[Marxism] A washingtonpost.com article from: ffeldman@bellatlantic.net

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 Personal Message:
 What Wolfowitz tries to pass off as the "resilience of the Saddam regime" -- 
as though the unrest across Iraq could possibly be the work of Saddamists or 
even Baathists (a broader category) is actually the "resilience" of the nation 
of Iraq.  I have come to realize that 
Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bush et al proceeded on an assumption I first heard stated 
by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the tiny and uninfluential Socialist 
Workers Party in 1991: "There is no Iraq," the idea being that the country was 
so beaten down by Saddam and so divided along ethnic and religious lines that 
it was no longer viable as a nation-state if in fact it had ever been one.  
Well, score one for the irreversibility of the colonial revolution.
Fred Feldman
 
 U.S. Faces Growing Fears of Failure
 
 By Robin Wright  and Thomas E. Ricks
 
  The Bush administration is struggling to counter growing sentiment -- among 
U.S. lawmakers, Iraqis and even some of its own officials -- that the 
occupation of Iraq is verging on failure, forcing a top Pentagon official 
yesterday to concede serious mistakes over the past year.
 
 Under tough questioning from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy 
Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, a leading administration advocate of the 
Iraq intervention, acknowledged miscalculating that Iraqis would tolerate a 
long occupation. A central flaw in planning, he added, was the premise that 
U.S. forces would be  creating a peace, not fighting a war, after the ouster of 
Saddam Hussein.
 
  "We had a plan that anticipated, I think, that we could proceed with an 
occupation regime for much longer than it turned out the Iraqis would have 
patience for. We had a plan that assumed we'd have basically more stable 
security conditions than we've encountered," Wolfowitz told the senators.
 
 The testy hearing reflected growing anxieties with only six weeks left before 
political power is to be handed over  to Iraqis. The United States is now so 
deeply immersed in damage control -- combating security problems and 
recriminations from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and making a third attempt at 
crafting an interim government in Baghdad -- that lawmakers and others say Iraq 
faces greater uncertainty about the future than it did when the occupation 
began with great expectations a year ago.
 
 "There are a lot of people across this country who are very, very worried 
about how this is progressing, what the endgame is, whether or not we are going 
to achieve even a part of our goals here -- and the growing fear that we may in 
fact have in some ways a worse situation if we're not careful at the end of all 
this," warned Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), echoing comments of several 
committee members.
 
  President Bush acknowledged yesterday that the United States is facing "hard 
work" in Iraq that is "approaching a crucial moment." But he said he will not 
be swayed from the goal of helping Iraq become a "free and democratic nation at 
the heart of the Middle East."
 
 "My resolve is firm," he said in a speech to the American Israel Public 
Affairs Committee. "This is an historic moment. The world watches for weakness 
in our resolve. They will see no weakness. We will answer every challenge." But 
lawmakers challenged Wolfowitz with their fears that the U.S.-led coalition 
still does not have a viable plan in place for the transition -- and that 
failure could be costly.
 
 "A detailed plan is necessary to prove to our allies and to Iraqis that we 
have a strategy and that we are committed to making it work. If we cannot 
provide this clarity, we risk the loss of support of the American people, loss 
of potential contributions from our allies and the disillusionment of Iraqis," 
said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the panel.
 
  U.S. successes in Iraq have been "dwarfed" by two deficits created by the 
administration -- a "security deficit" and a "legitimacy deficit," said Sen. 
Joseph R. Biden (D-Del.).
 
 The public criticism on Capitol Hill mirrors growing alarm expressed in 
private throughout the U.S. foreign policy community as well as among Iraqis 
about the political transition and deteriorating security. The U.S.-led 
coalition has dramatically lowered its goals, they say, from an early pledge to 
create a stable, democratic country that would be a model for transforming the 
greater Middle East, to scrambling to cobble together an interim government by 
June 30 that will have only limited political authority and still depend on 
more than 130,000 foreign troops.
 
 "We've sacrificed the preferable to that which is most expedient," said a U.S. 
official involved with Iraq policy. "We've gone from hoping for a strong and 
empowered government to one that can survive, literally, until a new 
constitution is drafted."
 
 With mounting instability, from the assassination of a top Iraqi politician to 
kidnappings for ransom of prominent professionals and their children, Iraqis 
close to the negotiations by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi are now warning 
that credible politicians or technocrats may not be willing to accept jobs in 
the interim Iraqi government.
 
 "Anyone in his right mind would say, 'What you're giving me is an impossible 
task and a no-win situation,' " said an Iraqi adviser to a member of the Iraqi 
Governing Council.
 
 The crisis over mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib has also complicated 
the political transition, with fears among Iraqis that any association with an 
interim government named by U.N. and U.S. diplomats will undermine their 
political aspirations.
 
 Some military officers are also concerned that Washington is now cutting back 
on its original goal of eliminating major flash points in Iraq before June 30. 
They say the United States has basically retreated in Fallujah, handing over 
control of the Sunni city to a former Iraqi general who is now commanding some 
of the very insurgents U.S. forces were fighting -- again, in the name of 
expediency.
 
 "What we're trying to do is extricate ourselves from Fallujah," said a senior 
U.S. official familiar with U.S. strategy who would speak only on the condition 
of anonymity. "There's overwhelming pressure with the Coalition Provisional 
Authority and the White House to deliver a successful Iraq transition, and Iraq 
is proving uncooperative."
 
 In his testimony, Wolfowitz expressed  optimism about trends in Iraq. "We're 
not trying to suggest by any means that this is a rosy scenario, but we do 
think that Iraq is moving forward toward self-government and self-defense, and 
that's the key to winning," he said.
 
 But in response to persistent questioning, Wolfowitz said the United States 
had been "slow" in creating Iraqi security forces and too severe in its early 
policy of de-Baathification, or barring from government jobs and political life 
tens of thousands of Iraqis who were members of Hussein's ruling Baath Party.
 
 He listed other shortcomings in planning, including underestimating the 
resilience of Hussein or his supporters, their postwar operational capabilities 
and financial resources. Wolfowitz also said he did not know how many U.S. 
troops would remain posted to Iraq over the next 18 months. "It could be more, 
it could be less" than the level of 135,000 troops  the Pentagon has said it 
plans to keep in Iraq through 2005.
 
 And he conceded that the question of how Iraq will operate after June 30 
remains unsettled, adding that officials would have a better idea of how Iraqi 
sovereignty will work "as soon as we know who our counterparts are."
 
 In Britain, the closest U.S. ally in Iraq, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also 
conceded that the Iraq situation is more troubled than the coalition predicted. 
"It's palpable that the difficulties which we faced have been more extensive 
than it was reasonable to assume nine months ago," he said in an interview with 
the British Broadcasting Corp.
 
 Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
 
   

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