By PLS
A Humvee hits a mine in Iraq. A marine is killed. His buddies get mad and take it out on civilians.
I’m sorry your comrade lost his life, but it’s war. You were ordered to poke your noses into someone else’s country, and–surprise! surprise!—much of the population wants you out or dead. You probably don’t want outsiders to blow up American buildings and force transformation on our “decadent” society, but you assume the administration’s desire for “regime change” in Iraq permits you to bust into a house, execute everyone in sight and then (since you know deep down you’ve done something really disgusting) lie about it?
Answer me this: how do you resist a government that has a vast monopoly on power? How do you resist a hegemon with so much firepower that a head-on encounter would be suicide for a platoon or even a brigade? With suicide bombs that waste only one person. With well-hidden remote controlled bombs on the road. With melt-away snipers on roofs. It’s rational. It’s logical. It’s practical. It’s the only way.
So this is war today. But there are precedents in American history. Seventeenth century British generals sneered at American revolutionaries for waging an ungentlemanly war. What happened to the Redcoats as they marched from Lexington to Concord? They were picked off by snipers lurking behind those famous stone walls. Afterwards the irregulars went home to their families, so I suppose the British should have kicked down the doors of those quaint New England salt boxes and slaughtered the civilians who harbored the rebels—and were, in fact, rebels at heart.
In Afghanistan: A truck in a speeding convoy of Humvees and other mechanical monsters “loses control,” smashing into vehicles and pedestrians, killing human beings and doing a lot of damage. A random collection of people turns into a violent mob, and the troops “defend themselves” by firing (1) on the crowd, as some eye-witnesses say or (2) over their heads, as an US Army spokesman claims, adding (why?) that lethal force is allowed by Army rules if troops feel threatened.
Let’s replay this tape. Wouldn’t you be hopping mad if whoever organized this convoy selected an hour of the day when streets would be clogged with people and traffic to send trucks and Humvees barreling through? Exactly how fast were they going? News reports I’ve seen haven’t told us. However, had these Americans been proceeding at a more reasonable pace, the reaction, though angry, would have been less susceptible to violent intensification. In Afghanistan resentment is always smoldering, whether it’s Brits, Russians or Americans doing the occupying. The crash stirred embers into flames.
And what about those brakes: both the normal brakes and the emergency brakes failing at the same time? This coincidence is very fishy—or someone in a maintenance unit needs to be severely disciplined for incompetence. Glad as I am that US authorities have promised to investigate this incident, I see the pledge as mostly a PR move. The military will take forever to come up with a report that’s all too likely to be, under this administration, a whitewash or classified. Either dodge would be a mistake. Americans may have a short attention span, but Afghans won’t forget. A cover up will keep the embers of anger red hot.
Time for another look at American history: the Boston Massacre. The English, facing what they called insubordination, claimed self-defense. Bostonians saw it otherwise, as cold-blooded murder and cause for rebellion. For some addled reason, the US military is now borrowing from the old Redcoat script, but it’s still a losing script. When you have to use or threaten lethal force on angry disobedient civilians, you’ve failed. The last act is simple: you go home.
Back to the speeding. It happens in Iraq, too. The justification is the same: it’s too dangerous to drive slowly and safely. Think about it. During World War II Jeeps were loved, but today’s Humvees are hated. Jeeps were agile little machines that offered no protection to speak of, but they became the symbol of the can-do American soldier throwing the invader out. Humvees are armored monsters, yet they still aren’t safe, because the US military isn’t really welcome in Afghanistan or Iraq. Whatever the high tech occupiers do, the insurgents (or whoever) will devise a relatively low tech way to kill or expel them. That means many more American deaths to come.
And yet the US is actually in the process of spending $592 million to build a new embassy in the heavily fortified Green Zone of Baghdad. Its walls will be 15 feet thick. Unless this car-bomb-proof compound is also missile-proof, I wouldn’t feel wholly safe inside. In any event I’d refuse to work there. Even if I were guaranteed incredible danger pay, rapid promotion and plum onward posting. Not because of safety concerns. I received danger pay in Karachi. Because of the claustrophobia.
This, tellingly, is how the embassy project was reported in the Saudi-based Arab News, on April 28. I use this quote because I think it’s important to see how things look from non-American points of view.
Three years after a US-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein’s regime, only one major US building project in Iraq is on schedule and within budget: the massive new American Embassy compound....The installation is touted as not only the largest, but the most secure in the world....Besides two major diplomatic office buildings, homes for the ambassador and his deputy, and the six apartment buildings for staff, the compound will offer a swimming pool, gym, commissary, food court and American Club all housed in a recreation building. Security, overseen by US marines, will be extraordinary: setbacks and perimeter, no-go areas that will be especially deep, structure reinforced to 2.5 times the standard, and five high-security entrances, plus an emergency entrance-exit....The current US embassy in Iraq has nearly 5,5000 Americans and Iraqi working there....They rarely venture out into the “Red Zone,” that is, violence-torn Iraq.As I said, claustrophobia. So long as embassy officers and American employees can’t tootle out on a Saturday morning to wander freely among the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia or decide spontaneously, on Thursday evening, say, to nip out for some supper in “that great little restaurant by the river,” I don’t feel optimistic about the US as a constructive force in Iraq. For that matter, if I headed the Iraqi government and I actually had control of my capital city, I wouldn’t give the Americans (or any foreign entity) 104 acres of prime real estate, along the river smack dab in the middle of Baghdad, to build themselves a “compound.”
Speaking of fortresses, the embassy project is all too reminiscent of the crusader castles whose ruins overlook the King’s Highway in Jordan. The Europeans, having decided they needed to wrest control of the Holy Land from the infidels, built a series of enormous castles on hilltops offering a birdseye view of anything moving on the surrounding plains, the best fortifications money could buy back then. The crusaders also had some pretty good horses, which, fully armored, were the Humvees of the day. All the invaders lacked was realism, vision, numbers and acceptance by the population. Times haven’t changed much, have they? (This post opens with a photo of the ruins of the crusader castle at Kerak south of Amman.)
Another American history flashback: the British held New York and Philadelphia and even Boston, for awhile, but they couldn’t control the countryside. Worse, they had formidable enemies, like the French, who were happy to help the rebels. Need I mention Iran and the majority Shiite population of Iraq?
The official argument for the monster embassy is that the US will need thousands of people to oversee the $18 billion aid package that’s on the table. If I were Iraqi, I wouldn’t count on that figure buying $18 billion worth of reconstruction because, even if it’s fully allocated, which seldom happens in such cases–i.e. Afghanistan and Africa, it will be subject to cost plus contracts that will lead to huge cost overruns by well-placed, under-audited US companies and favored sub-contractors.
The US is also building, expanding and/or hardening numerous military bases in Iraq. This proliferation of military installations suggests that the Bush administration’s passion does not lie in the pre-invasion pretext of establishing democracy or in restoring essential services to a war torn country—schools, clinics, hospitals, 24/7 water and electricity supply for city dwellers, etc. A good portion of that possibly mythical $18 billion is apt to be spent on housing a permanent US military presence in Iraq, another reason for doubting that the Bush administration desires a fully autonomous democratic state. US bases would soon be unwelcome in Iraq. Are Iraqis going to be any happier than Saudis to have American troops and hardware on their soil threatening other Muslim countries? Think crusader castles again.
The US promised major reconstruction in Afghanistan, too. It didn’t materialize. That’s one reason why the Afghans are angry, one reason why the warlords and the Taliban are resurgent. Consider how different things might have been if the Bush administration had paid attention to Afghan history and confined its post 9/11 military efforts to capturing bin Laden, a rich Arab lording it over a proud poor non-Arab country. Mullah Omar and a minority of Pushtoon fanatics aside, Afghans would have been eternally grateful.
Outcomes might also have been different if the neo-cons in the Bush administration had remembered American history. Donald Rumsfeld also wanted to wage a 21st century war in Iraq. He got one. But not the one he expected.