Iraq war enters its fourth year  

Hasan Abu Nimah

The war in Iraq which was supposed to last a few weeks has just entered its fourth year with no end in sight. The US-British invasion was advertised as being intended to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction, end dictatorship, and create momentum which would lead to overall harmony and peace throughout the troubled Middle East.

While US President George Bush and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, declare that everything is just fine, even though not one thing has gone according to plan, Iraq, according to its first post-war prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is now in civil war. Iraq is sinking in chaos, poverty, fear and sectarian violence.

So far estimates put the cost of the war in excess of one trillion dollars, a staggering sum that is about 20 times Iraq's pre-war gross domestic product, or the equivalent of more than 150 years worth of Iraqi oil production. But more important than all the wasted wealth is the human cost. Credible estimates indicate that over 100,000 Iraqis have died so far and dozens suffer violent deaths every single day.

As US military casualties mount, with over 2,300 dead and tens of thousands injured, Americans have turned against this war, sold to them on false pretences by an administration that has yet to provide either a coherent explanation for why it went to war or a realistic strategy to get end it any time soon.

It is hard to imagine how a country like the United States, with all the means available to its strategists and policy makers, not to mention the bitter experience of Vietnam, leapt into this trap. But the answer is simple, and if the clear dangers were known to the some right from the start, others had to wait for the hidden facts to be gradually revealed to realise that the problem was neither in the available intelligence nor in the collected data; all that was accurate, and if acted upon, the war would have been avoided. The real problem was that those who wanted the war no matter what, distorted, concealed and fabricated whatever evidence they needed to trick Americans into supporting the war. Some of this was self-deception, which apparently continues as Bush seems no more ready to hear and act on sound advice than he was before the war.

The cost of the war, appalling though it is in Iraq, extends beyond that country's borders. The United States, the United Kingdom and the rag-tag band of others who rushed to join the war party hoping to share the spoils of certain victory have caused their relations with the Arab and Muslim world enormous and long-lasting damage for no good reason. Even if the damage stops at this level, it will take decades to return the situation to what it was. But as the war goes on, the hole continues to get deeper. The greater damage is done to American standing worldwide, because the war and its consequences have compelled America to betray all its avowed principles. The United States had entangled itself in all the practices which were the trademark of countries like Chile under Pinochet, or the former Soviet Union; practices such as torture, detention without trial or due process in secret prisons in dark corners of a far-flung empire, spying on citizens at home, deceiving the nation, relying on bad propaganda, suppressing the freedom of expression, manipulating democracy and supporting corrupt dictators as long as they comply with Washington's wishes. At the same time, international law and the UN system, built painstakingly after World War II, have been swept aside, as they become no more than fig leaves in the application of America's double standards.

There are lessons to be learned and one only hopes that against so much cost in life they will be, quickly. One is that complete reliance on military power in the absence of principles leads only to further conflict. Israel resists learning that very lesson, but its experience should have served as a warning to all. Israel had used its military superiority successfully until its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. But that disastrous adventure proved a turning point; Israel could not obliterate its enemies and reshape the region to suit its desires no matter how much force it possessed. Since then, Israel has not lost its military advantage, but all the F-16s and nuclear weapons it possesses have proved useless in consolidating its ill-got gains or winning legitimacy. And the killing and violence that Israel hoped would silence its enemies has simply created more determined opponents and new types of resistance. Suicide bombing in the region was the direct result of the Lebanon invasion. Israel has lost the option of using its military superiority for achieving desirable political ends as a result of excessive use and habitual aggression.

In leading the world to a war based on deceptions and bare lies, and whose foremost proponents actively wanted to reshape the region to suit the agenda of an aggressive, expansionist Israel, the United States has not only betrayed its principles, it also helped spread extremism and terrorism throughout the world.

"There is no right way to correct a wrong decision," an American anti-war activist told the BBC recently. Many people want the United States to leave Iraq immediately, arguing that the US presence is itself fuelling the violence and civil war. Others argue that pulling out would only hasten the slide into a civil war that makes all we have seen so far look mild in comparison.

Former prime minister Allawi, a US and British protégé for many years, who rode to Baghdad on the back of American tanks, now ridicules those who try to disguise the fact that Iraq is already in civil war. Earlier, Allawi condemned abuses of human rights in Iraq now as being worse than under Saddam's regime.

It is clear that the war party is desperate to salvage a decision which proved disastrous from beginning to the end. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an honourable exit strategy for a war that was started with the greatest dishonour. Bush is right to say that leaving Iraq now may appear to hand the "terrorists" an immediate victory. But not leaving only postpones that day of reckoning and increases its eventual cost. Saving lives, not saving face, must guide the way forward.