January of 2009 will bring
a new president who will inherit an old problem; the Revolutionary War we
started in Iraq.
In 1990-1 the H.W. Bush administration organized a real
coalition of nations to bring military operations to bear on a dictator/ally who’d
gotten out of control. Saddam’s Iraq was being used to keep the Ayatollah’s Iran in
check. Saddam had thrown a near decade
long war against Iran while
frittering away the resources of Iraq on himself and his toadies,
and needed new resources to plunder. Saddam, underestimating international
objections, raided the neighboring, oil rich, sheikdom of Kuwait.
The coalition of nations that rose up against the travesty
in Kuwait
included Arab nations in the region. Two
keys to getting and keeping these allies were that Israel
didn’t participate and we didn’t go to Baghdad
after liberating Kuwait. The H.W. administration went along with the
latter under the assumption that the Iraqis would throw out a weakened Saddam
after the war; the assumption was faulty.
Nearly 10 years had transpired and Saddam was as entrenched
as ever in his self-serving regime when the W. Bush administration took
office. On the 11th of
September 2001 the tragedy of an attack on the USA
took place, costing the lives of thousands of innocents in fortress America.
The W. administration’s initial reaction to the invasion of our
country was to attack the regime and country giving aid and shelter to those
who had attacked the USA: the
Taliban, Afghanistan
and Al Qaeda. The effort was not to be
the full-scale attack that the US
was capable of mounting, so a strategic alliance with the enemies of the
Taliban was created. The problem with
the alliances were twofold: first, the allies (the Northern Alliances) were
nowhere near the capability of the US military and second, the Northern
Alliances did not all like the US as much as they admired one of their own (Al Qaeda’s
leader Osama bin (forgotten) Laden).
Osama escaped from encircling forces and got out of trap set in a remote
valley (in the rugged terrain of the Pakistan/Afghanistan frontier), and hasn’t
been seen or seriously pursued since.
Meantime, in the W. administration, holdovers from the
Reagan and H.W. administrations were attempting to take advantage of the fear
and confusion following 9/11 to finish what they had started in 1990; felling
Saddam. Connections to terror were
fabricated and tales of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were phenomenally
exaggerated, where possible, or created as needed. In 2003 the W. administration employed the
might of the USA
to begin the Iraqi Revolutionary War.
The US troops were not allowed the time to come up to the
required strength of 300,000 soldiers for the invasion, nor the 500,000 troops
for the planned occupation of Iraq,
so this effort was also pursued at less than the capacity the US military had
determined the task required. Still our
forces managed to capture Saddam, kill his heirs, fire his Baath party and fire
the Iraqi Army. Five years into the
effort and W’s administration still have not admitted, if indeed they realize,
that the recovery of Iraq after the revolution faces the same obstacles that it
did earlier, when it couldn’t muster the cooperation needed to oust a weakened
Saddam, internal strife amongst the three groups of people in Iraq: Shi’a,
Sunni and Kurd.
The USA
can not reconcile the differences between the three ethnic groups that quibble
in Iraq,
they must resolve their differences amongst themselves or the next dictator
will take advantage as did the last. We
can consult in the establishment of democratic institutions, even as we restore
our own. We can also help train the new
Army, should the Iraqis decide to reconcile.
Other than that the revolutionary war we won for them is just a pause
between dictators. That next step is
for the Iraqi peoples to make, or not.
The USA should stand
down our forces till Iraq
has displayed a capacity to make said next step, and return only if our
presence is requested by the peoples of Iraq.
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