Mission Impossible: Democratization by Deceit

The Ends

Based on the objectives, there can no longer be any doubt that the Coalition of the Willing has lost the war in Iraq. The only remaining question is which way the coalition should cut its losses; whether it should cut and run or slog it out in the hope that Iraq does not remain a failed state racked by civil strife and home to terrorist organizations with ill-intent towards the US and its allies.

The invasion of Iraq has clearly failed in terms of the stated objectives. The coalition has failed in its objective to remove the weapons of mass destruction from the dangerous hands of the Iraqi regime because they were not in those hands. The other objective persistently underlined by the leading proponents of the war was to strike at the terrorist threat being offered by Islamic fundamentalists. However, by invading Iraq, a second front has been opened where it did not exist, and where once the US and its allies were on the front foot against al Qaeda, they are now simply holding the fort.

That being said, the invasion of Iraq was never really about removing a threat of weapons of mass destruction or routing al Qaeda. The overlapping objectives of the Bush Administration were: the social and economic liberalization of the Middle East, the establishment of a strategic foothold in the heart of the Middle East, the securing of oil supplies, the protection of Israel, and the removal of a thorn in the side of US Middle Eastern policy.

These were certainly the real objectives within the White House and Department of Defense driving US foreign policy towards war in Iraq. In 1997, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives formed the “Project for the New American Century” think tank #1, in which they pointed to a direction for establishing American global domination. This involved a more assertive stand against America’s enemies, and the promotion of political and economic freedoms across the globe.

Democratization of the Middle East is a noble goal, and aligns with a national interest heavily focused in the Middle East. Iraq, as a relatively secular society, weakened militarily by the First Gulf War and 10 years of sanctions, appeared to be the perfect candidate for sowing the seeds of democracy.

A precedent for nation building was available with the post WW2 Marshall Plan, where the US, with historic magnanimity, supported the rebuilding of Germany, a defeated aggressor.

But with noble intention, the Bush Administration brought a dose of arrogance. As the world’s sole superpower, the question neo-conservatives were now asking was why should the US not be throwing its muscle around when clearly, as a liberal democracy, it had infinitely greater moral authority than tyrants, such as Saddam Hussein. In 1998, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who would both later become, respectively, Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense for the Bush Administration, wrote a letter to the then Clinton Administration arguing for the removal of Saddam Hussein without waiting for general consensus from the UN #1.

The means by which the Bush Administration chose to pursue its objectives was to prove deadly to many thousands of Arabs and Americans without any of the goals, stated or unstated, coming close to being realized. There have been numerous documented and admitted mistakes in Iraq since the US swept into Baghdad. It is not, however, a matter of post-war policy gone wrong that has undone the Administration’s intentions. It is the actions in the lead up to the war that has made such fatal errors inevitable.

The Means

The events of September 11, 2001, will go down in history as a day of unparalleled heinous criminality. George Bush would call, quite rightly, for the head of Osama bin Laden. A ruthless war on terrorism was demanded by the events of September 11. A stateless enemy would require strangling the Islamic militancy militarily, politically, financially and morally. And this indeed was the strategy undertaken by Bush, at least up until the 2002 State of the Union Address.

The path of least resistance to overthrow the Taliban, state sponsor of al Qaeda, was established and enacted with UN support. Al Qaeda was pushed to the mountains bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. Countries considered waverers were commanded to fall into line, and fall into line they did with the US campaign to rout out terrorism. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia disavowed terrorism and signed up for the fight. By the end of 2001 all was in place for the final rout of al Qaeda, and the capture of bin Laden.

And then George Bush delivered his January, 2002 State of the Union Address, and the world first heard of a supposed axis of evil that was posing great danger. (#2)

Why was the President now talking about Iraq, Iran and North Korea and an axis of evil? What had happened to the fight against al Qaeda? Why was he monstrously mangling these two together? Within weeks, the answer was clear. The US Administration had decided to go to war in Iraq and was prepared to use the war on terror as a cover for this decision. What followed was 14 months of duplicity and deceit driving the US and its allies inextricably towards a war they would soon regret.

First came the beat up around weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs.

From early 2002, up until the start of the war a year later, all senior White House officials followed a campaign script to deliver the message that Saddam was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons, as well as pursuing nuclear weapons. Appearing on CNN's Late Edition in March 2002, Cheney said of Saddam, "This is a man of great evil, as the President said. And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time."

In September, Rumsfeld told Congress that Saddam had “amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons, including Anthrax, botulism, toxins, and possibly Smallpox.” And in November Bush asserted that “we know he's got chemical weapons” (#3). Time and again these and other Administration officials carried the line that Saddam maintained and pursued a threatening amount of WMDs.

However, it was evident that Iraq did not pose an imminent threat, and it was questionable whether it had any WMDs, let alone significant stockpiles. From what has now come to light, there was no credible evidence to suggest otherwise at the White House. To take America to war, the Bush Administration applied the 0 percent tactic: twist and exaggerate a threat from 0 percent to 1 percent, and then apply the 1 percent doctrine (#4), whereby America should eliminate threats of 1 percent before they become a reality.

Leaving nothing to chance, the Bush Administration moved on another front with a concoction of a relationship between Saddam and the events of September 11.

When asked on Meet The Press, in September, 2002, whether there was a link between the events of September 11 and Saddam, Cheney said that “we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al-Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years”. With further prompting, “But no direct link?” Cheney responded, “I can’t… I’ll leave it right where it’s at. I don’t want to go beyond that. I’ve tried to be cautious and restrained in my comments, and I hope that everybody will recognize that”. In fact, Cheney was throwing caution to the wind. The sourcing for the alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda was both tenuous and discredited (#5).

This thread was persisted with by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld right up to the invasion. Whenever terrorism emerged, the ogre of Saddam was brought to bear. In response to the October 2000 Bali bombings, Bush was sure to underline “the fact that there is a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam" (#6). However, this “connection” was no more than that they both happened to originate from the Middle East. Saddam led a secular socialist party fundamentally opposed to the Islamic extremists of al Qaeda, who had planned and carried out the September 11 attacks.

The extent of misinformation being presented by the Bush Administration ensured that the majority of Americans believed that the Iraqi regime was in some way responsible for the events of September 11 (#7).

If truth is the first victim of war, then perhaps the abuse of truth is the signal for the imminent coming of war.

To the call for arms, promptly came Tony Blair and John Howard.

Ever since taking office, Blair proved to be the master of spin. The level of sincerity displayed during times of public mourning was something to behold by any budding sales person. Blair’s knack of illuminating the evil mindset of the Islamic fascist, when responding to questions as to why it was imperative to bring down the secular Baathist regime, was, in deed, sales pitching of a bad product at its supreme.

Underlying a good sales person is a belief in what is being sold. Blair's commitment to the US Iraq policy was certainly underpinned by a healthy notion of international activism. However, the problem with taking on the sales task with such fervor was that the facts became secondary to the spin. Blair failed to see how misguided an Iraqi invasion would be because he took on the role of sales person at the expense of his Prime Ministerial duties of policy analysis.

Howard’s contribution to the spin program sat comfortably with his technique of policymaking and the art of ignorance. This technique, in the making with the children overboard scandal, maturing with the WMD scandal and coming of age with the AWB scandal, requires public servants to report to their superiors on a “need not to know” basis. This process of governance revolves around the Prime Minister being able to adopt politically astute positions that are completely unjustified based on the facts. It ensures the Prime Minister can come out of the subsequent scandal having reportedly acted in good faith.

Howard’s decision to support the invasion was based largely on political instincts that grab any opportunity to drive a wedge into the opposition Labour party, as well as sycophantic tendencies towards the neo-conservative occupiers of the White House.

Despite the chorus of misinformation coming from the Coalition of the Willing, the international community remained unconvinced in the justification for war. Colin Powell’s half baked prosecution case against Iraq at the UN in February, 2003, (#8) did nothing to persuade the international community, other than those already committed to the American course, of the threat from Iraq. The UN presentation consisted of little more than an invoice for some aluminum tubes and a satellite picture of a truck parked outside a building.

Throughout February, Hans Blix remained in Iraq collecting evidence. Although the Iraqis were deemed by the US not to be complying fully with UN Security Council Resolution 1441, it remains unclear as to what Saddam’s regime needed to do to meet the demands of the Coalition of the Willing. The confusing public reference by Bush of a “rerun of a bad movie” (#9) reinforces the idea that there was no course of action that Iraq could take to prove that they had no WMDs. And, of course, there was not. The objective of this plan was not to seek out and destroy WMDs; it was to bring democracy to the Middle East. This objective required the toppling of Saddam.

By March, 2003, the US was still not getting a clear nod from the UN that would constitute a UN mandate. The Iraqi desert summer was not far away and a decision had to be made whether to bunker down for another two seasons waiting on the UN inspectors to complete their task, or to blow the trumpet of war (#10). There was never any question of what the decision of the US Administration was to be. Nor was there any question as to whether Blair and Howard would follow, despite a lack of a clear argument for declaring war.
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In reconstructing Iraq after the war, it appears that the US commanders were not imbued with the same sense of nation building as their counterparts following WW2. When General Douglas Macarthur was assigned the task of drafting the Japanese constitution after World War II (#11), he oversaw the legalization of the Communist Party, ensuring that it did not gain impetus as a rallying point for discontents.

The same enthusiasm for free speech was lost in Iraq. The banning of a small publication for including diatribes against the American occupation brought the nation to a stand still as the Sadr militia came out to show itself as a power base. (#12)

The US military’s indifference towards the free press has also bore witness to its remarkable ability to wipe out al Jeezera reporting crews. This may not have been deliberate, although the circumstances in which al Jeezera buildings and crews have been bombed by US forces remain troubling.

Another disturbing aspect of Bush’s war on terror has been the use of torture

The transgressions that occurred at the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, had less to do with rogue elements of the military than they had to do with a lack of leadership emanating from the White House, through Rumsfeld and Cheney. It began with the treatment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan as enemy spies, with the corresponding extreme methods of information extraction. That such techniques were being applied by foot soldiers to foot soldiers will have only harmed the professionalism and standing of the US Army for years to come.

It is no surprise that these tactics would be carried over to the field of Iraq. The US soldiers at Abu Ghraib may have erroneously interpreted their orders to a degree of negligence requiring court martials, but it has also been tabled that the standards applied at Abu Ghraib were transferred from Guantanamo Bay at the instigation of Rumsfeld. This is consistent with the continued stance by the Bush Administration that torture, as defined by the Geneva Convention, be legalized as a tool in the war on terror (#13).

Other disturbing reports on the standards of coalition forces keep coming to light. In June 2006, the New York Times reported a statistic compiled by the US Army that, on average, one civilian was killed every day in 2005 at a US checkpoint (#14). More recent reports of massacres by US soldiers have bore witness to civilian carnage becoming more incidental than accidental.

The number of deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of US soldiers is, in part, a reflection of the current Pentagon leadership. It is also a reflection that coalition forces are under enormous pressures; the pressures of fighting against guerillas who have the support of a large percentage of the population. That the Administration extracts positives by suggesting that they’d “rather fight them there (in Iraq) than here (in America)” (#15), and so, in effect, commit US troops as decoys, goes to show how perverse its politics on Iraq have become, particularly as it comes from the very same Administration that claimed American troops would be greeted as liberators. (#16)

The Failure

Three years after the US and its allies invaded Iraq, with the country bordering on civil war and al Qaeda posing an imminent threat, it can only be concluded that the project has failed. The reason it has failed is because the pre-war planning was based upon removing both WMDs and the link between Baghdad and bin Laden, neither of which existed.

Had the true objectives of the war been explicitly laid out, then the Bush Administration would have gained a better grasp of the likely consequences of their actions. If the debate was on nation building, and not clouded by non-existent WMDs and the undercurrent of fear associated with Islamic terrorism, the conclusions may have promoted sound post-war policies. Sufficient troops may have been supplied to secure the peace; the Iraqi military and bureaucratic chain of command may not have been dissembled; the second tier Sunni leadership may have been engaged rather than alienated as they were the key to the construction of a secular democracy envisaged by the Bush Administration.

As it stands, the support for coalition troops amongst Sunni and Shiite sections of Iraqi society appears ambivalent at best. That the main enemy of US troops are Sunni Arabs, who, prior to the war, spear-headed the secular, modern drive within Iraq that made Iraq a strong candidate for securing the seeds of democracy within the Middle East, highlights the degree to which this mission has gone off the rails. Iraq is not going to be a Western friendly liberal democracy any time soon.

It remains decidedly unclear whether Iraq will ever establish a stable democracy, and to what extent it grows to be a strategic ally of the US. What is known is that the cost has been extraordinarily high in civilian lives, in the lives of US soldiers, and in the cost to the American economy; a cost running into the hundreds of billions of US dollars. And it is likely the cost will be more again if there is to be the slightest chance of achieving the objectives of an Iraqi democracy.

A major problem with the US military efforts to win the peace was the fact that the objectives of the field commanders and strategists were not in line with the objectives of the White House policy makers. In the field they thought that they were uncovering WMDs and fighting against terrorist sponsorship, but in the White House, this was democracy building.

A debate on creating democracy in Iraq might have brought the problems with managing secular issues within Iraq to the fore. What the US Administration failed to see, despite the clear signals, was that the secular forces at play would prove to be a huge impediment to the foundation of a united Iraqi democracy. If the Administration needed advice on this matter, they need not have looked further than Turkey, which was under no such illusion. In dramatically denying its military ally, the US, a base for troops to advance on Iraq despite an offer of six billion US dollars, Turkey saw the reality of how an invasion would decidedly move towards the break up of Iraq and the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish state, so feared by the Turkish government (17).

On the general objective of democratizing the Middle East, there have been some successes. Lebanon was emboldened enough to demand independence from Syria’s military and intelligence infiltration. Syria, on the back foot from the events in Iraq, did, in deed, step backwards. This success has been somewhat counteracted by the sustained bombing campaign across Lebanon carried out by Israel from June 12 to August 14 in 2006(#18) and supported by the US.

Elsewhere, the gains have been marginal. Egypt’s token elections had an air of Soviet style pre-determined democracy.

The next time Iran went to the polls after the US arrived on its doorstop, it took a step to the fundamentalist right with the voting in of a hard liner, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to replace the pro US-engagement President Khatami. The dismantling of the Baathist party in Iraq, and subsequent emergence of Shiite strength within Iraq has undeniably strengthened Iran’s position within the Middle East.

The Middle East may see the formation of stable democracies friendly to the US, or it may remain a thorn in the side of US policy through the age of American global domination. This will depend upon the policies of future Administrations and their ability to overcome the damage caused by the invasion of Iraq.

Of the other major objectives of American policy that drove the invasion, protecting Israel and securing oil reserves, neither has been clearly satisfied.

The outcomes of this war have been an across-the-board disaster. It has been a disaster caused by ideologues that were prepared to justify a war based on deceit for the idealized social and economic liberalization of the Middle East. And it is these ends that Condoleezza Rice persistently brings to bear when she talks of the final judgment on Iraq, in spite of the fact that she was party to the overt rationalization of the war based on WMDs and terrorism. But as history has taught us, the ends reached through ignoble means are never noble, for the conceived ends are never realized.

When leaders allow and promote the use of torture in order to save thousands of lives, the result is not saved lives but a plenitude of torturers. When leaders use false claims to send invading armies in order to promote democracy, all but a bloody failed state ensues.

The stated objectives of fighting al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism were always going to fail as they did not represent the actual aims of the Bush Administration. The post war mistakes of the Administration were unavoidable once the political decisions to base the war on false pretences had been made.

So why did the coalition leaders lie about the purpose of the war? It was a matter of political expediency. Wolfowitz admitted as much in May 2003. In Vanity Fair, he said, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason..." (#19)

The catch 22 for the Bush Administration was that, by laying bare the actual reasons, some politically unpalatable results would also be brought to light. If there had been open and honest debate, then the question may have been asked as to why consideration was being given to going to war against a secular socialist regime in the Middle East when the US was at war against Islamic fundamentalist terror groups.

Without having to focus so vigilantly on presenting a case that was scarce on facts, the case against war might even have overtaken the case for war in the minds of the ideologues. But the debate was never had. If it had, no matter which way the decision fell, the result would have been magnitudes of order superior for the US than the current state of affairs.

There can be no doubt that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld regret their decision to go to war. In spite of their denials, if they had the chance to turn the clock back, it can be guaranteed that they would reverse the whole operation in Iraq to a time before they had decided to coerce the US into this war with assertions of WMDs and allusions to the war on terror. And on this basis, the invasion of Iraq is a definitive failure.

George Bush decided to forsake the immediate needs of his countrymen for the long term vision of his ideologically driven counselors. That he was prepared to do this under the guise that it benefited the short term needs of the war on terror brings the charge against him and his Administration to a failure of duty. Regardless of the viewpoint, from the short term to the long term, from liberal or conservative, from American, British or Australian national interests, the invasion of Iraq has been a failure; a failure borne of incompetence and deceit.

The Aftermath

For all the failures in Iraq, the leaders of the coalition found themselves re-elected from October 2004 to February 2005.

That Bush went into the 2004 election with support for his handling of the war on terror is proof of the success of his duplicity rather than proof of his success against terror. But it also demonstrated the inability of the Democrats to pin him for his enumerable mistakes in the war on terror. John Kerry, a celebrated soldier and protestor of the Vietnam War, displayed misjudgment, and a streak of opportunism, perhaps due to a lack of a well grounded foreign policy position, in first voting against Operation Desert Storm, in 1990, and then voting in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. It was as though, in 1990, where the US actions were clearly striking against naked aggression, he was responding to American misjudgments in Vietnam, and in 2003, where the grounds for invasion were particularly shaky, he was responding to his own misjudgments in 1990. This made him open to charges of weakness and made charges against Bush for his decisions harder to stick.

In Australia, the Opposition decided to remove Simon Crean who had led the charge, arguing consistently well that the decision to invade was pre-empting UN investigations. The Opposition then had to choose between Kim Beazley, who had a record of falling for Howard’s one card trick of the political wedge, and the untried Mark Latham. Latham came to lead the Opposition with refreshing verve. An extended honeymoon period saw him positioned to throw out a real challenge to Howard in the 2004 elections, but then the wheels came off. The first wheel to dislodge was his policy on Iraq. In March, 2004, without consultation with colleagues, Latham declared Australian troops would pull out by the following Christmas (#20). This was a disastrous move. It’s one thing to egg on one’s most important ally into a misconceived war, as Howard did, and it’s another thing to slap them in the face and forsake the people whose infrastructure you’ve just had a major role in uprooting. Latham had no exit strategy from his exit from Iraq strategy.

England was also poorly served by an insipid opposition. The Tories failed to target the middle class voters most likely to turn their back on Labour in the aftermath of Iraq. Instead, they chose to appeal to those sections of the community feeling insecure about immigration. This tactic was brought to the Tory party by none other than Australian Prime Minister Howard’s campaign strategist, Lynton Crosby (#21). However, the one (race) card trick may work against the likes of Beazley, but in England it was the wrong tactic for the wrong election. The net effect was that the Tory Party completely lost the opportunity to exploit dissatisfaction against Blair amongst Labour voters, which, with a first-passed-the-post electoral system, could deliver electoral success. Those Labour voters at risk of lodging a protest vote, or non-vote, were brought to the ballot box to vote against the greater evil of the populist politics being carried out by the Tories, whilst those Labour voters who might be thought to be attracted to anti-immigration politicking remained unimpressed.

So the Coalition of the Willing saw its three publicly unrepentant leaders re-elected.

What remained hidden from all these election campaigns was the key deceit of the debate on Iraq. By entering Iraq, the coalition removed the political and moral stranglehold over Islamic militancy that the West had attained in the months following the September 11 attacks. Before the Iraq war, the main protagonists in the war on terror, al Qaeda, were on the back foot in the mountains bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. By invading Iraq, the US and its allies gave al Qaeda both breathing space, as the military grip loosened, and fresh oxygen, with the disaffection the invasion caused across the Muslim world. The Taliban were associated with the perpetrators of September 11. The Baathist Party, a secular socialist regime, with an antipathy to Islamic fundamentalism, was not.

And now, the tactics being adopted by al Qaeda in Iraq are being re-imported into Afghanistan, undermining one of the few successes of the Bush Administration since September 11, 2001; a success that was not consolidated due to the diversion of coalition forces and energies to Iraq. The leader of the Taliban, former president of Afghanistan whilst the country hosted al Qaeda, Mohammed Omar, has now gained sufficient leverage to sign a ceasefire with Pakistan (#22), evidently not as committed to the war on terror as in the days and months after September 11, 2001.

This leaves many of those responsible for September 11 protected by local Taliban forces, just as they were before the coalition invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Osama bin Laden has attained a level of reverence and mystique that was precisely what ought to have been avoided. Indeed, one of the most insidious outcomes of the Iraq campaign is that the greatest mass murderer of US citizens will now live to a ripe old age without facing justice. That Bush, in full flight of switching the US attention from al Qaeda to Iraq stated that he was “not that concerned about him” (#23) underlines the extent to which he was diverted from his responsibilities to respond to the events of September 11.

If Iraq has become the battleground of the war on terror, it is a battle contrived by the Bush Administration. This Administration has managed to put America in a position where it cannot disentangle itself from Iraq without serious strategic implications for America’s interests. Bush’s view that “leaving before the job is done would be a disaster” is an unfortunate reality that his Administration has placed on America (#24). Whereas Iraq was once a country where Islamic fundamentalists were suppressed, it is a now a failed state hosting the largest recruitment and training camps available to al Qaeda.

According to the latest National Intelligence Estimate from US Intelligence Agencies, the war in Iraq has become a “cause celebre” for Islamic extremists, with the threat of terrorism increasing rather than declining since the invasion (#25).

The war against terror should have lasted 5 to 10 years had the West taken out al Qaeda when it had the chance and then worked with allies to target educational and financial institutions responsible for fanning fundamentalism, without broadening the conflict. By retaining the moral and political ascendancy the West had in early 2002, Islamic terrorism would be on a course to a slow burn out. Instead the war will last 20 to 40 years. Our leaders are telling us that it will last a generation, the same leaders who diverted their attention from the war against terror to the war against Iraq. These leaders, Bush, Blair and Howard, have established a shameless Orwellian art form of duplicity. We are now, apparently, in the midst of a constant war to defeat an undefeatable enemy.

That a well managed anti terrorist policy should have effectively wiped al Qaeda out within a 5 year period was what Kerry alluded to when he stated that the goal was to return to a time where “terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance” (#26). However, in phrasing it this way, he appeared not to take the war seriously, and left himself open to attacks by Bush of not comprehending the nature of the war on terror.

Nonetheless, it is Bush and his Administration that has shown little understanding of the war on terror, and the nature of the enemy. For this reason, threat levels across the West have been steadily increasing in recent years with the growth of home grown terrorist cells. One of the many incredible claims by the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing is that the Iraq war did not increase the threat of terrorism. Yet anger at the Iraqi invasion is a consistent theme in the formation of these home grown terrorist groups.

In the US, one of the most threatening was uncovered in July 2006. It consisted of detonating bombs in tunnels entering into New York with the result of flooding the New York business district. The suspected mastermind of the plan, Assem Hammoud, allegedly became involved in Islamic militancy when he became angry at America’s involvement in Iraq. (#27)

The governments of Britain, on October 12, 2005 (#28), and Australia, on November 1, 2005 (#29), were compelled to introduce draconian legislation in response to actions and threats that were in large part motivated by the respective governments’ policy to support the invasion of Iraq.

On July 7, 2005, 4 Muslim youths caught the train from Blackpool to London. There they boarded the public transport system where 3 of them managed to detonate bombs killing 52 people. This was home grown terrorism. The youths were British citizens, but had somehow found cause to turn against their country and kill and maim dozens of their country men and women. Such a heinous crime is inexcusable, but, as concluded by the British government’s own report into the bombings, Britain’s foreign policy in the Middle East was a “key contributory factor” motivating the treachery (#30). By not invading Iraq, the risk of terrorism would not have been eliminated, but by doing so, Blair had increased the risk to a magnitude where it duly became a reality.

And for what has the increase in the risk of terrorism on English soil been? Britain's military commander, General Richard Dannatt, has now come out severely criticizing the invasion and imploring "get ourselves out some time soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems". Blair's response, that his military chief's extraordinary rebuttal of British foreign policy was "fully in line with what the British government has said", shows Blair will never be able to engage in earnest, honest political debate on Iraq. (#31)

A parallel abuse of the truth was being undertaken by the Howard government. In the March 2005, Australia’s chief of police, Mick Keelty, suggested that the invasion of Iraq had heightened the risk of terrorism within Australia. Howard immediately rebuked and silenced Australia’s leading policeman, as was politically necessary, as such an assertion would call into question the worth of the war (#32). Howard’s denial defied logic, and now defies the facts. The alleged Australian terror cell, whose identification instigated the legislation of November 1, 2005, was also made up of home grown Australian nationals. The cause of their hostility to Australia stemmed from the invasion of Iraq. This is not based upon public declaration by the groups, but is based upon intercepted communications amongst the group by the Australian police (#33).

The ability to abuse logic has been a hallmark of the Howard government’s posturing in relation to its war on terror. Phillip Ruddock, in defense of the November 1st legislation, argued that, as tourists were still visiting London, then such laws were eminently acceptable. One can only assume the attorney general is intently following communist Vietnam’s legislative agenda since their tourism bonanza.

Prior to the war, Howard insisted that “if the United Nations is to preserve its credibility, then the United Nations has got to match the rhetoric of what it said with action” (#34), as if to suggest that only by rubber stamping the use of force proposed by the Bush Administration would the UN retain its relevance. Surely the reverse was true. Indeed, we now see a greater endeavor by the current Administration to establish UN approval of its dealings with Iran and North Korea, in direct response to the problems that have resulted from the US failure to obtain UN approval in 2003.

Iran and North Korea have faired considerably well out of America’s misfortune in entering Iraq. Both regimes have new found confidence in their game of brinkmanship with the US. The case for pre-emptive liberation is off the table, due mainly to how poorly it was placed on the table by the Bush Administration. This leaves the hard line North Korean regime able to starve its own population whilst pursuing its nuclear ambitions with virtual impunity.

This is in spite of Howard’s proposition prior to the Iraq war that the coalition could not deal with North Korea unless it first dealt with Iraq (#35). The question was: why? Why couldn’t the coalition pursue a regime that was as guilty of crimes at least as grievous as the Baathist regime, and also unashamedly and undeniably in pursuit of nuclear weapons, which it now has developed? The real answer, again in stark contrast to Howard’s assertions, is that the only chance of dealing with North Korea effectively was to avoid the military and political disaster awaiting the US in Iraq.

The ultimate hypocrisy of Howard’s position came during Australia’s 2004 election campaign when he accused Members of the Opposition, who questioned the value of going to war, of being pro-Saddam (#36). One could then logically infer, by his failure not to advocate a land invasion of North Korea, that Howard was a fervent admirer of Kim Jong-Il’s totalitarian government.

Howard's current tack, in response to Labour's latest policy, of suggesting that a coalition withdrawal from Iraq would lead to a propaganda victory for terrorism and boost recruitment in such places as Indonesia, demonstrates his deep lack of understanding of the enemy; something shared across the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing (#37). Islamic fundamentalism is not fueled by the sweet smell of victory, but by the sour taste of disenfranchisement. The fact is that global terrorism received a huge propaganda boost with the invasion of Iraq. Whether the coalition withdraws or attempts to stay the course is not going to reverse the disastrous consequences the invasion has had on the war on terror.

Comparisons are often made between Iraq and Vietnam. But a key difference has to be that, where for Vietnam, protests only grew into the hundreds of thousands when the war effort stalled, in regards to Iraq, hundreds of thousands were marching against the imminent invasion prior to the war. In the UK and Australia at least, the arguments against the war were loud and clear, but were ignored.

Although the US is unlikely to incur as many US military, local civilian or insurgent deaths as in Vietnam, the strategic losses have been larger. The loss in Vietnam was a backward step in terms of both the Cold War and South East Asian foreign policy, but US domination on both fronts remained in tact. US failures in its Iraqi policy on the other hand have led to a significant global diminishing of its power, seemingly inexhaustible prior to the Iraqi invasion.

The US, militarily overstretched and politically on the back foot, must now take stock of how to reclaim political dominance of the globe. A period of humility is demanded before America can once again assertively lead the world. Rebuilding old alliances and potentially forging new alliances must take precedence over confrontations. For this and future Administrations, the lesson learnt may be that, for its own benefit, American leadership should be through multilateral bodies and the UN, and not just with the eager endorsements of political allies, such as Howard and Blair. Multinational engagements can provide America with a more palatable and sustainable scheme of employing international forces to uphold its direction.

The problem remains that Bush and Cheney demonstrably lack a clear comprehension of the geopolitical realities of the Middle East. Whilst they retain positions of executive power, the prospect of destructive policy positioning remains high. And whilst Howard and Blair remain leaders of Australia and the United Kingdom, the US is unable to rely on receiving constructive advice from two of its Western allies. The participating countries of the Coalition of the Willing must now wait on new leaders before they can expect to see successful strategies adopted against terrorism, albeit encumbered with the legacy of the Iraqi invasion.

References

#1 Project for the new American Century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

#2 2002 state of the union
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html

#3 WMD statements
http://www.motherjones.com/mb/mt-search.cgi?tag=WMD&blog_id=2

#4 The One Percent Doctrine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Percent_Doctrine

#5 Cheney draws link between al Qaeda and Iraq
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/meet.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atta_in_Prague

#6 Bush’s response to Bali bombings, CNN
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0210/14/se.08.html

#7 America believes Iraq responsible for September 11.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0923-08.htm

#8 Colin Powell’s UN presentation
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript/

#9 Bush reference to movie reruns
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030121-1.html

#10 Beating the summer desert
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021021/klare

#11 MacArthur legalizes Japanese Communist Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur
http://www.bookrags.com/Japanese_Communist_Party

#12 The banning of a Sadr Publication.
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/4615.html

#13 Rumsfeld gave go-ahead for Abu Ghraib tactics, says general in charge
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/04/wtort04.xml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9929724/
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/3143torture.html
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060917/REPOSITORY/609170362

#14 NY Times: New Guidelines Are Reducing Iraqi Civilian Deaths, Military Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/world/middleeast/22casualties.html

#15 Bush would “rather fight them there than here.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031018-4.html

#16 Cheney’s “belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators”
http://www.usatoday.com/educate/war28-article.htm

#17 Turkey rejects US troops
http://www.turks.us/article~story~2003032807334413.htm

#18 Israel-Lebanon_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict

#19 Admission by Wolfowitz that WMDs was political expedience.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-30-wolfowitz-iraq_x.htm

#20 Latham’s disastrous “home by Christmas” call.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/01/1080544624570.html?from=storylhs

#21 Liberal Party’s campaign strategist contribution to Tori Party
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Editorial/Britains-slippery-election-favourite/2005/05/01/1114886250134.html

#22 Deal between Taliban and Pakistan
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/nation/15624896.htm

#23 Bush not concerned about Osama bin Laden
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html

#24 Leaving Iraq would be a disaster
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/21/bush/index.html

#25 Iraq a “cause celebre” for Islamists
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/26/nie.iraq/

#26 Kerry on reducing terrorism to a nuisance
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/10/bush.kerry.terror/

#27 NY plot driven by Iraqi invasion.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/the-new-prince-of-terrorism/2006/07/08/1152240535591.html

#28 UK introduces Terrorism Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2006

#29 Australia introduces Anti Terrorism Bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Anti-Terrorism_Bill_2005

#30 UK Government findings on motivation for UK bombings
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745085,00.html

#31 Blair's military chief criticizes occupation.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061012.wukirak1012/BNStory/International/home
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/13102006/140/blair-backs-army-chief-iraq.html

#32 Keelty muzzled
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/03/16/1079199224907.html

#33 Australian Police allege terror cell motivation was Iraq
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-11/09/content_492680.htm
http://www.echarcha.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21734

#34 John Howard advises UN how to stay relevant.
http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2003/01/03-01-28.shtml

#35 John Howard suggests that we must deal with Iraq before North Korea
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/04/1044318602862.html

#36 Howard accuses opposition of being pro Saddam
http://crookedtimber.org/2004/09/13/election-notes-from-oz

#37 Howard suggestion of propaganda boost for terrorism on Iraq withdrawal
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Howard-defends-Iraq-troop-commitment/2006/10/17/1160850901463.html