The supreme international crime

Q/A on the Iraq War
by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman
November 29, 2005

1. On Reconstruction

Anthony DiMaggio: The "humanitarian reconstruction" of Iraq
has been acknowledged to a large degree as a failure in the
corporate press. It's interesting, though, to see the
reasons given for why: the resistance is hampering
reconstruction, there wasn't perfect foresight by the Bush
administration in the reconstruction coordination planning
process, the excessive "rapid personnel shifts" of those
Americans involved in rebuilding, American money has
"necessarily" gone to "pacification" instead of rebuilding,
etc. What seems to be systematically omitted here is any
real responsibility placed on the Bush Administration for
its failure to make humanitarian reconstruction a high priority.

Chomsky: The excuses also overlook the fact that the
insurgency was created by the brutality of the invasion and
occupation -- which is, in fact, one of the most astonishing
failures in military history. The Nazis had less trouble in
occupied Europe, and the Russians held their satellites for
decades with far less difficulty. It is difficult to think
of an analog. A few months after the invasion, I met a
highly experienced senior physician with one of the leading
relief organizations, who has served in some of the worst
parts of the world. He had just returned briefly from
Baghdad, where he was trying to reestablish medical
facilities, but was unable to because of the incompetence of
the CPA. He told me he had never seen such a combination of
"arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence," referring to the
Pentagon civilians in charge. In fact, it was monumental.
They even failed to guard the WMD sites that had been under
UN supervision, so that they were systematically looted,
handing over to someone -- probably jihadis --
high-precision equipment suitable for producing missiles and
nuclear weapons, dangerous bio-toxins, etc., which had been
provided to their friend Saddam by the US, UK and others.
The ironies are almost indescribable.

Another fact overlooked, though it is finally beginning to
leak, is the immense corruption under the CPA, beside which
anything attributed to the UN pales in insignificance.
Plenty of information has been readily available, but only
tidbits were reported here.

One can go on. But the major and crucial point overlooked is
the judgment of Nuremberg, declaring that aggression is "the
supreme international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated
evil of the whole." All of the "accumulated evil." Also
overlooked are the stern words of the US Chief Counsel
Justice Jackson: "If certain acts of violation of treaties
are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does
them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared
to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which
we would not be willing to have invoked against us . . . We
must never forget that the record on which we judge these
defendants is the record on which history will judge us
tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to
put it to our own lips as well." Until at least this is
recognized, all other discussion is merely footnotes, and
shameful ones.

Herman: The U.S. specialty is destruction, not
reconstruction, in accord with the U.S. elite's longstanding
giving of primacy to military means, and the use of force in
dealing with target states. We save them by destroying them,
and then move on to the next creative project. This is how
it works even when we succeed in bringing into power an
amenable client regime, as in Nicaragua after the ouster of
the Sandinistas or Afghanistan after the removal and
dispersal of the Taliban. There have been explicit
leadership statements to the effect that "nation-building"
is not our business -- we specialize in dismantlement, not
construction.

In Iraq, there has been a lot of construction, but not much
reconstruction. What have been constructed are massive U.S.
military bases and facilities, repairs of oil extraction
facilities, and protective walls in and around the Green
Zone, which is essentially an occupied fortress within
Baghdad. Not much has been done for Iraqi benefit. There are
two incentives for reconstruction in Iraq: one is to serve
U.S. companies, obviously mainly donor companies like
Halliburton and Bechtel, who want the business, especially
under conditions where looting is relatively easy given the
difficult conditions and fiscal confusion. There is also an
incentive to reconstruct in order to help sell the client
government to the Iraqi people. The first incentive has been
effective, with the donor companies getting lots of business
with lots of overpayment, but most of their work has been in
base, oil industry, and Green Zone construction, not
reconstruction helpful to Iraqis. The second incentive might
have had some potency except for the extreme difficulties of
working in the highly insecure environment of occupied Iraq,
plus the fact that Bush priorities and the unexpectedly high
costs of the occupation have made this form of help to the
client government too expensive; so helping the client
government has been reduced to the U.S. specialty --
pacification by violence.

2. On Civil War in Iraq

DiMaggio: A common argument made against de-escalation and
withdrawal is that Iraq would fall into civil war. Should
this argument be taken seriously by the American public?
Many have argued that the U.S. is already promoting civil
war in Iraq by training Iraqi security forces to fight other
Iraqis (the resistance). In addition, others have pointed
out that U.S. occupation is hardly going to change the
dynamics of long-standing sectarian and cultural divides
between Iraq's various groups (Shia, Kurds, Sunni); in fact
it may make them worse by exacerbating relations between
Sunni insurgents/resistance and the Shia and Kurds. Is there
any legitimacy to the argument that the U.S. should prevent
civil war?

Chomsky: Aggressors have no rights, only responsibility. One
is to provide massive reparations (not aid). Another is to
withdraw forthwith, unless there is very strong evidence
that the population wants them to stay. To say that such
evidence is lacking is a serious understatement. The most
recent poll (August 2005), undertaken by the British
Ministry of Defense and leaked to the right-wing British
press, reveals that over 80% of the population want the
US-UK forces out, that 1% think they increase security, and
that 45% approve of attacks on US-UK forces. If this means
all Iraqis, as reported, it must be that opposition to the
occupiers is far higher in Arab Iraq, where they are
actually deployed and engaged. This is not too surprising in
the light of earlier information that has been released.

Herman: The Bush war has already started a civil war as part
of the evolving occupation strategy. The character of the
occupation, with its murderous use of firepower and harsh
treatment of the populace, has steadily enlarged and
consolidated a resistance. Having failed to get a puppet
effectively installed without even nominal democratic forms,
the Bush war managers opted for a tacit alliance with the
Shiites and Kurds, who would be given nominal and possibly a
modicum of real power via an electoral process, but with
much of the legal and power arrangements of the occupation
left intact and with the United States staying on to protect
the new quasi-rulers from the Sunni-based insurgency. This
provoked and institutionalized a civil war, with the
occupation maintained as the military arm of one side. Thus
the idea that the United States should stay on to avert a
civil war is a laugher -- it produced the resistance and
then moved on to a tacit alliance with the Shiites and Kurds
to fight the Sunnis on behalf of the latter two groups while
trying to train and arm these to be able to pacify the
Sunnis on their own, which is to say in a civil war with the
foreign military's direct assistance and participation.

3. On U.S. Withdrawal

DiMaggio: Most Americans seem to be considering withdrawal
within the next year or so. Do you think there is any
serious role to be played by the U.N. or Arab League in
ensuring a power-vacuum does not replace the American
occupation, should the U.S. decide to leave? In other words,
are these two organizations necessary for promoting security
in Iraq? From what polling has revealed, the people of Iraq
seem to prefer that Iraqi security forces should take over
stabilizing and policing the country, rather than the U.S.
or some other power. Is this realistic at all? Would
bringing Arab League forces in not just subject Iraq to
outside political pressures from neighboring regimes? And
does the U.N. really have any credibility there after nearly
15 years of murderous sanctions?

Chomsky: In Western propaganda, the murderous sanctions are
called "UN sanctions," which is technically accurate, but a
cowardly evasion. It has always been perfectly obvious that
they were initiated and conducted under US initiative, with
the "spear carrier for Pax Americana" -- as Blair's Britain
is described in Britain's leading journal of international
affairs -- trailing politely behind. And the cruel and
savage character of the sanctions (as well as the illegal
oil shipments) trace right back to Washington,
overwhelmingly. By April 2003, a large majority of Americans
felt that the UN, not the US, should take responsibility for
Iraq -- approximately the position that Spanish voters
approved a year later, but in the US, democracy has
deteriorated to the point that public opinion has little
influence on policy, on a very wide range of issues. The
discussion, in any event, is idle. It is for Iraqis to make
these decisions. The invaders may have whatever uninformed
subjective judgments they like, but they are of only
marginal interest, no matter who the invaders are.

Herman: With a U.S. withdrawal there would be a strong
incentive for the three sub-national groups to come to some
kind of accommodation, without any outside assistance. The
U.S. withdrawal would cut out a major part of the rationale
for an insurgency, so accommodation would become possible.
The very assurance of a specific and near-term U.S. timed
exit would probably induce serious indigenous attempts to
produce reconciliation and end a struggle that is so costly
to all sides, but mostly to the Sunnis and Shiites.

Other Arab states did perform a useful mediation service in
Lebanon in earlier years, so their utility in this service
is not out of the question. The UN is pretty thoroughly
discredited and probably has no useful role to play here.
But the possibility of purely indigenous accommodation in
the absence of the aggressor-occupier from abroad should not
be discounted. The United States has wrecked the country and
continues to do further wrecking in its pacification
operations, so that ending its operations there would be a
gigantic plus. It is not likely that the situation would be
as bad or worse with the United States and its "coalition of
the bribed" out of Iraq, and there is an excellent chance
that it would be much better. The Iraqis surely ought to be
given that chance of freedom from an aggression-occupation
following their long years of non-freedom under Saddam Hussein.

The United States should not only get out quickly, it ought
to be compelled or shamed into paying huge sums to a free
Iraq to compensate for the enormous damage that resulted
from its commission of the "supreme crime" and murderous
occupation.

Anthony DiMaggio teaches Middle East Politics and American
Government at Illinois State University. He is the Senior
Editor of The Indy, an independent newspaper based out of
Illinois.