Rohan Pearce
As the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq approaches, the imperial ambitions of the Bush junior White House are running smack-bang into the reality of what seems to be a militarily unwinnable counterinsurgency war. The reserves of imperial might on which the White House can draw are formidable and the victory of Iraqis over occupying forces is neither inevitable nor just round the corner. But if victory for Iraqis is not a certainty, the prospects of victory for the US appear far more remote.
In 2006 the White House faces a US working class increasingly unwilling to bear the human and economic costs of continuing Washington's imperial military adventure in the Middle East. A number of factors indicate the potential for renewed resistance against the war from within the US: the continuing deaths of US soldiers serving in Iraq, the occupation forces' inability to strike significant blows against the insurgency, an overstretched military, and worsening economic conditions for working people in the US.
The rate at which US troops stationed in Iraq were injured fell from 7990 in 2004 to 5939 in 2005. Yet by the end of 2005, 2180 US soldiers had died in Iraq — only one less than died in the previous year, despite suicide car bombings and roadside bombs halving during 2005, according to the commander of US troops in Baghdad Major General William Webster, quoted in the January 15 USA Today. Official casualty counts also fail to incorporate the deaths of US "private security contractors" (mercenaries). By January 16, 40 US soldiers had already been killed since the beginning of the new year.
An article in the December 5 New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh revealed that the US was planning to place greater emphasis on the use of air power to crush Iraqi rebels and render them easier targets for the weak, US-created Iraqi army. But "It's not going to work", Andrew Brookes, a former director of airpower studies at Royal Air Force's advanced staff college, told Hersh. "Can you put a lid on the insurgency with bombing?", Brookes asked. "No. You can concentrate in one area, but the guys will spring up in another town."
The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon told Hersh that "if the president decides to stay the present course in Iraq some troops would be compelled to serve fourth and fifth tours of combat by 2007 and 2008, which could have serious consequences for morale and competency levels". Already, according to In These Times' senior editor Christopher Hayes, a backdoor draft has been implemented through the continuing call-up of members of the US Army's Individual Ready Reserve (a group of soldiers who are no longer actively serving in the military). Hayes reported: "All of the officers interviewed who received orders to deploy in late December share one thing in common: They all started active duty in 1998, which means their full 8-year contract with the Army — or Mandatory Service Obligation (MSO) — will expire in May." One of them told him: "I get the impression that they did a check to see who they were coming close to losing and went ahead and sent out the orders."
A December 21 policy memorandum by the Economic Policy Institute revealed that even after adjusting for inflation, hourly and weekly wages in the US are still lower than in November 2001, and median household income (inflation-adjusted) had fallen from US$46,129 in 1999 to $44,389 in 2004. The EPI also revealed that the level of US household debt was the highest in the country's history. At the same time as the level of employer-provided health insurance in the US work force is falling, and health-care costs are rising, US military spending has reached record levels.
In terms of total direct budgetary costs, a study by economists Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, presented at the January 6-8 meeting of the American Economic Association, estimated the cost of the war in Iraq to be between $750 billion and $1.2 trillion, assuming that US troop withdrawals begin this year and proceed over the next five years. But for Washington to conduct anything more than token troop withdrawals designed to assuage mounting public opposition to the war, "Iraqisation" — creating effective proxy forces to fight the war — must succeed. A December 4 Miami Herald article reported that "Iraqis are far from ready to take over. Their performance is uneven; their loyalties are questionable, and they remain heavily dependent on American troops ... Of the 120 army and police battalions that have undergone training, 40 are good enough to take the lead in joint operations with U.S. troops. One is considered good enough to operate with complete independence."
A January 6-8 poll by Gallup for CNN and USA Today put Bush's disapproval rate at 54%. Forty-five per cent of respondents indicated that the war would be "extremely important" in determining their vote in Congressional elections; 40% indicated it would be "very important" (a rise of 1% and 3% respectively from an October Gallup poll).
The US public's backing for the Iraq War has followed a general downward trend over the last two years, with the occasional spike of support. Opposition to the war is yet to be fully expressed in US anti-war protests, but it has reached a level where it has begun to impact on how Washington wages the war.
However, the bulk of the US political elite do not yet consider the consequences of withdrawing from Iraq to be the "lesser evil". As Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to the Gerald Ford and George Bush senior regimes, explained in a January 16 Washington Post op-ed: "The stakes — for the United States and for the world — are enormous. Iraq lies in the center of a region critical to the well-being of the global system. It is surrounded by states intensely concerned about the nature and future of that country and its government. A failed Iraq could be a catastrophe for the Middle East and a calamity for the world. At the moment such an outcome would be inevitable without the U.S. presence."
From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.