Entering Baghdad could be as
difficult as leaving it

Mechanisms and complications
of the post-war future

"The risk of inaction making the
world more secure is a risk I am
not prepared to run."
---(George W. Bush quoted by
   Time magazine, New York)
(BY MICHEL PORCHERON
Special for Granma International

"I left for the complicated East with simple ideas," General
De Gaulle once stated. What about George W. Bush? He seems
to have gone to Iraq not with simple, but simplistic ideas,
according to a March 13 Courrier International article, and
he did so by deploying an over-dimensioned military arsenal.

In reality, he isn't the first to do so. The British arrived
in Iraq in 1914. At that time General Stanley Maude
"liberated" the country from the Ottoman tyranny, just as
General Tommy Franks is to do now by offering Iraqis "Pax
Americana" preceded by blanket bombardments, indispensable
for the region's future "democratization".

Since 1945, there are no known examples of democracy falling
from the skies, among a missile, a sack of rice or a pack of
leaflets calling for desertion. Nor is the U.S. version of
democracy like instant mint tea, just as a cup of coffee
from the Cuban Sierra Maestra is not soluble.

However, this seems to be the fixed idea of some
neo-conservative intellectuals -like Paul Wolfowitz, joint
secretary of defense; Richard Perle, chief advisor to the
Pentagon; or journalist William Kristol, director of The
Weekly Standard- who have all "advocated getting stuck into
Iraq for the long term, where they can then practice
conversion to democracy over the ruins of a defeat,"
according to a Le Monde article published on March 20.

So it would seem that Bush Junior's boys are in Iraq on the
sole and exclusive orders of Washington (as opposed to the
1991 Gulf War). Their number one objective: to eliminate
Saddam Hussein, dead or alive, to blow him to bits or
pulverize him. This is the method of the neo-conservatives
who always criticized Bush Sr. for having left the job half
done. Two years later, starting March 20, 2003, this same
U.S. political sector has put millions of Iraqis, mostly
civilians, on death row once again.

But today's GI's are like those of General Custer and other
figures from the U.S. conquest of the West, who knew
absolutely nothing about the Native Indians, be they Sioux,
Cheyenne, Navajos or Cherokees. A "good Indian" was a dead
Indian, like the Vietcong in the 1960s.

What does Bush know of the differences among the Kurds,
Turkmen or the Assyrian-Chaldean Christians, or between
Shiite and Sunni Muslims? The New York Times Magazine (NYM)
recently revealed that in September 2002, the U.S. president
knew absolutely nothing about the ethnic, religious and
political mosaic that would need to be borne in mind when
organizing any type of Iraqi Yalta Conference. Last January
during a meeting packaged under the grandiose name of the
Project for the Future of Iraq (NYM) Baby Bush demonstrated
he had just learned of the large opposing sectors existing
in Iraq, probably the most fragmented country in the Arab
world.

Although the president declared last weekend that this
military campaign could be longer and more difficult than
anticipated and requested a financial supplement of $63
billion USD from Congress; for the ever-optimistic Pentagon
specialists, the war shouldn't last very long. That is,
post-war is around the corner.

THE U.S. OPEN SESAME
If preparations for the mammoth military operation were
characterized by their strict organization, for the civilian
authorities, the strategy has been more changeable.

George Galbraith, professor at the Washington National
Defense University believes, however, that the current
situation can be summed up in one phrase: "The Pentagon
will have its war and the State Department its post-war."

But under what rules? What is for sure is that Washington
will not act as it did in Afghanistan. If U.S. troops enter
Baghdad, they will do so to stay and nobody can say in what
state nor when they will leave, bearing in mind that they
will be entering mined territory, figuratively more than
realistically speaking. Moreover, it is known that the
United States is arriving in the region with the intention
of evangelizing it that is "democratizing" it. Anyone
proposing an objective of such stature is planning to work
on it long-term.

This war has introduced an unprecedented historical
particularity: Iraq's reconstruction was planned before the
start of military operations, Le Monde noted on March 5.

According to the post-war plans, retired General Jay Garner
will bear the heavy responsibility of directing the future
civilian administration, foreign aid and the country's
reconstruction.

Just before the initial bombardments, two essential
tendencies proposed their scripts, written in the comfort of
their offices. On one side -mainly high-ranking military,
Pentagon and civilian leaders- were those in favor of an
international force, with the installation of a new
government integrated by the majority of the components of
the Iraqi puzzle, including those in exile. A strong man at
the service of Washington would take control of the country.

But it would seem to be the libretto of Colin Powell and the
State Department that has won White House preference, as
George W. Bush has revealed, and everything is heading
toward a long military occupation, with the solution of a
U.S. pro-consul and protectorate. This is the opinion of
George Packer, an influential analyst with The New York
Times.

Bush declared on March 22 that it would not be a campaign of
half measures, meaning Washington could: 1) Install a U.S.
military administration in charge of leading the country for
a period of up to two years, with General Franks playing the
role of a discreet MacArthur; 2) Supervising reconstruction
in Iraq, after having eliminated all the Baath party
members. Authority would be transferred progressively to
Iraqis represented by an interim authority whose creation
has just been announced by Bush; or 3) Prepare much later
for future elections where a Washington-selected government
would come in first.

Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political issues,
confirmed these three phases on March 19 (stability,
transition and transformation), stating in the words of
George Packer: An essentially American war will be
followed by an equally American peace.

BUSH'S THOUSAND AND ONE COMPLICATIONS
"Wanting to reach such an objective through violence is a
form of delirium. One can see at what point the border of
insanity is being crossed by encountering a torrent of
illusions, of ever more risky moves," as an inspired
editorial by Jean Daniel, titled "Delirium and justification"
in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur commented
on February 7. It continues, "in the name of law and
virtue, Bush is flirting with the Apocalypse."

In reality, according to The New York Times, the United
States is going to find itself mired in a series of
puzzles."

Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Foundation noted that the
United States is not in the least prepared for the efforts
that will have to be made in order to be successful. George
Packer, pointing to the malaise of U.S. citizens, including
those who support President Bush, believes that that state
of mind is certainly related to the fear of as yet unknown
consequences." The Independent's Robert Fisk expresses that
malaise in one question: What will be the price this time of
our insanity, of our inability to learn from the past? He
answers his own question by writing that will be known when
the Iraqi people demand an end to the occupation, when
popular resistance to U.S. presence begins to undermine
military success.

"In real terms, to better comprehend the situation, we
should recall that Washington rapidly and deliberately threw
the jihad of Bin Laden and the Arab world in general into
the same bag, with the case of Iraq in particular. Instead
of trying to solve the "central mythological" problem
constituted by the Palestinian issue, in a precipitate
manner, the United States began defining the Arab world as a
dirty puddle impossible to clean up or comprehend in which
fundamentalist, military and Islamic monarchs are dancing
over oil wells," Selim Nassib stated in a March 2003 article
in Le Monde Diplomatique. Nassib adds that thus arose Bush
Junior's decision, "imbued with his solitary omnipotence,"
to have recourse to a surgical operation consisting of
attacking Iraq as a symbol.

Presenting anti-war arguments, Daniel Vernet pointed out in
the French newspaper Le Monde on March 8, the "possible and
even probable consequences are so severe they have no
comparison with the reasons mentioned or left to be deduced
to justify the war. The destabilization of the region will
reinforce "harsh regimes" since "Arab elites most interested
in modernization have a highly limited taste for
liberal-imperialism."

Le Monde Diplomatique concluded that the issue now is to
know is whether the planet -with the exception of the United
Kingdom and Aznar's powerful Spain- will have sufficient
weight to serve as a counterbalance to the project of this
new Dr. Dolittle."