The politics of self-interest

[bemildred]

Meanwhile, Washington's concern for the destruction taking place in Iraq extends no further than how it reflects upon the US administration. In order to raise morale in the US President Bush unveiled a "plan for victory in Iraq" during a recent meeting with America's military top brass. The idea, so brilliant in its simplicity, is to empower the Iraqi people to defend their regained freedom by building a strong Iraqi army. Bush added that US forces would leave Iraq once that army proved capable of defending freedom on its own.

The US, that had dissolved the Iraqi army by imperial fiat issued by Paul Bremer in May 2003 is the same US that is propelling Iraq towards a sectarian-based confederation, the same US whose policies have encouraged Shia and Kurdish militias to grow more powerful and revered than the standing army, augmenting, in turn, the rejectionist violence in the so-called Sunni triangle. I say "so-called" because such terms were unfamiliar in Iraq until the Iraq-Iran war, one of the catastrophes wrought by Saddam Hussein and supported by all of America's current allies, opposed by all America's current enemies. Since then sectarianism has been politicised as never before. Credit for this is solely due to the US.

American journalists and commentators have been bewildered by how sharply White House statements vacillate between optimism and pessimism regarding the reconstruction of an Iraqi army capable of taking on the "insurgents". After considerable circumlocution Thomas Friedman, in The New York Times of 29 September, asserted that "Saddam's tyrannical rule over nearly three decades conditioned people here never to assume responsibility." It would require "a huge cultural shift" to rid them of this ingrained fear of taking the initiative. Curiously, the famous columnist who takes great pains to remind readers that he is a "three-time Pulitzer Prize winner" reached this conclusion on the basis of a story he was told of how "a boatload of Iraqi sailors decided to take a long lunch break and blew off the afternoon training" because of the heat. Odder yet, however, was the inconsistency of this conclusion with his observation that "after coalition forces introduced jamming devices to block roadside bombs detonated with cell phones, the insurgents started using infra red devices from garage door openers". This "enemy", who "just keeps getting smarter" and who showed "so much ingenuity" certainly lacked no spirit of initiative, and is made up of the same people who are supposedly trapped in the Saddam-bred "culture of fear".

Friedman is probably unable to conceive that there is a vast difference between the members of the new Iraqi army and their adversaries; that the former have little to motivate them whereas the latter is growing more motivated by the day.

Al Ahram