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Writers Articles And Opinions |
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29 March 2010
By Dahr Jamail
Plain Speak
The 2008
National Defense Strategy reads:
US interests
include protecting the nation and our allies from
attack or coercion, promoting international security
to reduce conflict and foster economic growth, and
securing the global commons and with them access to
world markets and resources. To pursue these
interests, the US has developed military
capabilities and alliances and coalitions,
participated in and supported international security
and economic institutions, used diplomacy and soft
power to shape the behavior of individual states and
the international system, and using force when
necessary. These tools help inform the strategic
framework with which the United States plans for the
future, and help us achieve our ends.
It adds:
… Our forces
will be strong enough to dissuade potential
adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in
hopes of surpassing or equaling the power of the US.
To accomplish this, the US will require bases and
stations within and beyond western Europe and
Northeast Asia.
In light of such
clear objectives, it is highly unlikely that the US
government will allow a truly sovereign Iraq,
unfettered by US troops either within its borders or
monitoring it from abroad, anytime soon.
The Status of
Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the Iraqi and US
governments indicate an ongoing US presence past both
the August 2010 deadline to remove all combat troops,
and the 2011 deadline to remove the remaining troops.
According to all
variations of the SOFA the US uses to provide a legal
mandate for it’s nearly 1,000 bases across the planet,
technically, no US base in any foreign country is
“permanent.” Thus, the US bases in Japan, South Korea
and Germany that have existed for decades are not
“permanent.” Technically.
Most analysts
agree that the US plans to maintain at least five
“enduring” bases in Iraq.
Noted US writer,
linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky, said,
“Bases [abroad] are the empire. They are the point of
projection of power and expansion of power.”
Chalmers Johnson, author and professor emeritus of UC
San Diego commented, “In a symbolic sense [bases] are
a way of showing that America stands there watching.”
Longtime defense
analyst from George Washington University, Gordon
Adams, told The Associated Press that in the broader
context of reinforcing US presence in the oil-rich
Middle East, bases in Iraq are preferable to aircraft
carriers in the Persian Gulf. “Carriers don’t have the
punch. There’s a huge advantage to land-based
infrastructure. At the level of strategy it makes
total sense to have Iraq bases.”
According to
Professor Zoltan Grossman of The Evergreen State
College, who has been researching military bases and
participating in the global network against foreign
bases for several years, the US has no intention of
releasing control of its bases in Iraq. The Pentagon,
he believes, has many old tricks to mask a military
presence and armed pressure.
In an interview
with Truthout he observed:
Since the Gulf
War, the US has not just been building the bases to
wage wars, but has been waging wars to leave behind
the bases. The effect has been to create a new US
military sphere of influence wedged in the strategic
region between the E.U., Russia and China. The
Pentagon has not been building these sprawling,
permanent bases just to hand them over to client
governments.
Grossman’s
prediction for Iraq:
Look for a
Visiting Forces Agreement - of the kind negotiated
with the Philippines - that allows supposedly
‘visiting’ US forces unrestricted access to its
former bases. Similarly, constant joint military
exercises can keep US troops continually visible and
intimidating to Iraqis. Even after 2011, nothing in
the Iraq Status of Forces Agreement prevents US
bombers (stationed in Kuwait and elsewhere) from
attacking Iraqi targets whenever they want, just as
they did between 1991 and 2003. Nothing prevents the
type of missile or Special Forces attacks like we’re
seeing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Nothing
prevents CIA or contractors from participating in
Iraqi missions or intelligence operations.
Adding credence
to this, we have Article 6 of the US/Iraqi SOFA
discussing “agreed facilities,” Article 27 mentions
“mutually agreed … military measures” after 2011 and
Article 28 talks of a scenario where Iraq is able to
“request” US security in the International Zone (Green
Zone.)
Gray Language
Chapter six of
the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report stated:
In February
2009, President Obama outlined the planned drawdown
of US forces in Iraq to 50,000 troops and the change
in mission by August 31, 2010. By this time, US
forces will have completed the transition from
combat and counterinsurgency to a more limited
mission set focused on training and assisting the
Iraqi Security Forces ($2 billion has already been
set aside for this for FY2011); providing force
protection for US military and civilian personnel
and facilities; and conducting targeted
counterterrorism operations and supporting US
civilian agencies and international organizations in
their capacity-building efforts.
The report
further clarifies that US troop drawdowns “will occur
in accordance” with the SOFA, but that “the pace of
the drawdown takes into consideration Iraq’s improved,
yet fragile, security gains” and “provides US
commanders sufficient flexibility to assist the Iraqis
with emerging challenges.”
On May 15, 2006,
Gen. John Abizaid, overseeing US military operations
in Iraq at the time, said, “The United States may want
to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to
bolster moderates against extremists in the region and
protect the flow of oil.”
On March 12,
2010, Maj. Gen. Tony Cucolo, the commander of US
troops in Northern Iraq, told reporters during a
conference call that it might be necessary to keep
combat troops involved in the security mechanism that
maintains peace between Iraqi national and Kurdish
regional forces beyond the August deadline.
The National
Security Strategy for US Missions abroad proposes to
“Ignite a new era of global economic growth through
free markets and free trade and pressing for open
markets, financial stability, and deeper integration
of the world economy.” This fits perfectly with the
policy outlined by the Quadrennial Defense Review
Report, which says there is a stated ability for the
US military to fight “multiple overlapping wars” and
to “ensure that all major and emerging powers are
integrated as constructive actors and stakeholders
into the international system.”
Such gray
language and loopholes in policy documents have been
common since the US invaded Iraq seven years ago. This
has not changed with the SOFA.
“The likelihood
of the US planning to keep troops in Iraq after
December 31, 2011 has to be measured in the context of
the history of US violations of other countries’
sovereign territory, airspace, etc.,” Phyllis Bennis,
director of the New Internationalism Project with the
Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC,
explained to Truthout. “At the moment, this is perhaps
most obvious in Pakistan - where the US has been
routinely attacking alleged Taliban or al Qaeda
supporters with both air and [limited] ground troops
in Pakistani territory despite the stated opposition
of the Pakistani government which is nominally allied
to the US.”
“The early
public discussions of ‘re-missioning’ combat troops,
changing their official assignment from combat to
‘training’ or ‘assistance,’ thus allowing them to
remain in Iraq after the August 2010 deadline for all
combat troops to be removed from the country, provides
the model for how such sleight of language will
occur,” Bennis said, adding, “It may or may not be
linked to a future ‘need’ for US troops to remain to
protect the increasing numbers of US government
civilians assigned to Iraq as the official number of
troops decreases.”
Bennis explained
that the language of the SOFA is grounded in the claim
that Iraq is a sovereign nation and that the
government of Iraq is choosing freely to partner with
the US government. But the reality, according to
Bennis, is that the SOFA was negotiated and signed
while Iraq was (and continues to be today) a country
occupied and controlled by the United States. Its
government is and was at the time of the SOFA’s
signing dependent on the US for support.
In Article 27 of
the SOFA, the text stated, “in the event of any
external or internal threat or aggression against Iraq
that would violate its sovereignty, political
independence, or territorial integrity, waters,
airspace, its democratic system or its elected
institutions, and upon request by the Government of
Iraq, the Parties shall immediately initiate strategic
deliberations and, as may be mutually agreed, the
United States shall take appropriate measures,
including diplomatic, economic, or military measures,
or any other measure, to deter such a threat.”
While the
agreement is ostensibly binding only for three years,
Article 30 permits amendments to the SOFA, which
could, of course, include extending its timeframe -
and with the Iraqi government still qualitatively
dependent on US support, this appears likely. The same
is true for Article 28, which states, “The Government
of Iraq may request from the United States Forces
limited and temporary support for the Iraqi
authorities in the mission of security for the Green
Zone.”
She concluded:
There is no
question that the US has wanted for many years to
establish and maintain military bases in Iraq,
whether or not they are officially designated as
“permanent.” I do not believe the Pentagon is
prepared to hand them all over to Iraq, despite the
language in the agreement mandating exactly that.
Instead, I think the formal arrangement following
expiration of the current SOFA may be through some
sort of officially “bilateral” agreement between
Washington and Baghdad, allowing for the US to
“rent” or “lease” or “borrow” the bases from an
allegedly “sovereign” government in Iraq on a
long-term basis. The likelihood of this increases
with the growing number of statements from US
military and political officials hinting broadly at
the possibility of a long-term presence of US troops
in Iraq after December 31, 2011, “if the sovereign
government of Iraq should request such an idea …
Faculty Director
of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at
Stony Brook University in New York, Professor Michael
Schwartz, has written extensively on insurgency and
the US Empire.
He pointed out
to Truthout that President Obama’s “… actions have
made it very clear that he is unwilling to sacrifice
the 50,000-strong strike force, even while he has also
said he would abide by the SOFA and remove all troops
from Iraq by the end of 2011. In the meantime, Gates
and various generals have released hedging statements
or trial balloons saying that the 2011 deadline might
be impractical and that various types of forces might
stay longer, either to provide air power, to continue
training the Iraq military, or to protect Iraq from
invasion. Any or all of these could translate into the
maintenance of the 50k strike force as well as the
five ‘enduring bases.’”
That the Obama
administration intends to maintain a significant
military presence in Iraq after 2011 is obvious from
its continued insistence that in Iraq “democracy” must
be guaranteed.
Schwartz
explained:
In Washington
speak this means that the government of Iraq must be
an ally of the United States, a condition that has
been iterated and reiterated by all factions (GOP
and Democrat) in Washington, since the original
invasion. Given the increasing unwillingness of the
Maliki administration to follow US dictates (for
example, on oil contracts, on relations with Iran,
and on relations with Anbar and other Sunni
provinces), the removal of troops would allow Maliki
even more leeway to pursue policies unacceptable to
Washington. Thus, even if Maliki succeeds himself in
the Premiership, the US may need troops to keep the
pressure on him. If he does not succeed himself,
then the likely alternate choices are far more
explicit in their antagonism to integration of Iraq
into the US sphere of interest … the Obama
administration would then be left with the
unacceptable prospect that withdrawal would result
in Iraq adopting a posture not unlike Iran’s with
regard to US presence and influence in the Middle
East.
His grim
conclusion:
All in all,
there are myriad signs that withdrawal of US troops
might result in Iraq breaking free from US influence
and/or deprive the United States of the strong
military presence in that part of the Middle East
that both Bush and Obama advocated and have
struggled to establish. Until I see some sign that
the five bases are going to be dismantled, I will
continue to believe that the US will find some
reason - with or without the consent of the Iraqi
government - to maintain a very large (on the order
of 50k) military force there.
Expanding the
Base
The US embassy
in Iraq, already the largest diplomatic compound on
the planet and the size of the Vatican City, is now
likely to be doubled in size. Robert Ford, the deputy
chief of mission in Baghdad, told reporters in
January, “If Congress gives us the money we are asking
for, this embassy is going to be twice the size it is
now. It’s not going down, it’s getting bigger.”
In 2005, The
Washington Post reported:
An even more
expensive airfield renovation is underway in Iraq at
the Balad air base, a hub for US military logistics,
where for $124 million the Air Force is building
additional ramp space for cargo planes and
helicopters. And farther south, in Qatar, a
state-of-the-art, 104,000-square-foot air operations
center for monitoring US aircraft in the Middle
East, Central Asia and Africa is taking shape in the
form of a giant concrete bunker … the US military
has more than $1.2 billion in projects either
underway or planned in the Central Command region -
an expansion plan that US commanders say is
necessary both to sustain operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan and to provide for a long-term presence
in the area.
Lt. Gen. Walter
E. Buchanan III, who oversees Central Command’s air
operations pointed out, “As the ground force shrinks,
we’ll need the air to be able to put a presence in
parts of the country where we don’t have soldiers, to
keep eyes out where we don’t have soldiers on the
ground.”
In 2007 in a
piece titled “US Builds Air base in Iraq for the Long
Haul” NPR reported, “The US military base in Balad,
about 60 miles north of Baghdad, is rapidly becoming
one of the largest American military installations on
foreign soil … The base is one giant construction
project, with new roads, sidewalks, and structures
going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the
center of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few
decades.”
It is so big
that, “There is a regular bus service within its
perimeter to ferry around the tens of thousands of
troops and contractors who live here. And the services
are commensurate with the size of the population. The
Subway sandwich chain is one of several US chains with
a foothold here. There are two base exchanges that are
about as large as a Target or K-Mart. Consumer items
from laptop computers to flat-screen TV’s to Harley
Davidson motorcycles are available for purchase.”
The report
added, “Several senior military officials have
privately described Balad Air Base, and a few other
large installations in Iraq, as future bases of
operation for the US military.” The term used is “lily
pad,” a description of the military jumping from base
to base without ever touching the ground in between.
In September
2009 The New York Times reported about Balad:
It takes the
masseuse, Mila from Kyrgyzstan, an hour to commute
to work by bus on this sprawling American base. Her
massage parlor is one of three on the base’s 6,300
acres and sits next to a Subway sandwich shop in a
trailer, surrounded by blast walls, sand and rock.
At the Subway, workers from India and Bangladesh
make sandwiches for American soldiers looking for a
taste of home. When the sandwich makers’ shifts end,
the journey home takes them past a power plant, an
ice-making plant, a sewage treatment center, a
hospital and dozens of other facilities one would
expect to find in a small city. And in more than six
years, that is what Americans have created here:
cities in the sand…. Some bases have populations of
more than 20,000, with thousands of contractors and
third-country citizens to keep them running.
Camp Anaconda,
as the Balad base is named, also has an Olympic-sized
swimming pool. The bottling company there provides
seven million bottles of water a month for those on
base. This base also contains two fire stations and
the single busiest landing strip in the entire Defense
Department.
A 2006
Associated Press story, “Elaborate US Bases raise
long-term questions,” gave the following account:
[At Balad] the
concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday
glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab
that’s now the home of up to 120 US helicopters, a
“heli-park” as good as any back in the States. At
another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq’s western
desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in
a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger
King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs,
traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the
roads. The latest budget also allots $39 million for
new airfield lighting, air traffic control systems
and upgrades allowing al-Asad to plug into the Iraqi
electricity grid - a typical sign of a long-term
base. At Tallil, besides the new $14 million dining
facility, Ali Air Base is to get, for $22 million, a
double perimeter security fence with high-tech gate
controls, guard towers and a moat - in military
parlance, a “vehicle entrapment ditch with berm.”
Truthout
contacted renowned journalist and filmmaker John
Pilger for his views:
Like
Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq is more a war of
perception than military reality. I don’t believe
the US has the slightest intention of leaving Iraq.
Yes, there will be the “drawdown” of regular troops
with the kind of fanfare and ritual designed to
convince the American public that a genuine
withdrawal is happening. But the sum of
off-the-record remarks by senior generals, who are
ever conscious of the war of perception, is that at
least 70,000 troops will remain in various guises.
Add to this up to 200,000 mercenaries. This is an
old ruse. The British used to “withdraw” from
colonies and leave behind fortress-bases and their
Special Forces, the SAS.
Bush invaded
Iraq as part of a long-term US design to restore one
of the pillars of US policy and empire in the
region: in effect, to make all of Iraq a base. The
invasion went badly wrong and the “country as base”
concept was modified to that of Iraq indirectly
controlled or intimidated by a series of
fortress-bases. These are permanent. This is also
the US plan for Afghanistan. One has to keep in mind
that US foreign policy is now controlled by the
Pentagon, whose man is Robert Gates. It is as if
Bush never left office. Under Bush there was an
effective military coup in much of Washington; the
State Department was stripped of its power; and
Obama did as no president has ever done: he brought
across from a previous, discredited administration
the entire war making bureaucracy and gave it
virtually unlimited power. The only way the US will
leave is for the resistance to rise again, and for
Shiites and Sunni to unite; I think that will
happen.
Captain, My
Captain
On March 4,
2010, as a guest on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show,”
Thomas Ricks, who was the military correspondent for
the Washington Post, referring to President Obama’s
promises to withdraw from Iraq, said, “I would say you
shouldn’t believe [it] because I don’t think it’s
going to happen. I think we’re going to have several
thousand, several tens of thousands of US troops in
Iraq on the day President Obama leaves office.”
Gen. George
Casey, the chief of staff of the US Army, stated last
May that his planning for the Army envisions combat
troops in Iraq for a decade as part of a sustained US
commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the
Middle East. “Global trends are pushing in the wrong
direction,” he said, “They fundamentally will change
how the Army works.”
Senior CIA
analyst Ray McGovern, who served under seven
presidents - from John Kennedy to George H. W. Bush -
explained to Truthout, “Since 2003 I’ve been
suggesting that the Iraq war was motivated by the
acronym OIL: oil, Israel, and Logistics (military
bases to further the interests of the first two).”
In January 2008,
McGovern wrote of statements signed by George W. Bush
when he was in the White House:
Contrary to
how President George W. Bush has tried to justify
the Iraq war in the past, he has now clumsily - if
inadvertently - admitted that the invasion and
occupation of Iraq was aimed primarily at seizing
predominant influence over its oil by establishing
permanent (the administration favors “enduring”)
military bases. He made this transparently clear by
adding a signing statement to the defense
appropriation bill, indicating that he would not be
bound by the law’s prohibition against expending
funds:
“(1) To
establish any military installation or base for the
purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of
United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or
“(2) To
exercise United States control of the oil resources
of Iraq.”
At the Chicago
Council on Global Affairs on November 20, 2006, in a
speech titled “A Way Forward in Iraq,” Sen. Barack
Obama, who had not yet become the commander in chief
of the US military, declared:
Drawing down
our troops in Iraq will allow us to redeploy
additional troops to Northern Iraq and elsewhere in
the region as an over-the-horizon force. This force
could help prevent the conflict in Iraq from
becoming a wider war, consolidate gains in Northern
Iraq, reassure allies in the Gulf, allow our troops
to strike directly at al Qaeda wherever it may
exist, and demonstrate to international terrorist
organizations that they have not driven us from the
region.
On March 16,
2010, Gen. David Petraeus, head of US Central Command,
told lawmakers that the US military may set up an
additional headquarters in northern Iraq even after
the September 2010 deadline. Petraeus said that
putting a headquarters in northern Iraq was “something
we are looking at.”
What reason is
there to doubt our commander in chief ’s assertion
that there is need to maintain an (approximately
50,000 strong) US “strike force” in or near Iraq to
guarantee US interests in the Middle East, to allow
Washington to move quickly against jihadists in the
region and to make clear to “our enemies” that the US
will not be “driven from the region”?
Bhaswati
Sengupta contributed to this report
EsinIslam.Com
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