Rumsfeld dismisses comparisons between Iraq & Vietnam

WASHINGTON: Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Monday that it would be wrong to characterize the situation in Iraq as a quagmire or a guerrilla campaign, despite suspected sabotage and the growing number of attacks on US troops.

He described attacks on US troops as acts of terrorism, and argued that the unrest in Iraq parallells what has accompanied the formations of democracies in other countries, including the United States.

“If you want to call that a quagmire, do it. I don’t,” Rumsfeld said during a Pentagon news conference where he was questioned about comparisons of the situation in Iraq to the United States getting bogged down in the Vietnam War.

As Rumsfeld defended the US role in Iraq, troops continued their raids against suspected loyalists of the former regime headed by Saddam Hussein. Approximately 180 Iraqis have been detained in the latest sweeps, prompted in part by last week’s attacks that left six American and six British soldiers dead.

The violence has continued, but it has been directed against property in recent days. An ammunition dump reportedly exploded over the weekend, killing as many as 30 looters, officials said. An oil truck was also destroyed.

On the political front, the US occupation also ran into difficulties.

Acting on allegations brought by Iraqi investigating authorities, US forces on Monday arrested and removed from office the American-appointed interim governor of Najaf, a provincial capital about 90 miles south of Baghdad. The governor, Abu Haydar Abdul Munem, is accused of kidnap, theft, intimidation and attacking a bank official, according to officials of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Several of his aides were also implicated.

This follows Ayatollah Ali Sistani, one of Iraq’s leading Shia leader and considered a political moderate who has been accommodating to rebuilding efforts, issuing a “fatwa” opposing plans to select a national council to steer the country. Agence France-Presse reported that the fatwa, issued this week, demanded general elections prior to the selection of any council. The authority intends to appoint the council by the middle of July as a prelude to developing a Iraqi constitution.

Sistani said “there is no guarantee that such a convention will draft a constitution upholding the Iraqi people’s interests and expressing their national identity, founded on Islam and lofty social values.”

At his news conference, Rumsfeld noted that comparisons to Vietnam had been growing along with the violence, but he rejected the idea. During that war, the United States found itself unable to assure security while fighting local guerrillas aided by the North Vietnamese army. The media frequently used the word “quagmire” to describe the situation that claimed about 55,000 US lives over some 15 years.

“There are so many cartoons where people, press people, are saying, ‘Is it Vietnam yet’ hoping it is and wondering if it is. And it isn’t,” Rumsfeld said after a reporter used “quagmire” in a question. “It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place,” he said.

Rumsfeld bristled at suggestions that the United States has been caught off-guard by continued eruptions of violence two months after the major fighting ended.

But even as he rejected terms that imply drawn-out US involvement in Iraq, Rumsfeld acknowledged that the fighting “will not be over any time soon,” and that stepped-up raids by US forces in recent days will likely only slow, not stop, a wave of violence and unrest.

The number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the end of principal combat on May 1 has climbed to 23. Another 41 have died in accidents or other non-combat circumstances. Two new casualties were added to the count over the weekend when American military search teams recovered the bodies of two soldiers who had gone missing earlier in the week.

“Unlike traditional adversaries that we’ve faced in wars past, who sign a surrender document, hand over their weapons,” Rumsfeld said, “the remnants of the Baath regime and the Fedayeen death squads faded into the population and have reverted to a terrorist network.”

Rumsfeld acknowledged that the failure to find Saddam Hussein or his two adult sons has hampered US efforts.

“There are some who hope that (Saddam or his sons) might come back, because they were privileged during the period they were there,” Rumsfeld said. “There are also others who are fearful that he’ll come back or they’ll come back.”

Baath loyalists, including former members of the Special Security Organization and the Special Republican Guard, are among at least five groups responsible for the ongoing violence in the country, Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld blamed looters and criminals who were released from Iraqi prisons by the “tens of thousands” before and during the war for taking advantage of the lack of security in the country.

He also said that “bus loads” of foreigners have poured into the country from Syria to attack and harass US and allied forces. Still other hostile groups are “influenced by Iran,” Rumsfeld said. He did not elaborate.

“They’re all slightly different in why they’re there and what they’re doing,” Rumsfeld said. “That doesn’t make it anything like a guerrilla war, or an organized resistance.” Those attacking US soldiers, he said, “are functioning much more like terrorists.”

“My personal view is that we’re in a war,” Rumsfeld said. “We’re in a global war on terrorism and there are people that don’t agree with that — for the most part, terrorists.”

Other administration officials described the ongoing violence similarly.

“We are not seeing a nationwide, coherent, organized resistance,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a television interview Monday. “We’re seeing pockets of resistance — criminals, looters, former members of the Baath Party, former members of the Hussein regime. But I don’t yet see, nor do any of my colleagues see, this as some nationwide organized resistance.”—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Los Angeles Times.

A wall of glass

It is nice having people over visiting you from across, who look like us, are of the same size and shape, speak the same language, listen to the same music and dance to the same tunes and yet have become novelties of sorts for each other. We are curious to know more but the boorishness of our curiosity checks us from asking the simple question at the back of our mind. A wall of glass seems to stand between us. It would break if we try to cross it.

Now here was noted Punjabi writer Sirdar Kirtar Singh Duggal, a Pindiite by birth who went to the city’s elite Dennys High School and graduated from the Gordon College, my own alma mater, who knew Maulvi Riazuddin, our headmaster in the Fifties, and Dr Stewart, Dr Cummings and Dr Daskawie, our principals, one of those Ravians whom Patras Bukhari got a job at the Lahore radio station, who was with Faiz Ahmad Faiz during his exile days in Moscow and Beirut and who, in the frenzied days of Partition married a Muslim whom he fancied — Aesha, the sister-in-law of Ali Sardar Jafri. That was not the season of love. But Duggal, good old native of mercurial Potohar, did the unthinkable. Who from across could be closer with so many shared years of youth and so many loves to ruminate about. But there was a joy and there was a sorrow that a wall of glass compartmentalized.

In the lobby of the hotel where Kishwar Nahid had arranged this brief tete-a-tete, odd inquisitive men hovered around us and some gauche intruders who tried to break into the conversation had to be shooed away by the blunt poetess. The past that we talked about was unlike the normal past that flows into the present like a gentle stream. It was a block that could be set aside. So when we picked the broken thread and started to talk about the present, it was like boarding another train at the junction, an up express off the main passenger line. And although being a writer and a poet, Duggal could free himself from common prejudices that cloud the vision, all he could see was a broken bridge and two receding cultures, one trying to coalesce its ingredients and the other filtering out impurities.

The past over, we discussed, the present with a little care, with a kind of delicate caution like we were talking through a small opening. It needed an effort to be candid. It was no earth shaking matter for instance but on this side it was still hard to understand how a Muslim woman had married a Sikh, not through elopement or any other unconventional method but with full consent of two socially respectable families. Granted they were liberal, progressive, leftist, communists, may even have been atheists at that time which the Sirdarjee does not seem to be now as he is doing a verse translation of the Granth Sahib into English. Still the barrier then must have been quite high and wide for anyone to remove. One would have needed to strip to one’s pure humanity to be able to make that leap. And they did that more than half a century ago! Was society more liberal then, more permissive? How can that be? The historical trend all along has been from conservative to liberal. Mediaeval Europe was highly conservative, not only morally but also intellectually. One could be tormented for making scientific statements contrary to traditional beliefs. But the march of ideas and social mores has since been towards liberal trends. In our case the reverse seems to be happening. Women on bicycles were a common sight in metropolitan Lahore and in Rawalpindi’s Saddar area up until the mid-sixties. It would be unimaginable today. Even in Islamabad which is a fairly open town such a sight would be uncharacteristic for many. This was surprising for Sirdarjee. He said women had gained tremendous confidence in his country. They were part of the country’s economic life, they were mobile and on the forefront of social protest against forces of oppression. He admitted the prevalence of crimes against women but such instances when they surfaced were widely condemned. The resurgence of bigotry and religiosity had economic and political reasons; it was a phenomenon apart unrelated to the general movement towards liberalism in all aspects of life. In particular he pointed to the liberation of arts and intellectual trends from moribund traditions. The emphasis on education and literacy was propelling society towards a great social change against which the forces of intolerance were making a last ditch effort but were bound to fail. People in general across all segments of society had decided for change. There was a surge of consciousness beneath that was surfacing. One saw that in unexpected manifestations. So, he maintained, the disappearance of the Progressive Writers Movement from the scene was actually a case of its assimilation. The people were fighting for their rights against their own ruling class. This was progress.

It was very refreshing to see such openness and hope in a man in his mid eighties when most people would encrustate and harden and one would set no great store by one’s future. He talked lightly about the way he was thrown around from one radio station to the other for his leftist faith. And all that happened when Panditjee and his progressive Congress were in power. That was some consolation to know for progressives on this side of the divide who suffered the worst hounding of their lives at the hands of the feudal establishment.

To Kishwar Nahid’s question about the decline of the Progressive Writers Movement, Sirdar Saheb explained that the movement was basically against the colonial power. When that ended it lost its steam. Writers’ attention was trapped by the confusion that freedom creates. But the reason for its decline in Pakistan could not thus be explained as here the colonials were replaced by the feudals whose repression was cruder than that of the British. Perhaps it was not easy for many to stand up to it.

But does this mean it is all over. No. Sirdarjee was emphatic. Injustice was self-defeating. It had an inexorable force at work against it. Inequality could not sustain. There could be no peace till the equation achieved a natural balance. The old Gordonian beamed across the glass wall. Author of more than a dozen works of fiction in Punjabi, four collections of verse and translations of his own works into English and Hindi, member of Rajya Sabha and recipient of high national honours, Duggal had no airs. His kurta-pajama was not starched. He wore his high status with grace and natural humility. The writer’s hand in which he took mine was soft and warm.