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CounterPunch
March 31,
2003
Washington Got
It Wrong
Bring Our Soldiers Home
By ROBIN COOK
This was meant to be a quick, easy war. Shortly
before I resigned a Cabinet colleague told me not to worry about
the political fall-out.
The war would be finished long before
polling day for the May local elections.
I just hope those who expected a quick
victory are proved right. I have already had my fill of this
bloody and unnecessary war. I want our troops home and I want
them home before more of them are killed.
It is OK for Bush to say the war will
go on for as long as it takes. He is sitting pretty in the comfort
of Camp David protected by scores of security men to keep him
safe.
It is easy to show you are resolute when
you are not one of the poor guys stuck in a sandstorm peering
around for snipers.
This week British forces have shown bravery
under attack and determination in atrocious weather conditions.
They are too disciplined to say it, but they must have asked
each other how British forces ended up exposed by the mistakes
of US politicians.
We were told the Iraqi army would be
so joyful to be attacked that it would not fight. A close colleague
of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld predicted the march to
Baghdad would be "a cakewalk".
We were told Saddam's troops would surrender.
A few days before the war Vice-President Dick Cheney predicted
that the Republican Guard would lay down their weapons.
We were told that the local population
would welcome their invaders as liberators. Paul Wolfowitz, No.2
at the Pentagon, promised that our tanks would be greeted "with
an explosion of joy and relief".
Personally I would like to volunteer
Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz to be "embedded" alongside
the journalists with the forward units.
That would give them a chance to hear
what the troops fighting for every bridge over the Euphrates
think about their promises.
The top US General, William Wallace,
has let the cat out of the bag. "The enemy we are fighting
is different from the one we'd war-gamed".
War is not some kind of harmless arcade
game. Nobody should start a war on the assumption that the enemy's
army will co-operate. But that is exactly what President Bush
has done. And now his Marines have reached the outskirts of Baghdad
he does not seem to know what to do next.
It was not meant to be like this. By
the time we got to Baghdad Saddam was supposed to have crumpled.
A few days before I resigned I was assured that Saddam would
be overthrown by his associates to save their own skins. But
they would only do it "at five minutes past midnight".
It is now long past that time and Saddam is still there. To compensate
yesterday we blew up a statue of Saddam in Basra. A statue! It
is not the statue that terrifies local people but the man himself
and they know Saddam is still in control of Baghdad.
Having marched us up this cul-de-sac,
Donald Rumsfeld has now come up with a new tactic. Instead of
going into Baghdad we should sit down outside it until Saddam
surrenders. There is no more brutal form of warfare than a siege.
People go hungry. The water and power to provide the sinews of
a city snap. Children die.
You can catch a glimpse of what would
happen in Baghdad under siege by looking at Basra. Its residents
have endured several days of summer heat without water.
In desperation they have been drinking
water from the river into which the sewage empties. Those conditions
are ripe for cholera.
Last week President Bush promised that
"Iraqis will see the great compassion of the US". They
certainly do not see it now. They don't see it in Baghdad. What
they see are women and children killed when missiles fall on
market places. They don't see it in Basra. What they see is the
suffering of their families with no water, precious little food,
and no power to cook. There will be a long-term legacy of hatred
for the West if the Iraqi people continue to suffer from the
effects of the war we started.
Washington got it wrong over the ease
with which the war could be won. Washington could be just as
wrong about the difficulty of running Iraq when the fighting
stops. Already there are real differences between Britain and
America over how to run post-war Iraq.
The dispute over the management of the
port of Umm Qasr is a good example. British officers sensibly
took the view that the best and the most popular solution would
be to find local Iraqis who knew how to do it. Instead the US
have appointed an American company to take over the Iraqi asset.
And guess what? Stevedore Services of America who got the contract
have a chairman known for his donations to the Republican Party.
The argument between Blair and Bush over
whether the UN will be in charge of the reconstruction of Iraq
is about more than international legitimacy. It is about whether
the Iraqi people can have confidence that their country is being
run for the benefit of themselves or for the benefit of the US.
Yesterday there was a sad and moving
ceremony as the bodies of our brave soldiers were brought back
to Britain.
The Ministry of Defence announced that
they were to be buried in Britain out of consideration for their
families. We must do all we can to ease the grief of those who
have lost a husband or a son, cut down in their prime.
Yet I can't help asking myself if there
was not a better way to show consideration for their families.
A better way could have been not to start
a war which was never necessary and is turning out to be badly
planned.
Yesterday's
Features
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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