[Mb-civic] Hayden: Why the U.S. is Supporting Civil War

[Reeeees at aol.com]

Published on Friday, August 26,  2005 by CommonDreams.org 
Why the US Is Supporting Civil  War 
by Tom Hayden
The search for the "noble purpose" in  Iraq is more elusive than the search 
for weapons of mass destruction. But  the logic of U.S. policy is being 
clarified in the present constitutional  talks.  
Let's summarize the situation at the moment:  
    1.  The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has backed  
language "that would have given clerics sole authority in settling  marriage and 
family disputes." [NY Times, Aug. 21, 05]  
    2.  Language in the current draft reserving 25 percent of the Assembly's  
seats for women is being defined as "transitional", which means it lacks  
constitutional character.[NY Times, Aug. 24, 05]  
    3.  A former clandestine CIA officer and current neoconservative analyst  
says on "Meet the Press" that "women's social rights are not critical to  the 
evolution of democracy." [Reuel Marc Gerecht, in [Maureen Dowd, Aug.  24, 05] 
 
    4.  Fact: the vast majority of the "Iraqi security forces" are composed  
of Shiite and Kurdish militias, deployed against Sunnis.  
    5.  The current Baghdad regime has agreed on opening the oil-export  
business to private foreign investors, and plans to scale back fuel  subsidies 
after the next election. [NY Times, Aug. 11, 05]  
    6.  The Washington Post, announcing that the U.S. is "lowering its  
sights" on what can be achieved in Iraq, reports that "the document on  which 
Iraq's future is to be built [the constitution] will require laws  to be compliant 
with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto  long-term political 
privileges. And women's rights will not be as firmly  entrenched as Washington has 
tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraqi  analysts say...we set out to 
establish a democracy, but we're slowly  realizing we will have some form of 
Islamic Republic."  [Aug. 14,  05] 
Now begins the spin, with simultaneous op-ed articles in the New York  Times 
and Los Angeles Times by leading neo-cons. [Aug. 25, 05] John Yoo,  who wrote 
the torture memos in the Justice Department, is described as a  university law 
professor and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise  Institute. David 
Brooks is the snappy neo-con "affirmative action" hire at  the New York Times 
op-ed page. Both argue that achieving a united Iraq was  never important 
anyway, despite several years of official Administration  rhetoric. Instead they 
promote a vision of a "federal" Iraq where power  devolves to the Shiite south 
and the Kurdish north, which happen to  coincide geographically with the 
country's major oil fields. As cover for  his argument, Brooks quotes Peter 
Galbraith, a former Clinton official  with liberal credentials, who long has favored 
dividing Iraq into three  parts.  
Yoo is very clear in his belief that "free trade" should and must break  down 
nation states like the former Iraq [and Yugoslavia before it]. Brooks  says 
it is "crazy" to envision an Iraq without the ayatollahs in a  significant role 
because they are the "natural" leaders of society. He  reprimands his readers 
against "screaming about a 13th century theocratic  state."  
With this shift, the US government has erased its last of its  rhetorical 
rationales for the war, the claim that "liberty" and  "democracy" and "women's 
rights" would be installed through armed  persuasion in Baghdad. Now they are 
arguing that Americans should accept  the emergence of a flawed Islamic state, 
just as similar Americans  accepted slavery and disenfranchisement as the price 
of the original  constitution.  
There's a small practical problem with this revised vision. It is  likely to 
intensify the war on two levels: Iraqis against the Americans  and Iraqis 
against each other. I don't have a particular philosophical  preference for 
centralized government, but the alternative in Iraq is a  devolution to warring 
ethnic and religious fiefdoms under the control of  the international market. Yoo, 
Brooks and Galbraith are silent on this  untidy aspect of their scenario, 
with Yoo even reminding Americans that we  had to go through the "fiery 
experience" of civil war before becoming a  nation. Leaving aside the fact that 
Americans threw the British out by  force, that's a macabre future for Iraqis who 
were promised "liberation."  Since the civil war will not be won militarily, the 
Administration will  argue that the occupation must be permanent.  
If this sounds mad, manipulative or both, what does it reveal about US  
intentions in Iraq?  
It suggests that the American purpose has been to destroy Iraqi  nationalism, 
as  in the previous Baathist state and the continued  de-Baathification 
policies.    
It suggests that our "best and brightest" want to weaken any future  
possibility of a strong Iraqi state with control of its own enterprises  and 
resources.  
It suggests that the US has chosen to ally itself with Islamic  
fundamentalism rather than a secular state with a centralized government.  
It suggests that civil war against the Sunnis and any other "diehards"  is 
the US preference rather than a political settlement that brings the  
nationalist resistance, including the Sunnis, into negotiations rather  than war.  
This is the same strategy the Israelis chose decades ago when they  directly 
and indirectly supported the Islamic religious groupings as  preferable to the 
secular and "Marxist" Palestinian Liberation  Organization [PLO] two decades 
ago. That strategy contributed directly to  the creation of Hezbollah and 
suicide bombers.  
It is the same strategy that led the US to support the mujahadeen, the  
embryonic Al Qaeda, against the secular, pro-Russian Afghan government. In  1998, 
two years before 9/11, Zbigiew Brzezinski flippantly dismissed  critics of the 
policy this way:  

Question: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic  fundamentalism, 
which has given arms and advice to future  terrorists?

Answer: What is more important in world history? The  Taliban or the collapse 
of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or  the liberation of Central 
Europe and the end of the Cold  War?

Question: "Some agitated Muslims"? But it has been said that  repeated: 
Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace  today...

Answer: Nonsense... [Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, Jan.  15-21, 1998]
The US opposes independent nationalism from Iraq to Venezuela. It  prefers to 
weaken independent states to diminish their military potential  in either the 
Middle East or Latin America, and to break down what are  described as 
"protectionist" barriers to the "free trade" model of  Halliburton or Wal-Mart.  
In seeking to impose both Pentagon dominance and a neo-liberal economic  
model on the world, the US is prepared to accept alliances with religious  forces 
that insist on strict censorship and punishment of freedom of  association and 
belief. For Bush and the neo-conservatives, it seems,  freedom for American 
investors can't wait, but women - their rights "are  not critical to the 
evolution of democracy."  
Far from achieving stability and security, these policies will foment  more 
violent hatred of the US. Far from planting democracy, US policy is  squelching 
what little democracy there is, threatening to dismember Iraq,  causing a 
civil war that will be the pretext for US troops to remain, and  re-arranging the 
Middle East to include a de facto Shiite alliance from  Teheran to Basra. 
That's why Bush can find no "noble purpose". It is about  a war for dominance, 
not democracy.  
Tom Hayden is a former California state senator and the author of  "_Street 
Wars_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565848764/commondreams-20/ref=nosim) " (Dimensions, 2004).  
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