IRAQ: Thank you NeoConMen

Mother Jones, a magazine from San Francisco, proposes some comics in its internet site, signed by Mark Fiore, as an answer to the question “Was the Iraqi war really worth”? In short, the message convened is that, three years after the invasion of Iraq, chaos was made possible thanks to the generous action of the NeoConMen. Many parade to say “thank you”: the democrats from Washington, military on the ground, the Iraqi people…

In the same Mother Jones magazine, James K. Galbraith (economics teacher at the University of Texas-Austin who has worked with the U.S. Congress) writes another article under the title “Withdrawal Symptoms”, where he confirms the chaotic situation in Iraq nowadays, analyses the beginning of a long, slow, painful retreat from Iraq and warns about the consequences of the American invasion. He argues whether the American are drawing the full and correct lessons from this disaster.

“[In Iraq] Oil production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation. Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water is scarce.… And most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year.… Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled.”
“Bush and Cheney have done more than merely bungle a war and damage the Army. They have destroyed the foundation of the post-Cold War world security system, which was the accepted authority of American military power. That reputation is now gone. It cannot be restored simply by retreating from Iraq. This does not mean that every ongoing alliance will now collapse. But they are all more vulnerable than they were before, and once we leave central Iraq, they will be weaker still. As these paper tigers start to blow in the wind, so too will America’s economic security erode.”

He argues that the american should now face a deeper debate and start quite soon asking this question: “Now that Bush and Cheney have screwed up the only successful known model for world security under our leadership, what the devil do we do?”

According to Galbraith, the reality is that the Iraq war could not be won by a force of any size or by an expenditure of any amount. “Against determined opposition, occupations in the modern world cannot prevail. They haven’t for more than 60 years. The reason is that the basic economics of warfare have changed”. He justifies this with his “fundamental facts of wars of occupation”, which tell us that foreign military power cannot long prevail over the territory of a people — in this case, the Sunnis of central Iraq — who are prepared to resist it to the death. According to him, this does not necessarily mean that the new Iraq will collapse when the Americans leave, but if the American army cannot defeat the insurgency, he argues that the insurgents will have to be accommodated politically. Otherwise, the civil war which the American will leave behind will be even more brutal in their absence.

In another article the Christian Science Monitor of Boston presents an Iraqi family and asks the question “Was it worth it?”. According to the article, the Methboubs, like most Iraqi families, feel a mix of frustration, disappointment, and hope in the face of daily violence.