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Duty in Defeat
// The U.S. takes stock on the fifth anniversary of Iraq
U.S. President George W. Bush delivered a speech yesterday on the event of the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the military operation in Iraq. He admitted huge losses, but denied that his main geopolitical undertaking was unsuccessful. The future of the American military presence in Iraq is cloudy after the elections. Republican candidate John McCain is determined to fight to the victorious end, but Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are promising to leave Iraq. Meanwhile, in Iraq, domestic conflict is growing – a war of everyone against everyone.
Differing Views
The fifth anniversary of the beginning of the U.S. military operation in Iraq, the formal pretense for which had been information, never confirmed, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, led U.S. President George W. Bush to sum up the results of those on the eve of that date. Bush chose to make his appearance at the Pentagon, which played a key role in the development of the strategy and implementation of the Iraqi campaign.
“No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure – but those costs are necessary,” Bush said, going on the offensive against his opponents. He preferred not to mention the official motivation for the invasion in 2003 – information about the deadly weapons the Iraqi dictator had. Since those weapons have not been found in the five years since the invasion, Bush has recharacterized the goal of the campaign as overthrowing Hussein. “Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth. The answers are clear to me: Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win,” Bush stated.
Since Iraq is the main bone of contention between Democrats and Republicans in the current president race, Bush warned Democratic candidates Clinton and Obama against taking a defeatist position. Arguing that “the successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,” Bush disparages those who “still call for retreat.” “War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much,” he complained. Among the reasons why the United States cannot withdraw its forces from Iraq, Bush named the danger that Iraq will sink into chaos and al-Qaeda will become emboldened and “Iran could be emboldened as well – with a renewed determination to develop nuclear weapons and impose its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East.”
Bush's speech was a response to position speeches on the war made two days earlier by Clinton and Obama. Those candidates regularly trade volleys about who is the bigger pacifist and who will put an end to the Iraq affair the fastest. But they say in harmony that continuing the war in Iraq will cost the citizens of the U.S. over $1 trillion and it is hopeless and unwinnable. In this they are at odds with Republican candidate John McCain, who was forced this week to make a one-man defense against the two Democratic candidates of the continuation of the war in Iraq until the victorious end.
Bush and Vice President Cheney, from his Middle Eastern tour, helped McCain. In Iraq the day before Bush's speech, Cheney made a determined announcement meant to counter the Democrat's thesis that the Iraq campaign would soon be wrapped up. Cheney called the operation in Iraq “successful” and promised Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki that America would not abandon its friends. He told a gathering of 3000 American troops at the Balad airbase 70 km. from Baghdad that they would complete their mission so the next generation of Americans would not have to.
Everyone's Fighting
Recent events in Iraq have cast doubt on the Bush administration's assurances that the wave of violence in the country in recent months has come to an end. Critics of the administrations claims point out that the American military is using individual Iraqi provinces where the level of violence has decreased as evidence of the success of the Iraq campaign, while preferring not to mention places where the situation has not only not improved, but has deteriorated.
The fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq military campaign was marked by a new massive terrorist act in the Shia holy city of Karbala. A powerful blast in a crowd of pilgrims 100 m. from the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, one of the holiest sites for Shia Muslims. At least 42 people, including seven citizens of Iran, were killed, and more than 70 were wounded. According to Iraqi police, the blast was the work of an female al-Qaeda suicide bomber.
UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon issued a statement condemning the terrorist act and calling on “all Iraqis to show maximum restraint in the face of these provocative actions.” He urged “Iraqi leaders to resolve their differences through political dialogue and in a spirit of national reconciliation.”
A national conference convened in Baghdad on Tuesday, the day after Cheney's departure, to show national reconciliation was a failure. Besides several small parties, the Sunni Arab Accordance Front and Shia radical Muqtada al-Sadr's Badr Party, the leading political forces of Iraqi Sunni and Shia, declared a boycott of the widely advertised conference. Iraqi leader al-Maliki was forced to address a half-empty auditorium. More than half of the 700 delegates invited to the conference, in Baghdad's tightly guarded “green zone,” did not attend. Al-Maliki expressed regret that some prefer to stand on the sidelines, underline the political process and hinder the government at a time when helping the government is a patriotic obligation. His declaration that peace has been achieved between Shia and Sunni was called propaganda by leaders of the boycotting parties.
Observers say that, besides continuing resistance to the American military presence in Iraq, other lines of resistance have been noted in Iraq. Sunni and Shia groups with their own military units face off. In addition, Iraqi groups are openly hostile to al-Qaeda, which has spread through Iraq recently, considering it to represent foreigners. As a consequence, five years after the overthrow of Hussein, the situation in Iraq is one of war by everybody against everybody.
The Dark at the End of the Tunnel
Independent observers say one of the most disheartening consequences of the continuing conflict in Iraq is the catastrophic refugee situation. Just before the fifth anniversary of the military operation, the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration released an account of Iraqi refugees and displaced persons. According to the report of that independent international agency, which works closely with the UN and humanitarian organizations, approximately every fifth citizen of Iraq living in Iraq before the invasion is now a refugee or temporarily displaced person. There are 2.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan and, humanitarian organizations say, their conditions are deteriorating. Gemini Pandya, an official representative of the International Organization for Migration, said there was “no light” at the end of the tunnel in the Iraqi refugee crisis.
In November, when Americans choose a new president, it will become know whether or not the Iraq campaign will last another five years. But observers agree that any decision – to maintain a military presence in Iraq or to leave the country – will be fraught with new serious costs and losses. Thus, the real question they are arguing over is simply where the cost is less.
Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 20, 2008
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