A Clear Victory, A Cloudy "Peace"
Published on Tuesday, February 11, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
"A Clear Victory, a Cloudy 'Peace'"
by Ira Lacher
Like primitive man-apes shrieking, waving their arms and jumping up and down, United States politicians are heralding the inevitable war against Iraq with self-assured bluster.
On the front page of the Sunday Des Moines Register, military pundit James Dunnigan boasts that Iraqi armed forces are so decimated from the Gulf War of 1991 that skirmishes might be "nearly bloodless."
Further in the article, other analysts pooh-pooh Saddam Hussein's chemical-biological weapons of mass destruction as being "so limited in technology and operational lethality" that they pose little threat to U.S. soldiers. (Why, then, we have to send 100,000 troops to deal with such outmoded weapons is not explained, but that’s not the issue here.) The rest of the article went on to reassure antiwar nervous Nellies that Iraqi troops would prove mere sand flies against the vaunted power of America.
They're probably right. War with Iraq most likely will be quick, and the military outcome decisive.
But what about the aftermath?
In the best scenario, America gets its hands on the massive and intact, Iraqi oil machinery. Petroleum prices plummet, and the U.S. economy gets a quantum boost unseen since the Nineties. Just by looking cross to regimes in the region we embolden the rise of pro-Western democracy in Iran and Saudi Arabia, contain unstable political situations in Syria and Lebanon, prop up an aging dynasty in Jordan and suppress Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, sending ripples throughout the Muslim world, including Asia, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. And, of course, our presence will prevail on Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat to make nice at the bargaining table.
Then, there’s this view of the post-“victory,” taken by most moderate economic, political and social analysts from all over the world.
To start, rebuilding the Iraqi oil industry is projected as a staggering investment – as much as $450 billion -- over at least a decade in a fragmented and unsafe nation punctuated by civil unrest.
"You get the sense some people in Washington, particularly hawkish members of the administration, have spent Iraqi oil revenue 10 times over before they've even gotten in there," Raad Alkadiri, an analyst at PFC Energy, an oil and gas consulting firm in Washington, told the Baltimore Sun.
The paper went on to discuss the price of oil, which, after the 1991 gulf war, rose as high as $40 a barrel, contributing to a global recession. Prices could rise to that level, the paper warns, due to a retaliatory OPEC boycott, oil fields set afire a la Kuwait, terrorist attacks against friendly oil suppliers such as Russia and Mexico, and continuing labor unrest in oil-producing Venezuela.
But even if those predictions turn out to be polyanna-ish, it’s far tougher to discount the likely reaction of Muslims angry at what they see as further evidence of anti-Islamic war.
“If a war takes place, emotions will intensify” among millions of Muslims in Europe, German Interior Minister Otto Schily told the Los Angeles Times. “It's quite clear you can't exclude repercussions. And a lot depends on [whether] a possible war is a long-lasting one or . . . short-term. It depends on how many victims will be civilians. But this is obviously a matter of great concern to us.”
Even more ominous was this warning, from a source the Times identified as “a top diplomatic official from one of the United States’ closest allies.”
“The feeling,” the official says, “will be that the war of the civilizations has gotten underway: the Christian-Judaism followers against Islam. There will be immediate reprisals; they will want to show that they are doing something, wherever they can.”
And this.
“Terrorism thrives where there is instability and motivated recruits,” the Times quoted Shibley Telhami, a professor of government at the University of Maryland. “And war with Iraq is likely to create more instability and more motivated recruits.”
In the Arab world, even moderate voices are reminding that rose-colored glasses can’t blot out the harsh glare of the Middle East. An editorial in the Daily Star, an English-language newspaper published in Lebanon, dismisses optimists who believe that a U.S. victory over Iraq will benefit the region.
“These ‘semi-optimistic’ Arabs,” the newspaper writes, “don’t deny that an invasion of Iraq will create a backlash in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which even if it falls short of an ‘explosion’ is likely to fuel terrorism.”
The newspaper goes on to warn of the unintended consequences of what promises to be, a great number of analysts agree, a long, drawn-out American occupation.
“Hitherto, America has wielded enormous influence in the region while remaining largely invisible, like a ‘giant ghost,’ ” the paper says. “Its previous direct military interventions in the region were limited in scope and duration. . . . Things promise to be very different in Iraq, turning the U.S. presence in the Middle East from a ghostly giant into a visible, audible and tangible giant. . . .
“Some will call this neocolonialism and others will liken it to America’s experience in postwar Germany or Japan. Only time will tell which description is more apt. But one thing is for sure: After the Iraq war, America will no longer be able to toy in secret with the region’s fate. All the cards will be flying in the air, and all the games will be exposed.”
Those “games,” many Muslims believe, include a Western desire to dominate Islam. Indeed, Osama bin Laden has declared religious war on the United States for what he alleges are continual western injustices against Muslims dating to the Crusades.
What George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, their allies, and those pundits who believe war against Iraq will be swift and sure have failed to explain, is how a long-term and heavy-handed U.S. military, political and economic presence in the Middle East can do anything but convince moderate Muslims that Osama and his followers are correct after all.
Ira Lacher is a former newspaperman and a current magazine editor. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa.
Copyright © 2003 by Ira Lacher. All rights reserved.