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13. AMERICA STUMBLES

NATION-BUILDING IN IRAQ

CONTENTS

Nation-building in Iraq

Into the quagmire

Mission accomplished?

Political repercussions back home in America

The 2007 "surge" in Iraq

The textual material on this webpage is drawn directly from my work
        America's Story – A Spiritual Journey © 2021, pages 417-421.
NATION-BUILDING IN IRAQ

What then possessed Bush to turn his attention to Iraq remains to this day an unanswered question.  Iraq's President Saddam Hussein was a dictator, a flamboyant self-appointed candidate to become the leader of the entire Arab nation (all the Arab countries of the Middle East), in competition with other such Arab candidates.  He used the usual Arab call to unity around the Jewish intrusion into the Arab world in the establishment of Israel and made all kinds of noise in that regard.  And he built up his military accordingly in order to present a plausible claim to such candidacy.

But as we have seen, he overstepped himself in Kuwait and he and his army got burned badly.  He was put under all sorts of military quarantine which restricted his venturesome ways – though not necessarily his language, used to keep himself "important" in the eyes of his own people.  Bush Sr. had not bothered to do more than kick him out of Kuwait, but had gone no further in the matter of hemming in the loud dictator.  As his then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney would later explain, to have gone deeper into Iraq would have amounted to entry into a "quagmire."  Nothing would be gained – at great expense to everyone concerned.

But Bush Jr. somehow decided that the world would be a better place if Saddam were to just disappear.  And it would also offer Iraq the opportunity to go "democratic."  That, to Bush, justified the huge enterprise.  He was determined to go nation-building in Iraq, no matter what the cost involved.

But Bush's cabinet seemed to be less than unanimous about undertaking this project.  However, Dick Cheney, now Bush's Vice President and closest advisor, was changing his tune – and was now fully in favor of jumping into the quagmire.  Likewise his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, not only had the U.S. military standing in readiness, but had the perfect candidate in mind, Ahmed Chalabi, to lead Iraq to "democracy."  And the U.S. Congress, in October of 2002, not wanting to appear to be unpatriotic, authorized exactly such action in Iraq – by a huge majority: 297-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate.[2]

But unlike his successful efforts in enlisting allies for his Afghan program, he got very little support from the international community (Britain would however join Bush in this enterprise – at great loss to both Britain and its Prime Minister Tony Blair).  At first Bush tried the "Bush Doctrine," claiming Saddam's support for al-Qaeda, and thus candidacy for American retribution.  But nobody bought that explanation.  Then in September 2002, Bush went before the United Nations General Assembly to put forward the claim that Saddam was violating the international restrictions he had been placed under since his rebuke over Kuwait – that Saddam was secretly developing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The physical evidence in this claim offered by U.S. intelligence was very questionable – and it quickly appeared that the larger world was not buying his story.  Ultimately the UN simply decided to send more inspectors into Iraq to see what evidence they themselves could find on this matter.



The U.N. Security Council votes unanimously to return 
UN inspection teams to Iraq

U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq

But when, after months of searching Iraq, the UN inspectors were unable to come up with any such WMD evidence, an anxious Bush saw his case before the court of world opinion weakening rapidly.  Thus he made one more effort to win the world to his cause, using the excellent international reputation of his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to make a hopefully compelling presentation in February of 2003 before the United Nations on this WMD matter.  Bush also had an American proposal put before the UN Security Council authorizing action against Saddam.  But when it became apparent that France, Russia and Germany were strongly opposed to this, he had the proposal withdrawn.

At the UN, Colin Powell holds a model vial of anthrax,
while arguing that Iraq is likely to possess WMDs – 
5 February 2003.

Some of America's key allies decide that they are not with the
US on the decision to invade Iraq (Germany's Chancellor
Gerhard-Schröder and France's President Jacques Chirac)

Bush thus decided that he was going to take out Saddam anyway, no matter what the rest of the world's opinion happened to be on this matter.

[2]All but 8 of the 213 Republican congressmen approved the resolution; but 126 of the 208 Democrats did not.  In the Senate, all but one of the 49 Republicans voted for approval.  But so did 29 of the 50 Democrats (one independent voting "no"), those voting in favor including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Charles Schumer – who would of course later try to backtrack on that unfortunate decision of theirs.

INTO THE QUAGMIRE

Thus on March 20th, Rumsfeld's military unleashed "Shock and Awe" (very heavy bombing) on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.  Saddam went into hiding and Iraq found itself leaderless as Americans, joined by British (and smaller units of Australian and Polish) military invaded their country.  Within a few weeks Iraq found itself delivered over to its new "democratic liberators."

Then the quagmire revealed itself.  Looting and ransacking of Baghdad got underway as people scrambled to get what they could of items before the economy shut down.  Then the three major ethnic groups that had been held together only by Saddam's tough hand fell into fighting among themselves:  the Sunni Kurds in the North, the Sunni Arabs in the West, and the Shi'ite Arab community in the East and South.  And the Turks next door – America's long-standing NATO ally – became intensely upset with Bush and his American invaders because Iraqi social breakdown also jeopardized the social order in heavily Kurdish south-eastern Turkey.  This would mark the beginning of the Turkish pull-back from its formerly close relationship with America.

President George W. Bush addresses the nation from the Oval Office
at the White House Wednesday evening, March 19, 2003, announcing
the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.   "My fellow citizens, at this
hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military
operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world
from grave danger ..."

Prime Minister Tony Blair shaking hands with President Bush,
after they concluded a joint news conference at Camp David
27 March 2003.

Saddam's OIl trenches burning April 2, 2003
to cover and protect Baghdad just prior to the US attack

"Shock and Awe" over Baghdad by US bombers

U.S. Forces preparing for the ground invasion of Iraq

U.S. Forces going house to house in search of Iraqi resistance

U.S. tank troops

British Royal Marines travel north in southern Iraq as allied forces fight toward Baghdad.

Members of the British 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery fire 105 mm guns in southern Iraq.

Marines from the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division, are on a highway to Baghdad.


Refugees flee the fighting in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.



U.S. Army soldiers approach a wounded Iraqi woman on a bridge over the Euphrates River in Hindiyah.   The woman had been caught in crossfire with Iraqi forces.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?

Bush ignored these deepening disasters, and on May 1st, arrived by jet aboard a U.S. carrier located offshore from San Diego (not somewhere in the Middle East!), Bush wearing a flight suit, although he himself had not piloted the plane.  He changed clothing and then appeared on deck to address the world with a very upbeat speech, with the huge banner "Mission Accomplished" displayed above the deck – in indication of how things supposedly stood on this Iraqi matter.

President George W. Bush walks across the tarmac with NFO Lt. Ryan Phillips to Navy One, an S-3B Viking jet, at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Thursday, May 1, 2003.  Flying to the USS Abraham Lincoln, the President will address the nation and spend the night aboard ship.

"Mission Accomplished"

President Bush, after declaring the end of major combat in Iraq, spoke on May 1, 2003, aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln off the California coast.


But at this point nothing except disaster had been accomplished!  And that would immediately be worsened even further by Rumsfeld's envoy, Jerry Bremer, sent to administer Iraq as Bremer himself saw the need.  In early May, Bremer issued fundamental Orders 1 and 2.  The first declared that anyone formerly connected with Saddam's Ba'athist Party (virtually every professional in the country) would be prevented from serving in their former capacity in the "new Iraq." 

And the second order, issued over the objection of the U.S. military commanders who had called on the service of the Iraqi army to keep some degree of order in the country, was to disband the Iraqi army – to un-employ hundreds of thousands of young men with rifles, and the knowledge of how to use them.  

Occupation zones in Iraq as of September 2003

So upset was the U.S. military command over this huge political blunder that all of the top generals chose to "retire" – leaving the new military matters in the hands of a very inexperienced American one-star general (actually Rumsfeld would direct overall U.S. military policy from DC anyway).

It was also at this point that anger aimed by the Iraqis against their fellow Iraqi social-cultural opponents now got turned on the occupying Americans and British, especially against the Americans.  At this point the real Iraqi war got underway.  And it would drag on for years – a true American (and British) quagmire.



Saddam captured that December ... hiding in a hole in the ground
at a farm near his hometown of Tikrit

Ultimately, Americans never came up with any evidence of Saddam having been developing WMDs.  However, Saddam himself was finally captured, sentenced and then executed – for committing crimes no worse than the ones Lincoln had committed in order to preserve the unity of the U.S. against Southern rebels.  Then Americans directed those Iraqis willing to take up the task of putting together a new Iraqi constitution – something that supposedly would finally justify this grand misadventure.

But politically speaking, all that would develop from this effort to "democratize" Iraq was to shift power from the Sunni Arab portion (about 20%) of the population, the sector that Saddam had counted on for his political support, to the Shi'ite Arab portion of the population (about 60%), the largest of the social groups and the one that had suffered minority status under Saddam.  But oddly enough there was little gratitude from the Shi'ites for their "liberation" by the Americans and the British.  Instead they simply took this opportunity for revenge against the Sunnis, and then turned on the Americans and the British when the latter group tried to settle the angry Shi'ite community down. And then there were the non-Arabic Sunni Kurds (another 20%), who had been waiting for decades for Kurdish independence (much to the anger of the Turks next door), the only group that showed some degree of real support of the American presence in Iraq.

Shi'ite cleric (and largely the Shi'ites' political leader) Muqtada
al-Sadr ... who showed no gratitude to America for putting
his Shi'ites in power in Iraq

Followers of Muqtada al Sadr

A Muqtada al Sadr supporter and a burning US army vehicle

Bremer signing over limited sovereignty to the American-appointed
Iraqi interim government – June 28, 2004.

Bush presenting Bremer with America's highest civilian honor,
the Medal of Freedom (December 2004) ... explaining that "for
fourteen months Jerry Bremer worked day and night in difficult
and dangerous conditions to stabilize the country, to help its
people rebuild and to establish a political process that would
lead to justice and liberty." What was he talking about?  
Bremer was in DC the whole time (dangerous conditions?)
... and the results of his policies were hardly stability,
much less justice and liberty, for Iraq. 

Thus exactly how leaderless "democracy" was going to restore social unity in Iraq instead of merely intensifying these deeper social divisions would remain a mystery to Iraq's American and British "liberators." None of the Iraqis had ever even heard of Rumsfeld's presidential candidate Chalabi (!!!) and so coming up with a leader was going to become difficult.  Finally (October 2005), under the new constitution, national elections were held (boycotted by most all of the Sunni Arabs) and a Shi'ite, Nouri al-Maliki, was put forward as a leader of a coalition and thus also as prime minister.

But this in no ways settled down the violence that consumed Iraq.  In 2006 the situation worsened deeply when some group blew up the al-Askari or Golden Dome in Samarra, one of Shi'ite Islam's most holy sites.  Shi'ites turned on Sunni mosques and murdered the imams found there. 

The Al Askari or Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra – blown up in
January 2006 (Shrine of the 10th and 11th Twelver Shi'a Imams:
Ali an-Naqi and Hasan al-Askari)

Soon death squads were roaming the country, especially in the Sunni West where American troops were expected to keep some kind of order (although Rumsfeld was trying to maintain a "small footprint" by keeping U.S. troops mostly restricted to the U.S. military bases in the country).

Another car bombing in Baghdad

US troops in Samarra sweep past dead insurgents


US Marines cross a road in Fallujah while others provide covering fire
during Operation Phantom Fury/Operation Al Fajr (New Dawn)."

Hooded Iraqi prisoners

A picture of an Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib prison
who was told that he would be electrocuted if he stepped off the box
(not true – but convincing torture to a hooded prisoner nonetheless)

Private Lynndie England with an Iraqi prisoner on a leash at
Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad

Naked Iraqis naked and bound together under US troop supervision

And wouldn't you know, all this chaos (thanks to Bush) would allow al-Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists finally to make their way to Iraq and begin to base their operations there, a much more strategic location than Afghanistan or Pakistan in making anti-Western mischief throughout the Arab Middle East.  Thus it was that the only true "mission accomplished" that occurred in Iraq was the one gained by the anti-American Shi'ites (religious kinsmen of the Iranian Shi'ites next door, Muslims pledged to bring "death to the Great Satan America") in the Iraqi East and South, and the anti-American Sunni jihadists in the West and Northwest of the country.

Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi
Jordanian terrorist leader of "Tawhid and Jihad" in Iraq

US and British soldiers being held captive by al Zarqawi
(the US troops were beheaded in front of the camera)

POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS BACK HOME IN AMERICA

In the 2004 American presidential elections, Bush was able to gain reelection against the Democratic Party candidate, John Kerry – to a great extent because the election got to be not about public policy but about very personal matters.  Kerry's Vietnam service record was challenged (unfairly as it turned out) by a group of Vietnam veterans, sinking greatly Kerry's political support.  CBS had countered this attack with its own report of service scandal on Bush's part – and then had to repent when it was discovered that the material Dan Rather had been using as "evidence" was a forgery.[3]   While this CBS special was clearly intended to sabotage the Bush candidacy, it actually stirred sympathetic support to the besieged president!  Thus it was that, quite exceptionally, Bush was reelected – virtually unheard of at a time when a leader's war was clearly not going well at all. 


An anti-Kerry cartoon

Pro-Kerry cartoon attacking his attackers!

At the presidential debates ... Sen. John Kerry speaking – 

Pres. George W. Bush looking very annoyed

The results

Newsweek, November 15, 2004


But the 2006 Congressional elections would hit the Republican hard.  They lost their majority in the House to the Democrats and had their position in the Senate reduced further, with also the two Senate independents tending to vote with the Democrats.

It was at this point that Bush got rid of Rumsfeld.  He had removed Rumsfeld's cabinet rival Powell back in 2004.  But Bush was now reversing course (too late for Powell however) in getting rid of Rumsfeld.  But the Republicans were very upset:  why hadn't Bush done this before the elections, when it would likely have helped the Republicans considerably?

[3]Scandal rather than serious news filling America's media front-line reporting was not a new thing.  Grocery store checkout stations had long been loaded with "newspapers" reporting such things as: "I was raped by a monster from Mars"; "Dog gives birth to a puppy with two heads"; etc.  But when the nation's prestige papers began to undertake this same behavior, along with national TV feeding sensationalist "news" to the public 24/7 as simply another form of entertainment, America's news industry became itself a much-degraded American institution.  The Walter Cronkite days of CBS news were clearly over.

THE 2007 "SURGE" IN IRAQ

The situation in Iraq was growing worse, not better through previous (Rumsfeld) policies.  And finally, on the basis of a study that Bush took a great interest in, the decision was made to end Rumsfeld's "small footprint" strategy, increase considerably the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and pursue a very aggressive forward strategy, designated as a grand military "surge."  Not surprisingly it worked.  It impressed the Shi'ite leaders enough that they decided to be more cooperative with the Americans, it allowed the British to back out of an Iraqi mess that had cost Britain's political leadership deeply, and it cut back considerably the operational abilities of the Sunni jihadists in the northwest.  And hopefully it gave the Americans (and their private "contractors") the opportunity to do some serious training of the (now mostly Shi'ite) Iraqi army so as to be able to take control.  And thus as Bush approached the last months of his presidency in late 2008, he was finally able to begin the drawdown of the American military presence in Iraq.

 Inside of the Baghdad Convention Center, where the Council
of Representatives of Iraq meets.  This photo shows delegates
from all over Iraq convening for  the Iraqi NationalConference
30 December 2008.

Go on to the next section:

Economic Catastrophe (2008)

  Miles H. Hodges