WHILE there is little doubt that the US-led Allies will finally have their way in Iraq, it will be later rather than sooner, which, to say the least, is in contrast to what the pundits had been saying about a couple of weeks ago. The Western print media these days, as is the case elsewhere, is waking up to the reality, calling into question the euphoria that marked the military strategy in the initial days of Operation Shock and Awe.
Simon Jenkins, writing in The Times, has made much fun of those who were dead sure about a smooth sailing in the deserts of Iraq. “The Iraq war is barely two weeks old and most of the predictions of politicians, generals and scribes are best left wrapping fish. The only satisfied people are those who ‘told you so’, but they were dismissed as unsound. Instead everyone from the American Defence Secretary to the lowliest laptop bombardier now says he knew all along that this war ‘might be’ long, bloody and hugely expensive.
“Funny how I do not remember it. I do not remember it because these people did not say it, on that glad, confident morning when they went to war. They did not say it because, had they done so, the public might have stopped them. And they wanted this war so urgently that they raced forward without enough allies, enough intelligence and even enough troops. They clearly fooled even themselves.
“... I never thought that an attack on Baghdad would not be won quickly. I almost admired Donald Rumsfeld his bravado. There would be a massive aerial bombardment, killing thousands of civilians and making the whole Middle East hate and terrorize the West. But my imagination never ‘war-gamed’ Stalingrad. If battle was joined I merely hoped that it would be ‘quick and clean’, as the merchants of Shock and Awe told us it would be. These merchants are now fleeing for the hills.”
Simon has no doubt that victory will be achieved in Baghdad, but looks beyond the immediate, and is not much impressed by the prospects. “This war will be won, slowly and messily. The American and British forces have too much power in reserve and too much domestic prestige at risk to pull back from the gates of Baghdad. But to kill Saddam, they will have to fight their way to his bunker across the bombed streets of a sullen city, or sue with some peace broker for his escape to a safe haven. They will then be trapped far from home and in a hostile territory, like the Russians in Chechnya. Every Arab mother will tell her son: ‘Avenge Baghdad.’ Young men from across the Middle East will deploy all the tactics of murder, anarchy and terror against this army until it just goes home. Of course I could be wrong. I fervently hope so, but each bomb kills hope,” he concludes.
Calling it a war of “choice, not necessity”, Bill Powell, writing in the New York-based Fortune magazine, has compared the American strategy in Iraq with that in Afghanistan, warning that “Iraq, at the heart of the tumultuous Middle east, with its 23 million people and vast oil reserves, is altogether different.”
“The diplomatic fallout over the war demonstrates that more clearly than anything else. Something, inevitably, was going to knock the world out of its post-Cold War inertia — the era in which the West couldn’t think of anything to do, so it just made what it already had (NATO, the EU) bigger.
“Sept 11, followed by Iraq, were those big things. We are, most assuredly, in the post-post-Cold War era, and things are going to look very different, almost no matter what happens.
Taking a look beyond the war, Bill describes the adventure as a “huge gamble, in part because so much depends on what happens after the shooting stops.” While the Allies will be hoping for “calm, not chaos,” there remains the distinct possibility that things may not go to plan in which case “anti-Americanism will shift from being merely potent to being toxic.”
Whatever happens, Bill is sure of one thing: managing post-war “is not going to be quick, and is not going to be cheap.” Indeed, the US has still to reach the point where it may decide who it will “work with.”
Writing elsewhere in the same magazine, Jeffrey H. Birnbaum has quoted sources as hinting at the strong possibility of Jay Garner, who is on leave from defense contractor L-3 Communications, becoming the de facto governor of 23 million Iraqis. “Garner, 64, is an almost perfect fit for the job. As an Army general in 1991, he helped lead Operation Provide Comfort, which delivered food and shelter to Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf war,” he writes.
“That’s one reason his friend Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brought Garner back to the Pentagon in January to head the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which is working seven days a week to develop detailed plans for a post-Saddam Iraq. Insiders say Garner will implement those plans as the head of civil authority under General Tommy Franks.
“Garner’s civilian status is a big plus. After President Bush’s heavy-handed walk-up to war, the last thing the U.S. needs is a modern-day General MacArthur rolling into Baghdad. And it will take someone with serious business know-how to introduce a capitalist system where there has been central-control socialism since the 1960s.”
After retiring as a three-star general in 1997, Garner became president of SY Technology, a Virginia provider of communications and targeting systems for missiles. SY was bought last year by L-3 Communications for a reported $48 million. Colleagues describe Garner as hyper-competent, with a personal touch — a man who can solve tough problems without being overbearing. “He wouldn’t dodge bullets; he’d bite them,” says a colleague who served with Garner in the Pentagon.
The military part of the cleanup, according to the write-up, will be led by Gen Franks’s Arabic-speaking deputy, Army Lt-Gen. John Abizaid. The rest — feeding the hungry, fixing the infrastructure, and creating a democratic government — will fall to Garner.
Going through the Western print media, it is interesting to note that while Tony Blair is labelled at home as the “American poodle”, the Americans seem to have warmed up to the British Prime Minister in recent times. Scott Simon, an award-winning international correspondent for National Public Radio in the United States, has described him as a “slick, charismatic politician with more charm than conviction” and with “magnetism vigour and the glibness of great vacuum-cleaner salesmen.”
Writing specially for The Sunday Times, Scott says that as war approached in Iraq, “some American journalists found it more constructive to quote Blair than their own President ... I am glad Blair has so often been nearby to translate for George W. Bush.”
Blair, he says, will be identified by many Americans as the moral voice of the Western alliance. “I don’t know whether this will do him much good at home, but it has made him the most compelling public figure in America.”
At home, however, Blair continues to get a relatively negative press. “Blair seems boldest when the outcome is most dangerous, most in doubt and most outside his power to direct,” goes a rather extended headline in the T-2 feature section of The Times. The accompanying photo-caption reads: “Blair is a man who thrives on immediacy and challenge, both of which war offers in abundance. Like many lawyers, he works best when he is up against it.” Every now and then someone in British journalist is still seen grumbling about the fact that the US would have gone ahead with Shock and Awe even if Blair had decided to stay away. Rumsfeld’s remark in this regard is, apparently, still not forgotten.
American journalists, however, are going overboard in waxing gloss over Blair’s role in the campaign. Washington-based Andrew Sullivan says he knows of no other recent precedent in which a British Prime Minister had “such an influence on American discourse, and, therefore, on the course of world events.”
He adds: “Blair’s ability to articulate the reasons in ways that Bush could not, made seventy per cent of the American public support for this war a possibility.”
Andrew, not unexpectedly for an American journalist, has made out a case where he has held everyone responsible for war except the American government. Those found ‘responsible’ by him include the United Nations, the “domestically-oriented” Democrats, Yasser Arafat and those behind the 9/11 disaster, who, together, made the American public realize that “only force could deter the fanatics, and bring about a Middle East peace.”
His conclusion? “This war may not be one that Bush created, devised or laid the groundwork for. But it is a war whose course he has shaped and whose successful resolution he is determined to achieve ... This campaign is just one part of an unfolding strategy to remake the world’s security.” Security? Geography, sir, GEOGRAPHY!
WHILE there is little doubt that the US-led Allies will finally have their way in Iraq, it will be later rather than sooner, which, to say the least, is in contrast to what the pundits had been saying about a couple of weeks ago. The Western print media these days, as is the case elsewhere, is waking up to the reality, calling into question the euphoria that marked the military strategy in the initial days of Operation Shock and Awe.
