The people of the United States have now subsidized through taxes some $1 trillion dollars in military spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Actually, it’s more like $1.5 trillion – that ‘.5’ is just a nuisance to have to continually type.

The majority of that, some $750 billion dollars, has been used to fund the war in Iraq, dwarfing the $299 billion spent on operations in Afghanistan.

That said, let’s suppose that you’re a staunch proponent of the War On Terror and its many facets. Let’s also assume that you’re aware of the fact that compared to the two figures that I’ve just mentioned, the funds allocated Operation Noble Eagle, which represents domestic security since 9/11, totaled a mere $33 billion dollars as of June of 2008. Of course, there’s the Black Budget to consider as well, but given that its classified it’s rather difficult to know how those funds have been annually allocated over the last nine years.

So let’s begin…

Afghanistan

Following the attacks of September 11th, the United States invaded Afghanistan. The primary purpose of the invasion was to kill or capture the command infrastructure of al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power given that they had provided a safe haven for al-Qaeda from which to operate. This particular justification is interesting given that the Pakistanis have long contended that three different offers of surrendering Bin Laden were made by the Taliban in 2001, all of which were ignored.

Mind you, that should come as no surprise given that removal of the Taliban was something that was on the books despite the events of 9/11. Having been supported by the Clinton Administration, the Taliban’s instability had come to be viewed as too much of a risk with regards to assurances that it could deliver the United States the control it desired over natural gas routes to the Caspian Sea. So, 9/11 or not, it had to go.

It’s here that we’ll pause for a moment so that something can be made rightly clear. Had the Taliban faithfully placated the US with regards to the afore mentioned pipeline, even given the events of September 11th, it’s doubtful that the goal would have been to militarily remove them from power. The reason? Because it’s far easier to manipulate a regime that truly requires your assistance to consolidate power than it is to undertake the long and arduous process of militarily invading a nation, instituting a ‘friendly’ government, and having to deal with fighting an asymmetric conflict against a diversified insurgency. Had the Taliban been more pliable, chances are that they would still be in power, and that to ensure the stability of their relationship with the United States they would have coughed up Bin Laden, et all, in the process. Politics is power, religious fundamentalism or not.

So, imagine a world in which the Taliban had not been portrayed as evil, but rather allies. Because the reality is had they played ball prior to 9/11 that very well could have been the case. Than again, they very well could have been trying to in the dying minutes of the proverbial fourth quarter, we’ll never know.

In any event, the face of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has since been wholly corrupted to placate the simplistic and hypocritical Western derision of ‘justice’. Beyond the realities of what took place behind the scenes before and after the invasion, it has since been painted as a crusade to liberate an imprisoned people, to ensure that human rights prevail, and so forth. Despite a variety of scandals that contradict all of our wonderful principles – that have even been defended given the ‘realities of the War On Terror – and the fact that the conflict itself has become massively diversified and spilled over into another country, the base belief that the invasion and occupation is ‘just’ remains prominent – not to mention expensive.

Iraq

I’m the last person in the world that enjoys defending the Central Intelligence Agency, but when it comes to the Iraq debacle it has to be said that the CIA was, quite literally, hung out to dry.

There are numerous theories as to why Iraq was targeted despite the fact that no connection existed between it and 9/11, the most prominent being the desire to control its vast oil reserves. That justification is one that I have never believed to be the primary reason, thought it can be rightly said that it was certainly an afterthought. In my opinion, the establishment of a permanent military footprint in the region has always been the goal, and it is one that remains a very real possibility, even given the limitations present in various agreements with the current government of Iraq.

Returning to the CIA – prior to the invasion they did their due diligence. In the end, they came up empty. That, of course, did not mesh with the administration’s position, so Dick Cheney established an independent intelligence group that found rather timely ‘evidence’ that not only tied the regime of Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, but also revealed Iraq’s ‘ongoing’ attempts to acquire materials that could be used to produce nuclear weapons.

Both were engineered, both were entirely baseless.

Unfortunately, that didn’t stop them from being successfully used to literally terrorize the American public into backing the invasion. In fact, even years after the invasion, and after solid evidence was made public that no connection existed between the regime of Hussein and al-Qaeda, the majority of the American public still believed his regime was complicit in the attacks of 9/11 – that’s how profound its initial impact was.

Of course, that doesn’t alter the fact that the CIA knew that Cheney’s ‘intelligence’ was made to order. Unfortunately, given that it ultimately answers to the Whitehouse, those within the Agency that valued their positions weren’t prepared to go to the mat to defend what they had initially concluded – not to mention that the halls at Langley had been filled with politically motivated upstarts willing to placate the administration, thus posing a threat to respected CIA veterans that viewed them as a threat to the integrity of the Agency. So they reluctantly played their role and did nothing as Colin Powell, who privately opposed the invasion, was sent to the United Nations with a briefcase full of lies.

Despite widespread belief, the invasion of Iraq was never authorized by the United Nations Security Council. To this day, under international law, the invasion remains an illegal act. While you might agree that the removal of Saddam Hussein was worth the effort, technically he was actually well within his rights to maintain the position during his trial that he did not have to recognize the court’s authority. Given that the invasion was in breach of international law, he was technically still the President of the country and therefore tried by a court that did not possess they legal authority to charge or pass sentence on him. Were the invasion legal, Hussein would have had legal recourse to be tried at The Hague. Even though his legal representation argued that he possessed that right, the fact that the country was, for all intents and purposes, unilaterally invaded, petitions to have his trial moved were easily dismissed.

Now, this is something that is very important, no matter your views on Hussein and his crimes. If we were to sit here all day and tally the nations that are currently under the heel of despots guilty of committing egregious acts, the United States and its allies would currently be in the process of invading dozens of countries – or cutting ties with them. Given that that isn’t occurring, it’s best to put aside media driven propaganda and look objectively at history.

For roughly three of the four centuries that the Ottomans ruled the vilayets of what is now modern Iraq, the seat of administrative authority was located in that of Baghdad. In 1921, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War, Great Britain, by way of the Treaty of Lausanne, was mandated control of two former Ottoman vilayets – Baghdad and Basra. In 1926, a third vilayet was added – Mosul – finalizing the country’s modern territorial boundaries.

From the very beginning of its modern existence the fear of civil unrest in Iraq was palpable. It was, in truth, a fear of such significance that the British engineered an entirely fabricated plebiscite (96% in favour) that would help them place Faisal bin al-Hussein bin Ali al-Hashemi on the thrown in 1921 even though few people in the vilayets of Baghdad or Basra had ever even heard of him. In reality, the country remained ghost-governed by British colonial authorities until its nominal independence in 1932 with Sunnis primarily filling administrative roles. One of the great ironies of Faisal’s mock-leadership was that he was, in actuality, dedicated to Pan-Arabism and attempted to overcome cleavage between Sunnis and Shi’ites by appointing both to various positions within government. Unfortunately, at the time, his belief in Pan-Arabism marginalized him in the eyes of numerous Arabs of prominence who were staunchly unwilling to abandon their own agendas, many of which accused him of betraying his Hashemite roots.

And so modern Iraq was born. Three regions thrust together by Western colonial design, ruled by a foreign monarchical proxy, rife with tribal, religious, and ethnic factionalisms.

In the decades that followed, political strife and foreign interference continued. In 1968, Rahman Arif was overthrown by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakir became the first Ba’athist President, and then watched as the movement was calculatingly usurped by Saddam Hussein and his supporters.

There is absolutely no question that Saddam Hussein was a murderous leader. There is also no question that as the leader of ruling party controlled by a minority he believed that to consolidate and maintain power in a historically fractured nation that, among other things, extreme measures were required. That reality has, unfortunately, been cemented throughout history on almost every continent. That said, history is history, and to perform selective surgery on it to remove the memory of our support for his regime is, as far as I’m concerned, beyond the pale.

Saddam Hussein’s relationship with the United States is well documented, extending much further back in history than the early 80’s. Hussein’s connection to US intelligence dates back to 1959 and the unsuccessful US backed plot to assassinate Iraq’s then Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim. While it is true that between 1972 and 1978 Iraq maintained relations with the Soviets, receiving arms and training, the 1978 crackdown on Iraqi Communists, along with a shift towards trading with Western countries, resulted in a distancing between the two. Like numerous nations viewed as potential client states during the Cold War, Iraq enjoyed the luxury of benefiting from both.

Since the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, Hussein’s transgressions have been brought up endlessly, the foremost being the gassing of Halabja in 1988, perhaps one the most disgusting examples of post 9/11 American amnesia. While there is no question that Halabja was gassed by the Iraqi military, the response to the event by the Reagan Administration was massively downplayed, if not wholly forgotten, in the wake of Hussein’s vilification.

After the attack, Hussein’s regime insisted that it had actually been the work of the Iranians – a position that Washington concurred with for several years before changing its stance. Further, initial US condemnation was weak, and despite Congress passing a bill that would have stopped the flow of funds and arms to Iraq, President Reagan vetoed it and his administration gifted Baghdad a further $2 billion dollars in aid.

Now you tell me – what void did that version of events disappear into?

Upwards of 1 million Iraqis died due to the sanctions imposed against Iraq after the Gulf War. That, of course, isn’t our fault – but his. It’s basically no different than saying that because you hired someone to beat your child, and your child refused to learn a lesson, that you’re not responsible for the abuse inflicted.

While we’ll never know exactly how many innocent Iraqis have been killed since 2003 – because the Pentagon couldn’t be bothered to keep track, among other things it couldn’t be bothered to do – do their deaths justify it all? Despite the rather warped belief on this side of the world that Iraq is now far more stable than it was under Hussein, the reality is that it isn’t. Even more, the belief that his removal, and all that that entailed, has led to the empowerment of the Iraqi people as a whole is utterly false. If anything, it has led to the burgeoning establishment of the old Ottoman vilayets. In fact, ‘the surge’ was designed to use that very principle as a tool with which to decrease violence in Iraq, projecting a false sense of accomplishment, which it succeeded in doing. What it also succeeded in doing was to help cement greater divisions. All one need do to see proof of that is to watch as the upcoming federal election process begins to produce thorns, such as the outright dismissal of minority parties from election rolls to ensure that the Shia majority’s control over the government grows. In the end, overlooking such thorns could very well ensure the US a continued, even if regulated, military presence in the country.

In the end, ask yourself if you feel like you’ve gotten your $750 billion dollars worth? If so, I’d be interested in a breakdown of how much each life, be it Iraqi, American, British, or otherwise, is valued at.

Crusading

Great crusades against evil – an eternally romantic notion, one that is, by no means, copyrighted by any particular political or religious ideology. One man’s evil is another man’s justice – always has been.

For those of you of a certain predictable disposition, I am in no way attempting to exonerate the man, nor defend his actions. What I am attempting to do is to apply logic to defuse what have become implacable lies. That being the case, to assuage that unrelenting, comforting cluelessness that some of you might be warmly wrapped in, let me put it this way…

Had Iraq not been invaded, would Saddam Hussein, given the country’s economic disparity prior to the invasion and the decreasing power of his regime, attempted to acquire and then use a nuclear or chemical weapon? If you believe that to be the case, and no evidence of any such program has been found in Iraq over the last seven years, what evidence do you possess that supports your belief?

If your answer vaguely resembles – “preemption is a better policy than the evidence coming in the form of a mushroom cloud” – ask yourself a simple question. Couldn’t the people of Iraq, given all that they have suffered, claim the very same thing?

If only they had $750 billion dollars, hu.

January 17, 2010

There was a time when Hamid Karzai was hailed as courageous, a symbol of democratic possibility in a nation that has never had a successful centralized government. He’s played the role well. When he needs to placate the West he has. When he’s needed to condemn the West in an attempt to win domestic favour he has. Mind you, the latter was most likely the West’s idea.

Today, Karzai claimed that he needn’t be on good terms with those occupying his country, nor enjoy their favour, to share a common purpose with them. Of course, without their favour, Karzai would either be dead or in exile right now, so to claim that he doesn’t require it is a little much. Then again, that’s to be expected from a man who stole an election and received a light slap on the wrist for it before the whole matter was, rather amazingly, forgotten in an expediently convenient fashion.

Behind closed doors we’re led to believe that the United States is growing tired of Karzai and his mouth. In my opinion, the majority of what comes out of Karzai’s mouth is put there by the United States, even statements in which he claims that he doesn’t require their ‘favour’.

It’s at this point that some might claim that I am being far too imaginative. To that I would answer that prior to the last national election there was speculation that the US was unhappy with Karzai. Unfortunately, following it, they recognized him as the legitimate head of state besides the fact that they knew all too well that the election wasn’t merely fraudulent, but bought and paid for. At that crucial juncture the United States made a decision – to stay with the devil they created rather than use the fraudulence of the election as a means to remove him. To have attempted the latter would have, in the view of many, only increased the insurgency’s resolve. The truth, of course, is that Karzai or no, the insurgency’s resolve wasn’t going to be diminished or increased because of the outcome of the election. Beyond that, there are other factors to take into consideration, the most important being the continued placation of various factions that were promised post-invasion assurances before Karzai was placed on his paper thrown. The United States was in bed with them prior to the invasion, had to placate them after it, and continue to do so. In fact, a segment of the current government of the country, not to mention its military leadership, is rife with those most likely reaping the benefits of deals cut with the likes of the CIA prior to the invasion for their cooperation during it.

That said, the resolve of the insurgency is buoyed by the presence of occupational forces and will only increase the longer occupational forces remain in the country. Added to that, turbulence on the other side of the border is only deepening their commitment. In the end, it doesn’t much matter who is President, the insurgency will still view them as a puppet of the West given that the process by which they secured the position was introduced and promoted by foreign powers and therefore suspect. Further to that, ignoring Karzai’s utterly corrupted reacquisition of the Presidency has only hurt NATO, allowing the insurgency to very rightly point out that the façade of Afghan democracy is, in fact, nothing more than that – a façade. In short, the West has proved itself hypocritical, and if anything has aided the resolve of the insurgency, it’s that.

In my opinion, Mr. Karzai is nothing more than a conduit through which to gauge public disposition. The existence of his government ensures that the insurgency remains actively engaged, ultimately legitimizing the presence of foreign forces.

January 9, 2010

An afterthought. That’s Iraq. A nation still divided, struggling to make some semblance of itself amidst the ruins and incalculable death of seven years of chaos. The only aspect of the occupation that is now focused on is the triumph of The Surge, which, if one spends some time actually examining its impact, did little to actually change anything beyond throwing up barriers between the nation’s embattled factions – forgetting that that state of tension and ultimate conflict was created by the occupation itself.

The north wants autonomy, the south can’t survive without it, the motives of various factions within the government remain suspect, a lull has emerged in which those with motive could be waiting for the overall strength of foreign forces to significantly diminish before enacting their endgames.

Today, another 127 people lost their lives in a series of bombings in Baghdad, wounding a further 448. The headlines read “violence returns to Iraq” – one wonders exactly when it left? As is always the case, the blame is being laid at al-Qaeda’s door. With an estimated 100 or so members of the group now active in all of Afghanistan according to US intelligence, one wonders how much longer the group’s name will be used for purposes of propaganda in Iraq? More than likely the bombings were planned by foreign insurgents, most of them Saudi nationals that have, for years, been entering the country and carrying out such operations. Al-Qaeda, the catch-name of the decade, hadn’t visited Iraqi soil until the occupation, and even then, whether a direct connection between the Bin Laden’s core group and it ever existed is still a matter of wild speculation.

How many innocent people have actually perished in Iraq over the last seven years? No one’s kept an accurate count. No one can. All anyone can do is speculate. What does that say about us? What does it say about us that, even now, it is of little concern? All that matters is that 227 Americans weren’t slaughtered today in Kansas City because of car bombs. Maybe that’s where it should have happened. Maybe it’s time that we learned that there’s repercussions for our actions, because 9/11 obviously taught us nothing.

December 8, 2009

Eight years. That’s how long we’ve been in Afghanistan – Canadians included given the involvement of JTF2 in special operations during the early days of the war. That’s two and a half years longer than we were officially at war with the Germans.

Obviously, given that the casualty rate isn’t comparable to that which was suffered during World War 2, not to mention that the war in Afghanistan is an asymmetric conflict confined to a specific region, it’s not the same as a world at war. So we don’t notice much. It remains a far distant endeavor, one that is perpetuated by the specter of 9/11. Never mind that foreign military invasions and occupations during the last eight years have led to a global increase in terrorism, that the majority of the world’s population viewed the United States as a greater threat to global security than any other nation not that long ago, or that since 9/11 global human rights standards have fallen – the war in Afghanistan has become a subject that produces apathetic sighs when mentioned, as if a burden, something that most would rather ignore, a fact reflected in recent polls in the United States in which the majority of Americans are now against the war. Mind you, no one’s taking to the streets just yet, even though monthly US casualty rates have significantly increased.

I’ve spent years exhaustively detailing why the occupation will eventually come to naught, so I’m not going to bother covering well worn ground. You can use the search engine to delve into the past if you like.

October 10, 2009

In the summer of 2003 the warnings signs were all there. Never mind that the CIA’s Baghdad Station Chief at the time was penning Aardwolves dripping with alarm, the candid nature of which would ultimately see him get sacked for having the audacity to write them – no one at the Pentagon or on Pennsylvania Avenue was in the mood to listen. To have listened would have meant to embrace the possibility that massive miscalculations had been made, and that’s certainly not something that the Pentagon was willing to remotely entertain with Rumsfeld at the helm.

It was sold as a cake walk. Over 4,000 American deaths later, and God knows how many Iraqi deaths, it turned out to be anything but. Mind you, there were those that could see it, those that had seen the same movie in the past whose criticisms were silenced or marginalized. Widespread utterances of dissent were not something that could be tolerated, and with the American media puffing on an opium pipe happily provided them by the White House, it became akin to treason.

For those of you that don’t want to admit it, there was a time when the majority supported the war in Iraq and passionately defended its necessity. Those voices are now in the minority, or altogether silent, and for good reason. The invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was ill conceived and poorly orchestrated from the get go. Not only would it result in the formation of the insurgency, but also plunge the nation into a civil war that was characterized as anything but on this side of the world. Added to that was the fact that it became one of the foremost destination for militants from neighbouring countries, the foremost being Saudi Arabia, who would never seriously be held to account for secretly supporting Sunni groups even after a report detailing their complicity was made public.

Iraq was, in short, a disaster, no matter simplified perceptions that the removal of Saddam Hussein was required for the sake of national security or that democracy was gifted the nation as if were as easy as taking a child to Build-A-Bear. It not only decimated much of the nation, but significantly empowered those willing to exploit divisions within Iraqi society for their own purposes. Ultimately, it became something so complex, so confused, that the subject itself became banal. The easy justifications were gone, the easy answers were gone, all those boisterous talking points used up.

The Bush Administration did its best to play cat and mouse with domestic perception. The PR blitz that was ‘The Surge’ helped somewhat defuse concerns that the war had gone completely off the rails, but in the end only aided in delaying the inevitable realization that the last seven years have produced little more than another American cautionary tale.

While the world focused on Iraq, Afghanistan waited patiently in the wings. And while American success in Iraq was debated and measures hastily undertaken in an attempt to avoid the unavoidable, the Taliban and likeminded groups in Afghanistan regained their former strength, united by an ancient mantra dating back to the ravages of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great – resist, both of whom they did (among numerous others).

Iraq now an afterthought, all eyes have turned to the graveyard of empires where farmers and herders turned warriors have taken up arms in an attempt to do what their forefathers did – repel yet another invader. Seven years from now I may very well be sitting here writing about how the war in Afghanistan was equally ill-conceived, equally as arrogant, and another cautionary tale. The question now becomes how many lives will be lost between now and then, and at what point will the subject become so banal that most won’t care?

September 23, 2009