COMMENTARY
June 28, 2003
Pacifying Iraq
Saddam Hussein's defence strategy all along was to fight a scorched-earth retreat, then mount terrorist strikes against occupation troops and domestic sympathizers once Iraq had inevitably fallen to the U.S. and her allies. The theory was that Americans can't handle casualties or bad news, and with the Western liberal media -- Saddam's most reliable and consistent allies -- dwelling on U.S. casualties from each terror hit, the Bush administration would be forced to pull up stakes. With them gone, the Saddamites would soon find their way back to power.
The first part of this plan did not go well for him. The Iraqi army collapsed, but owing to U.S. foresight, training, and technology, there was little scorched earth. Now the second part is going badly, too -- though it is far from over, and the Western liberal media are at least keeping their part of the "bargain", with endless, misleading, "chaos in Iraq" coverage.
The war entered its second phase with the fall of Baghdad, as I wrote in April. It was not yet over; only the exciting part was over. I said the second part would take much longer, and I predicted allied casualties would eventually be more than were lost in the main invasion. I believe that was also the Pentagon's expectation. Check against delivery: this is just what is happening, and contrary to reports, we are not surprised.
The invasion came in under budget in three ways, including literally, for it cost at least $8 billion (U.S.) less than the Pentagon had allocated (possibly a first in the history of our planet). There were fewer casualties, and the objectives were captured faster than even the most optimistic forecasts I had seen or heard about.
It was almost too fast: for part of the problem when Baghdad fell was the U.S. didn't yet have enough troops ready for occupation duty. The whole 4th Infantry Division was still en route from its pointless wait to be allowed to pass through Turkey. A fairly brilliant job was done of cobbling together U.S. Army patrols, in the first couple of weeks, from troops that seemed almost outnumbered by media hacks. These latter, having been wildly wrong in all their own predictions about how the war would go, were now desperately trying to score after-the-fact "gotchas".
As we now know, such screaming headlines as those which were accorded to the "Baghdad Museum looting", were based on lies. Yet we continue to be fed very dubious information by reporters working with, for example, translators previously employed by the Baathist regime. The "Iraq in chaos" slant is still being applied to isolated and sporadic resistance from surviving members of the Saddam Fedayeen (including the Syrian, Palestinian, and other foreign terrorists smuggled in to help). The slant is belied by less jaundiced reports from travellers through the country.
Most neighbourhoods in Baghdad are quiet, and business is booming by pre-war standards. Ditto, most towns across the country, especially those in the Shia south, where at least three in five Iraqis live. And by both American military and Iraqi sources, I am told that almost every major violent crime turns out to be, on further investigation, not a manifestation of "general disorder" but another hit from the Fedayeen.
Despite great efforts by both American and British military to be culturally sensitive, there are unavoidable problems in conducting the weapons searches which alone can reduce the Fedayeen's remaining armoury. Cultural clashes are inevitable, and spawn rumours, magnified in the summer heat.
The most common unlikely story is that the troops have violated sheltered Iraqi women. Its source is invariably the man of the house, who feels emasculated by the search of his inner sanctum. As more than one Western-educated Iraqi has explained to me, "it's a matter of honour with him to complain later", and to improve upon the facts. His cultural assumptions are beyond the ken of most Western reporters, diligently noting his charges. And the story is as often as not compounded by a more universal feature of human nature: the tendency of young women to flirt with big strong heavily-armed men in uniforms. If the man of the house sees an elder daughter doing this, he is driven very close to berserk; but the daughter only gets her share of his abuse later and off-camera.
Alas, the iron law of political correctness prevents even the reporters who understand such things from telling their Western readers about them: for remember, our culture is pretty weird, too.
Time and patience will be required. All the reliable indications I have are that the vast majority of Iraqis, including those still terrified of the Fedayeen in such old Saddamite haunts as Fallujah and Tikrit, remain glad of the presence of U.S. and British soldiers, while grumbling more than helping. An independent poll conducted earlier this month on Western sampling principles showed that 73 per cent of Iraqis thought the coalition were doing a very poor job, and 76 per cent wanted them to stay. Add in overwhelming distrust of each of the native Iraqi governing alternatives proposed to the poll-taken, and you have the larger picture -- of a world in which perfection is unobtainable, but one somehow muddles through.
David Warren
