America formally ended its eight-and-a-half year military occupation in Iraq on the 15th December 2011 with a flag-lowering ceremony presided over by Defence Secretary Leon Panetta Baghdad. The West led by the US invaded the oil rich nation in March 2003 under dubious claims. Whilst US policy makers continue champion ‘mission accomplished’ former head of the National Security Agency, the late Lieutenant General William Odom, called in 2005 – just two-and-a-half years after the US invasion – ‘the greatest strategic disaster in United States history.’
Whatever comes out from Washington or the Western media we make the following points with regards to America’s imperial adventure into Iraq:
1. The case for war against Iraq was cantered on Saddam Hussein’s possessions of weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s), that could be deployed at a moments notice by a mad man who was hell bent on causing terror around the world and was even linked in some way to the 9/11 attacks. After the invasion, the US created the 1,400-member international Iraq Survey Group who conducted a fact-finding mission to find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. By 2004 the ISG’s Duelfer Report stated that Iraq did not have a viable WMD program. On September 30th 2004, the US Iraq Survey Group final report concluded that, “ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn (sic) possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its investigation—including detainee interviews and document exploitation—leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability.” The US then continued to change the reasons for its invasion of Iraq, from the moral right to remove Saddam Hussein to previous UN resolution permitting the use of force to the fact that the Muslims of Iraq wanted the US to invade their country and remove Saddam.
2. Within a few months of the invasion, the US quickly became marred in an insurgency that today has greatly affected US prowess around the world. Evan Kohlmann, a leading expert on the insurgency outlined its beginnings “When the US invasion began in 2003, it was mainly Baathists, ex-Iraqi military, and Saddam loyalists. They were Iraqi nationalists, opposed to foreign occupation, who saw Iraq as a competitor with Egypt for the control of the Arab world. It was an issue of national pride. Video recordings and communiqués were coming out from everybody who had an AK-47. But as the war dragged on, some of these groups started coalescing; others were destroyed. Only the strongest, the most hardcore, the best financed, the people with the most training, survived, despite air strikes and the arrest of their senior leaders by the U.S. military.” The Shi’ah Mahdi Army began launching attacks on coalition targets in an attempt to seize control of territory. The Southern and Central portions of Iraq were beginning to erupt in urban guerrilla combat as multinational forces attempted to keep control and prepared for a counteroffensive. Many from Iraq joined Muqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi Army area of operation stretched from Basra in the south to the Sadr City section of Baghdad in Central Iraq. Whilst the US had defeated Iraq’s conventional forces in 21 days, it was Iraq’s unconventional forces that humbled the US military machine. In 2006 a Study Group, made up of people from both of the major US parties, led by former US Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, concluded that “the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating” and “U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end.” US claims that the Iraqi people wanted them to invade began to ring hollow.
3. When the Baker-Hamiltin report was released to congress in December 2006 the US was well and truly drowning in Iraq and comparisons were being made with Vietnam. It became clear to all that the US had massively underestimated the enemy and whilst it had rapidly removed Iraq’s conventional forces the unconventional elements in Iraq had brought the US army to a stalemate. Whilst the Baker-Hamilton report proposed engagement with Iran over Iraq, engagement with Iran had already begun, in order to contain the insurgency. Iran initiated its proxy the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) a group created in Tehran with full backing in 1982. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim its supreme leader until his death in 2009, gathered the major Shi’ah factions to partake in Iraq’s US constructed government, this left the US with an insurgency around Baghdad to only contend with.
4. Rapprochement between both Iran and the US was confirmed by Ahmadinejad, in his interview with the New York Times during his visit to the United Nations Summit in September 2008: “Iran has extended its hand of cooperation to the United States on the issue of Afghanistan…and our country has given assistance to the US in restoring peace and stability in Iraq.” The US through promises of positions in government, bribes and rewards managed to co-opt many of the Shi’ah factions give up violence and take part in the American constructed political setup. The role of Iran was outlined by an Iraqi official at the time “There is no doubt the Iranians have recently applied influence and leverage over Jaish al-Mahdi to contain and limit its operations inside Iraq,” Barham Salih said in an interview to IPS. “This is a welcome sign. But I’ll be very frank with you: the very fact that Iran can turn on and off the activities of Jaish al-Mahdi is one of concern to me as an Iraqi official.” Without Iranian support, Iraq would have become America’s new Vietnam. Whilst on the surface Iran-US relations appear to be strained as the US continues to ratchet up the nuclear enrichment issue whenever it suits them, both nations behind the scenes view each other through another lens. Both Iran and the US have the same interests in the region and have worked together in Afghanistan for some time. Iran could have brought the US to its knees, but its pragmatic rulers have turned out to be no different the other rulers in the Muslim world who have betrayed the Ummah time and time again.
5. Iraq’s first parliamentary elections in 2005 institutionalised sectarian and ethnic differences. In this way the US could always rely on support from different groups within Iraq who will remain divided and will always cut deals with the US in return for promises of power. Parliament was split between the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) led by the SCIRI and the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan (DPAK). This precarious settlement between these two groups meant Sunni resistance was contained and the US argued the elections had credibility due to the participation.
6. The US constructed a political system in Iraq which will protect and maintain its interests. America has merely replaced a brutal system with a corrupt system that recognises the ethnic and sectarian breakdown of Iraq. This will keep Iraq divided forever and as the jockeying for the March 7th 2010 elections has shown democracy has created fertile ground for polarised politics instead of dictatorial politics. Democracy rather than solve nationalism, tribalism or sectarianism, in reality recognises such corruption and incorporates it into a system of parliamentary politics allowing various factions to fight and jockey for their petty interests. This means in the long run violence will continue as a means to settle ethnic differences – which would suit the US as an acceptable level of chaos and violence justifies continued US interference. Similarly Iraq’s oil auction through Service Contracts (ST’s) that the Iraqi government agreed with various international oil companies has left the control over the Iraqi oil firmly in the hands of the Iraqi government. The oil companies have been contracted by the Iraqi government as service providers only. In this way America has full control over the Iraqi government, which means that through the established ST’s America has maintained full control over the Iraqi oil industry.
7. The Iraq war has undermined the US forever, whatever its rhetoric regarding the end of the occupation. The US has been exposed for throwing aside international law in a colonial pursuit and then concocting lies in order to justify invasion. During the invasion the US violated human rights as well as the rights afforded to prisons in Guantanamo Bay and in the infamous Abu Gharib prison. The Haditha killings, the use of White phosphorus, the Mahmoudiyah incident, the torture and killing of prisoners of war and the Mukaradeeb incidentwhere 42 civilians were bombed and shot in a wedding party are publicly known war crimes. These state-crimes in fact symbolise American’s invasion and brutal occupation and not exaggerated claims of mission accomplished. Alongside this more than 100,000, quite possibly 200,000 or more innocent Iraqi civilians lost their lives under US watch. US policies after the invasion to disband the Iraqi army caused a vacuum, which was then filled with violence.
8. The war may be at and end but US interference and colonial agenda is set to remain in Iraq. The US is merely reorienting its presence in Iraq as it no longer needs a large combat force in the country, which attempts to survive daily IED attacks. A smaller more specialised force can protect US interests. The reduced level of troops is possible in tandem with the expanded diplomatic mission because the US has been largely successful in its intentions in Iraq, setting in place the intended political, military, and economic elements for Iraq to remain firmly within American sphere of control. As the New York Times reported in September, the debate over specific numbers and figures is unimportant. “The administration has already drawn up plans for an extensive expansion of the American Embassy and its operations, bolstered by thousands of paramilitary security contractors.”
The US has today replaced a dictator with a system built upon ethno-sectarian differences which is institutionalised for decades to come. As the US attempted to extricate itself from this conflict which has gone well beyond what the US contemplated, the US is finding a resurgent Russia reclaiming back the former Soviet Republics and a confident China expanding its supply lines across South-East Asia all the way to Africa. The US position is considered untenable and overstretched and this has led Russia and China to be much more confident in challenging US prowess around the world. We also find that the US today is more and more reliant for the help and cooperation of Muslim rulers in the world whether it is in Iraq or Afghanistan, in order to achieve its aims. Their treachery has given the US the much needed support it required in its time of need. Whilst Obama may claim Iraq as his victory, globally US prowess has been permanently damaged.