While widespread ransacking was happening in Iraq after Baghdad fell, the U.S. moved swiftly to secure the country’s oil facilities. But in the months since the official end of the war, general looting and sabotage have impeded even the oil industry, frustrating efforts to quickly return oil production to prewar levels.
In the four months since U.S. President George W. Bush triumphantly declared the end of “major hostilities” in Iraq, the occupation has become ever more untenable and no less illegal by the day. Where are the members of the global antiwar movement?
Sergio de Mello’s death might accomplish something the dynamic and debonair UN special representative in Iraq would have loved to have seen–a U.S. request for the United Nations to take a leadership role in marshaling the international force and legitimacy needed to end the growing guerrilla war in Iraq. Now that Secretary of State Powell has initiated negotiations on a new UN resolution, United Nations officials and Security Council members should do more than pull the Bush administration’s fat out of the fire in Iraq. They should, with the support of U.S. internationalists, use it as an opportunity to permanently repair tattered UN-U.S. relationships. And they should demand a deal that will permanently fix the United Nations’ capacity to mount credible peace operations.
President George W. Bush’s nationally broadcast speech Sunday evening once again was designed to mislead Congress and the American public into supporting his administration’s policies in Iraq. Despite record deficits and draconian cutbacks in government support for health care, housing, education, the environment, and public transportation, the president is asking the American taxpayer to spend an additional $87 billion to support his invasion and occupation of Iraq.
The recent Bush administration’s draft UN resolution proposing a new role for the United Nations in Iraq is not a reflection of any concern regarding the illegality of the occupation, the lack of legitimacy of the U.S. presence in Iraq, or the impact on Iraqis of Washington’s abject failure to provide for even the minimal humanitarian needs of the population. Instead, it reflects a growing concern regarding what the New York Times called the “high cost of occupation” for the U.S. in Iraq–costs both in U.S. soldiers’ lives and in dollars.
In the months leading up to the recent war in Iraq and in its aftermath, Bush administration officials were forced to continually change their rationale for launching the attack to topple Saddam Hussein. Where they have not wavered, and where they have received consistent support from top Pentagon military commanders, is in their insistence that Iraq is not another Vietnam, not a quagmire. The further the U.S. and the world move from the fall of Baghdad on April 9th, the more it seems that the administration is correct: Iraq is not a quagmire. It is really a black hole.
Iraq is not the first country the United States has intervened in and then tried to have the United Nations try to clean up after it. Never before, however, have the consequences of a U.S. military action been so tragic for the world body and its dedicated civilian workers.
Between May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat in Iraq was over, and August 20, 131 U.S., nine UK, and one Danish military personnel have died in Iraq from all causes. That is more than one death every day. To the U.S. and UK toll must be added scores of Iraqis, both Saddamists–military, intelligence, fedayeen, non-Iraqi volunteers–and innocent civilians. And after August 20, 20 UN workers.
The invasion and occupation of Iraq posed new challenges to peace and justice activists. The growing credibility crisis of the Bush administration with respect to Iraq, as well as the ongoing crisis on the ground in Iraq, provides us with new opportunities. Below I present four theses on one campaign that could use these opportunities in a creative way: a campaign to turn the administration of Iraq over to the United Nations.