Toronto Sun, Canada
WASHINGTON. The famous words ofKing Pyrrhus of Epirus after the bloody battle of Heraclea in 280 BCare as appropriate for America's conquest of Iraq: "One more suchvictory and we are ruined."
The March, 2003 invasion ofIraq pitted the world's greatest military power against the largelyinoperative army of a small, dilapidated nation of only 17 million(deducting rebellious Kurds), crushed by 12 years of sanctions andbombing.
Thanks to total air superiority, invading U.S.forces achieved a brilliant feat of logistics, racing from Kuwait toNorthern Iraq in under three weeks. The 15% of Iraq's army that stoodand fought was pulverized by massive, co-ordinated U.S. air strikesand artillery barrages. Urban resistance failed tomaterialize.
The rout of Iraq's forces recalled anothercolonial war, the Dervish Campaign of 1898. Gen. Kitchener led theimperial British Army far up the Nile into Sudan where it met andmassacred a primitive Islamic host at Omdurman. Britain's quick-fireguns and artillery mowed down Dervish cavalry and sword-waving"fuzzy-wuzzies" as murderously as U.S. precision munitions vapourizedIraqi units.
U.S. air and ground forces in Iraq displayedsuperb technical, electronic, logistic and combat prowess confirmingthey are two full military generations ahead of nearly all othernations.
But as the great modern military thinker, Maj.-GenJ.F.C. Fuller, observed 40 years ago, the proper objective of war isnot military victory but a politically advantageous peace. While theU.S. won an inevitable military victory against a nearly helplessIraq, political victory so far remains elusive.
Primaryobjectives
In my view, two primaryobjectives drove the U.S. invasion of Iraq:oilandits support for Israel.
White House claims about weapons of massdestruction and terrorism were propaganda smoke screens.
PresidentGeorgeBush's claims thatimpotent Iraq posed "a grave and gathering danger" to the U.S.,CondoleezzaRice's hystericalwarnings about "mushroom clouds over the U.S.," and Vice PresidentDickCheney's bizarrejeremiads about "Iraq's reconstituted nuclear weapons" wereabsurd.
The U.S. now controls Iraq, astrategic nation with theMideast's secondlargest oil reserves.
The CIA estimates China's andIndia's surging, oil-hungry economies will cause world oil shortagesby 2030--or sooner.
Accordingly, the Bushadministration moved to assure America's global hegemony by seizingMideast and Central Asian oil before the impending crisis. Doing sorequired occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. imports little oil from the Mideast orCentral Asia. However, these regions are primary oil sources forEurope and Japan--and, increasingly, for India and China.
By dominating these oil sources, the U.S. controlsthe economies of its main commercial and potential military rivals.Control of the Muslim world's oil is the principal pillar ofAmerica's world power.
The Pentagon plans threepermanent major military bases in Iraq from which powerful garrisonsof U.S. air and ground forces, backed by mercenary native troops,will police not just Iraq but the entire Mideast and guard the new"imperial lifeline" of pipelines exporting oil from Central Asia andthe Arab world.
Other U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan,Tajikistan and Pakistan, linked to bases in Bulgaria and Romania,will guard the new imperial route.
The second objective, in my view, was aidingIsrael.
Influential American supporters of Israel'srightist prime minister, Ariel Sharon, played a significant role inbuilding the case for war against Iraq.
From various positions in the White House,Pentagon, National Security Council, media, and taxpayer-supportedWashington think tanks, these neo-conservatives helped to orchestratethe campaign about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destructionand trumpeted alleged threats from Iraq.
Mini-states
The neo-cons achieved their objective: Iraq, oncethe Arab world's most developed, industrialized nation, a bitter foeof Israel, was destroyed, and will likely end up split into threeweak mini-states.
Israel is a primary beneficiary of the Iraq war: apotential nuclear rival was eliminated by the U.S.
Many neo-cons believed crushing Iraq would help tocement Israel's grip on the occupied West Bank and Golan, thwart aPalestinian state and force the Arab nations to accept Israel'sregional hegemony.
But for the United States, Iraq was at best apyrrhic victory. Invading and occupying Iraq has proven to be afinancial disaster. The invasion cost $105 billion US in directexpenses--the price of five complete carrier battle groups, or onemillion low-cost apartments.
Occupying Iraq costs $9 billionmonthly.
Pre-war neo-con plans to finance the occupation byplundering Iraq's oil have been frustrated by sabotage. Congressestimates the overall cost of "pacifying" and "rebuilding" Iraq forfiscal 2003 and 2004 at a staggering $200 billion.
This money will have to be borrowed by the emptytreasury, which, thanks to Bush's reckless "war" spending, is runninghuge deficits headingtoward $400 billion, riskingan explosion ofinflation thatthreatens to undermine the long-term bond marketand further weaken the dollar.
The human cost of the war continues to rise. As ofthis writing, U.S. losses amount to 555 dead, and about 9,000casualties from combat, accidents and serious illnesses.
Ten thousand Iraqi civilians were estimated tohave been killed by U.S. forces - in a war now described as wagedunder "mistaken intelligence assumptions."
Iraqi military casualties are6,000-10,000.
Iraq lies in ruins. "Rebuilding Iraq" means payingfor all the damage caused by massive U.S. bombing and years ofsanctions.
Puppet regime
In spite of rosy claims from the White House abouthanding sovereignty to Iraqis, American troops will garrison Iraq foryears to guard the oil fields and maintain a "democratic" puppetregime in power in Baghdad that obeys Washington's orders.
U.S. forces will continue to face a simmering,low-grade guerrilla war that will kill or wound more American troops,and increasingly brutalize and corrupt occupation forces--theinevitable result of all colonial wars. In short, America now has itsown West Bank, or Lebanon.
The brazen arrogance andprofound ignorance shown by the Bush administration in its crusadeagainst Iraq has turned the world against the UnitedStates.Occupied Iraq is acting asa terrorism generator. For the next generation of young Muslims, Iraqis becoming what Afghanistan was in the 1980s, a rallying point tofight foreign occupation, battle imperialism and defend the tatteredhonour of the Muslim world.Bush and his men havecreated millions of new enemies.
Half of all U.S. ground combat forces are tieddown in and around Iraq. Reserves are being mobilized for long tours.Wear and tear on overstretched U.S. forces and their heavy equipmentis a grave, though little discussed, problem.
Neo-con promises of "liberation" of Iraq, ofjoyous, flower-tossing crowds and of rapid "democratization" haveturned to dust. Iraq remains a dangerous, volatile mess seething withviolence and implacable Shia political demands. Twenty resistancegroups now battle U.S. and allied occupation troops. Militant Islamicjihadis are heading for Iraq to fight "Great Satan" America. Yet Bushstill claims invading Iraq made America safer.
However, because of Iraq,much of the world nowregards America itselfas a menacing, unstablethreat.
President Bush has stuck his head into a hornet'snest. The U.S. will bleed men, money and reputation for a long timebefore it figures out how to get out of the first colonialmisadventure of the 21st century.
March 14, 2004
Eric can be reached by e-mail atmargolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@tor.sunpub.com
Copyright 2004 West-Art, Prometheus 91/2004