It's All Our Fault

This past weekend, I went out to see the documentary “No End in Sight”. As I said in a previous post, this was an excellent film. It actually shed a lot of light on a few things that I wasn’t aware of. Well, I was sort of aware of them, but not to the degree that I am now that I have seen this.

This film could easily be dismissed as an anti-Iraq War film. I don’t really see it that way. It was actually more of an informative breakdown of the utter incompetence with which the occupation was and is being handled. It didn’t spend any time dealing with conspiracy theories. It did, however, point some fingers at the current administration regarding their rush to go to war in Iraq. This is not a conspiracy theory. It has basis in well-documented fact. I won’t go into any of that because that is not what this posting is about and it is only briefly touched on in the film.

This film could also be easily dismissed as left-wing propaganda. Typically, I might agree with that assessment. However, the mere presence of one person in particular negates that accusation entirely. That one person happens to be none other than Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell. He was also a signatory on the PNAC letter urging former President Clinton to invade Iraq in the late 90s. When someone of such as Mr. Armitage comes out negatively of the occupation that he had a hand in starting, you just know something has to be wrong. His mere presence, ironically, lent a large amount of credibility to what was being said.

I knew that L. Paul Bremer had done a couple of things during his tenure as interim governor of Iraq that were questionable such as deciding what contractor got what contract and for how much. There also remains the issue of the missing $9 billion in Iraqi funds, but we’ll leave that alone as well… for now. I also knew that the Iraqi military had been disbanded. What I did not know was that this came from a direct order from Bremer. I also did not know that more qualified people (like General Jay Garner and Colonel Paul Hughes) were telling him and anyone who would listen that this was a mistake. From what I gather, the Iraqi military was disbanded simply for being members of the Iraqi military. I suppose that one could argue that they may have been loyal to Saddam Hussein. However, given that Iraq had a policy of military conscription, I doubt that. There also remains the fact that these newly former and unemployed soldiers were volunteering to work for the Americans in order to provide for their families and to aid in securing Iraq. This act was stupid at best, prejudiced at worst. I use the term “prejudiced” because that is what it appears to be.

So, let’s take a look at some of Mr. Bremer’s “orders” and how they affected the population of Iraq:

Order #1- This order involved the de-Ba’Ath-ification of Iraqi society. On the surface, this doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Unfortunately, what this really accomplished was putting people who were in positions of authority completely out of work. This included teachers and engineers of varying fields. Essentially, if you were a member of the Ba’ Ath party in Iraq, you were pushed aside. Never mind the fact that some of these party members were only members because Saddam Hussein would have had them and their families murdered otherwise. So, that was step one.

Order #2- This is the order that disbanded the military by way of dissolving the Ministry of Defense. As I said before, this was stupid. I could understand if the upper levels of the Ministry of Defense were dismissed, but the average soldier and the chain of command up to battalion level have no real control over the orders that they are given. It seems to me that these people could have and should have been re-trained for security purposes and utilized for that purpose. This would have allowed them to remain functional as members of their society and would have served to better stabilize Iraq in a much speedier way. Instead, Bremer “fired” nearly 400,000 people and tried to stabilize a country of 25 million with a force of only roughly 168,000 coalition troops. The mind boggles.

Order #14- This order involved a list of “prohibited media activities”. For a force who only wanted to depose Saddam Hussein and bring the Iraqi people Western-style democracy and freedom, it certainly looks a little suspect that they would limit the freedom of the press. Could it be that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) wished to propagandize what they were doing? Maybe, just maybe, it was because the CPA was afraid that the Iraqi people might not actually want Western-style Democracy and limiting the activities of the media was one of the major ways to make sure that the Iraqi people took what the CPA was shoveling.

Order #46- Order 46 actually amended Order 39, which governed foreign investment. What Order 39 stated was that the only business venture that a foreign company could not engage in was retail sales. This left the door wide open for foreign investors to take advantage of a severely weakened Iraqi populace. While it said that foreign companies could not participate in direct retail sales, it still allowed for them to sell the goods for retail sale to Iraqi businesses. This puts the Iraqi on a course to become a nation of nothing but consumers. Being a nation of consumers places that nation at a distinct disadvantage in that they are unable to provide for their own lives and, thus, they become a nation of dependants. I don’t see how this can be a good thing. Independence is good for a nation because it inspires a sense of self worth. It inspires people to produce and, when people produce, they feel better about their place in the world. It seems to me that, if we truly had the best of intentions in “freeing” the Iraqi people, we would have made provisions for the state of their national psychological well-being as well as their economic well-being.

Order #38- Order #38 actually, get this, places a tax of 5% on goods sold in Iraq for what is called a “Reconstruction Levy”. So, we went to Iraq without the direct request of the Iraqi people, destroyed just about everything and now we’re taxing them to rebuild what we destroyed. Not only that, but we aren’t even giving the Iraqi people the opportunity to rebuild it themselves. We have basically given certain American contractors the authority to rebuild what we destroyed and we are taxing the Iraqis to pay them. Wow. The audacity of some people just astounds me at every turn.

It occurs to me that these “orders” are exactly what has created this “insurgency” in Iraq. These "orders" also explain why we saw jubilant Iraqis in the beginning of the occupation and now we see angry Iraqis. What we are seeing is not terrorism. It is not an insurgency. What we are seeing is an entire nation rebelling against oppression. What we are seeing is an entire nation so hopeless that it would rather die than live under our version of "freedom". Certainly, they were oppressed under Saddam Hussein, but they weren’t starving. Under Saddam Hussein, they at least had clean water and electricity. Under Saddam Hussein they had education. Under Saddam Hussein, they had hospitals and access to preventive health care. Granted, it wasn’t up to our level, but it was better than nothing at all. Under the CPA, they have none of this. What they have are random home inspections that often result in the prolonged detainment or, sometimes, even death of a household’s sole breadwinner. What they have is a lack of constant electricity so that they may stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. As awful as Hussein was, what they have now is, dare I say, worse. The utter hopelessness that these people must be feeling is what is at the root of terrorism. It isn’t religion, its hopelessness. If we truly want to fight terror, ridding the world of this hopelessness and degradation with an even hand and equality in mind is the only way to go about it. One cannot fight an ideal with bombs and guns.