[Marxism] "We're getting our asses kicked in Iraq"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is an article by a conservative ideologue, Justin Raimondo, of
Antiwar.Com, basically a right-wing "isolationist."  In US right-wing
tradition, isolationism means more interested in spreading the empire in
Asia and Latin America than Eurasia (that is, "Russia" broadly defined)
and Western Europe, on the assumption that the US cannot exercise world
domination.  This was the debate in the ruling class before World War II
that helped create the Keep America Out of War committee, a tradition
that Buchanan still basically identifies with.  It attracted, of course,
fascists as well as many more people who were more traditionally
conservative and sometimes leftists.

The most interesting thing about the article is its summary of the views
of people like Scowcroft, Luttwak, and others who are NOT isolationists
in this sense, but who are beginning to consider the necessity of
withdrawal, and trying to see ways to play it to Washington's advantage.

There are a lot of things pressing the US government to stay in Iraq.
If they leave, tremendous instability will result -- and not just in the
Middle East.  The situation will grow worse for Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, and other US allies.

One thing that will not result is a socialist revolution in Iraq.  That
will prove to some leftists that the US has "won" the war in Iraq.  See,
Islamists, Baathists, and various bourgeois Shia are in power. For such
"revolutionaries," who are convinced that the Islamists and almost every
other leftist or anti-imperialist nationalist current except themselves
is "exhausted," reconquest of the right of self-determination in a war
with imperialism is worth exactly nothing unless it leads lickety-split
to communist revolution complete with nationalization of everything that
is nailed down and (just to be on the safe side) everything that moves
as well.

That fact -- and it is a fact -- does leave real maneuvering room for
imperialism.  Withdrawal from Iraq will not automatically create a
popular revolution where one was not otherwise brewing.  Because of what
I have just said, US withdrawal from Iraq would probably create a very
complex situation in the Middle East except for the Palestinians, who
can only gain from it.  The most revolutionary consequences might turn
up in some place like Bolivia or the Philippines.

But US withdrawal -- and that is why I think it will not come real soon
-- will assuredly be a tremendous victory for the working-class and
peasant side in the world class struggle.  That fact will eventually be
clear to everyone. Just as it is pretty well acknowledged today that the
withdrawal of Britain, France, and Israel from Egypt in 1956 and the
failure of the US to topple the Cuban revolution in the October 1962
Missile Crisis were major historic setbacks to world imperialism.

Fred Feldman



Antiwar.com
Heading for the Exits - "We're getting our asses kicked in Iraq" 
Justin Raimondo 12 Jan 2005 
Diplomacy and disengagement: the buzz is "out now"

http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1003506.htm

Forget the "good news" from Iraq that Glenn Reynolds, Arthur Chrenkoff,
and the Pollyanna Brigade keep pushing, because this is the real news:
"Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, recently returned from his second
fact-finding mission to Iraq, this latest with a small group of fellow
members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including committee
chairman Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican; ranking member Sen.
Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat; and Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat. 

"It was during a private meeting at the offices of interim Iraqi Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi that Mr. Allawi told the senators to move their
chairs away from the window ? for fear an insurgent sniper might take
aim at the American scalps." 

The "good news" propaganda is for the red-state masses, but our
lawmakers and other insiders know what the real score is. We're getting
our asses kicked in Iraq, and there's no polite way to say it. 

That's why the buzz over "disengagement," i.e., heading for the exits,
is getting louder, with a front page treatment in the New York Times
informing us that "Conversation has started bubbling up in Congress, in
the Pentagon, and some days even in the White House about when and how
American forces might begin to disengage in Iraq." 

Members of Congress are returning from their districts, where they've
had to listen to rising concerns among their constituents about the
costs of this war: the public was never solidly behind it, and since the
lies that dragged us into it have been exposed, they are now even less
supportive. $4.5 billion per month, skyrocketing casualties, and a
military stretched to the breaking point ? no wonder it's a Republican
congressman, Rep. Howard Coble, dean of North Carolina's congressional
delegation ? and an enthusiastic supporter of President George W. Bush ?
who is among the first to raise the issue of exiting Iraq. 

Noting an upsurge in opposition to the war signaled in letters and calls
to his office, the 10-term congressman representing North Carolina's
very conservative 6th congressional district says he's "fed up with
picking up the newspaper and reading that we've lost another five or 10
of our young men and women in Iraq." Coble is not the first Republican
to call for withdrawal: the heroic Ron Paul (R-Texas), who opposed this
war from the very beginning, has that honor. 

But Rep. Paul is a GOP maverick, long hated by the party leadership for
his principled stands against big government and foreign wars: they
tried and failed to purge him in the early 1990s and have since done
their best to ignore him. They can't ignore Coble, however, who heads up
the House subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. When
this guy begins voicing public doubts over "staying the course," you
know something's up. What's up is that the antiwar movement no longer
consists of people out on what the MSM derides as the "fringes" ? Rep.
Coble is no Michael Moore. Nor is he a libertarian in the mold of Ron
Paul. 

He isn't even a Jim Leach, the moderate Republican congressman from Iowa
who criticized the war early on. But then neither are Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Edward Luttwak, and various unnamed "senior
members" of the president's national security team cited in the Times ?
all of whom are leading the growing chorus in favor of getting out of
Iraq ASAP. Washington is abuzz with the remarks of Scowcroft and
Brzezinski at a seminar sponsored by the New America Foundation and
presided over by the indefatigable Steve Clemons. Both came out for
withdrawal in fairly unambiguous terms. 

Scowcroft averred: "With Iraq, we clearly have a tiger by the tail. And
the elections are turning out to be less about a promising
transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict.
Indeed we may be seeing an incipient civil war at the present time."
These remarks from a stalwart of the Republican establishment drew a lot
of media attention because they stand in such stark contrast to the
official GOP line that the elections will solve everything ? because
"democracy," don'tcha know it, is a magical antidote for all the ills
that have poisoned the region for centuries. 

The democratic conceit is the linchpin of the neoconservative orthodoxy
that, paradoxically, is the basic foreign policy view of what Lew
Rockwell brilliantly terms "red-state fascism." But it is not shared by
Republican realists like Scowcroft ? and Rep. Coble ? who see the chaos
enveloping Iraq through something other than Fox News-colored glasses. 

Scowcroft cuts through the propaganda and the guff, viewing each theater
of the regional war through the unsparing lens of one who sees the world
as it is, not as he would like it to be: "Afghanistan. First of all, it
is not Iraq. We did not go into Afghanistan because it was Afghanistan,
we went in because it was the headquarters for al-Qaeda and the Taliban
was supporting al-Qaeda. And we have pretty well cleaned out the Taliban
and al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. Now Afghanistan stands as it was when the
Soviet Union left ? a failed state. And one election a democracy does
not make. 

"We've been really lucky about Karzai, he turned out to be pretty good,
and rather lucky for us ? but he is still more the mayor of Kabul than
he is the president of Afghanistan. The warlords are not only alive and
well, they are thriving and running much of that country. They probably
have at their disposal more resources than they ever had before because
Afghanistan is turning into a narco-state. We have precious little
experience in dealing with failed states and putting them together. Now,
fortunately, I don't think we have to put Afghanistan together because
it's not surrounded by neighbors that require it be what you would call
a 'functioning modern state.'" 

This echoes the analysis of Michael Scheuer, the former CIA
agent-turned-author, who, until 1999, headed up the unit tasked with
going after Osama bin Laden. As Scheuer wrote in chapter two of his
scintillating and incisive bestseller, Imperial Hubris: "The
reestablishment of an Islamic regime in Kabul is as close to an
inevitability as exists. One hopes that Karzai and the rest of the
Westernized, secular, and followerless Afghan expatriates installed in
Kabul are able to get out with their lives." Scheuer is a little harsher
than Scowcroft, but that's largely a matter of style. Both see through
the "democratic" finery to the underlying flesh-and-blood reality, and
this kind of x-ray vision was on display at the seminar when, in the
question and answer period, Scowcroft examined the regional problem not
in terms of postwar Germany and Japan, the two favorite examples held up
by the neocons, but using Turkey ? the only successful post-Ottoman
state ? as the model. 

But that, he glumly notes, took 80 years to construct. The laser-like
clarity of realism shone brighter in the case of Brzezinski, especially
when Morton Kondracke ? you can just hear his annoyed "how dare you say
that?" tone ? rose to ask the following: "What should Iraq policy be if
we are in as bad a shape as you say we are? What are you both
suggesting? Are you saying we can get the European Union and other
nations involved in Iraq ? when the Europeans have flatly rejected our
requests and haven't been involved in Iraq at all?" 

Moderator Clemons managed to lighten the atmosphere by quipping, "So,
you are asking if the realists are being realistic," but Zbig let Mort
the Wart have it right between the eyes: "If our presence in Iraq is
going to be for a long period, then we need to change the terms of our
presence drastically. And if it's not going to change drastically, then
our presence should be terminated." Both Brzezinski and Scowcroft agreed
that we have to involve the Europeans, either under the UN or NATO, but
even if we can't get them on board, we ought to jump ship ? before the
whole ill-conceived enterprise sinks. As Brzezinski put it: 

"If we can get in some fashion, some form of significant international
presence either under the UN flag or under the NATO flag, fine. We
cannot get the Europeans to join us in Iraq unless we are prepared to
share with Europeans the serious decisions regarding the Middle East ?
including the Iraq problem and Iran. I would say that this is in our
interest, but many people in this country would be opposed to that. And
I'm not sure the Europeans would be prepared to do much even then. But I
would think that it would be worth the trouble after the elections ?
assuming the elections are not a total disaster. Let us try." The hard
part about being a member of the reality-based community ? as one White
House official derisively characterized war opponents ? is considering
the worst possible outcomes as all-too-probable, and 

Brzezinski's unsparing realism leads inexorably to the only logical
conclusion: "If that doesn't work, then I would think that sometime in
the course of this year, if there is something which vaguely
approximates an Iraqi government ? in all probability a Shi'ite
theocracy, as a consequence of elections ? then I think we should
disengage because staying longer will dig us deeper and deeper in the
conflict." 

Scowcroft, too, raised the question of getting out in answer to a
question from Dana Priest, of the Washington Post, about Iraq: "If Bush
admits that we have a serious problem and asks, what would happen if we
left Iraq? Europe would have to say, 'It's as bad for us as it is for
you.' We can't have a civil war in Iraq." Scowcroft apparently believes
that if we threaten to get out, making withdrawal our public posture,
this will provide the Europeans with enough incentive to get in there
and help keep order. 

But Edward Luttwak, writing in the current (January/February) issue of
Foreign Affairs, has another idea: the key to keeping order in Iraq is
in its immediate neighbors, all of which would suffer adverse
consequences in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. First off, says Luttwak,
we have to understand that the conquest and occupation of Iraq is
nothing like the defeat of either Germany or Japan after World War II.
It is more like Napoleon's invasion of Spain and southern Italy in the
beginning of the 19th century. 

As Luttwak points out (sorry, it's not online): "The very word
'guerrilla' acquired its present meaning from the ferocious insurgency
of the illiterate Spanish poor against their would-be liberators under
the leadership of their traditional oppressors. On July 6, 1808, King
Joseph of Spain presented a draft constitution that for the first time
in Spain's history offered an independent judiciary, freedom of the
press, and the abolition of the remaining feudal privileges of the
aristocracy and the church. ? Yet the Spanish peasantry did not rise up
to demand the immediate implementation of the constitution. Instead,
they obeyed the priests, who summoned them to fight against the ungodly
innovations of the foreign invader ? for Joseph was the brother of
Napoleon Bonaparte and had been placed on the Spanish throne by French
troops a month earlier. That was all that mattered for most Spaniards ?
not what was proposed, but who proposed it." 

The same thing happened in Naples, where a "Holy Faith" militia
organized by Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo rose up against the Napoleonic
"liberators" and paved the way for the British massacre of local
French-supported liberals. It didn't matter to the insurgents that the
Roman Catholic faith was enshrined in the Napoleonic constitution ? the
illiterate peasants who resisted "liberation" couldn't know that, and
wouldn't have cared if they did. 

As Luttwak says, what mattered was "not what was proposed, but who
proposed it." Like the Spanish and Italian peasants who were urged to
resist Napoleon's occupation by their priests, the Iraqi people are
listening to their clerics, who are telling them that foreigners are
crusading against their religion, stealing their resources, and
violating their women. In Germany and Japan, the elites collaborated
with the Allies to effect a transformation of the political structure,
and the people, with a long (if not entirely untroubled) history of
parliamentary government behind them, were not in irreconcilable
opposition. The situation is quite different in Iraq. In short, there
can be no Iraqi democracy in any recognizably Western sense of the term
due to the acute shortage of democrats. 

Luttwak is not unaware of the possible consequences of an American
withdrawal, yet, like Scowcroft and Brzezinski, he sees this as the
least worst alternative: "The probable consequences of abandoning Iraq
are so bleak, in fact, that few are willing to contemplate them. That is
a mistake. It is precisely because unpredictable mayhem is so
predictable that the United States might be able to disengage from Iraq,
at little cost, or perhaps even advantageously." How so? 

"A well-calculated retreat" would not only extricate us from an
increasingly untenable situation, it could also cause the enemy to
over-stretch itself, and ? although we don't face a single enemy, but a
multiplicity of hostile parties ? the resulting power vacuum may cause
the various factions to pull back from the abyss of civil war. These
factions are united, today, around an overarching antipathy to the U.S.,
but the announcement of a date certain for withdrawal would surely take
the wind out of the pan-Arabic and Islamist grouplets that are thriving
under the occupation. 

Luttwak points out that Moqtada al-Sadr's radical Shi'ite militia felt
unconstrained enough to attack U.S. forces even while it was American
troops who were keeping the Ba'athist remnants and other Sunni militants
from reestablishing Sunni minority rule. The withdrawal of U.S. forces
would secure, for the government we leave behind, what the American
occupation could never accomplish: majority support for a stable postwar
governing structure. 

Iran, for its part, would not like to see an immediate withdrawal of
U.S. troops, in spite of their official rhetoric, because this would
create enormous instability on their border, and the effects would be
felt all the way to Tehran and beyond. The Iranian government has long
since lost whatever theological and moral authority it once had in the
Muslim world, and Iraq bereft of Saddam and the U.S. military would
create more problems for them than it would solve ? including the
increasing problem, for them, of how to control their own dissidents. 

The U.S. could easily demand "the end of subversion, arms trafficking,
hostile propaganda, and Hezbollah infiltration in Iraq": in return, the
Iranians would get the dismantling of dissident bases within Iraq (the
weirdo "People's Mujahedeen") and the advantages of having a stable
neighbor. Turkey would also want to be in on the deal. The Turks have
been stirring up the Turkmen minority (who aren't really Turks, as
Luttwak notes, but Azeris) in an effort to forestall the emergence of an
independent Kurdish state ? which, they believe, would greatly
exacerbate their own long-standing problem with a combative Kurdish
minority in Turkey. 

Luttwak also points out that the Turks, in supporting an "anti-Kurdish
coalition" in Kirkuk with violently anti-American Sunnis, are indirectly
aiding the insurgency. As long as the U.S. military remains in Iraq, the
Turks can afford to aid their Turkmen protégés in Kurdistan without
facing any unpredictable and possibly unpleasant consequences. 

If and when the U.S. sets a timetable for withdrawal, however, the Turks
have an interest in making sure that the outcome benefits their own
national interests ? which means a unitary Iraqi state and no
independent Kurdistan. The Turks have a natural interest in ensuring
Iraqi unity and stability ? but the presence of U.S. troops has given
them an incentive to pursue another policy. 

The Saudis, too, come into play here: they have been lax in policing
their border, across which legions of fanatics have joined the latest
theater in the worldwide Islamic insurgency directed at the United
States. Yet the Saudi monarchy is even more fragile and vulnerable to
subversion by the insurgents than is Iran: without U.S. troops to keep
local al-Qaeda jihadists at bay, Iraq would pose a deadly threat to the
Saudi regime. Instead of blowing up Iraqi policemen in Baghdad,
Zarqawi's suicide bombers would hurl themselves at Riyadh. The Saudis
have a vital interest in maintaining order in Iraq ? and we'll see how
quickly they militarize their porous border with Iraq once the Americans
are no long shielding them. The Saudis are currently enjoying a spike in
oil prices: let them pay some significant portion of the $45 billion
monthly bill, and consider themselves lucky that we gave them ample
notice before vacating the premises. 

I don't agree with Luttwak's plan to threaten Syria with "punitive
action" if Damascus doesn't go along with the plan, nor do I believe
such bullying is necessary. In the vacuum left by American military
power, the Syrians have just as much to fear as the others, and for many
of the same reasons. The American withdrawal would deprive Damascus of
such legitimacy as opposition to the designs of the "Crusaders" confers:
it would also open up the possibility of ethnic strife in the north and
among the growing ranks of devout Muslims in the country. 

The last time Islamism raised its head in Syria, the former dictator,
Hafez al-Assad, leveled an entire city and killed some 20,000 supporters
of the Muslim Brotherhood. Assad's son is less decisive, and his regime
is far weaker: the Syrians would be ill at ease to contemplate the
rising influence of radical Islamism not far from Damascus itself, which
Iraqi anarchy would certainly encourage. 

But even if all these diplomatic arrangements fall apart, or are never
even consummated, we should still withdraw, says Luttwak, and this is my
favorite part of his scintillating piece: "Even if the negotiations here
advocated fail to yield all they might ? the disengagement should still
occur, and not only to live up to the initial commitment to withdraw.
Given the bitter Muslim hostility to the presence of U.S. troops ? their
continued deployment in large numbers can only undermine the legitimacy
of any U.S.-supported Iraqi government." 

The battle against the Iraqi insurgency isn't anything like the
aftermath of our World War II triumph ? it's more like the radical
recession of the Napoleonic empire that presaged Waterloo: "With Iraq
more like Spain in 1808 than like Germany or Japan after 1945, any
democracy it sustains is bound to be more veneer than substance. Its
chances of survival will be much higher if pan-Arab nationalists,
Islamists, and foreign meddlers are neutralized by diplomacy and
disengagement. Leaving behind a major garrison would only evoke
continuing hostility to both Americans and Iraqi democrats. 

Once U.S. soldiers have left Iraqi cities, towns, and villages, some
could remain a while in remote desert bases to fight off full-scale
military attacks against the government ? but even this could incite
opposition, such as happened in Saudi Arabia." He's right about the
garrison: it would be a target of choice, and a de-legitimizing factor
(perhaps a critical one) ? in deciding the fate of the regime we leave
behind. Total disengagement is risky, and Luttwak acknowledges this, but
"its risks are actually lower than the alternative of an indefinite
occupation, and its benefits might surprise us." 

I'm sure Scowcroft, Brzezinski, Scheuer, and an increasingly vocal
majority of the American people would agree. NOTES IN THE MARGIN I'll be
the guest speaker at the first Yale Political Union meeting next month,
discussing and debating the topic "America should not use force to
export democracy." Naturally, I'll be arguing for the affirmative.
Antiwar.com readers can witness the event February 2nd, at 7:30 p.m., on
the Yale University campus in New Haven, Conn. E-mail austin@xxxxxxxxxxx
for more details. I note, with amusement, the following diatribe on
Michelle Malkin's blog: 

"Meanwhile, over at the unreality-based web site antiwar.com, Justin
Raimondo decries '[w]idespread support on the Right for internment of
Japanese-Americans during World War II, touting Michelle Malkin's
shoddy-to-nonexistent scholarship.' A question for Mr. Raimaondo [sic]:
If support for my book is so widespread, why hasn't a single major
pundit or blogger come to Pipes' defense?" But these same pundits and
self-important "bloggers" have touted Pipes and his works continuously,
defending his oxymoronic appointment to the government-funded U.S.
Institute of Peace, quoted him, and held him up as an "expert" on
matters Islamic. Yet now Madame Malkin and her neocon confreres are
running away from him as fast as they can. 

How fickle ? and typical. I have a question, in turn, for La Malkin: if
it was okay to lock up all those Japanese-Americans, then why not round
up all Muslims, too? And let's throw antiwar dissidents in the same
brig: after all, if American citizenship doesn't immunize you against
this sort of treatment, then where does one draw the line? Several
hotlinks embedded in this article available at:
http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1003506.ht


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