[Marxism] US faces growing fears of failure: Wolfowitz admits errors

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, that attempt to try something new went well.

Here is the same posting with a less cineramic format.

 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, at
this stage of the game at any rate, of the colonial revolution.
Fred Feldman


Washington Post.Com May 19, 2004

 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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