July 5th, 2003
Dear Senator Wyden,
I read news reports with disbelief this week as Donald Rumsfeld disputed whether the United States was involved in a guerilla war or not in Iraq. He invoked the T-word, “terrorism,” as though Americans are supposed to shut off their brains and ignore reality whenever we hear the T-word. Well, the fact is that we are are involved in a guerilla war, and it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
It is hard to believe that things are going to plan when Jay Garner is installed for a few weeks in Baghdad and then hustled out of Iraq. It is hard to believe that the plan is working well when I read of daily attacks by Iraqi army irregulars on our soldiers (the very definition of guerilla war, in fact). It is hard to believe that in the tinderbox that is post-war Iraq we are going to bring about a magical transformation of an ethnically ruptured society into something akin to Western democracy by the sheer imposition of force. Even our own soldiers are beginning to respond with exasperation when asked what they are doing in Iraq; too few of them are trained for police action, and many see themselves in a no-win situation.
The only part of the plan that seems to be going well is the privatization and renovation of the Iraqi oil industry; out of all the government buildings of Iraq, the oil ministry building alone was quickly secured during the invasion. A couple of weeks ago the administration proudly announced that the oil was once again flowing from Iraq, though of course a few hours later some unknown persons sabotaged the pipeline. It is clear to even the most casual observer that the U.S. is taking great pains to make Iraq’s resources profitable.
This is the most troubling thing about Iraq: after all the lies and exaggerations by the Bush administration got us into the war, they are resolutely insisting to all the world that the spoils belong to us, or more accurately, the friends and business associates of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Our defense companies get the contracts for rebuilding. American oil companies will step in and run the oil fields. Bush’s hand-picked administrators will retain the control over how Iraqi society is remade. This attitude is negative in two ways: it reinforces the notion in the rest of the world that this was a war for oil, and it keeps us from getting any meaningful assistance from the rest of the world in rebuilding post-war Iraq. I really have to question why, other than petulance, we have kept the U.N. from having a role in post-war Iraq. We’re like the monkey who put his paw in the hole of a coconut to grab the treat: we got the treat, but we can’t keep the treat and extract our paw.
In my first letter to you about Iraq eight months ago I said it was about oil, and it was about power. I have seen nothing but confirmation concerning that. So long as it is about oil, and about power, we are going to lose in the long run. If we were really the humble and wise nation that we professed to be once, we would drop our pretensions about being able to do it all alone, and get the U.N. involved in a meaningful way. Only then will our imperial overreach turn into something that Iraqis and the world will respect. We also need to belly up to the bar and start planning to pay the true tab for this misadventure: the day our soldiers stepped into Baghdad became the day we bought the country and all its problems. There are roads to be rebuilt, power stations to be repaired, and water systems to be replaced. If we treat Iraq the way that we have treated Afghanistan, nation-building on the cheap, we can expect the same result: continued lawlessness and hatred of America the Occupier.
Kurt