America's Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East by Chas W. Freeman & Jr

Author:Chas W. Freeman & Jr. [Freeman, Chas W. & Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics
ISBN: 9781682570043
Google: kPaHjgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 27219577
Publisher: Just World Books
Published: 2016-01-15T06:19:44+00:00

Change without Progress in the Middle East

October 25, 20122

It’s an honor to have been asked once again to address this important annual conference on US-Arab relations. The theme of this year’s discussion is “transition within constancy.” I confess I’m still trying to figure out what that means. My best guess is that it’s something like “progress without change”—a policy approach that only Saudi Arabia has ever managed to pull off. In many ways, however, “change without progress” would be a more accurate description of most of the conundrums in the Middle East.

In any event, the United States is not in an encouraging position in the Middle East. We are less free of Iraq than we wish we were, groping for the exits without a plan in Afghanistan, uncertain how to deal with the Arab uprisings and their aftermath, dabbling from the sidelines in the Syrian civil war, stalemated with Iran and at odds with a belligerent Israel over it, snookered in the Holy Land, nowhere in the affections of the world’s Muslims, and in sometimes deadly peril on the Arab street.

Almost a decade ago, the United States invaded and occupied Iraq. Advocates of the operation assured us that this would be a “cakewalk” that would essentially pay for itself. The ensuing war claimed at least 6,000 American military and civilian lives. It wounded 100,000 U.S. personnel. It displaced 2.8 million Iraqis and—by conservative estimates—killed at least 125,000 of them, while wounding another 350,000. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq will ultimately cost American taxpayers at least $3.4 trillion, of which $1.4 trillion represents money actually spent by the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and intelligence agencies during combat operations; another $1 trillion is the minimal estimate of future interest payments; and the other $1 trillion is future health care, disability, and other payments to the almost 1 million American veterans of the war.

The only way to assess military campaigns is by whether they achieve their objectives. Outcomes—not lofty talk about a tangle of good intentions—are what count. In the case of Iraq, a fog of false narratives about weapons of mass destruction, connections to al-Qaeda, threats to Iraq’s neighbors, and so forth left the war’s objectives to continuing conjecture. None of the goals implied by these narratives worked out. Instead, the war produced multiple “own goals.”

Those who urged America into war claim Iraq was a victory for our country. If so, judging by results, the George W. Bush administration’s objective must have been to assure the transfer of power in Iraq to the members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, all of whom had spent the previous twenty years in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The former “decider” made doubly sure of this outcome when Sunni and Shiite nationalist forces, like those of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, threatened the pro-Iranian politicians the United States had installed in Baghdad. Bush “surged” in additional troops to ensure that these politicians remained in office—and there they abide.

The

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