A Way Out:
- To the People of the
Abstract. Since the elections of November
2006, the relevant organs of state have been under intense constitutional pressure
to bring about an end to the Iraqi affair. But the operation is proving to be
more of a challenge than was originally anticipated. Here, we propose that the
reason for this is that for the Americans to depart successfully, they must be
confident that they have left a functioning state behind; and that the only option they have at their disposal
should they decide to act along these lines is the restoration of the status quo ante. We then illustrate how
two obstacles may or must prevent this scenario from becoming a reality in the
foreseeable future - and by this we mean beyond, probably a ‘couple’ of years
beyond 2011. The first obstacle is obviously that it would seem improbable that
Restoration could ever be sold to the population back home. The second
obstruction is that, after 5 years of occupation, the only conceivable backbone
for any possible functioning state of
Introduction: on a collective madness
October, 2008.
It appears as if the outbreak of the financial crisis has made the Iraqi
question disappear from the radar screen of public attention. Well, it hasn’t
disappeared nor has it gotten any simpler. The story out of Washington
concerning this particular issue goes as such: the U.S., ‘allied’ and Armed
forces of the ‘democratically elected government of the sovereign people of
Iraq’ (in all, about 350,000 men and women in uniform), are fighting an epic
battle against ‘5,000 to 10,000 terrorists’ which are systematically putting
their efforts in check. After having had their efforts thwarted for the most
part of the past few years, the said ‘sovereign’ people and its ‘generous
friends’ from abroad are finally turning the situation around on the ground,
thanks to the enlightened strategy named ‘surge’ put forward by the no less
than enlightened Bush administration. In fact, things are going so well that
‘negotiations’ between the said administration and its Iraqi ‘counterpart’ have
produced a tentative ‘deal’ that could, if specific conditions are met, see
‘coalition’ troops leave by 2011 (Sofa). But, as the story goes, it is much too
early to rejoice, because the ‘5,000 to 10,000 terrorists’ remain a formidable
enemy. That’s why the president and his staff still never miss an opportunity to
assure their constituents that they will ‘stay the course’ until the ‘job is
done’. What is this ‘job’ they are referring to exactly? It’s impossible to
give a clear answer to the question, because the members of the administration
have never ceased to change their opinion on the subject. For example, they
spoke at first about getting rid of the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ they
believed were in Iraq, then they spoke about establishing ‘democracy, a
constitutional government and the rule of law’; now, at the end of their
mandate, they say that they would not have been unhappy to have settled for a
‘stable Iraq’. But, among other things, what do they mean by a ‘stable
What strikes us most here is not the
absurdity of the discourse as such, its Post-Modern style (or is it Surrealism?
Dadaism? What is it?), but is the fact that it has and still is encountering no
opposition worthy of the name. For example, one might have expected that, in
this year of a presidential election, the candidates would have seized the
moment to prove to their constituents that they are fit for the job they claim
to deserve by giving the actual administration the ride they ought to get on
the subject, but they have yet to do so. For now at least, it seems that
senator McCain - who sometimes claims the ‘surge’ is of his own making - has decided
to abdicate all responsibility on the matter, choosing instead to make a
mockery of it: on the one hand, he says loud and clear that he will never bend
to the irresponsible and inconsequent populace demanding an immediate
withdrawal and that he will fight the 5,000 to 10,000 terrorists ‘to the death’
even if that implies that the American soldiers remain in Iraq until the ‘end
of Time’; however, on the other hand, he whispers almost inaudibly (but still)
that his position could change very rapidly, depending upon the final shape of
a ‘definition of victory’ he’s currently working on (victory in Iraq achieved
by linguists - with the help of pollsters? -, instead of the Armed forces!
That’s the best one we’ve heard in a long time). The senator of Illinois, for
his part, has at least - in our opinion - succeeded in keeping his dignity
here, but, when the day is done, he has no more beef to show for than his
opponent does: he says that he’s prepared to start the evacuation process as
soon as he takes office - meaning that he will surrender to the ‘5,000 to
10,000 terrorists’ (or, put differently, that he has no problem with the
prospect of seeing the 150,000 U.S. soldiers go under the yoke of these
‘terrorists’) -; but adds on the other hand, echoing word for word the
preoccupations of the current administration, that this is conditional on the effect this measure will have on the ‘stability’
of the region (i.e. not only of Iraq, but of the whole Middle-East, and, by
extension, the rest of the world - oil). Here again, what is to be understood
by ‘stability’? He has yet to clarify this matter, which implies that, for the
moment at least, his position is surprisingly similar to the one of his
opponent, although articulated differently. In fact, if we could use a metaphor
to illustrate this, we would say that the senator in question, on this subject
at least, makes us think of Ryan Howard striking out: a whole lot of air is
being displaced, but no contact is being made. Another example of the free pass
the Bush administration has had regarding this problem which sucks up the
Nation’s wealth and blood (and let’s not forget about the critically injured,
whose fate is sometimes worse than death) is the total absence of the ‘news’
media complex in the debate: despite the fact that it’s a multi-billion dollar
business, it has yet, after five years, to answer a single intelligent question
on the subject. A third example of what we are trying to define is the
Passivity of the People. Among other things, the Sovereign Has never seemed to
Grasp that this ‘war’, which has cost over a trillion dollars by now and
counting, has and is still supported by money coming from abroad - Chinese for
the most part (nothing wrong with that, as we are about to discover, but still)
-; all at a time when the economy is crumbling and is badly in need of what
seems to be ever larger amounts of public funds to keep it afloat. But the
wealth, the product of the sweat of
So as of now, the main perspective
on the ground as seen from the viewpoint of the Bush administration - no
choice, there is no other - has not changed a bit, despite all the rhetoric.
The members of the ‘democratically elected government of the sovereign people
of Iraq’, the American political personnel - diplomats, CIA, ‘security’
contractors, high command of the Armed forces, etc. -, the foreign diplomatic
corps and personnel, etc. (in short, the whole apparatus of the occupation),
are still being besieged in central Baghdad in an area of the size of Soho, NY
- the so called ‘Green zone’ - by the ‘5,000 to 10,000 terrorists’, as they
have been for the past number of years. The Armed forces still must retreat
every night to their heavily fortified barracks, and when they go out the next
day, they are still again armed to the tooth, accompanied by tanks and a cell
phone ready to ring for air support in case a (or a band of ) ‘terrorist(s)’ is
(are) met. If the occupiers left tomorrow, the 20 million-plus ‘sovereign’
Iraqi people would ipso facto fall to
the ‘5,000 to 10,000 terrorists’, and the members of their ‘democratically
elected’ government would be swept away like dead leaves in a high wind. Now
the Bush administration, sounding like a broken record, asks again for
‘patience’: the ‘surge works’ and the ‘war’ is in the process of being ‘won’;
it’s just that it will still take a ‘little time’. But as for ourselves, we are
afraid that the ‘surge’ is just another gimmick invented by politicians ending
their mandates to hand over to their successors a problem they have absolutely
no clue of how to solve (as for the senator of Arizona, his pro ‘surge’ stand
seems to be nothing more and nothing less than a part of his election campaign
strategy). The most frightening thing here, in our opinion, is not that the
government of the most powerful country in the world all but admits that it
simply does not know what to do anymore about Iraq, but the fact that nobody or
organized entity among this nation of 300 million-plus also does seem to have
any idea about how to handle the hot potato, neither the presidential
candidates, nor Congress, nor the ‘news’ media, nor the People, nor the peace
movement. So notwithstanding the financial collapse, we believe that the
problem is certainly worth the attention. In the following pages, we will try
to sort it out.
Beforehand, we think that it’s
absolutely essential for you to realize that since the events of 2001, you have
systematically shot, bombed, imprisoned, tortured (ok, ‘abused’ if you insist -
but isn’t it the same thing?), or ostracized people at home or abroad who dared
not agree with you, or worse, people you suspected were not in agreement with
you. But did you, do you only know what
your thoughts consist of? Evidently not, judging by the
To frame a narrative, one must first put
forward a ‘method’, i.e. general principles of thought to which the discussion
must respond. Here, we propose the ‘philosophical’ approach, and by that we
mean a little logic and a heavy dose of common sense and pragmatism (this way
of proceeding will justify itself crystal clear later on). Second, one must
define an objective. What would be the practical use of a narrative of the
Some of you might be intrigued by who we are.
To this, we would like to indicate that we already addressed the matter in
‘Introduction to the Pax Americana Files’ (a text posted on this site in May
2007 - from now on ‘Intro’), and that we wont say more. But again, to help
dispel from the start any misunderstandings, let’s just say that we are from
I The Trap
Approaching the problem
of the American adventures in Iraq is no easy task, because the only account of
it, i.e. the one put forth by the administration which shall officially be the
subject of history next month, is a dense, one could say impenetrable web of
sophisms, questionable logic, dubious reasoning, half truths, outright lies
(remember the justifications for going to ‘war’?), etc. What makes this
narrative iron clad is not its intellectual merits (we repeat, does someone
really believes, among other things, that ‘5,000 to
The position of the
outgoing administration on the question of post-occupation Iraqi politics is in
perfect logical sequence to what could be observed above, and can be
articulated in this way: the ‘surge’ has succeeded in reigning in ‘terrorism’
and accelerating the process of ‘national reconciliation’: in a time frame
which is still impossible to predict accurately, the ‘democratically elected
government’ will take over the country and the foreign contingents shall leave.
Again, this is nothing but an abuse of linguistic terminology designed to save
face and assist the administration to end its mandate without being
embarrassed. As for the presidential candidates, either they endorse the hoax
(McCain) or they retreat from confronting it directly (‘Mr. Change’), for it
seems that, in the present context, in which no one questions the Bush
administration’s perspective of the ‘war’, to do otherwise would result in a
free-for-all in which there would be no way for them to know if it would help
or ruin their bid for presidency, and so they sail with the current. This being
understood, it is very true that the level of violence has sharply decreased
recently, but this is because the locals know you are on your way out. If you
would only dare to open your eyes, you would see that there are public reports
confirming again and again that since the congressional elections of 2006 and,
above all, since the launching of operation ‘surge’, the soldiers on the
ground, the Army’s high command and the diplomats have not stopped repeating it
to the Iraqis they meet every day. These, understandably, have received the
message loud and clear, and have thus begun instructing their followers to save
their energies for the struggle which will start the day the pullout will be
completed. What struggle? To make a long story short, let’s say that the
survival of the Iraqi state will depend on the outcome. Why bother, might you
ask? To make a long story short again, you must understand that the state of
* * *
Any plan of evacuation worthy of the
name must be concerned first and foremost with the question as to whether an
Iraqi state will be left standing should a pullout occur. If the answer is yes,
the operation will be possible indeed; if the answer is no, it will have to be
given a long and hard second look. That’s the issue to which the Bush
administration is confronted with since the congressional elections of 2008,
and that’s the issue to which the next president will be confronted with as
soon as he takes office. Now, two scenarios emerge as the only credible ones
when one contemplates the problem from this perspective, which could be termed
as ‘Islamization’ (or ‘Fundamentalization’) first, and Restoration second. The
first would see the establishment of some form of theocracy; the second would
be witnessing the resurrection of the secular dictatorship of the Baath party
(yes, the party of Saddam). The Fundamentalization of Iraq might appear from
the onset to be a bona fide option,
in the sense that it seems in all likelihood to contain all the ingredients for
the repetition of a familiar spectacle already seen in Afghanistan or Somalia:
thousands of local ‘warlords’ and other kinds of pocket chieftains will
immediately fill the vacuum caused by the departure of the invaders and
proclaim themselves virtual monarchs within the couple of hundred square feet
under their effective control, until the People, the Sovereign, the highest
authority in the land, Tired and Disgusted with these individuals, and in the
absence of any other alternative, will not Oppose the capture of power by a
radical religious group having entries in all fragments and sub-fragments of
the shattered society, and thus capable of restoring the authority of the state
so that it can perform at least minimally the tasks only a state can perform
(punishment of crime, building and maintaining of public utility
infrastructures, supporting the national economy, etc). Of course, you would be
infuriated by this because it would mean that you would have spent your blood
and money only to advance the cause you were supposed to be fighting, but at
least there will be a standing state of
But
again, where does that leave us? On the surface, nowhere, because the same
monotonous and sick spectacle repeats itself every day, as it has been for the
past five years: the soldiers go out of their barracks in the morning and
cruise through Arab Sunni territory; sometimes, they get shot at, sometimes,
they explode on IEDs, sometimes, they meet somebody wearing a dynamite belt
which detonates on their arrival, etc: in all cases, they return fire and kill
everyone around, and if something still moves, air support is called; at night,
they return to where they left in the morning, only to see their sleep (or
life) sometimes interrupted by a round of mortar (or two), and to wake up the
next day only to do the exact same thing that they did the day before. It is
absolutely true, however, that the level of resistance has sharply decreased in
the last year and a half, but those who do not cease to repeat it and draw on
that fact to affirm that ‘we are winning the war’ do not acknowledge that it
can also be argued that the opposition has softened because there is hardly
anyone left to do so. As usual, no one brings up this legitimate objection.
Also, there was talk at some point that the apparent weakening in the fighting
was the product of a mysterious ‘secret weapon’ that was ‘taking out’ almost by
magic any opposition, but, here again, one can be sure that this was just another
abuse of public opinion orchestrated by a moribund administration desperate to
see October end. Indeed, what needs to be done here is not to kill more people,
or more time, obviously, but to neutralize the idea, or, more precisely, the
ideas that will trigger the blowing apart of Iraq and the Middle-East state
system with it when your soldiers leave, and these are the ones held by radical
Sunni and Shiite religious leaders and their followers, which constitute an
overpowering majority in this part of the world. That’s the task, but no one,
again and again, from top to bottom of the entire American society, seems to be
aware of it, as it appears that, as it has been for the last five years, they
don’t have a perception of what they are doing. But all of this is on the
surface. If one looks closely behind what meets the eye, however, one can see
that, since the congressional elections of 2006, nothing short of a
paradigmatic shift, or if one prefers, a revolution, has occurred in the Bush
administration’s handling of this affair. If any ‘secret weapon’ has been put
into operation here, it’s that these folks have finally started to use their
brains. Of course, as usual, public opinion and its ‘news’ media seem
completely unaware of this, although the phenomenon is happening openly. Up
until then, the only language spoken to the Sunni Arabs was the one of the
rifle, but after the said elections, things changed subtly, but radically in
this regard. Two sets of measures can clearly be discerned. First, diplomatic openings were made to
the resistance, which could not but have been articulated more or less along
these lines: ‘you’d better get organized, because we’re packing soon’. The
other side, understanding perfectly well this universal language, acted
consequently. Of course, the siege of the ‘Green zone’ and the pressure on the
infrastructure of the occupation was not relinquished one bit, yet the Sunni
Arabs accepted to build an army in cooperation with the Americans (that’s the
much heralded ‘Sunni Awakening’). This fighting force, composed in good part by
the boys and girls that have become men and woman in the concentration camps
during the years of 2007 and 2008, is said to be 90’000 strong now. If it were
true - for our part, we do not think it’s a lie this time - it seems safe to
predict that this prolific and resilient people will be able to put 150’000
soldiers in the field by 2010, which will be more than enough not only to hold
their own, but also to challenge the other groups for the control of the state
when crunch time arrives. However, these soldiers cannot aim at imposing
al-Qaeda’s agenda (the imposition throughout the state of strict Sunni
orthodoxy), because the other groups will simply never bend to that: if, for
example, the future regime tried to reduce the Shiites to the same deplorable
conditions that they are subjected to in Saudi Arabia, there will be a war of
attrition: Iran will not accept this and will step in, the Kurds will at some
point seize the moment and proclaim their independence and then Turkey will
step in, and so on and so forth, until the spiral is out of control. The Sunni Arab army must not be an ethnic
militia: it must, when it’s strong enough, not to destroy, but be able to
convert and then absorb enough members of other groups so it can become
a truly genuine Iraqi army. This can only be done by persuasion, by convincing
enough of the members of the other groups that, in a free and liberated
But
unless proven otherwise, you are still prisoners of the trap you’ve made with
your bare hands and have thrown yourself into with such reckless abandon. How
can a community that took such a beating for so long suddenly rise up from its
ashes and place upon its shoulders the burden of maintaining the integrity of
the state? What is the real extent of the loss of civilian life among
II The Great Constitutional Meltdown
The Bush administration has changed its mind
so many times and in such a contradictory fashion when asked the question as to
why it decided to invade Iraq in the first place, that we prefer to wait until
more research is done on the subject to speak up on it. Besides, two opposing
theories present themselves. Of course, there are many variants to these, but
we believe that each can be reduced to the following: the first says that the
reason behind the invasion was to gain ‘control’ over Iraqi oil; the other argues
that it was rather the direct consequence of a ‘neo-conservative conspiracy’.
Both contain elements of truth but, when all is said and done, they are
completely inadequate: the first constitutes at best a truism; the second
amounts more to a fairy tale than anything else. Let’s review them for a
moment.
No
one will dispute the fact that if it were not for their oil deposits, the
Middle-East and Iraq would be as important to you (and to the rest of the
world) as are Lichtenstein, the Central African Republic, Paraguay or
Bangladesh, to name just a few. No one will contest the fact that if it were
not for oil, the reasons for invading
‘If you’re going to
go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to
These words of wisdom were spoken in 1991 by
none other than Dick Cheney, yes! ladies and gentleman, Dick ‘Ceterum censeo Saddamus esse delendam’
Cheney himself, then Secretary of Defence in the administration of Bush the
elder - and sometimes referred to as a ‘neo-con’ in the literature mentioned
above -, in response to the said ‘neo-conservatives’ and other people of the
sort who thought that the First Gulf War had ended prematurely. We hope there
is no doubt in your mind now as to why the invasion was flatly rejected right
from the start by the prominent members of both major parties, and why it
stayed that way all through the 90’s and continuing into the beginnings of the
new millennium. There was no question of going to
On 9/11, while the towers collapsed,
an emotional tsunami overwhelmed the
Surely, such was the rationale
behind the invasion, a move which simply did not make sense from any military
or economic perspective, but is perfectly understandable if perceived to have
been dictated by internal political necessities, more precisely to quench the
seemingly insatiable thirst for ‘Arab’ blood present in
* * *
Perhaps
the most significant point that this perspective may enable us to understand in
this complex issue is Bin Laden’s strategy. One must acknowledge that this
individual is first and foremost a (Sunni) religious fanatic and, as such, that
his primary objective is to establish a strict (Sunni) orthodoxy everywhere
possible. In the beginning, the main obstacle he faced was that he did not have
the means of realizing his ambitions. There he was, sitting in a cave with
nothing else but a few followers: how would the grandiose dreams to be
realized? It must not have taken long for them to find out that the only way
they would succeed would be if they could make others work for them. But who?
It is then that you, the People of the
Reflecting with the intent of seeing
how the cycle of madness can be broken is certainly worth a last chapter.
III What is Pax Americana?
To be continued
(chapters II and III of the text which can be downloaded here by clicking on
‘télécharger’ constitute a bona fide
introduction to what will follow).
A Word dedicated in all Humility and
with all due Respect to the responsible Citizens who intend to exercise their
Right to Vote in the next presidential Election
April
30, 2007. In spite
of that smoke screen called ‘surge’, it is a secret only to the naive or those
whose reasoning is based on false premises that what can be called ‘Operation
Out of Baghdad’ is well underway. It was initiated by the highest authority of
the land, one that no one, be he President, or no interest group, be it the
‘military-industrial complex’, can disobey: the People. The process is slow
because the Sovereign, in the United States, in compliance with the Law first
imagined and written down by the ‘Founding Fathers’ and then ratified by
Himself, the Constitution we say, must proceed ‘orderly’ if He wishes to make
Himself understood. First, a majority of Citizens must agree on a manner to
approach a given set of circumstances - or on a solution to bring to a
particular problem, or whichever way one wishes to put it -, second, this
agreement among this particular majority of Citizens must be sustained.
Through the electoral process and subsequent capture of the concerned
governmental institutions, the system of ‘checks and balances’ is then
short-circuited to the necessary extent and the given majority sooner or later
prevails. These cases, needless to say, are of extreme rarity. Usually,
democratic majorities evaporate almost instantly, so that representatives
elected at a given moment with a ‘clear’ mandate, as soon as they come to
office, have to fight with other representatives elected at other given moments
on no less ‘clearer’, but different mandates (because handed out in different
circumstances), all of them, as time evolves, seeing their legitimacy and clout
undermined by the arrival of other representatives better grounded on the
issues of the day (who remembers a year ago ? Who remembers three or four years
ago ? On September 11/01, who remembered the day before ?). This is not to say
that nothing ever gets done in the United States. Simply, we mean that in the
‘normal’ course of American politics, change is extremely slow to come about,
because the Sovereign, the Supreme Authority, the most capable agent indeed in
relation with this matter, is usually of no - or very little - effect, as He
simply annuls Himself by Himself by way of His own inconsistency - this is the
core of the ‘Father’s’doctrine, what makes the rest hang together. But again,
we must specify that we don’t want to imply either that the People is of no
importance in U.S. politics; in fact, we affirm the exact opposite. The point
we are trying to make is simply that by virtue of this way of proceeding, the
Sovereign makes it very hard on Himself to act, because He generally tends to
show a tendency, when He is in His ‘right’ frame of mind, to be versatile, mobile,
variable, indecisive, etc. But the situation we are witnessing is without a
doubt different, most certainly ‘abnormal’, as it now appears obvious that the
congressional elections of November 2006 were no flashes in the pan. The
Sovereign wants out, and He will vote His way and harass the concerned organs
of government until this is done. Americans are on their way out of Iraq, that
is a certainty, the only unknown that remains being the time when the pull out
will be complete. This moment seems to be approaching with lightning speed as
Congress, under intense public pressure, pressure that grows by the day, is on
the course of passing a Bill that would require the soldiers to leave by 2008.
In this context, the President’s menace to veto any such measure carries risks
only to himself, because he, in the United States, who runs contrary to the
People’s intention is sooner or later crushed. Still, we doubt very much that
the plans of evacuation currently being studied will go past the stage of
discussion, not because of the President’s apparent hostility (a President can
be impeached - and in the actual frame of things, this one is in great danger
of that), but because of the extraordinary situation a retreat would call into
existence, a situation which complexity has yet to be understood by anyone in
all its implications, especially in relation with national security. In short,
it is obvious that the representatives have received loud and clear the message
of their Master - the President included -, but we believe that they won’t
deliver anytime soon on what is expected from them, not because they don’t have
the power to do so (the ‘Big Boss’ has spoken, there is now no other
interpretation possible here), but simply because they don’t want to take
responsibility for the enactment of a measure whose fall out promises to be so
uncertain. Rather, these representatives are seemingly ‘buying time’, with what
appears to be two objectives in mind: first, they test the resolve of the
People’s mood, second, in the case that sentiment proves durable, they ensure
that the next presidential election will be fought squarely over the issue of
the return of the soldiers - a presidential Veto, should it ever be put to use,
shall only be understood in terms of these ‘delaying tactics’. Why such
cautiousness ? Maybe an overview of the problem facing these representatives
will help to understand how treacherous it is. So let’s then try now to put us
in their shoes - and in those of the next President, there should be no doubts
about this.
The
idea here is to banish any sort of wishful thinking and attempt to forecast as
accurately as possible the shape that Iraqi politics will take after all
foreign troops will have left. This understood, if one bases one’s reasoning on
the assumption that the State will survive the end of Occupation, two credible
scenarios seem to arise naturally, which could be referred to as ‘Restoration’
on the one hand, and ‘Islamization’ on the other. The first case would see a
return to the status quo ante, i.e. a re-establishment of the Baath
party with all its prerogatives. The second would be witness to a sequence of
events already seen in Afghanistan or Somalia: swarms of ‘warlords’ would
immediately re-cover the country, each and every single one of these creatures
making their arbitrary rule absolute within the couple of hundred square feet
where their authority would hold, until the People, exhausted, would give way
to a strong fundamentalist government having entries in all fragments and
sub-fragments of the political body, and thus capable of imposing by force the
basic principles of life in society (punishment as it should be of murder,
rape, theft, etc.; garbage collection; maintenance and construction of public
utility infrastructures - hospitals, schools, roads, etc. -, etc). But as soon
as one starts to examine this second scenario more closely, however, one
rapidly realizes that it is simply not credible. It is not because there is not
one brand of Islam in Iraq but two, whose disciples are as compatible with each
other as were those of Loyola and Calvin, to name just this example. This can
be seen everyday: the country has been conquered and demolished beyond
recognition; the population has been decimated or has fled; the Nation has been
under the yoke of foreign occupiers for four full years now, and they keep on
fighting and killing each other for syllogisms, as if nothing else worthy of
their attention existed. As if it were not enough, deep divisions can be
observed among members of a same confession (especially among Shiites). No, the
idea of an Islamic-fundamentalist government here is rigorously antinomic with
the notion of a State that is one and functional. For the State
of Iraq to survive Occupation, it must be taken over by a secular party which
plunges roots in all religious communities (i.e. also Christian and
others). Now, in the real world, there are not ten formations of the
sort in Iraq, there are not four, there are not two, there is one, and
its name is ‘Baath’. Which brings us back to our first scenario. But still,
even if the surrealistic foresight of an aspiring President trying to persuade
his/her apprehended Constituents to put back in place the party of Saddam would
materialize (the spin would be that the establishment of a ‘new’ Baath, i.e.
with a ‘human face’ and led by a ‘moderate’ leader of the kind of the Mubaraks
or the Musharafs, would permit to safeguard at least minimally U.S. national
security, thus permitting evacuation), it remains to be seen as to what
happened to the members of the Baath party in the last few years. In the Shiite
areas, their fate is not hard to imagine: as soon as the Americans ‘took over’
the country, they were probably almost all rounded up and systematically put to
death by the men of the Ayatollahs. In the Sunni parts of the country, it all
depends on the extent to which the American policy of ‘de-baathification’ put
in the works in the aftermath of the Invasion was carried out. Therefore, as a
first conclusion, it can be said that the scenario of Restoration may also not
be credible after all, for there is most probably nothing left to restore
anymore. So, let’s say it cannot be entirely ruled out, but appears to be at
best highly improbable for the moment.
All this to
say that planning for evacuation on the premise that a viable Iraqi
State will be left behind might be mistaken, because there are strong
indications that the State in question could very well have ceased to exist
already. What would that imply for American security ? To be frank, it’s
anybody’s guess. What is certain for now is that at the moment the last foreign
soldier leaves, the civil war will spill over the whole Middle Eastern State
system, thus giving life to a gigantic security Black Hole, a maelstrom
whose power of suction will be of high intensity; this right on the world’s
most prolific oil producing region. The script by which military chaos will
insinuate (or engulf ?) itself is already written. It will be function of three
distinct stages. Stage I: the two fault lines that fracture the Iraqi society
today, which can be termed as the ‘Shiite-Sunni divide’ on the one hand, and
the ‘Arab-Kurd divide’ on the other, will widen ever further at prodigious
speed. Stage II: the region will align itself accordingly. In the first case,
the remains of the Sunni community will be supported by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf States (less Bahrain). They will face their Shiite
compatriots, who will be backed by Iran and, in one way or another, by their
fellow disciples of Ali of the Arabic Peninsula (example: the very sizable
Saudi Shiite minority makes its home in this country’s oil producing region).
For good measure, Syria, Turkey and Israel will also be protagonists, but as
what could named as ‘wild cards’. In the second case, the Kurds will face the
daunting task of confronting Turkey, Iran, Syria and what’s left of Iraq’s
Sunni community altogether, with virtually no hope of being assisted by anyone.
But they will stand up and fight. Stage III: the U.S. and the other ‘great
powers’ will continue to boast about the ‘superiority’ of their ‘moral values’
but, simultaneously, won’t be able to refrain from selling arms to the
belligerents, and will thus watch with anxiety the unfolding of events in their
traditional ‘sphere of interest’ (the Arabian Peninsula, Jordan, Iraq and Iran
for Britain and the U.S.; Iran for Russia; Iraq - and Turkey - for Germany; as
France will as usual continue to cramp on Germany while trying at the same time
to collect a leftover here and there). Past that point, as was already
mentioned, rational forecasting is no longer possible: at this very moment in
time, the only prediction that can be made is that the region on which America
(and the world) depends in great measure for its oil supply will be submitted
in full to the laws of chance, with all
that implies for the oil business. In the absence of an Iraqy state, nothing
can be ruled out on that matter (a barrel at 100$? 200? Something else?
Your guess, reader, is as good as anybody's). It is no wonder that American representatives
are doing everything they can not to acquiesce to the order that was issued to
them from high up: it could very well be that a plan of evacuation worthy of
the name has yet to be assembled.
So let’s
attempt to put the argument together again. The Supreme Authority in the United
States or, if one prefers, the Sovereign, who does not expresses Himself in any
other tense than the imperative and does not tolerate disobedience, has,
following the congressional elections of 2006, issued a dictate which could be
formulated as such: ‘It is now time to leave Iraq’. What permits to be sure
that the ‘Boss’ is taking sides on this issue is not the mere outcome of
elections as such - a rather commonplace event if there ever was -, but the
fact that the democratic majority which has manifested itself on that occasion
has gathered strength since instead of disintegrating, as democratic majorities
usually do almost as soon as they come into existence. This means that all
opposition to the Sovereign’s Will is now at this very moment on the way to
being choked out of political life. The best example of this is that candidates
for the next presidential election who do not get the message are facing the
prospect of having to abandon the race because of their inability to raise the
necessary amount of funds, while their more receptive counterparts are awash in
money. Another good example is the recent turnaround of the Mass Media: deaf,
mute and blind not so long ago (i.e. when the war was ‘popular’), it slowly but
surely discovers it has abundance of eyes, ears and tongues at its disposal
(shall we say brains ?), and has started, four years later, to examine the
enterprise from a more critical angle, as a result of which the public debate
is now on the way of being purged of the ‘out of phase’ point of view. As it
unfolds, it can be predicted with certainty that the winner of the next
presidential election will be he/she (Democrat or Republican) who will present
what will appear to be the ‘best’ plan of withdrawal on the day the Sovereign
will make His decision, in November 2008 (‘best’, i.e. in relation with
national security). This understood, the said candidates cannot but weigh two
options in relation with this forthcoming mandate, options that can be named
‘Restoration’ one the one hand, and ‘cut and run’ on the other. Provided there
are still enough secularists alive in Iraq, the return to the status quo
ante appears to be an option on the condition a ‘moderate’ dictator can be
found, a ‘good tyrant’ of the kind Americans seem to be enamoured so much that
they are willing to forgive any encroachment he may make on the ‘moral values’
they say they hold for ‘sacred’ (‘Democracy’, ‘Human Rights’, ‘Rule of Law’,
etc). Of course, Americans will also have to kiss goodbye many of the ‘laws
voted in’ by the previous ‘democratically elected’ government, like those that
sell short the country’s oil to the MNCs, for example (secularists are
secularists, not traitors). This, however, will permit to safeguard the
integrity of the State, which in turn will enable the region to hold together
‘by itself’ (in an atmosphere of ‘uneasy peace’ but still), thus leaving
America free to extract itself from the swamp and throw it’s full weight at
Al-Quaeda, finally. In addition, the debonair ‘strong man’, the ‘sympathetic
autocrat’ - who will spare the Kurds -, will be the U.S.’s most effective and
zealous ally on the ‘war on terror’, because the opposition between secular
Baath and Islamic fundamentalism is not just circumstantial, as it is for the
U.S. for example (9/11), but visceral, completely and irremediably antinomic.
But, provided that there is still at least an embryo of organized secularism in
Iraq, that must be specified, the aspiring presidential candidate will still
have to find the words to explain to the Nation that the thousands of deaths,
the tens of thousands of critically injured, the hundreds of billions of
dollars sunk into the enterprise - not to mention the 150’000 Iraqi civilian
deaths, the astonishing quantity of injured, the no less hallucinating number
of refugees (four million, yes, 4’000’000, half at home, half abroad), etc.
(according to the most recent UN figures, which are generally accepted by
students of this episode, but which are deemed too low by most serious
analysts) - were mere vain sacrifices, and that an exit strategy, to be
‘successful’, has no choice but to rely entirely on ‘the party of Saddam’.
This, at least for the moment, seems to be at best a long shot, but most surely
an infallible recipe for losing the election. So, we’re left with ‘cut and
run’. At first, this option might appear attractive for an aspiring
representative whose objective is to seduce the electorate, in the sense it
seems to offer plenty of room to juggle with the ‘moralistic’ approach, so
prevalent since the beginning of this affair. The spin would be of
incommensurable ‘sex appeal’ (this term being employed here in the meaning
immortalized by Tony Blair shortly before the Attack): ‘We came in with good
intentions; we did our best; it didn’t work out; too bad; farewell’. Then, when
the civil war breaks out, it will be possible at some point to dump the
responsibilities of the mass casualties inflicted on Iraqis by the Occupier
(which are denied to this day by Washington - ‘we don’t count the bodies we cut
down’) on some Ayatollah, to stamp the ‘G’ word on him, and, furthermore, why
not, to drop a couple of hundred thousand tons of depleted uranium explosives -
with ‘precision’, of course - as ‘punishment’ for such ‘flagrant violations’ of
the ‘Universal and Timeless moral principles’ (preferably on the Shiites, who
did not resist during the Occupation and were thus generally spared, to
‘equalize’ the amount of devastation upon the two communities). This line of
action would indeed be very clever, ‘sexed-up’ all right, and in direct
continuation of the spirit that led to the war in the first place and presided
over it for its whole duration. It will allow to ‘save face’, to win the election,
and also to secure some degree of ‘popularity’ afterwards. But then again,
there are also strong indications that the ultimate dividends such an approach
will yield will only be, once again, of those of the kind provided by Pyrrhic
victories. In other words, if the goal here is to ‘run’ in order to have free
hands to go after Al-Quaida, one can affirm without fear of being mistaken too
much that the U.S. won’t be able to venture very far. One obvious example of
this is that it can be certain that Bin Laden’s disciples will thrive as fish
in water if the evacuation proceeds without leaving behind a strong secular
State, let alone no State at all or, if one prefers, a civil war. In addition,
it will take a considerable amount of money and energy on the part of America
to prevent the twelve States of the region from being altogether sucked into
the Black Hole. One last example: it is impossible to predict how the oil
production and exports will be affected by the Swirl, so enough forces will
have to be kept at bay and ready, ‘just in case’ (but where ?). One could go on
like that for quite a time, but the moment to make a second conclusion has
arrived. It seems that the Sovereign, which one has no choice but to obey or
assume the consequences, has made up His mind. Sooner or later, the pressure
applied on the political institutions will become unbearable, and Iraq will
have to be evacuated. Period. As it stands out today, it seems that the
responsibilities to bring that about will fall on the next President’s
shoulders and, as it stands out today, the course of action that this person
will adopt on that occasion is still up in the air. On the surface, two options
seem available, that can be termed ‘Restoration’ first, and ‘cut and run’
second. The first, from a well understood national security point of view,
would seem the best one by far. Leaving behind a strong, grass roots, genuine
Arabic secular party (at the hands of a 'gentle despot', or why not a woman ?
an Arab 'Iron Lady' - the Baath only discriminates against religious
fanaticism) would have six distinct advantages. First, the integrity of the
State would be preserved, thus eliminating the probabilities of civil war.
Second, as a result, a collapse of the Middle East State system would be
avoided (the region would still be ‘tense’, that is agreed, but it would not
catch fire). Third, as a result, the probabilities of disruption of oil
production and exports would dramatically diminish. Fourth, as a result, the
US, extracted from the quagmire, could envisage with optimism its own
restoration over global leadership. Fifth, as a result, a true, effective,
coordinated international strategy could then be built around a clear objective
understood worldwide: the neutralization of Al-Quaida. Sixth, in the ‘new’
Baath party, America will have found its most zealous and reliable partner in
this endeavour, for there is no organized political force on the Planet -
U.S.A. included - more antagonistic, more allergic to all the brands and
sub-brands of Islamic fanaticism than this one. But this option, however, could
very well not be one, as it seems most likely that the current administration
and their Ayatollah friends appear to have made sure it woundn’t. How many
members of the Baath party are there still alive in Iraq today ? That is the
question. Hence, there are good probabilities that the person whose mandate it
will be to terminate the Occupation will have no other choice than to ‘cut and
run’. In the previous case, it could be seen that Restoration would have permitted
America to truly evacuate the region and give it the latitude to retool its
vast web of global alliances towards the objective everybody agrees on in good
faith: the neutralization of Al-Quaeda. Here, we are afraid the U.S. will
only ‘run’ into another quagmire. Just consider the monumental urgencies that
will have to be treated in priority: the Iraqi civil war, the Middle
East state system meltdown and the subsequent inevitable perturbations
of the oil business. In this apocalyptic atmosphere, it will be very hard
to put in motion any semblance a of concrete coordinated international
strategy, because America, when it will sollicit help abroad, will still again
be subjected to the poison that ‘it should take care itself of the mess it
initiated in the first place’. As for Bin Laden, it seems pretty safe to say
that he will have a new lease on life, and that if he dies in the upcomming
period, there is a chance that it will be of laughter. So, everything
preceeding can be summarized as such: the Sovereign, most of the time mute, has
uttered a sentence, which could be said to be: ‘Quit Iraq, now !’. Since
disobedience is unimaginable over time in this case, that will happen sooner or
later, most probably under the next President’s tenure. As things stand out
now, it appears quite clear that the U.S. will leave behind military chaos, and
that the ‘twister’ will expand first to the region (the two fractures), and
then cause wider disruptions which are simply impossible to forecast with any
semblance of accuracy right now (the ‘oil factor’). The difficulty with this
more than credible scenario is that what shall become its driving force,
military chaos that is, seems to be a problem most Americans don’t even
anticipate. If it would have been otherwise, neither the Attack, nor the
subsequent destruction of the Iraqi State would have occurred (in that last
case though, confirmation still makes itself awaited). So, in a nutshell: the
clock is ticking, evacuation is just around the corner, but nobody seems to have
a clue of what will need to be done next.
It is in
this context that the research paper posted on this Internet site justify its
existence. It does not provide any ready-made prescription to cure the ills of
the day. Rather, it tackles head-on the problem of military chaos and, in doing
so, puts forward intellectual tools that may help to understand its dynamics
and allow it eventually to be dealt with. As such, our main finding is that
America’s encounters with military chaos are not a new phenomena, but began
right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In these pages, we see how, on that
occasion, the danger was infinitely greater than the one that looms over today,
because it was not a mere region that was about to erupt, but the whole
Eurasian continent. Moreover, we see how the U.S. turned the tide of these
troubled and potentially disastrous circumstances not only to its advantage, but
to the advantage of the whole (the beauty, the aesthetics or, if one
prefers, the sublime of the thing lies there), and thus hit what could
be called a ‘diplomatic Grand Slam’. Here is shown with photographic precision
how this was done. First, we introduce the strategists who were the architects
of that masterful achievement. Second, we review and analyse a significant fragment
of the abundant and enlightened literature they produced on that occasion,
which, as far as we are concerned, only concede to the ‘Federalist Papers’ in
terms of importance in the history of American political litterature (we
propose to call this literature the ‘Pax Americana Files’). Finally, we
witness the process by which the State adopted the ideas of these theoreticians
and put them into practice. In other words, we say that the opposition between
the U.S. and military chaos might very well be at the core of what is called
‘Pax Americana’, its first principle, or essence if you will. This Pax
Americana, which can be said to have established itself after the demise of
Communism, can be divided into two distinct periods, or ‘rounds’. The first one,
which is studied here and which can be determined by the time frame included
between the fall of the ‘Eastern Block’ and 9/11, was a no contest, in the
sense that the ‘Genie’ was successfully and swiftly bottled. The ‘second
round’, which started after 9/11, is still too close to call, but, based on our
studies, there are good reasons to be optimistic. For one, the students of war
which engineered America’s stellar performance after the collapse of the Soviet
Union are alive and well for what we know, some of them still even being quite
‘young’. For two, we would assume that many of these proven clutch hitters are
ready, and indeed most eager to be called up once more to the plate (Secretary
of State or other). The difficulty here is that these supremely gifted patriots
have been critical from the start of the whole Iraq operation - an opposition
that sometimes borders on the vindictive - and we fear that what they will say
might be too harsh, or perhaps more justly, too ‘realist’ for the Public to
swallow (which means that the representatives, if this is still the case, will
remain ‘neutral’). Therefore, a third conclusion can be put on the table here.
America will sooner or later evacuate Iraq, and it is most likely that it will
leave behind a state of military chaos that will most probably expand. To where
? Nobody can tell at this stage. The point we are trying to get across is that
there is no shortage of students of the military in the United States whose
specialty it is to deal with the problem of chaos, and who have in that regard
brilliant track records. Nothing, however, will be possible without the
necessary amount of support among the population. So here, in this ‘historical’
essay, is an inventory, a showcase of some of the resources the Public has at
Its disposal to help face the challenge that will soon arise. It features the
most powerful weapon of them all, the brain; it shows that America has an
abundant supply of this material; and pledges it shall use it in full force.
The results might be to the eyes of some less ‘sexy’ than the bombing of Iran
‘back to the stone age’ or the ‘fallujahizing’ of Sadr City, for example, but
we are convinced they will be far more conclusive (given the nature of the
‘enemy’). It is in this context, we repeat, that the reading of the pages
posted on this site is of some pertinence.
At first,
our intentions were different. This project was initially begun in the
aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Like most students of the military -
Americans included -, we were reeling after the ‘unthinkable’ had happened, and
were trying to understand what was going on. We finally gave the preliminary
results of the investigation under the form of this paper in April of 2003, as
a draft for a Ph. D. Thesis (it was posted on the Internet a year ago). Our
objective then was to understand the true strength of the American military
machine, in the hope of shedding some light on a simple question: ‘Where will
it stop ?’. The originality of our approach was that instead of counting tanks,
planes, boats, ‘smart’ weapons, etc., and then conclude by being in awe in the
face of such an inexorable entity, as it seems to be done in many studies
concerning this particular field, we wanted to isolate and then put to the test
the ideas, or, if one prefers, the intellectual foundations on
which rests the Colossus, or, perhaps more precisely, we simply wished to
locate its driving force in order to try to determine where it was heading. In
doing so, we found, barring our way, the widely held belief that holds that the
hypertrophy of the American military machine in the contemporary world is the
result of a ‘conspiracy’ finding its origin in some dark corners of the
‘industrial-military complex and of the conservative (and neo imperialist)
right’. A fourth conclusion could be inserted here, stating that if there is
one thing that this paper does, it is to expose the myth for what it is. This
being said, our proposed hypothesis have still not been contradicted, and we
challenge anyone, not only in the U.S., but on the entire planet, to put them
to the test: the true strength of the U.S. war machine lies not in its size
or the level of sophistication of its weaponry, but in the aim it
serves. In a Sovietless world, it is the only force capable of reining in
global military chaos and, as such, it preserves not only U.S. national
interest, but also the common good. Should it be put to use to other
ends, there is every reason to believe that serious problems will arise,
problems that military might in itself will be unable to solve. In the
Post Soviet world, the only enemy worthy of this name the United States faces
is itself. That is why the original text has been left untouched
(save some minor corrections, stylistic for the most part, and the fixing up of
the eternal typing errors - and we sincerely apologize for the unevenness of
the footnotes, publishing on the Internet has its limits), despite the sharp
difference in ‘context’.
One might
wonder why this paper is paper written in French if its intention is to touch
the greater public. There are two reasons for this. First, we had no
intentions, in the beginning, of reaching to anyone but our apprehended
research director (and further, to the potential members of the Jury - an
ambitious enough task, as will surely agree any person who has had the
slightest degree of exposure to the Ph. D). Second, we sure initially wrestled
in the first moments with the prospect of communicating our perception in
today’s Lingua Franca, but it became almost instantly crystal-clear that
our command of written English was not up to par (this is still the case, as
the reader will surely agree). We believe we can assemble a word (in this case,
we tried our best), but not 100 pages or more - at least not yet. Still, we
figured that out of a Nation of 300’000’000, a potential market for readership
was there. One might also wonder why this paper is anonymous. The cause is
simple. Due to illness, the project had to be interrupted (November 2003). We
are not prepared to say more other than it is very serious and has to be
treated in priority, this meaning we’re out of business for now. In any case,
it is our deep conviction that the ‘name’ is of absolutely no importance
towards the understanding of the subject. What is to be emphasised here is the
the Pax Americana Files. These, we think, can be divided into two
‘chapters’. The first is closed. It was written during the period going from
the fall of the Berlin Wall until 9/11, and a synthesis of it is at the
disposal of anyone who wishes to visit this Internet site (II and III). The
second chapter, which began after 9/11, is still in the process of being
created. Whenever we have the opportunity, we follow with great interest the
constitution of that fascinating literature, as it grows and builds itself
together every day. As a fifth conclusion, we would like to express our belief
that every single person who intends to vote in the upcoming presidential
election should have at least some minimal exposure to that literature. Shall
that occur, we garantee that the American People will be nobody’s fool in this
affair anymore (because, if we’re not mistaken, that seems to be the core of
the problem - we will maybe expand on that another day). So as a last word, and
for those who will be leaving us now, we display here what in our eyes are some
of the brightest features of this ‘second chapter’:
I. In the
aftermath of 9/11
Barry Posen. «The
Struggle against Terrorism: Strategy, Grand Strategy and Tactics», International
Security (IS), 26: 3 (2001-02).
Steven Walt.
«American Primacy: its Prospects and Pitfalls», Navy College War Review,
55: 2 (2002).
Steven Brooks and
William Wholforth, «American Primacy in Perspective», Foreign Affairs
(FA), 81: 4 (2002).
II. Reacting to
the Bush Doctrine and to the project of going to war with Iraq
John Ikenberry.
«America’s Imperial Ambitions», FA, 81: 5 (2002).
Steve E. Miller.
«Gambling on War: Force, Order and the Implications of attacking Iraq», in
Carl Kaisen et al., War with Iraq: Costs, Consequenses and
Alternatives, Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002.
Joseph Nye Jr. «The
Limits of American Power», Political Science Quarterly, 117:4 (2002-03).
John Mearsheimer
and Steven Walt. «An Unnecessary War», Foreign Policy (FP), Jan.-Feb.
2003.
John Mearsheimer
and Steven Walt. «Keeping Saddam in a Box», www.Harvard.edu
(reprinted from The New York Times, Feb. 2, 2003).
III. After the
Attack
Jack Snyder.
«Imperial Temptations», The National Interest (NI), 71: 2 (spring 2003).
Robert Jervis. «The Compulsive
Empire», FP, juil.-aug. 2003.
Joseph Nye Jr. «US
Power and Strategy after Iraq», FA, 82: 4 (2003).
Zbignew Brzezinsky. «Hegemonic Quicksands», NI,
74: 1 (2003-04).