IRAQ:
U.S. On the Brink

Analysis - By Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON, Apr 30 (IPS) - One year after President George W Bush
declared the end of major combat in Iraq, the United States appears to
be teetering on the brink of strategic defeat in its Mesopotamian
adventure.

Even as Bush on Friday reiterated his ambition to bring "freedom and
democracy" to Iraq and the Middle East, a series of recent policy
reversals -- capped by Friday's announcement that a former Ba'athist
general will take charge of an all-Iraqi security force in Fallujah --
suggests that an increasingly desperate Washington will settle for far
less.

Indeed, over the past two weeks, the administration appears to have
almost entirely jettisoned the neo-conservative vision of an ardently
pro-U.S. Iraq led by Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmed
Chalabi, opened wide to U.S. and western capital, and eager to serve
as a convenient base for destabilising Syria, Iran and even Saudi
Arabia if it gets out of line.

The defeat of the neo-conservatives, whose influence has been
exercised primarily through the offices of Vice President ***** Cheney
and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has been made abundantly clear
by the mandate the administration has given United Nations Special
Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to essentially handpick the leadership of the
new Iraqi government that will gain ''limited sovereignty'', as one
State Department official put it this week, after Jun. 30.

That the world body has been given such an important role severely
undercuts the maximalist objectives of the neo-cons and other
right-wing unilateralists, whose main aim in going to war in Iraq was
to demonstrate that Washington did not need the United Nations to
''legitimate'' its role as the ultimate guarantor of global security.

Brahimi's apparent decision to exclude Chalabi, for whom he is said to
have the greatest contempt, drew strong protests from the INC leader's
neo-con supporters in the Pentagon and outside the administration, who
were then further infuriated by Brahimi's statements last week that
current Israeli policies -- fervently backed by the neo-cons -- are
''poison'' for the entire region.

Bush's refusal to back away from the Algerian diplomat confirmed that
the balance of power within the administration, at least on Iraq, has
shifted decisively toward the realists.

Finally, the decision not only to forgo a major attack on insurgents
in Fallujah but to also withdraw Marines to positions outside the city
and recognise a new, Ba'athist-led force to guarantee security there,
defied the hawks' increasingly shrill insistence that failure to crush
the uprising and capture or kill those responsible for the deaths of
four U.S. private-security contractors in early April would mark a
strategic defeat for the occupation.

The deal, which clearly caught Pentagon civilians off-guard, appears
to have been negotiated by commanders on the ground and approved by
the National Security Council staff in the White House -- one more
indication that neo-cons have fallen from grace.

But it also indicated a larger policy already announced by Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) chief Paul Bremer a week ago -- that, in
the words of Iraq specialist Juan Cole at the University of Michigan,
''the United States has embarked on a policy of re-Ba'athification,
rehabilitating thousands of ex-Ba'athists and putting them to work''.

This policy reversal, too, has been strongly opposed by Chalabi -- who
had been in charge of the programme to eliminate members of former
President Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party from the public face of Iraq
-- and his allies in Washington.

But while the administration no longer appears to be heeding the
neo-cons on Iraq policy, the big question is whether these policy
reversals will save the U.S. occupation and Washington's minimum goals
of putting in place (with Brahimi's help) a broadly representative
government that can both ensure stability and go along with the
indefinite presence of several discreetly situated U.S. military
bases.

On this, opinions in Washington are deeply divided, but a growing
number of analysts believe that policy changes might be too little,
too late.

The foreign policy establishment was shocked by an interview in the
'Wall Street Journal' by retired Gen William E Odom who, among other
posts, served as director of the National Security Agency (NSA) under
former President Ronald Reagan (1981-89). ''We have failed,'' he said
last week, adding that even if an Iraqi election takes place next
January as scheduled, ''anybody that's pro-American cannot gain
legitimacy''.

Calling for a swift withdrawal, Odom, who is based at the conservative
Hudson Institute and has never been inclined to traditional
isolationism, warned that the continued presence of U.S. troops -- let
alone a major military crackdown against Iraqi insurgents -- was
simply radicalising both Iraqis and other Arabs, risking the
destabilisation of the entire region.

''The issue is how high a price we're going to pay ... less, by
getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later''?

His analysis was bolstered by the results of a detailed survey of
3,500 Iraqis throughout the country in late March and early April
released Thursday by the Gallup organisation, CNN and 'USA Today'. It
found that 57 percent of Iraqis wants the U.S. occupation forces to
leave the country ''immediately'', defined as ''in the next few
months''. When the generally pro-U.S. Kurdish sample (representing
about 13 percent of the population), was excluded, the percentage of
Iraqis favouring an immediate withdrawal rose to two-thirds.

The detailed survey largely confirmed reports that the vast majority
of Iraqis have become very disillusioned with U.S. and other
occupation forces over the last 13 months. While pleased that Hussein
is no longer in power, four out of five non-Kurdish Iraqis said they
now regard the coalition forces as ''occupiers'' rather than
''liberators''.

Moreover, the survey was conducted before the sieges of Fallujah and
Najaf, which, according to most published reports, further alienated
Iraqis from the occupation.

''If these polls' results are to be believed, we've already lost the
war for hearts and minds'', noted one congressional aide, whose boss
initially supported the war.

''I don't believe that the American public generally understand what
happened in the first half of April, which is that the U.S. lost
control of Iraq to a set of popular uprisings and was forced to
re-conquer the country'', Cole told IPS.

But the cost in both Iraqi and U.S. lives was unexpectedly high. More
than 130 U.S. soldiers were killed in April, more than died in the
first six weeks of last year's war itself; indeed, more than any
one-month military death toll since just before the last U.S. combat
troops withdrew from Vietnam in 1973. The fighting forced the
administration to put off scheduled troop withdrawals and consider
sending in more soldiers.

The political result here has been a sharp drop in public confidence
in Bush's Iraq policy, according to a 'New York Times'/CBS poll
released Thursday, which also found that a record 58 percent of the
U.S. public now believe the invasion has not been worth the cost in
lives and resources.

Cole said the decision to pull back from Fallujah, as well as other
recent major policy reversals ''may have taken us back from the brink,
but we could be back there at any time''.

Indeed, even as the Marines were pulling back from Fallujah, the
Pentagon was expediting the shipment of more heavy tanks and armoured
vehicles to Iraq -- precisely the kind of weapons that
counter-insurgency specialists say will make it more difficult for
occupation troops to win ''hearts and minds''.

The Associated Press (AP) reported this week that the army had even
requested ski areas in the Sierra Nevada mountains that were using
five howitzers to prevent avalanches to return them immediately for
use in Iraq and Afghanistan -- another indication that the military is
both overstretched and preparing for the worst. (END/2004)

The Associated Press (AP) reported this week that the army had even
requested ski areas in the Sierra Nevada mountains that were using
five howitzers to prevent avalanches to return them immediately for
use in Iraq and Afghanistan -- another indication that the military is
both overstretched and preparing for the worst. (END/2004)