The Rag Blog

Four fresh developments – involving Israel, France, and Washington and Tehran themselves – are bringing closer a war that could happen by accident.

The two most recent columns in this series have focused on the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran, evident in the belligerent statements coming out of Tehran and the even more sustained, hostile rhetoric emanating from the George W Bush administration and the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party (see “Baghdad spin, Tehran war” [6 September 2007] and “Iran: war and surprise” [13 September 2007]).

On the American side, the political offensive has been accompanied by comments from the United States military and diplomatic leadership, not least General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker’s related criticisms of Iranian involvement in Iraq at the congressional hearings of 10-11 September 2007.

There are strong arguments that the warlike rhetoric aids the political leaderships on both sides in their respective domestic predicaments. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has even been criticised within his own party for a cavalier attitude to inflation (now running at over 20%), while for his part Bush is widely seen as a lame-duck president. In these circumstances, the danger is that a febrile, antagonistic atmosphere reinforces a climate that could – quite possibly by accident – quickly escalate into war.

Indeed, even in the past week four additional developments have ratcheted up the tensions even further. In the context of the underlying balance of forces in the Persian Gulf region, make it necessary to analyse what would happen if there really was a war with Iran.

A spark, and a flame

The first development was the unexpected statement from France’s foreign minister Bernard Kouchner that war with Iran could not be ruled out. Kouchner is one of Nicolas Sarkozy’s appointees from the political left, and is routinely regarded as a foreign-policy liberal; his record includes advocacy of intervention on human-rights grounds in disaster-zones and “failed states”. This context, and the fact that Kouchner’s comment (misunderstood or not) no doubt reflects the views of his president, reinforces the sense that the French government is moving closer into line with the Bush administration – indeed, more so than Germany, Italy, Spain or even Britain.

France’s motives may include an oil-related desire to improve relations with Washington; the French oil company, Total, is now linked with Chevron in plans to develop the Majnoun oilfield in southeast Iraq (see Pepe Escobar, “French-kissing the war on Iran”, Asia Times, 18 September 2007). This is a potentially lucrative deal, but requires the acquiescence of the Iraqi parliament – and that is unlikely without American involvement.

The second development is the claim made by Iran that 600 of its Shihab-3 medium-range missiles are available to target United States forces in Iraq and selected sites in Israel (see “Response to pro-Zionists on Oct. 12′”, Jerusalem Post, 17 September 2007).

The third development is Israel’s enigmatic air-raid in northern Syria on 12 September (supplemented by the declaration on 19 September that it now considered Gaza an “enemy entity”). The Syrian raid is particularly worrying for Iran, less because it was directly affected but more because the response among Arab states (some of whom Iran has been attempting to cultivate) has been so muted. This at least suggests – and it must be a worry for Tehran – that whatever else might ensue if war does break out, there will be little regional support for Iran.

The fourth development is the convening by the Bush administration of a meeting of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council in Washington on 21 September directed against Iran. The principal aim is to intensify and strengthen the sanctions already in place against Iran on account of its nuclear-power programme; the US will also seek backing for its blacklisting of the Pasdaran-e Inqilab (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) on the grounds that it supports terrorism.

This combination of events does not – any more than the pre-existing tensions outlined in the previous column in this series – mean that war between the United States and Iran is inevitable. It is the case, however, that public and media discourse in the US is moving in the direction of “preparing” citizens for that possibility. Such a situation opens out the field of potential dangers, among which is one or more relatively small incidents could precipitate a full-blown conflict.

Such an incident might be engineered by Israel, by US forces entering Iranian territory or waters, or (perhaps more likely) by radical elements within the Revolutionary Guards seeking to regain their diminishing status within Iranian society. If a crisis did develop rapidly to the point of major US air-strikes on Iranian targets, ultra-radicals on both sides would be delighted. For Washington’s neo-conservatives, it would be a near-ultimate vindication. But what would happen when the balloons popped?

A war and its aftermath

A war with Iran, irrespective of how it started, would stretch well beyond a couple of days of strikes by US air-force and navy planes, and missiles against Iranian nuclear facilities (see “The next Iran war”, 16 February 2006). There would also be attacks against four other sets of Iranian targets: air defences, air bases, missiles and command- and-control systems. Some of these would be targeted even before nuclear facilities were hit, partly to reduce the risk of US aircrew casualties (and hostages, a recurrent American nightmare in relation to Iran).

The US requirement to counter Iranian retaliation, especially by Revolutionary Guard units against Iraq and oil facilities in the western Gulf, means that its forces would have to attack numerous “forward bases” of the guard. This will involve a strenuous effort to severely damage transport and communications nodes, especially in western Iran; there could even be attempts to destroy the Iranian political leadership.

All these plans make operational sense from a strictly military standpoint, but two of their aspects are immediately apparent. The first is that the scale of the assault is such that it could not be completed within a few days. The combined US air force and navy might be formidable, but even this degree of force would be stretched to undertake hundreds of sorties stretching over many days; repeated reconnaissance, including bomb-damage assessments in between the raids; many repeat operations; and improvised reactions to setbacks, accidents or unexpected events. It would be clear, almost from the start, that this would not be over within a week.

The second aspect is the mismatch that would soon appear between early appearance and underlying reality. It is highly likely that the early indications from a sustained US military operation against Iran would be of a crippling of Iranian military power and of serious damage to its nuclear programme. America, in other words, would appear to have “won” this brief war. This, however, would be an even greater illusion than the three-week race to Baghdad in March-April 2003. It is highly unlikely that, however much wishful thinking there might be to this effect in Washington, the governance of Iran will fall apart at the seams – let alone evacuate the scene to social collapse and implosion, as happened in Iraq.

What is far more probable on the Iranian side is that the Revolutionary Guards would be revitalised to spearhead a vigorous campaign in Iraq, and to back retaliation against US allies in the western Gulf (including strikes against their oil facilities). This strategy might evolve over many weeks or even months – just as in Iraq four months passed between the termination of the Saddam Hussein regime and the first big indication of the war that was unfolding, the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003.

It is also as certain as can be that the Iranians would seek every means possible to speed the development of nuclear weapons. These two processes – Iran’s deepening involvement in Iraq and its intensified nuclear programme – would in turn provoke further US military action, involving both the deployment of ground forces across the border from Iraq and repeated air-raids.

There is more. As a war with Iran escalated, the impact on the al-Qaida movement would be galvanising. Al-Qaida might have little or no affinity for Shi’a Iran but the Islamic identity of the republic would in the midst of war against the “great satan” transcend confessional differences. Islam would be under renewed attack in a new theatre of war, and that war would moreover be covered in great depth by the regional satellite news-channels with their commanding, engaged audiences across the middle east and beyond.

A perilous moment

This is only the rudimentary outline of the broad, probable consequences of a United States war with Iran. There must be many more detailed calculations available to strategists in the Pentagon and military colleges across the US. But whether the Pentagon or openDemocracy is the preferred source, this sketch is already enough to indicate why many among the US military – as well as senior figures in the US state department – are strongly opposed to the idea of an escalating conflict with Iran.

Such internal dissent over the drive to war also means that a sudden, large-scale attack by the United States on Iran remains unlikely. What becomes more plausible by the week is that a spark might start a conflagration – a war not entirely by accident but not by direct design either. And once it started, there would be little prospect of turning back.

The impulse that drives United States policy in Iraq is reflected in the professional character of its leading military and diplomatic figures, says Tareq Y Ismael.

A potentially decisive season of hearings and discussions about the performance and future of United States forces in Iraq has come to a provisional conclusion with the Congressional testimony of the US’s two leading players in Baghdad: military commander General David H Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker. But any expectation that their or their predecessors’ reports assessing the progress of the military “surge” and its accompanying political efforts has proved futile. Instead, Washington – and United States political discourse about Iraq more generally – sleepwalks (see Gideon Rachman, “Many contenders but just one voice”, Financial Times, 18 September 2007).

This outcome suggests that the feverish predictions of a momentous opening of real debate about the consequences of the US invasion of Iraq were always grounded in fantasy. As with the frenzied anticipation that surrounded the Iraq Study Group report of December 2006, the real attention is better focused on the underlying character and dynamics of the US project than on official, establishment discourse, which tends to evade this key issue (see “The Iraq Study Group report: an assessment”, 8 December 2006).

The immediate pre-history of the Petraeus and Crocker reports is a healthy corrective to the temptation – indulged by critics of the George W Bush administration too – to overestimate the chances of a new course in Iraq as long as the existing power-brokers in Washington are in charge.

The background of policy

Most analysis and commentary on Petraeus’s and Crocker’s reports have been presented without due attention to the background of the men who wrote the reports, as well as outside the larger and relevant context of occupation and destruction. Many observers have focused attention on the minutiae of the so-called “Anbar model” – whose speciousness was in any case highlighted by the subsequent killing of Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, the chief Iraqi figure of the “Anbar Salvation Council”. Few have sought clues to the reports’ findings in the professional character of their putative authors; but they are there to be found.

General David H Petraeus is an ambitious, intelligent officer who holds a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University. His first combat mission was the Iraqi invasion in 2003, where he served as the commander of the 101st airborne division. In post-invasion Iraq, General Petraeus has been charged with three roles, each ending in debacle.

First, he was responsible for ensuring stability by recruiting and training the local police force in Mosul. After his efforts had been deemed successful, he left Mosul in February 2004. In November 2004, insurgents had captured most of the city; 7,000 police recruited by General Petraeus either changed sides or simply went home; thirty police stations were captured; 11,000 assault rifles and other military equipment worth $41 million disappeared; and Iraqi army units abandoned their bases (see Patrick Cockburn, “General Surge”, Independent, 9 September 2007).

His second role, which began in May 2004, was training a new national Iraqi army, of which he wrote confidently four months later: “Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being re-established” (see Patrick Cockburn, “President Petraeus?”, Independent, 13 September, 2007). Three years later his trained Iraqi army is still inadequate and is affected by various levels of sectarianism and corruption.

Third, Petraeus was charged with being the executor and the public face of the “surge” policy, launched in February 2007 (see Tom Engelhardt, “Launching Brand Petraeus”, TomDispatch, 9 September 2007). This reflected the narrowing of US strategic goals from those proclaimed by President Bush in November 2005, when he defined victory in Iraq according to a set of short, medium, and long-term goals (the short-term goals included “meeting political milestones; building democratic institutions; standing up robust security forces to gather intelligence, destroy terrorist networks, and maintain security; and tackling key economic reforms to lay the foundation for a sound economy” (see White House, National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, 30 November 2005).

When these eluded accomplishment, Bush was forced to lower the bar to the bare requirement of mission stability. Petraeus was picked to manage this objective in late January 2007, and the Senate confirmed the appointment in February, when the six-month US military “surge” commenced.

Ryan Crocker is a career foreign-service officer with long, high-level experience in the middle east and south Asia. He speaks good Arabic, and witnessed the marine withdrawal from Beirut after the suicide-attack that killed 241 of their number in 1983; a withdrawal that was equivalent, in his mind, to capitulation to terrorism. For a brief period in the summer of 2003, Crocker served as political advisor to occupation proconsul Paul Bremer (see Karen DeYoung, “The Iraq’s Report Other Voice”, Washington Post, 10 September 2007).

Less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, Crocker (then deputy assistant of state for near-eastern affairs), was heavily involved in planning post-Saddam Iraq in what came to be known as the “future of Iraq” project, which produced 1,200 pages of documents covering each facet of Iraqi society and state. As an advisor to Bremer, Crocker shared responsibility for the dissolution of the Iraqi army, implementing the recommendations of the “defense policy and institutions working group”, to the effect of depoliticising the Iraqi army in order to restructure along a positive unifying role (see Farrah Hassan, National Security Archive – Electronic Briefing Book, No 198 [1 September 2006]).

The disaster that followed the disbanding of the army later provided the base of the Sunni insurgency and drove spiralling violence in Iraq; the thinking and approach showed a remarkable ignorance of the indispensable role of the army in Iraqi state and society. Yet, Crocker went on to be appointed the man charged with effecting national reconciliation, economic revival and a re-building of Iraqi infrastructure, all under the shadow of an unpopular occupation.

Crocker is, moreover, an architect of the denationalisation of Iraq’s oil industry, which was a priority among the eighteen benchmarks; this has come to be known as the “oil law” – an opening of Iraq’s national industry to the control of foreign entities. The “oil law” is highly unpopular among huge numbers of Iraqis committed to their own country’s national interests; it is certain to drive fragmentation rather than reconciliation.

The ethos of power

It is now no secret that the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq was based on intelligence that was spurious if not downright deceptive; and that the project owes much to longer-term American strategic objectives towards Iraq and the region.

Throughout the 1990s, US strategic concerns were dominated by a constantly growing domestic need for oil articulated by rising power-centres within the economy. In 1999, as CEO of Halliburton, the future vice-president Dick Cheney gave a speech to the Institute of Petroleum which highlighted his own vision of the absolute priority of oil in US grand strategy:

” … by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day … the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies … governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business” (see Energy Bulletin, 8 June 2004).

When Cheney entered the Bush administration, he developed the formula that those who control Iraq will control its vast oil reserves as well as the oil capacities of the larger region.

Today, the paramount role of oil in US grand strategy has become more widely acknowledged, even by establishment figures such as ex-chair of the federal reserve, Alan Greenspan (whose autobiography expresses sadness “that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil”.)

The wider regional and international context of US policy towards Iraq, against the background of the professional and personal profiles of Petraeus and Crocker, makes the political and public-relations aspect of their reports to Congress all the more evident. The heart of the matter was hollow: a campaign to salvage the eroding credibility of a lame-duck president.

The hollowness extends even to the provenance of the respective reports, in light of the close cooperation with the White House involved in generating them:

“Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect examinations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government. And though Petraeus and Crocker presented their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data” (see Julian E Barnes & Peter Spiegel, “Top general may propose pullbacks”, Los Angeles Times, 15 August 2007).

The soft and collusive character of the Petraeus proceedings – with the session effectively framed by sympathetic Republican members ready pre-emptively to pillory those who would question the general’s credibility and/or independence – ensured that such critical questions as there were touched only on details of the general’s report, rather than on the fundamentals of the surge policy and the larger context of occupation (see Leila Fadel, “Security in Iraq still elusive”, McClatchy newspapers, 9 September 2007).

Even earlier “insider” assessments had offered a far bleaker view of US performance – including the government accountability office (GAO) report presented by General David Walker (see Karen DeYoung & Thomas E Ricks, “Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals”, Washington Post, 30 August 2007) and the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, chaired by retired General James L Jones (see William H McMichael, “New Iraq war report echoes previous analysis”, AirForce Times, 18 September 2007).

The mismatch between the fantasies of US progress in Iraq and the realities on the ground suggests that the mindset ruling the strategy is impervious indeed. It recalls a remark directed at General Petraeus by his superior, Admiral William Fallon (commander of Centcom) in their final meeting in Baghdad, in March 2007 – “an ass-kissing little chicken-shit” (see Gareth Porter, “US-Iraq: Fallon Derided Petraeus, Opposed the Surge”, Interpress Service, 12 September 2007). It is in these unguarded soldiering words that the most unvarnished assessment of the ethos that animates Washington’s latest pronouncements on Iraq may lie.

Note: The author would like to thank his postgraduate research assistant, Chris Langille, who provided editorial suggestions and helpful comments.

Tareq Y Ismael is professor of political science at the University of Calgary, and editor of the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies.

In order to save the family farm, bring down skyrocketing health costs, slow down immigration of Mexican farmers who are being driven off their land, and save the Gulf of Mexico, we must stop the Farm Bill, passed by the House and now up in the US Senate.

There may be no better sign of the changing debate over the nation’s farm subsidies: A Midwestern governor running for president calls for cuts in a system that has steered hundreds of millions of dollars a year to his state.

09/19/07 “Truthdig” — — Please, please, I tell myself, leave Orwell out of it. Find some other, fresher way to explain why “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is dependent upon killer mercenaries. Or why the “democratically elected government” of “liberated” Iraq does not explicitly have the legal power to expel Blackwater USA from its land or hold any of the 50,000 private contractor troops that the U.S. government has brought to Iraq accountable for their deadly actions.

Were there even the faintest trace of Iraqi independence rising from the ashes of this failed American imperialist venture, Blackwater would have to fold its tents and go, if only in the interest of keeping up appearances. After all, the Iraqi Interior Ministry claimed that the Blackwater thugs guarding a U.S. State Department convoy through the streets of Baghdad fired “randomly at citizens” in a crowded square on Sunday, killing 11 people and wounding 13 others. So the Iraqi government has ordered Blackwater to leave the country after what a government spokesman called a “flagrant assault … on Iraqi citizens.”

But who told those Iraqi officials that they have the power to control anything regarding the 182,000 privately contracted personnel working for the U.S. in Iraq? Don’t they know about Order 17, which former American proconsul Paul Bremer put in place to grant contractors, including his own Blackwater bodyguards, immunity from Iraqi prosecution? Nothing has changed since the supposed transfer of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority, which Bremer once headed, to the Iraqi government holed up in the Green Zone and guarded by Blackwater and other “private” soldiers.

They are “private” in the same fictional sense that our uniformed military is a “volunteer” force, since both are lured by the dollars offered by the same paymaster, the U.S. government. Contractors earn substantially more, despite $20,000 to $150,000 signing bonuses and an all-time-high average annual cost of $100,000 per person for the uniformed military. All of this was designed by the neocon hawks in the Pentagon to pursue their dreams of empire while avoiding a conscripted army, which would have millions howling in the street by now in protest.

Instead, we have checkbook imperialism. The U.S. government purchases whatever army it needs, which has led to the dependence upon private contract firms like Blackwater USA, with its $300-million-plus contract to protect U.S. State Department personnel in Iraq. That is why the latest Blackwater incident, which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki branded a “crime,” is so difficult to deal with. Iraqis are clearly demanding to rid their country of Blackwater and other contractors, and on Tuesday the Iraqi government said it would be scrutinizing the status of all private security firms working in the country.

But the White House hopes the outrage will once again blow over. As the Associated Press reported on Monday: “The U.S. clearly hoped the Iraqis would be satisfied with an investigation, a finding of responsibility and compensation to the victim’s families — and not insist on expelling a company that the Americans cannot operate here without.” Or, as Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified to the U.S. Senate last week: “There is simply no way at all that the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security could ever have enough full-time personnel to staff the security function in Iraq. There is no alternative except through contracts.”

Consider the irony of that last statement — that the U.S. experiment in building democracy in Iraq is dependent upon the same garrisons of foreign mercenaries that drove the founders of our own country to launch the American Revolution. As George Washington warned in his farewell address, once the American government enters into these “foreign entanglements,” we lose the Republic, because public accountability is sacrificed to the necessities of war for empire.

Despite the fact that Blackwater USA gets almost all of its revenue from the U.S. government — much of it in no-bid contracts aided, no doubt, by the lavish contributions to the Republican Party made by company founder Erik Prince and his billionaire parents — its operations remain largely beyond public scrutiny. Blackwater and others in this international security racket operate as independent states of their own, subject neither to the rules of Iraq nor the ones that the U.S. government applies to its own uniformed forces. “We are not simply a ‘private security company,’ ” Blackwater boasts on its corporate website. “We are a professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm … We have become the most responsive, cost-effective means of affecting the strategic balance in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.”

Yeah, so who elected you guys to run the world?

09/19/07 “ICH ” — — I am consistently amazed at things that right-wing nut jobs throw at me to justify their support of an unjustifiable war. Seriously, when you watch Generals, Ambassadors, Senators and Congress Reps and pundits who still cheerlead for a miserable, failed and murderous policy you can almost see the skepticism in their eyes, too. They know they are lying for their masters now, if they, like George and Dick didn’t always know they were lying.

However, a measly segment of our population are still so willingly ill-informed and ignorant of the facts are grasping for straws.

At the recent “Support for our Troops” rally that was held by the Republican backed and funded Move America Forward and Gathering of Eagles (who I like to call the “Smattering of Pigeons”) groups last Saturday where they had 1/100th of the numbers of the true “Support the Troops” (and the people of Iraq) rally and march that was sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, we pro-peace people were even called “Communists” several times. I have asked people what they mean when they call me that so-last century epithet and they say: “Yeah, you hate America.” Well, for all of those who have eyes but refuse to see, and ears but refuse to hear, this is what Communist means:

Someone who supports communism which is a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.

I don’t see how wanting peace and wanting our government to finally quit lying to us and stop killing people to further their hegemonic goals of bringing corporate America to every corner of the globe makes us Communists; maybe Humanists, patriots or great Americans, but Communists, no. Some people in America do belong to the Communist party, which is not against the law, and it is also not against the law to be a Muslim, yet.

One of the more morally reprehensible notes from the supporters of death I receive is the one that goes something like this: “I am for peace, too, but not at the expense of my family.” These people are saying that it is okay to ruin my family and thousands of other families in the US who have been torn apart like the bodies of our loved ones to keep other families “safe.” I have news for these people, as bad as the sacrifices have been for some families in America, the people of Iraq have suffered far more for the deceptions and greed of BushCo. Think about this: America killed over a million Iraqis between Gulf I and this current occupation, and that did not keep my family safe, or the families of the people killed in 9-11. How can one sleep at night thinking that her family is safe when so many people are devastated by the policies that she thinks is keeping her family safe? Never mind the National Intelligence Estimates that have rightly showed that our transgressions in Iraq and such inhumane prison camps as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are increasing Islamic extremism.

What makes Mrs. Safety think that the Iraqi babies are less precious than her babies? Does the geographic accident of her baby’s births give them more right to be safe than the Iraqi babies? Maybe Mrs. Safety thinks that her babies deserve more protection because they are white and Christian? Or just maybe because they are hers?

I spent 24 years of my children’s lives thinking that I was doing everything I could to protect them. I guarded the boundaries of my family like a Doberman. I didn’t let anything bad in those boundaries to hurt my children until 2000 when an Army recruiter broke through my defenses to lie like a son of a bitch to my son who would ultimately be killed so Mrs. Safety’s babies could have the illusion and delusion of safety. Casey and my family paid a dear price for my thinking that my babies and my boundaries are the only ones that were precious and worth protecting. It will only be when we realize that all human life if precious and worthy of protection and know that all of the world’s children belong to all of us that war will stop being used as a tool in Satan’s tool-box of greed and destruction.

Many Muslims and American soldiers have told me that I may have lost a son, but I have gained millions of sons and daughters in my work for global peace and understanding.

They are all our sons and daughters as Casey was your son.

[Translator’s Introduction: The article below by Fawwaz Traboulsi first appeared in Arabic in the Beirut daily as-Safir on July 5, 2007.

Was the Iraq war inevitable? The anti-war movement in the West did what it could to prevent it. On February 15, 2003, in hundreds of American, European, and other cities across the globe an estimated ten million people demonstrated against the impending war. Massive demonstrations continued during the weeks preceding the invasion on March 20, 2003. World public opinion notwithstanding, the Bush administration plunged headlong into the war, and eventual catastrophe, with delusional fantasies: they would quickly win in a “shock-and-awe” campaign and the Iraqi people would welcome the invading troops with “rice and flowers” — so they proclaimed.

What about the anti-war movement in Arab countries? There were demonstrations in Arab cities in the weeks preceding the invasion, to be sure, some turning violent in confrontations with the police (chiefly in Cairo); but these were few and sparse, sometimes organized by the state, and far smaller than anything witnessed in the West. Anecdotal evidence from expatriate Arab groups indicated a far larger turnout of Arabs abroad than in their home countries. No doubt the repressive police states that are the norm in most of the Arab world made it difficult to organize anti-war rallies without government authorization. Perhaps also the masses in Arab countries were weary of marching in demonstrations that would be perceived in support of Saddam Hussein’s reviled government. But what about a wider oppositional movement in years preceding the war, if not in Iraq then in neighboring countries, that should have held Saddam Hussein and his government (and other despotic Arab regimes) accountable for their policies and deeds? What about intellectuals and journalists who should have written, and could still write critically, in a press whose freedom in many places (at least in Lebanon and the Gulf states) had not been curtailed? In the article below, Traboulsi addresses an Arab audience that has not always shown a disposition to take to task Saddam Hussein’s regime and others like it. A particular target of Traboulsi’s criticism are the political commentators that are prone to attribute the Arabs’ woes to dark conspiracies or to external forces beyond their control, thus deflecting much of the blame from failed and discredited rulers. In doing so, these political commentators contribute, if not to public apathy and demobilization, then to a feeling of impotence and despair against current conditions. — Assaf Kfoury]

For anyone reviewing the record, it is now plain that the president of the United States was lying to the American people, his allies and the world when he was brandishing the specter of “weapons of mass destruction” as justification for the decision to invade Iraq. Not only was George W. Bush lying when he maintained WMD threatened the security of Iraq’s neighbors, he managed to push the charade to the point of convincing a large segment of American and world public opinion that these weapons posed a direct threat to the security of the United States itself. His dutiful acolyte Tony Blair elevated the lie to an extra level of demagogy when he declared that Iraq’s chemical weapons could be set and launched within 45 minutes!

The lie about WMD was coupled with another lie, this one about a presumed connection between Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda, which has since been totally exposed as a fabrication. Osama Bin Laden can now send reams of thanks to the American president for having turned Iraq into a haven for al-Qaeda and other Jihadi organizations. The Mesopotamian lands became a producer and exporter of terrorists within a brief period of importing them during the first few months of the occupation. And Bin Laden can double and redouble his thanks to the American president who has acted, wittingly or not, so as to help make al-Qaeda a truly international terrorist network which now reaches large portions of the planet.

While we recount lies that were used to justify the war, let’s not forget that American neo-conservatives had been clamoring for regime change in Iraq since 1995. We now know preparations for regime change by force had been underway before the terrorist operation of September 11, 2001, and the latter provided the perfect excuse to put the plan to invade Iraq into action.

We know all of that, and a lot more, about the background that led to the war from the American side. But what about the background from the Iraqi side? We know very little about the latter and there does not seem to be much interest in finding out more. Nonetheless, during the WMD crisis in the months right before the invasion, there was one person in Iraq who knew with absolute certainty the non-existence of WMD — this person was of course Saddam Hussein.

So, a question is in order: Why did Saddam Hussein procrastinate for months on end before permitting UN inspectors to proceed with the search for WMD? And why did he put up all sorts of obstacles before finally agreeing to let the inspectors freely pursue their assignment? By the time he agreed it was too late to stop or impede the inexorable drive to war. Many will rush to preempt the question with a flat answer: They were going to attack Iraq regardless!

The same answer came in response to another question several years before: Why didn’t Saddam Hussein order his troops to withdraw from Kuwait in 1991 before the UN deadline? Had he done so, he would have invalidated the main and official reason the US and its allies used to attack Iraq in 1991.

In both situations, Saddam Hussein did not undertake to do any of the necessary steps to undercut the plans of the powers arrayed against Iraq. An attempt to do so may or may not have worked, but why refrain from it? There is no need to speculate why Saddam Hussein acted the way he did. He is no longer alive so that we could still hope he would be asked these questions in front of a truly independent Iraqi court — a court that would judge him for the totality of his crimes and policies, not for only one relatively minor crime which, in the event, led to his execution in an act of tribal vengeance.

Was there a way to prevent the United States from invading Iraq?

Those who maintain the inevitability of the invasion, regardless of the Iraqi regime’s conduct, repeat a logic heard before in justification of every war and every Arab defeat. That sort of logic of fated events complements another justificatory logic, this one preoccupied with conspiracies where the idea of a “trap” is central to the plot: After every war and every defeat, it must be that the unsuspecting leader fell into a “trap” set by his enemies. Some have said that Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the Second Gulf War in 1991 resulted from his falling into a “trap” set by US Ambassador April Glaspie, who let him understand that her government would not intervene in inter-Arab conflicts, which led him to believe he would have a free hand in acting against Kuwait!

What is truly amazing in the conduct of our Arab rulers is that, while they literally follow the principles of Machiavelli’s book “The Prince” when it comes to devising forms of internal repression and tyranny, they invariably fail to pay attention to the Prince’s advice in being expert like the fox in uncovering “traps” and avoiding them. If they keep falling into “traps”, it then stands to reason our rulers should be made accountable rather than absolved for their failure.

These questions may now seem from a different bygone time, but they haven’t lost any of their relevance as we watch the unrelenting horrors in today’s Iraq. There may be a lesson in pondering them. May they contribute to put an end to that pernicious habit of elevating defeated leaders to heroes — these leaders who were often rewarded by promoting them to absolute ruler or by renewing their mandate by acclamation after … a war they did not know how to avoid or a defeat that brought destruction to their country and their people!

Editor’s Note: At least the capitalists behind the death squads have been found guilty of murdering banana workers, something they have been doing for more than a century. It remains to convict other major multi-national corporate murders such as Coca-Cola, Nestle… Ron Ridenour, columnist.

A US federal court let Chiquita bosses off the hook on Monday, imposing a mere $25 million (£12.5m) fine on the multinational for payments that it made to Colombian death squads between 1997 and 2004.

Colombian Justice and Interior Minister Carlos Holguin said that the plea agreement in the Chiquita case “is not worthy of US justice, because it gives the idea that impunity can be bought for a few million dollars.

Mr Holguin told Bogota’s Radio Caracol that he found it surprising that “with a payment of $25 million, an amount so insignificant for a multinational the size of Chiquita, people are granted impunity who, in one way or another, were factors and accomplices in the horrendous crimes committed by the self-defence groups.”

Chiquita bosses, who enjoy annual revenues of about $4.5 billion (£2.2bn), had proposed the $25 million fine in March.

US district judge Royce Lamberth approved the deal, which also places the company on probation for five years.

The banana company has admitted to paying about $1.7 million (£850,000) to the notorious United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

The payments were approved by senior executives of the firm, according to court documents, and continued even after the disclosures to the Justice Department, despite insistent warnings to the boardroom from Chiquita’s lawyers.

But the Justice Department said in a sentencing memo last week that it had decided against charging 10 Chiquita bosses involved in the payoffs.

Among those who had been under investigation were former Chiquita chief executive Cyrus Freidheim, who is now boss of the Sun-Times Media Group and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Roderick Hills, who served on Chiquita’s board and is married to Carla Hills, who served as the US trade representative under former US president George H.W. Bush.

Chiquita senior vice president and general counsel James Thompson crowed that the Justice Department had made “the correct decision, which reflected the good-faith efforts” that the company had made to deal with a “difficult” situation.

Federal prosecutor Jonathan Malis emphasised the companies’ “co-operation,” while noting that “Chiquita was funding the bullets which killed innocent Colombians.”

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia’s civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country’s cocaine exports.