Ed,
I've extracted a couple of points:
(KH)
Well . . . now you're touching on military matters. Here we have a
situation which is probably novel in the whole history of warfare where
the invasion was so easy by the virtue of overwhelming technical
superiority and yet the occupation is becoming more difficult by the day
and probably impossible within 12 months. The Americans and the British
will only be able to venture forth in tanks. It will be like Northern
Ireland for the past 30 years (where there is still no possible agreement
on an acceptable form of government), only ten times more complex. I
cannot see how the Americans can ever devise any sort of government
acceptable to the Iraqis that doesn't involve either former senior
Baathists or the ever present danger of a takeoever of control by the
Shias that would put the women back into burqas and set the clock back 50
years. The only way that the Americans could obviate the type of
religious control that presently obtains in Saudi Arabia and Iran (both
with constitutions that give primacy to Sharia law) is if it invaded
those countries, too, and instituted some form of Arab government that
would be imposed for 50-100 years until at least one generation had grown
up with and through a decent educational system and were then capable of
operating some sort of reasonably representative government.
(EW)
Yes, getting there was easy, being
there may prove impossible, getting out will be extremely
difficult. The Americans simply can't get out. That would be
conceding a defeat they would never recover from. This suggests
they're stuck in a terrible jam.
I wonder? There's no limit to the chutzpah of politicians. I
remember very clearly what happened in the Suez Crisis of 1956 which was,
in its foolhardiness, very similar in many ways to the Iraq invasion.
Prime Minister Eden decided that President Nasser of Egypt was another
Hitler and secretly devised a cunning plot with the Israelis and the
French to take back the Suez Canal which Nasser had nationalised. The
Israelis suddenly invaded Egypt on the pretext that they were destroying
guerilla bases. The British and the French then said that shipping
movement through the Canal was in danger, called for a cease fire (which
they knew Nasser would refuse) and then attacked Egypt from the air
immediately, dropping in thousands of paratroopers, landing thousands of
other troops from landing crafts and occupied the Canal within days.
(This "emergency" attack had obviously been planned for months
beforehand, of course, just as Bush had been planning his invasion for
many months prior to pretending to consult with the UN.)
Anyway, the Americans were so alarmed that the USSR might cut up rough at
this imperialist act that they threatened the British with financial
pressure, and insisted on the British accepting a cease fire arranged by
the United Nations. This was the most humiliating climb down ever by the
British Government and Eden had to resign soon afterwards on the pretext
of ill-health. Macmillan took over and he took over the reins with such
nonchalance (*) that most of the British public didn't feel it was a
disaster at all! From wild acclaim for the invasion on the part of most
of the British public we descended to almost total forgetfulness of the
whole incident within weeks. (*Macmillan had a laid-back Edwardian style
of doing things -- almost Charlie Chaplinesque -- though Macmillan was
one smart cookie in actual fact. He got thrown out of Eton school for
buggering another boy, but that didn't faze him even though Eton school
never forgot teh incident and never invited him back on Speech Day even
when he was Prime Minister.)
I don't think that Bush would be so nonchalant (nor would be allowed to)
if he decided to withdraw from Iraq in any sort of defeatist way, but I
think it is quite possible, politically, for Bush to announced the
formation of a totally Iraqi government in 'civic' Iraq as a great
gesture of American trust in democracy, give them some money (to
refurbish a few hospitals and schools) and perhaps promsie them some
minimal oil royalties, and then just drop the whole mess in their laps. I
think most of the American population is so credulous that they would buy
this. (I am not being anti-American in saying this. The majority of most
populations are credulous and simply follow what their leaders tell them
if it doesn't actually affect them in their face. How many people in teh
west actually care what happens in the rest of the world? 10%
maybe?) Up until the invasion, the American-inspired UN sanctions
had been badly hurting ordinary Iraqis year after year, and few in the
West really cared. So, however much suffering would be caused to Iraq by
the such a withdrawal, I don't really think that many people in the west
would worry about this.
I'm not suggesting the above *will* happen ('cos there's still the
problem of how to legally validate the selling of oil from the controlled
zone of Iraq to the oil corporations), but I think it *could* happen
politically. (Of course, it's possible that Bush might have to resign in
the meantime, or be impeached, and his successor might have to carry all
this out.)
. . . . .
(KH)
It looks to me that there are going to be all sorts of internal
strife between different parts of the American government from now
onwards. The State Department, the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and the
Bush group -- never mind Congress and the American Supreme Court, never
mind the oil corporations or the UN -- all seem to have their own
pronounced views on the matter.
(EW)
It'll be messy. However, as I've
argued before, US policy in the Middle East may also be
unsustainable. It may simply cost too much and require very large
cuts in domestic programs that Americans will ultimately not stand
for. What we may see, in the next decade, is America bunkered down
on its own soil, weapons pointed outward. The triumph of the
isolationists?
I'd been inclined to agree, except that America will still need
vast quantities of oil from abroad in adddition to imports from
Venezuela, even if (as I think likely) it's in economic recession. This
has got to include a lot of Saudi Arabian oil (and Iraqi oil as quickly
as the wells can be brought back into production). No, I think that even
if America vacates civic Iraq, it cannot afford to be isolationist and
will still keep troops all over the place (including the oilfields of
Iraq) to protect its interests and supplies.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England
