MGG Pillai Commentary View

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The tide has turned in Iraq

THERE COMES A TIME, in every colonial and military occupation, when a simple act of defiance puts it on notice. It is downhill after that. Often it is not recognised until years later. In India, it was the Dandi salt march in 1930; 17 years later, it was independent. In Vietnam, the Vietcong, during the Tet offensive 1968, briefly captured Saigon; seven years later, the United States was defeated. In Iraq, it was the return of the former Saddam generals, in their old uniforms, and the old Iraqi national flag, invited to take over security in Fallujah, after the Marines walked into unexpected resistance from the locals; the two generals it chose promptly declared their arrival as a defeat for the US.

There would be more confrontations like this. But the Saddam forces and the flag is a powerful rallying cry now. It would, if not already, in time be the sign of the resistance to US control. All the US can do from now on is to adjust itself to more concessions and defeats like this. And whether it likes or not, it is now a bit player in the drama in Iraq, with the capacity to do much damage but little else. It would see its coalition partners slip away as they in turn are targetted for their role in Iraq.

The US has lost its legitimacy, its move forward from now on is downhill, but the end is by no means near; it could drag on for a decade and more. The best it can hope is a stalemate, but at an unacceptable cost. The release of photographs of US soldiers abusing Iraq prisoners only showed Washington's proconsul's contempt for them matches that of their own dictators and rulers. It is, like My Lai, an incident amongst many of the atrocities of the invader, which causes Arab anger only so it could add to the growing American anger. In other words, incidents like these are to be expected.

Computer war games

But that these photographs pose a political problem for the US adminstration is only to be expected. Washington conducts itself in wars as diverse as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq with tremendous firepower and technological superiority that it comes to accept that this alone would freeze the enemy in its tracks. It does not. The America of the 21st century fights wars as kids play computer war games. Massive destruction is all they see, not the human tragedies that surrounds it: women, children, the aged and other non combatants killed in this orgy of destruction. But it forgot to factor in the human spirit. When the US destruction creates the havoc it does, those who live would take on the US soldiers on the ground. It happened in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in every war of resistance, the retaliatory response as fearsome, it is one sign the US loses ground, the political and military if not the moral.

It is this fearsome response, after the blanket US bombardment, that puts Washington in doubt. The United States is not conditioned to deaths. In every war, it shows its superiority by a kill ratio of one US dead to 40, 50 or more of its enemy. But even this is doctored. Only those who died in battle, and if wounded within 30 days, are counted; all others are non battle field casualties. Whereas the enemy casualties are at best gross over-estimates. This was so blatant in Vietnam, when I was a young Reuters reporter there, in the mid-1960s, that we used to, for fun, treble the US casualties and reduce the Vietcong's estimates of US casualties by a fifth, and we get a sample of reality! One expects the enemy to overestimate, we were told, but never ever the United States.

For the US war is predicated to information control. Only its voice must be heard. Everything must be checked against an official source. It works so long as that information is tightly kept. But a rogue element often appears and destroys the carefully built edifice of moral righteousness and invincibility. The My Lai affair is one. The photographs of US prison abuses of Iraqi prisoners is another. It puts the US on the defensive, and is a convenient foil to divert attention from the disaster building up in Iraq. But it is an irrelevant debate that takes place in Washington and, to a lesser extent, in London. In the larger context of the US in the Middle East, the huffing and puffing over the photographs is an irrelevant diversion.

Irrelevant focus

Washington understands this clearly. It waffles its way to focus on irrelevancies, restate its grandious plans for Iraq and the Middle East, ignore the larger issues, and hope it is enough. It never is. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it stays out. No amount of pious preaching would alter what is now unalterable. Until the photos came into the public domain, Washington, and London, held the high moral and geopolitical ground. The Arab ground, even in Iraq, was at best quiescent, if not beaten into submission. The hated dictator is no more. The promise of liberal democracy a la the West became the rallying cry.

But it could not be sustained. The political and demographic realities ensured that this democratic government would not want the United States to hang on to Iraq as its linchpin to the control of the Middle East. It was yet another blow. The United States and Britain went to war in the confident expectation that President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass distraction. It did not matter if he did not. They needed an excuse to invade, and this was it. There was none. Then one by one it shifted away from its stated ideals as its own raison d'etre bit the dust. They hoped the Shias would welcome them with flowers; today, the Shia is more determined than the Sunnis to drive the United States out. The Sunnis deprived of power they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein did not take that kindly.

More important, they are invaded and brutalised by an invader who not understanding them make judgments that ignore the reality. To defend their country, for that is what it is now, the Iraqi is prepared to spill blood and more. The US is not. Which is why there seems to be a deliberate Iraqi campaign to take US casualties. In April, 168 US soldiers were killed; that would correspond to about 800 dead and wounded, or a battalion is put out of action. It is probably more, since the US does not reveal its casualties as scrupulously as it claims to. The Iraqi is under no illusion: he must spill more blood than he cares to; but he would rather spill it himself than bleed to death from a bomb dropped from thousands of feet above him. What we would see is a violence in the ground fight, in which the US cannot match. What we have seen so far is only a start. It now looks certain that anyone who comes to the aid of the US - be it the UN or any international body - is ipso facto an enemy. Whether Washington likes it or not.

[This is my weekly Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) and appeared today, 12 May 2004]

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@streamyx.com