Occupation in Iraq a mistake

by Matthew Chavez

Daily Lobo columnist

The White House and its dwindling allies continue the struggle to pull redemption from the charred rubble of Iraq. Nothing unsettles the Bush administration more than a legacy of trillions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of grisly deaths with no strategic gain to show for it.

Confronted by journalists about the Middle East mayhem unleashed by President Bush's policy of aggression, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice resorted to clairvoyance, assuring the American public that the benefits of the U.S. destruction of Iraq may take "decades" to appear. But while Bush officials scramble to spin what is coming to be regarded as the worst foreign policy error in U.S. history, the multiplying consequences have begun to materialize.

By autumn of 2002, the White House had conjured an impressive arsenal of pretexts - 21 were required - to frighten America into an unprovoked invasion. Pliant news media made any of the pretexts possible, but for "bureaucratic reasons," former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz explained in 2003, the administration settled on Iraq's phantom weapons of mass destruction. By 2004, Bush's Iraq Survey Group confirmed what U.N. weapons inspectors had known for a decade: Iraq's alleged arsenal of banned weapons was in fact a decaying Soviet-era junkyard.

The Bush administration responded by giving the "war on terrorism" rationale a quick promotion to the top of the list, where it has remained the primary vehicle for perpetuating this "absolute replay of Vietnam," to use the phrase of Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and decorated Vietnam War veteran.

But instead of crippling global terrorism, the war in Iraq has become its primary catalyst. Many analysts warned of this predictable outcome, which had already begun to appear by the early phases of the Iraq occupation.

"In counterterrorism terms," the conservative International Institute for Strategic Studies reported in an early assessment, "the (Iraq war) has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition that appeared so formidable following the Afghanistan intervention in late 2001." A candid Pentagon study published the same year concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies," creating hope that connections were being made at last.

But the study did not recommend less intervention to remedy the eruption of Middle East fury, but rather to improve Washington's "strategic communication" about the matter - that is, to refine the art of compelling acceptance of foreign occupation. The study made little effort to conceal the underlying political philosophy that produced such an inconceivable solution. Under a heading labeled "Leadership from the Top," Pentagon planners explained that "interests, not public opinion, should drive policy."

By 2004, international terrorism had more than tripled, after reaching a 20-year high the previous year. These figures met with such embarrassment that a subsequent report showing yet higher numbers was suppressed.

Meanwhile, the campaign to distort the underlying cause of nonstate terrorism continues, including the array of familiar self-aggrandizing explanations. But the root cause has been well-understood by those who bother with careful examination. In the most extensive study of the topic to date, University of Chicago professor Robert Pape discovered an unmistakable correlation between foreign intervention and suicide terrorism.

"What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common," Pape observed from the careful examination of every known suicide terrorist attack in the last 20 years, "is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces form territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland."

Tens of thousands of U.S. combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have vastly deepened the reservoirs of resentment, and the consequences have been catastrophic. A newly released study by two research fellows at the NYU Center on Law and Security shows that the aggression against Iraq has produced "a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost."

There is new evidence that what the authors call the "Iraq Effect" has also enabled a resurgence of Osama bin Laden's network. According to U.S. intelligence assessments published in a Feb. 19 New York Times story, senior al-Qaida leaders have "re-established significant control over their once battered worldwide terror network," a development the U.S. intelligence community regards as a "major setback."

On Presidents' Day, Bush compared the so-called war on terrorism to America's War of Independence, citing George Washington's 1796 farewell address to support his policy of aggression. Had Bush himself examined this extraordinary document, however, he may have reconsidered such an overtly counter-historical invocation.

Bidding farewell to a nation he helped establish, Washington urged a "respectable defensive posture" toward other states, a recurrent theme Bush's speechwriters conveniently omit. Our first president cautioned against "mischiefs of foreign intrigue" that spawn "overgrown military establishments ... which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican liberty."

To embrace this sensible posture would reverse the self-reinforcing loop of U.S. intervention and suicide terrorism, beginning a homeward journey away from the decay of empire and toward, in Washington's words, "the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation ... to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity toward other nations."

Matthew Chavez is a political science major with a focus on international relations and a minor in Middle Eastern studies.