Iraq: A War of Liberation

“The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. It is in the nature of things that the progress of Reason is slow and no one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies. One can encourage freedom, never create it by an invading force.”

If you look at the many wars that have been justified as wars of liberation, it’s clear enough that the overthrow of a brutal dictator and the struggle against authoritarian Islamism in all its forms fit the general picture.

John, could you give a couple of examples, please. Was there any war in which culturally alien foreigners invaded a country on a false pretext and justifiably liberated it? What are you talking about?

Thanks.

abb1, I think your objection to John rests on misunderstanding the phrase “have been justified” in the sentence you quote. John doesn’t mean “were (objectively) justified”, he means that there were lots of people who engaged in writing speaking etc with the aim of justifying (whether or not they succeeded in producing an (objective) justification).

The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia is not relevant, because it was a response to attacks over the border by the Khmer Rouge – attacks that were very bloody, and which had been going on for some time.

I see what you mean about endorsing the Resistance uncritically – many or most of them are probably diametrally opposed to my liberal, European, agnostic, feminist world-view, and I do not like some of their methods (beheading, kidnapping NGO workers/journalists, assassinations).

BUT. I feel that groups fighting against foreign occupation within their own borders (and even foreigners come to lend them a hand), deserve to be given some leeway, particularly when the other side is disregarding the Geneva Conventions and other tenets of their supposed civilisation.

Just as the desperate actions of a Palestinian cannot be measured by the standard we should apply to the IDF, the French resistance had a lot of communists and were not squeamish in their methods, the ANC committed atrocities, etc. After their eventual success, as lamentable as it may be, these excesses are usually forgiven as necessary in the larger scheme of things.

Once the Iraqis have won, we neutrals can and should ask them to conform to the UN Human Rights declaration, Geneva conventions, etc., and put pressure on them to heed us.

But while your own country is waging an illegal war against them, you (and the nationals of other belligerent countries) have no moral standing to judge or condemn them, I feel. First look to your own governments’ behaviour.

By the way, a similar hypocrisy was noticeable the other day in a post by Kos that I thought in very poor taste, in which he expressed his “contempt” for Arafat. Why should a man pampered for all his life compared to the average Palestinian, whose tax dollars help to prop up the IDF, feel entitled to express contempt for Arafat when the latter had just died, no matter how flawed he undeniably was? IMO Kos lacked the moral credibility to do so with any authority. Now, if Mandela said it, it would be different.

Yes, I agree with messenger above and this seems to be a commonly accepted notion; UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/45/34 says:

…
4. Affirms once again its recognition of the legitimacy of the struggle of the peoples under colonial and alien domination to exercise their right to self-determination and independence by all the necessary means at their disposal
…

This has been a consistent theme repeated every time former colonial people are allowed to express their opinion on this subject.

Ghandi. i r teh nekulturny!!111!!!

In order to be fighting a war of “liberation”, shouldn’t there be some prospect of “liberty”, if you succeed? It appears to me that the “insurgents” are fighting the exact opposite, a war to UNliberate Iraq.

the incorruptible communard wrote: “how can you even compare an intellectually limited right-wing blowhard, this “Norm”, with John Pilger? There is a huge credibility gap.”

“Norm” is Norman Geras, an internationally respected political theorist. He is hardly intellectually limited, or a right-wing blowhard (last I checked, he was a Marxist). I don’t agree with his take on this issue, but he is no yahoo.

mark

Gandhi fought a war of liberation using non-violent methods and barely a shot being fired, and ended up with the world’s largest democracy, albeit still with lots of problems. The Palestinians have been fighting a war of liberation for over 50 years with the most violent of methods and have nothing to show for it. How many people got killed in Vietnam or fled in fear after their war of liberation? My point is that as a previous post said this is a war of liberation to UNliberate the population, it is one small group of people bent on domination. Not particularly noble in my opinion.

I think Johns question would be more interestingly applied to Ivory Coast where we have

French Peace Keepers with UN endorsement

Who are not welcome by the recognised government of that country.

Who have attacked it and been attacked by it (were they justified in doing this by 45/34 – after all the french here are colonists)

but

Gabajano is most probably a genocidal thug – as are many of his supporters

But the rebels include a fair share phychopathic killers

So French intervention guarantees a degree of stability

but under French Rule Ivory Coast has experienced the longest and deepest fall in living standards in the world.

So what is right?

Would the Vietnamese have been better off if the French had simply stayed another 30 years?

Well, the French DID stay another 30 years after the formation of Vietnamese national resistance in the 20s, and then the U.S. stayed another 20 years. How exactly did that make anything better?

But more to the point, without opposition the French would have stayed another 100 years- or forever.

And a major difference between VN and Iraq is that the Vietnamese did not end up with an occupying army of Chinese or Russians.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was just tha- an invasion. An invasion that tightens the leash and steals more national resources is NOT a “war of liberation”.

I don’t think Roger’s characterization of Americans as ‘traditional colonialist looters’, is fair. Granted, there were plenty of American companies that took advantage — I would even say, in an unethical way — of business opportunities in Iraq. Plus, there was money to be made on Wall Street in oil. But I certainly don’t think that that was the intetion of the US government. It’s too risky and costly, economically, politically, and, yes, even from a humanitarian standpoint.

I AM of the belief that WMD was just a pretext for the war, and that the real reason to invade Iraq was democratization. The legal justification for invasion was a pretty thin veil, let’s face it. I’m convinced that the war is a sincere effort by people in the Bush/Blair camps to come up with a long-term plan for peace in the Middle East.

Is it misguided? Without a doubt. It was misguided because it probably will not come close to working. It will probably create more problems for everybody than it will solve. Plus, a democratic Iraq would probably not do nearly as much as a peaceful Israel/Palestine.

But I think that people should get it straight that this war is not about greed. It has nothing to do with looting Iraqi oil. Bush is an idealist. He’s not actually evil — (though I do disagree with nearly all of his policies). He believes that what he’s doing is a good thing that will change the world for the better.

I think he’s going in a terribly wrong direction. But if we characterize his position and the American role in Iraq as just some kind of greed-fest, then we’re as guilty as Bush is himself of seeing the world in black and white, good and evil.

I agree with Messenger although he/she is simplistic in my opinion. We all need to appreciate the tragic aspects of human life. We talk about democracy, but much of our democracy is based on rallying against foreigners. Many British people told me that they never felt so right as during WW II, when they had been attacked and had to set aside petty disputes to keep from being overrun. They could concentrate on the common good. Politicians need foreign enemies and scapegoats and have no trouble finding them.

One of the tragic aspects of the Iraqi war is that here is justification for invasion, not very good justification, and no justification for invading without preparing for the aftermath of the invasion. It isn’t a black and white proposition. History teaches (see above) that there is nothing like a foreign invasion to make people set aside serious disputes and take up arms against the invader, especially if the invader makes no attempt to speak your language, encourages Christian missionaries (they left long ago or they would be all dead) and believes as Bush, Sharon, Richard Pipes and Bernard Lewis (in his later years) seem to believe that Islam has nothing good to teach the world. Wahhabism is a problem; Islam needs to come to terms with modern science. So do the fundamentalists in Georgia who want to place stickers in every science textbook saying that the theory of evolution is just a theory.

You’ve heard of proposition 13, which spread out from California as an understandable but shortsighted way to control property taxes. You’re going to hear about Proposition 200, as it spreads out from Arizona, because people are understandably angry with underfunding of education and healthcare. Whites want to blame all these problems on illegal immigrants. They curse Vicente Fox for not supporting the invasion of Iraq. There is a strain of American culture exemplified by Bush and Trump that says, save up your money and your food and screw the others, it’s their fault if they don’t save. That approach may bring another civil war. There are far more Latinos in the US than Muslims.

The European Union has humanely handled education, pensions and healthcare, with some bumps. Problems of paying for these things haven’t been solved. However, Americans are led to believe that we don’t have to pay for anyone but ourselves. The stupid ballot initiatives are mostly anti-democratic. Democracy is hoist on its own petard. That’s the tragedy of the media-driven modern world. Americans believe that they can pay less taxes and get more benefits and that Islam is our #1 problem.

Coinnech, let’s suspend, for the moment, the issue of American motivation. Surely, even the Americans can agree that the continuation of war reparations to Kuwait is insane. Little things like that would go a long way towards making Iraqis think that the American installed government has Iraq’s interest at heart — or at least are distantly interested in them.

Very generous of Messenger to give the resistance “some leeway,” i.e., room enough to accommodate “beheading, kidnapping NGO workers/journalists, assassinations,” not to mention various random killings of innocent Iraqi civilians.
The point is simply that undeniably the fighters for liberation are killing many of those whom they supposedly aim to liberate, and that they would, if they came to power, rival even Saddam in brutality.
The Americans may be a bad lot, and certainly they had no business intruding themselves into Iraq. But now they’re there, and if those who are leading the fight against them and against many others whose motives are quite decent–if this lot prevail, then the Iraqi people will suffer greatly under their rule.
The coming to power of such men would not be a tragedy, it would be a crime. It may be that the Americans have created conditions such that “liberation” will occur. But they have a duty to try to prevent this outcome, and bugging out wouldn’t fulfull that duty.

“Surely, even the Americans can agree that the continuation of war reparations to Kuwait is insane. ”

Unfortunately only the Kuwaitis can agree to this – and why would the US disagree with them for doing this. – but just like the other debt forgiveness issue seem to have gone a bit quiet recently.

Thought-provoking post. It strikes me that the American Civil War provides interesting parallels. It was a war of choice (the South could have been allowed to go its own way), although the opposition’s ideology was undeniably ugly and oppressive. The war was initiated for political reasons (nationalism, perhaps a fear of European encroachment), and a humanitarian “liberation” basis was later grafted on. The liberation objective was achieved, in a narrow legal sense, but in practice proved to be largely ineffective (what with Jim Crow). The war left the conquered area governed by an essentially undemocratic one-party polity, heavily invested with religion and militarism. Certainly, as of today, I’m glad the war was fought and won, but is a hundred-year perspective too attenuated to justify such monumental carnage?

Gosh, these comments are amazing.

Pilger, credible???? The man is unhinged, beyond the selective conspiricism of Chmosky and without the IQ as excuse for his mucky ranting.

Murderers, bombers, kidnappers and beheaders struggling to destroy the rule of law so they can oppress the Iaqi people freely – this is morally superior to people and soldiers who operate subject to the uniform code of military justice, deliver squillions in humanitarian aid and are striving to build a country to take its free place in the world?

I remember my uncle and aunt, Communists and peace activists since the 1930’s, publishing justifications for USSR invasions and heading off on Soviet cruise ships in recognition of their efforts for ‘peace’. They could always claim that the mass murders of the Cadets or the Kulaks or the Hungarians or the Czechs or the Afghans or the Vietnamese or the Chinese were aberrations, because the information gap was so poorly filled.

Not you guys. There is plenty of evidence that you are delusional and supporting some of the worst criminals in the history of politics, and counter-evidence is available in real time.

Are you going to start killing your neighbors, like your heroes?

“Would the Vietnamese have been better off if the French had simply stayed another 30 years?

Well, the French DID stay another 30 years after the formation of Vietnamese national resistance in the 20s, and then the U.S. stayed another 20 years. How exactly did that make anything better?

But more to the point, without opposition the French would have stayed another 100 years- or forever.”

I realize that the French didn’t have as good a reputation for their dealings as the English, so perhaps Vietnam couldn’t have become a Hong Kong, but it wouldn’t have become the horrific monstrosity that it did become if they had not tried to throw off the French.

RE: the calculus of the Civil War, you have to count the children of the slaves who would have also become slaves.

A substantial portion of the effective fighting power of the resistance is made up of foreign and Iraqi jihadists who seek to establish Iraq as an enduring base for their side in the global struggle against the US, and who are happy to employ terrorist means against anyone, including ordinary Iraqis, who get in their way.

Maybe so, but the US invasion gave them a righteous cause, like Nazi invasion to Stalin’s henchmen.

Also, in another piece by Pilger that I read last year he makes a point that the Iraqi resistance is the only hope to prevent the next invasion, a series of invasions, in fact. Now, when the Bushies are in control for another term, this seems even more important, because a year from now we may be discussing whether Syrian resistance cutting two dozen heads is justified by the US bombing Damascus back into the stone age and killing 100,000 Syrians.

There must be a limit to liberal ambivalence, folks, especially in a case like this where one side is clearly an imperialist agressor (Coinneach’s ludicrous contrarian twist notwithstanding).

Now, now, Brett, you should make an effort to get it right; abb1 wasn’t equating the U.S. with Stalinist Russia but with the Nazis who invaded it. Surely that makes all the difference. No?

Got me there, Asq; It’s so much better to be compared to Nazi Germany, that I withdraw my objection.

For the record, I think we ARE acting like an imperial power. And I’m not too happy with that. But as these things go, we’re a relatively nice imperial power. Which will cause us to lose our empire even faster than these things usually go, because imperial over-reach is exacerbated when you don’t bother to extract tribute from your subject states.

Coinneach, here’s a piece of reality for you:

Poland seeks Iraqi oil stake

Poland, which has sent troops to support the US-led forces in Iraq, has acknowledged its “ultimate objective” is to acquire supplies of Iraqi oil.

The Polish Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, said his country had never disguised the fact that it sought direct access to the oilfields.
[…]
“We have never hidden our desire for Polish oil companies to finally have access to sources of commodities,” Mr Cimoszewicz told the Polish PAP news agency.

Access to the oilfields “is our ultimate objective,” he added.
…

The first thing US troops did after crossing the border was securing the oil fields, the only building they guarded in Baghdad was the oil ministry.

You can’t be serious, Coinneach. If you’re just trolling – that’s alright, but if you really to mean what you say, then you certainly do have a problem with reality, my friend.

“The first thing US troops did after crossing the border was securing the oil fields, the only building they guarded in Baghdad was the oil ministry.”

And if they’d done anything else, it would have been utterly irresponsible. Since Iraq’s future was dependent on oil revenues, and setting all of the fields ablaze would have been an ecological disaster.

Any other course of action, and YOU would have tore Bush a new one for letting Saddam turn Iraq into a poluted economic basket case.

Brett, are you saying that there were only two alternatives: leaving the 1990s sanction regime, or else invasion? If you really believe this, then this would explain how you can believe that the US’ intentions really are benign here.

Incidentally (and I’m sure people here appreciate a Bush voter making the effort to engage with these questions), of you believe liberation was the primary aim, what’s your answer to the perennial question of why Bush is so untroubled by the multitude of other tyrannies around the world?

If there is a case to be made for the occupation of Iraq as a war of liberation, then surely the justification for the occupation which would flow that case would be dependent on the situation after the invasion. Or at least the parts of the situation that were foreseeable. Regardless of what we think of the members of the resistance, it was predictable that there would be resistance. If the war of liberation justification were to work, then the Coalition would have had to planned properly in advance to deal with the resistance in a vaguely sane manner. It clearly hasn’t. The same goes for reconstruction, quite apart from the scandal of the process of awarding contracts. Finally, those who make the war of liberation argument have to believe that Iraq is not going to end up with another leader much like Saddam (when I say much like Saddam, I do not necessarily mean on quite the same scale, but still basically a tyrant). Since the alternative for the US is a democratically elected and anti-American theocracy, I see no likelihood of anything but another strong man. This was all eminently predictable before the war. Thus, the war of liberation argument exists: it just has to deny the relevant facts on the ground.

Abb1 — that’s a disturbing piece from the BBC. It almost inclines me to drop my argument, but I’m not quite there yet. I am given pause because of two things: firstly, the article relates specifically to Poland which is not a major actor. Secondly and more importantly by a long shot, I’d be willing to drop my argument and be convinced if you would explain the following:

Why would the US engage in a policy that’s sure to raise oil prices for a few years — and which has already raised oil prices in the US — when such an outcome is terrible for a lot of US businesses, including those owned by friends of Bush and Cheney? There’s money to be made by some, sure. But the greater impact is bad news for any business in the US that needs to ship anything anywhere. And that’s just about all big businesses. If this is a war motivated by capitalistic intentions, then that move does not make any sense whatsoever. If it’s a war motivated by ideology then it does.

I’m not dogmatic and I’m willing to be convinced that I’m wrong. I’m just not there yet.

What I actually said was that if the justification was going to succeed, they needed to believe that. I can live with the claim that it is botched war of liberation, but that rather undermines the force of the claim that it is a war of liberation when it is so botched, and for such foreseeable reasons.

This “war of liberation” is a manifestation of an energy crisis. “Liberation” and “democratization” and other theatrical terms (with “against terror” no longer so prominent in the script) give the enterprise the taint of nobility and help to sell the sacrifice of U.S. soldiers. We’re in Iraq because of oil: because there’s a finite supply of it and because our “way of life” depends on burning an extravagant amount of it. Beneath Iraq are the planet’s second-largest oil reserves–it’s a safe bet that the U.S. will never leave, unless we use it as a stepping stone to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. It’s a safe bet that liberation and democratization are on the horizon for much of the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is a good point. If the Bushies wanted democratization in the ME, all they had to do is to call thier friend crown prince Abdullah and ask him to hold an election next Friday. That would save us a hundred thousand corpses and a quarter trillion dollars.

Brett,

I would add a fourth obstacle, that of Iraqis just genuinely pissed off at being occupied, tortured, swindled and bombed by the Coalition, a problem which of course increases the more military action is taken to deal with the first two obstacles you mention. How this is to be solved is unclear.
On the first problem, the key thing is clearly an ability to separate the foreign fighters from the local population. I do not see any way, short of herding people in ‘protected settlements’, of this being done.
On the second, long-run success against the first problem would obviously help in reducing its military aspect. However, absorption into civilian life will not prevent these groups from continuing to attempt to regain control: they’ll just do it other than by overt armed struggle against the Americans, through corruption, intimidation and so on.
On the third of your problems, ethnic tension, you say that fair and even handed government will gradually dissolve this problem. Where do you see the likelihood of fair and even handed government coming from, because I’d been under the impression that whoever got ‘elected’ would rule in the interests of those who were keeping them in power, the Coalition (as in: no government can survive unless either the problems are solved, or no-one can overthrow them by violence; not being overthrown means being dependent on the Coalition; solving these problems means being dependent on the Coalition; why would the Coalition support someone else they were going to get something out of it;).
By the way, I welcome your willingness to discuss this. Without meaning to seem snide or patronizing, although I think it may be unavoidable, it’s really pleasing to see a supporter of the war who is prepared to engage with those who opposed it.

“Too much of the criticism of the war is like looking at a heart transplant patient in mid-operation, and declaring it a botched operation because he’s lying there with a gaping chest wound, and no heartbeat.”

My criticism of the war is that I wouldn’t trust this bunch of chancers to drill my teeth.

Iraq has very little use for the oil save to sell it, and in as much as the only sense in which the coallition means to “strip” them of it is to BUY it off of them at the market rate, their interests and the coallition’s are the same.

The disparity between the occupiers interests and the occupied can be measured in the same units one uses for the ever popular surgery metaphor –blood. The blood flows out of the bodies of Iraqis. Why are they dyingk exactly? because we cleverly flytrapped terrorists in their territory? Why, how could they be ungrateful to us for such a bountiful act? Or is it that we suddenly have a bloody interest in the internal politics of another country? What is it that required, for instance, killing two thousand Iraqis in Najaf? Seemingly, keeping a former Ba’athist in power by doing away with his opposition — a plan that has evidently failed.

Instead of arguing about whether deposing Saddam H. was good — and I’d argue that if the black plague had taken Saddam H., or an industrial accident, it would have been good — I’d love to see even one liberatory gesture by the Americans in the upcoming months. How about spending half of the 18 billion earmarked for Iraqi construction, regardless of the risk that that reconstruction might well benefit an elected government that is hostile to the Americans?
If the Americans can’t take such risks, than it is pretty simple. The occupation is solely an act of oppression designed solely to benefit a certain segment of the American population. Myself, that is exactly what I think the occupation is, and has been from day one. To disguise this by pretending that the Americans are really working in the interest of the Iraqis by, say, bringing that pesky petroleum price down to below fifty a barrel is sophistry of a low comic order. I guess the extra revenue would just make Iraqis feel guilty about all that wealth they were siphoning from their benefactors.

Conflict of interest is a llittle euphemistic for what is simply high seas piracy. Otherwise known as the Bush foreign policy. Let’s replace the stars and stripes with the skull and crossbones and be done with it.

Anyone who gets a glimpse of the inner workings of local politics when they’re young enough to not have an investment in the status quo ante gets radicalized, or at least thoroughly disillusioned, unless they had no illusions to lose.
It’s hard to insist on moral behavior once you realize how fragile it is, how thin and human, but that’s the task.
The best argument for the invasion and occupation is the hideous tyranny of Saddam, that’s the only basis for the use of the word “liberation” to describe the presence of the US military and the things they’ve done; but Saddam was a virtual employee of the US for years, as were the Taliban in Afghanistan. They wouldn’t have been what they were without American encouragement. That isn’t conjecture, it’s history, and complicity.
Geras, like John Wayne, wants to get rid of the bad guys, but simply getting rid of bad people is easy, it’s preserving the good that’s hard, protecting the innocent, things like that.
Allawi would not appear to be a particularly devoted champion of the innocent. And the presence of John Negroponte in Iraq now should put paid to any nonsense about humanitarian motives, though it won’t of course. Because no one who says there are humanitarian motives involved really believes it. What they mean is they’d like it be like that, it would be nice if it were.
Geras can only repeat the p.r. mantra about Saddam, mewling about “the torture chambers” over and over – and ignoring the overwhelming stench of Abu Ghraib completely. He has no other point than that Saddam was terribly bad and therefore anything that gets rid of Saddam is automatically good. Bad cops use that same inversion to justify themseves no matter what they do.
Pilger’s logic is of a substantially higher order, as this piece shows.
Though if it really is simply a matter of getting rid of the bad people, rest assured the extinction of the human race will remove every last villain from the planet, permanently.
Like I said, the hard part is keeping the good, preserving it, encouraging it.
Where’s the moral encouragement in Iraq? What’s being preserved?
The polite Left kowtows to the gloating Right by talking about “foreign fighters” in Iraq, as though coming to the aid of your brothers in arms is against the rules. What nonsense.
The only historical figure it’s acceptable to point to for an example of appropriate resistance is Ghandi. But Ghandi would have been assassinated already if he was in this.
Geras says “Stop The Denial” and I think that’s excellent advice for everyone. Quit pretending there’s anything decent about this nightmare, and while you’re at it quit pretending it was about oil too.
It’s about empire, and the subjugation of Iraq is intentional. Lies to the credulous and bullets to the rebels.
Mission Accomplished.

Jeff has it right. “Peak Oil” is the name of the game, the end of cheap oil – not the end of oil, although that’s visible on the horizon, but the end of cheap oil. The Bush administration is very well aware of the problem, seeing as Cheney has agonised publicly over this for some years. What scares me is that we, the corpulent comfortable West, may one day regard Bush and Blair as great heroes for having the foresight to seize the major oilfields at this critical juncture and to keep some of us in comfort for a few years longer. We’re addicted to oil and like all addicts we’re heavily in denial. Hate to say it, but the death and destruction to come will dwarf all that has gone before, and in the desperate scrabble for energy reserves, “civilization” will become regarded as some quaint notion peddled by our ancestors. Dog eat dog coming up next, let’s see who holds on to a “moral view” then.