RSSThe Gulf of peace and friendship
May 15
I noticed a strange comment in this article below:
Al-Qaida says it has captured three US soldiers
“We all wish that foreign troops would leave the region and give a chance to countries in the region to establish security themselves,” Mr Ahmadinejad said during a meeting with Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the UAE president. “With each other’s help, we can turn the Persian Gulf to the gulf of peace and friendship.”
Now, as anyone who reads this site regularly would know, I’m not a fan of the US invasion of Iraq. But, the above comment is absurdly naive. The bulk of the violence going on in Iraq right now is it’s own people against each other (or, perhaps some amount of other regional actors as well). The ironic part of this situation is that the foreign occupation has given the Iraqis the freedom to kill each other. They did not have this under Saddam because he would have massacred anyone even loosely involved.
This is a big part of why I’m not personally in favour of a full US withdrawal. They broke it and they still need to find a way to help fix it, although fixing it does not mean clamping down on the population more. It likely means stepping back a bit, finding small ways to prove to the Iraqis that they are there to help rather than keep slaughtering them, and dumping in tons of cash to rebuild the country they destroyed.
The West has caused a lot of problems in the Middle East over the last few centuries and made existing problems a lot worse. But, whether or not the US had invaded Iraq it was not a “Gulf of peace and friendship,” nor close to one.
May 15, 2007 @ 08:15:07
A recent guest on the Daily Show made the statement that if the US pulled out of Iraq, the insurgents would turn on Al Qaida and slaughter them. In theory, the majority of the insurgents are Iraqi’s who see themselves as freedom fighters and would rather form a Islamic nationalist state than an chaotic Al Qaida training ground. Reportedly, Al Qaida fighters only represent a small percentage of the insurgent base and are barely tolerated. It makes sense psychologically, that regardless of which side, be it Sunni or Shiite, ultimately controls Iraq, they won’t want to deal with the perpetually destabilizing forces of Al Qaida.
However, on the other extreme, many conservative Americans are now claiming that the major mistake made by Bush in the Iraq war was not hitting them hard enough in the first place. People are making analogies to Japan, where the use of atomic weaons ultimately forced a quick and orderly surrender. They claim that if the US had simply “carpet-bombed” Iraq from the beginning, civilians be damned, then the country would be more safe and secure now. The flaw in that is that Japan had an emporer to whom all were extremely loyal. The emporer surrendered and ordered the people to comply with the American forces, which allowed the orderly post-war reconstruction. In Iraq, there was no such centralism, despite the previous regime’s iron grip. And as we’ve seen, most would rather die than surrender.
May 16, 2007 @ 07:55:09
The ironic part of this situation is that the foreign occupation has given the Iraqis the freedom to kill each other. They did not have this under Saddam because he would have massacred anyone even loosely involved.
I take issue with this. Prior to the occupation, Sunni and Shiite were neighbours, and even intermarried. Think about how it is here in Canada – there is definitely still systemic racism and ghettoisation of minorities, but there is also plenty of mixing, interaction and intermarriage between groups. Similarly, there were some tensions between Sunni and Shiite, but a lot of this was political (Sunnis having disproportionate power under Saddam). It’s not like they were just waiting for more freedom to kill each other.
There is also ample evidence that the sectarian violence was largely manufactured by the occupation – they armed and incited militias, hoping that would help put down the insurgency or at least divide it. Google “Salvador Option” for more info.
May 16, 2007 @ 09:05:33
Red Jenny,
There is no evidence that the occupiers were supplying weapons to the religious militias. That’s pretty far out there.
There is also zero incentive for the US to ferment violence between the Shia and Sunnis, as we can obviously see since that’s what has destroyed any real hope of salvaging the situation.
I see your point that the average Iraqi Shia and Sunni lived together nicely before the occupation. I wasn’t trying to imply it’s the average person causing the violence. But, there are obviously non-trivial extreme elements on both sides doing the fighting.
My point still stands that there are fundamental problems with pockets of society in the middle east, irrespective of the western meddling. There is a non-trivial percentage of the population who thinks violence is the proper way to solve internal differences. Look at Iraq and Palestine as current examples. Both of those societies would be much better off, and in a much better position to fend off their occupiers, if they would stop killing each other.
May 16, 2007 @ 10:50:25
nthier, there’s quite a bit of evidence, actually, and it was even covered in mainstream sources like Newsweek. But it’s not something we can be sure of, I’ll agree.
Do you really think there’s no incentive for the US in all this sectarian violence? Aside from the fact that it gets in the way of a united insurgency, it also provides an excuse for an ongoing military presence: we can’t leave now, they need us.
There’s definitely a culture of violence in places that have experienced a lot of violence – even in places like Israel they find disturbingly high rates of things like domestic violence, or violent dispute resolution. So the culture of violence in the ME is pretty unsurprising. Iraq and Palestine tried for a long time to fend of their occupiers before factional violence sprung up. This, too, is not uncommon in many occupied or colonized countries – after some time, the stresses and terror of war worsen differences between groups that are brought together temporarily to fight a common enemy.
Of course, I’m simplifying, but this is just to show that so much of what is happening is not isolated this particular time & place (Iraq) – it’s eerily similar to so many other instances of imperialist occupation and war. Even the same arguments you’re giving were repeated by colonizers in the past – they were used as justification to support their policies.
I don’t know what the answer is, I just think we need to be careful when recommending the US stay, even in the limited form you advocate.
Not that the Persian gulf has ever been a zone of peace and friendship.
May 16, 2007 @ 10:51:53
sorry. bad grammar. and typos. eek.
May 16, 2007 @ 12:27:21
Red Jenny,
Those are all valid points, and I agree with most of it.
But, I do not really think there is incentive for the US to further the civil war. At this point pretty much everyone wants to be out of Iraq. Even the hardest-core neo-cons who wanted Iraq to basically become a permanent US military base seem to have been sidelined.
My gut instinct is that the US should leave immediately since not only was there no good reason to invade Iraq, it’s been a blunder ever since. But, when I try to think through the possible scenarios after they leave completely I can’t see any evidence that the civil war won’t expand, killing many more people than already.
But, the question of what the US should do to try fixing it is much harder to answer. It may very well be true that things are too far gone and even if the US did begin doing “the right things” it wouldn’t be enough. Maybe the true best answer is to fully withdraw, let the sides fight it out and hope a victor quickly emerges with only a few thousand casualties. Maybe that is truly less bloody than if the US has to stay in this same position for the next 10 years with daily bombings, which only further delays the eventual period of improvement.
But, I cannot believe for a second that as soon as the US would leave the Iraqi factions would stop killing each other. It makes the most sense that the violence would increase, at least for a while.
Given the cost in lives of either choice, I have to hope there’s a better answer. As a simplified example: perhaps the US should draw down just enough (or try funding a UN force large enough) to keep the current government functioning and continuing to train Iraqis, and ideally keep a lid on the civil war. Pour money into real reconstruction efforts. And obviously the largest component of this is to find a way to reconcile the various factions, which doesn’t currently seem to be on anyones radar.
Or, maybe the US should install a dictator who can keep a lid on all this cultural animosity. Hey, where did that Saddam guy go?
May 17, 2007 @ 06:25:54
Oh I agree with you, at this point the US definitely does not want a civil war. I think some of their bad policies came back and bit them in the ass, to be honest. I don’t think it was masterminded to come out quite like this.
If the US leaves militarily, they could as you say, fund a UN peacekeeping mission, they could pay reparations, they could support indigenous groups that are always in existence (hospitals, orphanages, food distribution centres, NGOs). There’s really no hope in hell that they would do the “right thing” and as you said, even that wouldn’t be enough. Although military withdrawal won’t fix everything, it isn’t likely to make everything worse either. The level of violence wouldn’t completely abate, but there’s a good chance it would be reduced fairly quickly.
May 17, 2007 @ 09:53:19
Even if the US is not supplying weapons directly to the militias who are systematically executing their historical enemies, they are arming and training the Iraqi police and army, who have be repeatedly linked to the death squads that now roam Iraq under cover of darkness and political consent.
Democracy dictates that the majority rule. And in Iraq, the majority are Sunni. The largely Sunni government has plenty of reasons to crack down on the Shiites who were once the ruling class under Saddam. The US can not stop them because a) they’re the closest thing to a government Iraq has, b) they are needed to take out the insurgents, and c) to acknowledge the murders is to acknowledge a broader failure. The violence in Iraq won’t end until that purge is complete, regardless of the US presence. And since the US won’t stop it, what does it matter if they stay or leave?