would, for example, lack the moral right to use up the earth’s atmosphere, it also lacks the moral right to establish a security regime for itself at the expense of other states.

The practical problems of achieving this will of course not be straightforward, any more than the practical problems of creating an international nation-state system in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War over three centuries ago were straightforward. The point here is simply to argue that we need this new mindset as the foundation for changing our behavior.

Before dismissing this as ridiculously idealistic dreaming, it is worth recalling how ridiculously idealistic, back in the 16th century era of kingdoms, the revolutionary new idea of governments of the people based on a shared self-identification as a “nation” would have sounded. Even more to the point, in an age when one individual can cause enormous international suffering through any of a virtually infinite number of ways against which reliable defense is impossible, we have no choice.

Simply stated, security today requires balance: it cannot be perfect. The best we can do is to maximize security, knowing that total success is impossible. And maximizing security requires the participation of everyone else.

Security is real only if stable, enduring. No one would be satisfied to have perfect security that only lasted for five minutes. The whole point of worrying about security is to achieve lasting security. Yet policymakers all too often do precisely the opposite – setting in place policies that provide extremely short-term security at the expense of exacerbating longer-term security risks.

Unfortunately for those who seek simple solutions, shared security in an adversarial environment cannot be perfect because perfect security for Side A means perfect insecurity for Side B. Stable security in an adversarial environment therefore requires a balance in which all sides have sufficient security to tolerate the situation. Acquiring too much can be as dangerous as having too little because too much on one side will be perceived as a threat by the other, provoking countermeasures.

Stated abstractly, this need for balance between Side A’s security and Side B’s security seems too obvious to need belaboring. In the real world, however, forgetting this simple concept causes endless conflict.

A population denied any security at all, totally dependent for survival upon the forbearance of a hated and feared enemy, will have little incentive to engage in moderate discourse and every incentive to arm to the teeth and take all manner of desperate risks to destroy the “perfect” security attained by the opponent. This remains the case even if the opponent is not engaged in any hostile action because the threat remains. Thus, utterly insecure groups cannot be held to the same standards of behavior as secure groups. For the secure to make such demands as a precondition is both unrealistic and hypocritical. Security is the precondition that must be given before a group can be expected to accept international standards of behavior. The more interdependent we become, the more security becomes a common good that we either all share or all do without.

Basra Aftermath: Prelude to The Coming Storm

As Moqtada al Sadr continues trying to engage in peaceful democratic action (proclaiming ceasefires, calling for demonstrations), Washington, Maliki, and Hakim seem intent on provoking decisive fighting. This is a dangerous gamble to consolidate control before 1) Iraqi provincial elections in which Moqtada may do very well and 2) the end of Bush’s time in office. The plan evidently remains in place despite the initial reverse suffered in Basra (see the detailed March 31 discussion here for the opposite viewpoint - that Moqtada lost in Basra). The longer it continues without clear success, the more impressive Moqtada will appear to be, the more angry his forces under attack will become, and the better Moqtada’s long-term political chances.

Maliki is taking an offensive stance. First, he has begun purging the army of pro-Sadr soldiers, replacing them with Badr Corps militiamen; where will the “thousands” of suddenly unemployed soldiers turn now? (Hint: what did the Sunni soldiers do after they were fired by the US in 2003?) Second, he has promised to continue his campaign against “criminal gangs,” a thinly veiled threat directed at Moqtada’s faction. Third, the Iraqi army made a show of force that provoked renewed fighting in Basra.

Four days after the alleged “radical” Moqtada agreed to a ceasefire in Basra, the U.S. is also on the offensive, bombing the city, killing civilians. In another apparent attack on Moqtada’s militia, a U.S. helicopter fired on the city of Hilla, killing policemen and wounding civilians, following an attack on U.S. troops (?) curiously wearing civilian clothes. Given Iraqi security conditions, why wouldn’t a local militia attack armed civilian strangers? In Baghdad itself, U.S. forces are raiding Sadr City, which is essentially under siege in a collective punishment strategy that is becoming reminiscent of the criminal Israeli treatment of Gaza.

The attacks on Moqtada’s forces seem more than sufficient to anger and inspire resistance but well short of what would be required to compel submission. If Washington’s goal is truly to pacify Iraq under consolidated control, time before the Bush Administration leaves office seems very short; if the goal is just to keep the lid on until next January, then the time seems very long indeed and the tactic of dribbling gasoline on the flames seems a curious one.

In any case, the Iraqi situation appears to be approaching a critical point, with the government warning that it will use force to disarm Sadr’s militia if he does not comply by the April 8 deadline, Sadr calling for a demonstration on April 9 and demanding that the newly enlisted Badr Corps militiamen be removed from the Iraqi army.

Given the rising military power of the Sunnis in the absence of integration into the government, Kurdish standoffishness, and apparent hardening of intra-Shi'ite hostility, the longer term prospects for Iraqi sociopolitical stability look dim as well. As I discussed earlier in reference to the Islamic world as a whole, to classify all non-state actors in a society that lacks a modern state structure as illegitimate and define them as enemies is simply illogical. First, it is not obvious that they have any less legitimacy than an unrepresentative state. Second, the more they are denied access to the official political system, the more they will strive to thrive outside it.

Iranian Peacemaking

In this video, Pepe Escobar, reporter from Real News,summarizes the results of last week's fighting in Basra, which ended after the commander of the al Quds Force negotiated an agreement in Qom, Iran between representatives of Iraq's two leading Shi'ite organizations, each of which has members in the Iraqi parliament and a private militia. According to Escobar, the outcome demonstrates that:

Iran is sufficiently powerful to get the two most important religious parties in Iraq, the Sadrists and al-Hakim's Supreme Islamic Council,
to Iran to broker a ceasefire organized by Iran.

For a slightly more detailed summary that also sees Iran as emerging the real victor of the Battle of Basra, see this piece from Radio Free Europe. Key details include the following:

Several sources indicated as early as March 28 that a representative of al-Maliki's Al-Da'wah Party, Ali Adib, and Hadi al-Amiri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), traveled to the Iranian city of Qom to meet with Iranian officials.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, the aim of the trip was twofold:
to press al-Sadr to restrain his militia and to call on Iran's Qods Force to stop supplying weapons to Shi'ite fighters in Iraq. It was also revealed that the two men went to Iran without consulting with the prime minister.

Haidar al-Abadi, a member of Al-Da'wah, said that the delegation was from the Shi'ite-led United Iraqi Alliance, which is dominated by Al-Da'wah and the ISCI, "and the prime minister was only informed. It was a political maneuver by us."

This quiet Iranian diplomatic initiative differs dramatically from Ahmadinejad's strident rhetoric. The media has focused on the significance of the Basra events for Iraq; what are the implications for Iran? Will Iranian elites derive the lesson that diplomatic peacemaking might be a more effective way of making Iran a major regional player than a war of words with excitable opponents? What will be the impact on Iranian politics of quiet peacemaking led by the commander of the al Quds Brigade, as opposed to, say, a diplomat or moderate politician? What will be the impact on regional attitudes toward Iran?

Only time will tell how political realignments will play out: the various impacts of the battle of Basra are by no means inevitable or straightforward. Keeping in mind a complex adaptive systems perspective on these events may help in understanding them. Such a perspective underscores that actors (individuals, factions, countries) are adaptive agents in an interactive system in which each actor influences and adapts to the others. Depending on what follows, the battle of Basra may have a long-lasting and far-reaching impact on regional politics.

Security: The Perfect Trap

Perfect security is a perfect trap. The further one advances one’s security, the more one provokes countervailing pressures that undermine one’s security. The quest for perfect security thus becomes a trap: if pursued too far, the quest only pushes the goal even further away.

The simplest way in which this occurs is when the act of enhancing security provokes a direct reaction. One example is an arms race, in which neither side intends aggression but both feel compelled to amass weapons that only provoke the opponent to respond in kind. Another example is the would-be hegemonist or empire-builder that innocently claims to be expanding only to ensure its own security. Many aggressors who appeared quite evil to their opponents have used this rationale, perhaps with a significant element of sincerity. Long land borders on open plains and long supply lines for scarce overseas resources do indeed make even the powerful feel insecure. Ironically, the more the empire-builder expands his domain, the more he will have to defend and the harder everyone else is likely to resist, a process that may well undermine both the empire-builder’s security and his perception thereof faster than he can strengthen it.

A more complicated form occurs when enhancements to one type of security undercut another type. A homeowner with half a dozen locks on the door in defense against burglars may burn to death before he can get them unlocked to escape a fire. A rich empire may seek such control over a scarce international resource that it provokes the rise of a military alliance of poor countries seeking to defend themselves or a social revolution by people who see their wealth benefiting others.

Security comes in many forms. It is all too easy to focus on one at the expense of another. At a minimum, security is composed of military, economic, and psychological arenas. The impact may occur at different time scales or be nonlinear, making it difficult to realize that improvements in one arena impose costs in another. Even if one understands concept of tradeoffs, they may be impossible to calculate. How valuable is trust? How much international trust does a benign world power lose when it claims the right to, for example, conduct preventive war to eliminate the possibility of a future threat? Might such an assertion sometimes undercut the power’s security by transforming neutrals into fearful opponents and sometimes enhance the power’s security by persuading opponents to give up resistance?

Bravado, the assertion of rights, a stockpile of weapons, and a quick little military victory are cash in the bank; the costs are less clear, less tangible, less certain, and slower to emerge. Indeed, they are quite likely to be invisible until the leader’s term in office has ended. To point out that these costs can be predicted on the basis of theory even though not actually yet detectable in the real world is a warning decision makers will find easy to ignore.

That perfect security is a perfect trap may seem obvious when laid out in the abstract, but this trap clenches its teeth daily on all manner of earnest, hard-working decision maker. Future comments on this theme will consider the concept of a national security commons and the implications for national security strategy of the rising complexity of the international political system.