Public Speeches

End game in Iraq: scenarios for peace

The starting point for any discussion about an end game in Iraq must always be the responsibilities of the occupying powers.

The burden remains on the occupiers to justify the ongoing impact of their presence in Iraq, especially its human costs. There must be full accountability for the impact of the occupation on the civilian population – the dead, injured, displaced, the damaged infrastructure, the collapse of law and order, the opening of sectarian divisions, etc,. The ongoing immiseration of Iraqis must also be justified in terms other than the potential to make conditions in the country even more dire.

There is also a responsibility to pay reparations and reconstruction costs.

There is no equivalent requirement on those wanting to end the occupation to prove that its termination will make matters worse.

There is no parity between doing something with the absolute dead certainty of killing and maiming hundreds of thousands, and doing the opposite with only some probability that some people will suffer as a result.

It is therefore disturbing that the moral polarities of the debate have been reversed by those responsible for the war and occupation – that somehow the onus is now on those who want to end the nightmare rather than on those who want to perpetuate it. Such is the nature of opinion management in the West.

Two points need to be raised at this juncture.

The argument that a withdrawal of coalition troops would initiate further pain for Iraqis begs one vital question which is studiously avoided by the architects of the war: what has been done to Iraq since March 2003 that only the indefinite presence of 160,000 troops prevents the country collapsing into anarchy?

The occupation has produced conditions in which terrorism and sectarian violence have flourished on a scale never before seen in the country. Who takes responsibility for this? Those who promised on 10 March 2003 that "the life of the Iraqi citizen is going to dramatically improve" – I am quoting President Bush?

Secondly, how do Bush, Blair, Howard and pro-war advocates know things would certainly get worse after a coalition withdrawal? 600,000+ casualties would be hard to top. It is possible they will, given what the occupation unleashed on existing social, ethnic and political structures in the country which maintained some sense of order.

Then again, conditions might actually improve given that, according to US General George Casey, it is the occupation which has actually fuelled the insurgency. Take away the common ingredient which binds the resistance together and provides its raison d’etre, and the organised violent resistance to the presence of US, British and Australian troops may possibly collapse.

The coalition’s argument for staying the course seems to imply that democracy isn’t the fix after all, and that only a militarised society or an autocratic ruler can hold the country together. Why will the killing stop when a new de-Baathised army is born?

Calling them all "terrorists" is, as Mike Davis suggests, "a playground epithet in the serious business of geopolitics [and has] hardly advanced anyone’s understanding of the post-Cold War world." And yet this is all we get from both the organ grinders of pro-war spin and the political monkeys who faithfully repeat their lines. At least they no longer speak of "democracy enhancement" or "Iraq as a model for the rest of the Middle East" – a small relief.

Perhaps Howard and Downer could ask themselves why they are facing stiffer resistance to their occupation of Iraq than the Nazis did in occupied Europe – or the Soviets in Eastern Europe? It was supposed to be about flowers and chocolates.

Regardless of whether we opposed the war before it was launched, Mr Howard implores us to focus on the present and forget how we got to this invidious point — as if the past and present are unconnected.
War aims and justifications such as the search for WMD, the liberation of Iraq and the promotion of democracy have been quietly dropped.

But if you don’t fully understand why and how you got into this mess, you won’t find a way out of it. It’s understandable that the PM doesn’t want to be reminded of what he said in 2003 even if the public recalls his words very clearly.

Let me make a number of other brief points.

If the so called troop "surge" fails, - and I believe it is failing - what then? By their own admission, Bush, Blair and Howard have said there is no fall back position. There is no Plan B.

If highly trained and well-equipped Western armies are unable to quell the insurgency and sectarian violence unleashed by the occupation, why will inferior Iraqi troops be more successful? Recent reports cast grave doubt on the hope that indigenous forces capable of replacing the occupying armies will emerge in the foreseeable future.

Prime Minister Howard is concerned that a defeat for Washington would be viewed by America's enemies as a victory for terrorism. He speaks of "a humiliated, weakened America" in the future tense, as if the coalition's reputation hasn't already been tarnished by its catastrophic intervention in the Middle East.

The insurgents won the war two years ago by successfully resisting Washington's efforts to eviscerate them; the "dead-enders" prevailed. Not even the US Joint Chiefs of Staff expect the New Year "surge" to reverse the terrible course of events, and the neo-cons who promoted it can no longer define victory in coherent sentences. Instead they now blame the victims for their awful fate.

Washington's defeat (and by extension our defeat) isn't all bad news. A chastened US might not act so recklessly in the future. It may even confront its addiction to war and acknowledge the limits of its power. If the US recognises there are no military solutions to the political and economic challenges it faces around the world, wisdom and power may no longer be strangers in Washington's diplomacy.

In this unipolar world, the United States lacks political constraints on the exercise of its awesome military might. The role of allies is to inhibit the temptations of unilateralism and encourage Washington to use its authority responsibly, instead of uncritically endorsing its every folly or fretting about its declining credibility.

In November 2003, former CIA operative Milt Beardon wrote in The New York Times that:

"There were two stark lessons in the history of the 20th century; no nation that launched a war against another sovereign nation ever won. And every nationalist-based insurgency against a foreign occupation ultimately succeeded."

His observation might also apply to this century.

Finally, despite overwhelming opposition from the Iraqi people, US troops will almost certainly stay in Iraq until a reliable Vichy-style dependent client willing to protect Washington's regional strategic and economic interests is securely in place. This will take time. Dependable collaborators are proving hard to find. It is hard to believe that the US will fully withdraw from the country in the foreseeable future – otherwise what will it have all been for?

The end game in Iraq is some way off.

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