Lessons learned
Right-wing America has already lost the war, writes Mohamed El-Sayed Said*, but humanity has yet to win it
In a number of ways, the war in Iraq is over. The ultra-right coalition in the United States has effectively lost the battle. The evolution of the military conflict in Iraq will have diminishing significance as compared with the political struggles arising from the conflict, particularly within the United States.
The omens predicting the political defeat and potential break- down of the right-wing coalition currently in power in the United States are many. The most crucial sign of political defeat is the dismal failure of all of the premises on which the theory of war was formulated by right-wing Zionists and neo-conservative circles inside and outside the administration.
The Bush administration won approval for the war from Congress by arguing that such a measure was necessary to pressure Iraq to dislodge Saddam, thereby enabling the US to control Iraq without having to actually wage a war. This premise proved to be wrong. Popular revolutions did not topple Saddam Hussein.
Congress was also cheated by the Bush administration when it argued that the sweeping powers granted to the president to launch a war against Iraq would be enough to pressure the UN Security Council to produce a resolution blessing the war against Iraq. Ultra- right political theorists argued that France, Russia, Germany and China would eventually join the pro-war bandwagon because they would have no other alternative once Bush showed the determination to go to war with or without the consent of the United Nations. This argument as well proved to be a fallacy.
The American people were told that the war would be seen by Iraqis as a liberation rather than an invasion. When the war broke out, the resistance shown by the Iraqis to coalition forces made this argument absolutely ridiculous.
The American people were also told that the war would be a quick and simple victory without great human and political costs. Without a doubt, the performance of the American military against a small country that was embargoed for some 13 years has been far from honourable, brief or simple.
We may now turn to the three most fundamental reasons why I believe that the Bush administration has already lost this war.
The first reason is that the war has been lost on moral grounds. The failure of the United States to gain adequate votes within the UN Security Council made this war an illegitimate aggression against a small nation.
Worse still is the fact that Iraq is seen to have been systematically brutalised by the United States and its allies before the war even began. The 1991 Gulf War destroyed Iraq far beyond what was necessary militarily. Every respectable institution, including Harvard University and the United Nations, have testified to this fact. Then came the rigid implementation of the harshest and longest-running sanctions ever implemented by the international community. The sanctions resulted in extraordinary human suffering. A new, brutal war against Iraq that is unprovoked and unjustified is by no means rational.
For pragmatists in the United States who may have accepted the notion of imposing US global dominance, the second aspect of failure is probably more persuasive. The theory of US global dominance was strategically predicated on the assumption that the United States had the military capability to win two separate wars in different regions. The real strategic shock, which I am confident that US military planners will contemplate for years to come, is that the US was forced to deploy reserve forces in Iraq in order to win this single war against a small and obsolete military power. In theory, the United States could be defeated if a middle-sized nation such as Iran were to engage in fighting with US troops while they are bogged down in combat with Iraq. In fact, this is the moment for any other nation, big or small, to rebel against US dominance without fearing a quick military reprisal. And, if the US, with a defence budget close to half a trillion dollars, fails to win a quick war against a small nation with an out-of-date weapons systems such as that of Iraq, a number of nations coming together to engage US troops in several distant locations, or in only one region, may succeed in exhausting the American military potential. Global dominance will then become merely an illusion.
This and other scenarios may not be practical at this point in time. However, the long-term significance cannot be over-stated at the strategic level, particularly if the US continues to exert the same level of arrogance and aggression.
The war against Iraq has amply revealed the fallacy that the US has the potential for global empire. A more surprising revelation can be seen on the other side of the coin. People across the world have been inspired by the stiff Iraqi resistance to the American invasion. How ever events unfold in the military field, the real lesson to be drawn by millions of people is that it is possible to rise up against American military power to defend their homeland or cultural ideals. The significance of the Iraqi resistance, even if it is vanquished, is that it is only fear that defeats people. Liberating oneself from that fear is a necessary ingredient for effective opposition and emancipation.
Iraqis have freed themselves from fear not because they are braver than others. Oddly enough, it was the brutality of successive American administrations that liberated Iraqis from the fear of American military might. This happened when United States policies closed all windows of opportunity for Iraq to be rehabilitated or treated fairly within the international system. Desperation proved to be a powerful killer of fear. And because Iraq was constantly bombarded and brutalised for the last 12 years, people became accustomed to the awful destruction of the United States military. In this way, Iraqis were helped to conquer their fear and resist the invasion.
Perhaps more significant is the fact that the Iraqi people were so thoroughly angered by the images of Iraqis that were put forth by the formidable American propaganda machine. The very idea that the people who pioneered human civilizations would receive invaders with flowers and hugs, and that Iraqis would conceive of the invasion as liberation, was more than infuriating. It called for active resistance.
The phenomenon of resistance in Iraq is such that the political fruits of a possible American military victory are likely to be denied. Assuming that the allies manage to beat the Iraqi army, opposition on both the military and political levels is likely to continue. Collaboration with any major segment of Iraqi society will almost certainly be rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people. Americans will not manage to have a comfortable or controlling presence inside Iraq. Their plans to dominate the country will eventually vanish.
Indeed, the immediate reaction to the war on the global level has been a summary judgment on the failure of the plan to invade and dominate Iraq. Opposition to the war at the international level is a true revolution that will not lose. The foolishness of the Bush administration and the ideological barbarism which have characterised the coalition that stands behind it have mobilised millions of people to oppose the administration and its plans for empire. Global resistance to imperialism has been revived.
The remarkable consensus among people across the world on the urgent need to resist this new colossal threat to peace and justice has never been so effective and spontaneous. However, it has a long way to go. Humanity still needs to win the majority of the American public to its side. We may not wait long before this is accomplished, at which time those war criminals who dreamed of imposing a brutal empire by means of war and coercion will certainly be punished.
* The writer is deputy director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and former Ahram bureau chief in Washington.
