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| December 15, 2003 | ||||
Saddam's Capture:A Pyrrhic Victory in the Making? |
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| by Christopher Deliso | ||||
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So
it's finally happened – Saddam
has been captured. If he was in fact funding the Iraqi guerrillas,
US soldiers should now have an easier time of it in the wilds of Iraq,
with the A Lucky Break? The arrest of Hussein appears to be fortuitous, coming just in time for the new year – and the new season for political campaigning in America. The timing could not have been any better for a beleaguered president who had, until yesterday, run out of propaganda stunts in advance of next month's pivotal State of the Union address. In the short-term, Bush's future looks rosy. The Democrats, schizophrenic, confused and constantly attacking one another's ideas, are once again reduced to fulsome plaudits of the president's great leadership, as they were with the Thanksgiving turkey stunt. They have no choice now but to praise the leadership that led straight to Saddam's underground lair – and, by implication, make themselves utterly irrelevant to today's political debate. If by some small miracle, Osama is captured too, the Democrats may as well just drop out of the race. Enemies of Bush who fear nothing more than the unrestrained indulgences of a second-term president do not want to contemplate a long dark night of foreign intervention and revoked civil liberties. However, will the arrest of Saddam still prove a boon for Bush, 11 long months from now? In the long-term, could having Hussein on his hands actually prove problematic for Bush? We should remember that even after the initial euphoria of the arrest has worn off, the situation on the ground in Iraq remains. The Bush Administration has been spinning the myth that Saddam Hussein was the hidden hand behind the Iraqi resistance. However, if the guerrillas do not give up but instead redouble their attacks, the capture of Saddam will be seen as ineffectual. If this is how it turns out, and military deaths continue, then candidate Bush may actually suffer from the capture of Saddam. The Trial to End All Trials We should also not forget the inherent problems to be encountered in trying Saddam. If the US really wants to show itself as a paragon of law and justice, he will be allowed to mount a defense. And, if this goes anything like the Milosevic trial at the Hague has, the result will likely be long, tiresome and politically embarrassing. Will Saddam be allowed to call witnesses to the stand from past and present American administrations? Will his testimony on the former Iraqi-American friendship prove damaging for leading American officials? In this landmark trial to be conducted before the eyes of the world, how much of the proceedings will be censored or otherwise withheld from public knowledge – and what will the free press have to say about this? Just as much as Saddam, the US Government and the operative tribunal will also be put on trial here. A Reprieve for the Imperialists Undoubtedly, the coming weeks will see a revitalized neoconservative movement use the capture to justify everything it has long called for. No doubt the fact that Saddam was overthrown and finally arrested – no matter how bloody and difficult it turned out to be – will be forwarded as justification for why leaders of other "rogue states" can and should be hunted down. On to Iran, Libya, North Korea! Yesterday's reports showed ordinary Iraqis celebrating the final downfall of Saddam. They giddily fired their rifles in the air, "like a wedding" said one resident of Baghdad. Now, everyone – especially the neocons – is waiting to see the effect this momentous event will have on the Iraqi resistance. Should the guerrillas melt away, give up, or even gladly put down their weapons and pledge fealty to the US occupiers, the prevailing narrative to emerge from all this conflict and waste will be that Saddam, and only Saddam, was the reason for the resistance in the first place. Removing a dictator, by necessity, would therefore be to simultaneously remove all opposition to the American Way – anytime, anywhere. No doubt, the international tyrant count is set to rise exponentially overnight. In many ways, though they had no actual relation, the arrest of Saddam and the attacks of September 11th mark two turning points in the war on terror. The latter set it off, whereas the former will be used by propagandists to retrospectively justify it. However, if the now-daily attacks do not stop but rather intensify, one of two arguments will emerge. If they are seen to be revenge for the capture of Saddam, the Iraqi leader will continue to be blamed – or, that is, his symbolic image will be blamed. Or, if there is no perceived relationship between the violence and the vanished leader, the possibility would have to be considered that Iraqis are just opposed to being run by an outside occupying force – and not fighting for the honor of Saddam. This is the possibility neocons fear most. The sentiment has, however, certainly been witnessed by innumerable reports from Iraq, which have quoted many Iraqis as stating that, while they are grateful to the US Army for removing Saddam from power, they would prefer that it leave their country as soon as possible. Saddam's Arrest – Deflecting Attention from the War on Terror While President Bush and Co. will probably emphasize the capture of Saddam as the greatest moment in modern history, we shouldn't forget the broader context and the rationale that has led the US thus far: the war on terror. New evidence shows that the prosecution of this terror 'war' has some serious shortcomings. Take, for example, a recent report from the US Government itself on anti-terrorist financing initiatives, which reveals that: "…U.S. law enforcement still has no clear idea of how terrorists move their money and that the FBI, which is the lead agency in tracking terrorist assets, still doesn't 'systematically collect or analyze' such information. It concluded that the Justice and Treasury departments have fallen more than a year behind in developing plans to attack terrorist financial mechanisms, such as the use of diamonds and gold to hide assets." This same article quotes a "…senior US official" as saying: "…we desperately need to revitalize our effort to choke off terrorist financing, because until we cut that off, we have not crippled Al-Qaida's ability to attack us… we started out well, picked all the low-hanging fruit, and then, as we have squeezed, they have simply moved on to different methods." The Impossible War The obvious, but seldom-cited truth is that terrorism will never be eliminated until the motivations behind it are. Governments can invest as much money, time and technology as they want into fighting terrorism, but human ingenuity will always prevail in the end. To be sure, they can increase their chances of success by such methods, but the terrorist threat can never be entirely eliminated by policing. Any individual who is determined and fanatic enough can wreak untold havoc in countless ways, with even the bare minimum of funds and technology. That is the nature of terrorism, and the nature of our age. Capturing Saddam Hussein, while a great morale and propaganda boost for the US Government, may not end an Islamic terrorist campaign that began before his downfall and which had no use for him anyway. The great danger for the American people is that, while caught up in the inevitable Super Bowl-style euphoria over Saddam's arrest, other, more pertinent issues are likely to be further ignored. Take, for example, Afghanistan. The 'Forgotten' Front: Afghanistan The war there has cost $50 billion so far, and is not over yet. The vanquished Taliban have been allowed to regroup, aided by Pakistani tribesmen, forcing the US to launch a 2,000-man assault – by far the biggest since the war – to reclaim territory wrested from government control. According to the Independent, "…the deputy governor of Zabul admits most of his province is now in Taliban hands, officials report that the situation is much the same in neighbouring Oruzgan, while about half the territory in Kandahar has slipped out of government control. In the dusty town of Spin Boldak close to the border with Pakistan in the east, where the Taliban was born, black and green flags celebrate its rebirth. American forces in Afghanistan and the multinational International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) have come under fire more times in the past three months than the previous 15. This year, 25 American and Isaf soldiers have been killed and 28 injured. The number of Afghans, allied and enemy, killed, according to the US military, is 'several thousand.' More than 400 Taliban fighters were said to have been killed in September." Besides the forces of the elusive Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the anti-American guerrillas now include a third faction: "…(warlord) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, created by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence as a mujahedin leader against the Russians, and a past favoured recipient of CIA largesse, is an increasingly active player in the anti-Western alliance." The Independent report also notes that American troops in Afghanistan are beginning to see an influx of foreign fighters and tactics – such as suicide bombing – that had been relatively unknown before. In fact, they are specifically noting the resemblance between guerrilla methods used in Iraq this year with the new style of Afghan resistance. This is ironic in the extreme, considering that before the war in Iraq that country had no interest in teaching the Taliban about terrorist methods, and no involvement with the Taliban's leading personalities. By invading Iraq, the US made Saddam Hussein – no friend of radical Islam – into a religious hero worth dying for. In the coming weeks, we are about to see if America's number one enemy becomes even more powerful in captivity than he was in hiding. Of course, it's also possible that his influence in captivity may wane, and the neocons appear to be justified. However, it is unlikely that Hussein's arrest will silence those other terrorists whose cause never involved him in the first place. The American people were tricked into thinking that winning the war on terror somehow depended on capturing Saddam, even if he had never been involved with the events of September 11th, 2001. Unfortunately, considering the massive amount of celebratory propaganda we are soon going to be hit with, it's likely that the delusion will continue – even as international terrorism does also. |
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Christopher Deliso is an American journalist, travel writer and author concentrating on the Balkans and Southeast Europe, where he has lived and traveled for almost a decade. His criticisms of interventionist foreign policy can be found in his writings for Antiwar.com, and in his recent work on the West's failures to eradicate foreign-funded Muslim extremists in the Balkans, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West (Praeger Security International, 2007). Mr Deliso directs the Balkan-interest news and analysis website, Balkanalysis.com and is also the author of a travelogue, Hidden Macedonia (Haus Publishing, London). He holds an MPhil with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University.
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