The defining war

Three years after the Iraq invasion, the continuing war is shaping the possibilities and limits of global power for our main ally, the US. Recently returned from Iraq, national security editor Patrick Walters reports
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March 18, 2006
"WE'RE an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

So said an unidentified White House aide to US President George W. Bush during a conversation with American journalist Ron Suskind.

Three years after the immense US-led invasion force rumbled across Iraq's desert frontiers bound for Baghdad, Washington and its allies confront an even more troubling horizon across the Middle East. The intoxicating neo-con vision of Iraq as a beacon of democracy flourishing at the heart of the Islamic world has long since dissolved into a grim, more realistic, challenge for coalition policy-makers: how to exit Iraq without leaving behind a bitterly divided and ungovernable nation with the potential to destabilise the entire region.

In 2003, the US-led coalition military swept Saddam Hussein's regime aside in a lightning offensive that began on March 20 and stunned the world. General Tommy Franks's brilliantly executed campaign saw Baghdad overrun in just three weeks as the Coalition forces displayed their awesome mastery of 21st-century conventional warfare. That short, sharp, military shockwave proved to be the only part of George W. Bush's strategy for Iraq that went exactly according to plan. So well did things go that on May 1, 2003, Bush famously landed on the deck of a US aircraft carrier to declare that the main combat operations were over in Iraq. Behind him a huge banner declared: "Mission accomplished". Having assumed they would be greeted as liberators, the Pentagon's plans called for US troop numbers to fall to just 30,000 by mid-2003 as Iraq progressed rapidly to democratisation and a new civil order.

Three years on the US still has more than 130,000 troops in Iraq and the news just seems to keep getting worse. Iraq has cost the US taxpayer nearly $US100 billion. The war drags on and the toll of coalition casualties, now standing at 2500 mainly American dead and 20,000 wounded, climbs inexorably every day.

A vicious insurgency continues to foment sectarian strife. More disturbing, Iraq has become the heartland of the global jihad, drawing adherents into the struggle from around the globe. This multi-headed hydra shows little sign of faltering in the face of intense military pressure from the coalition.

Without a national government three months after last December's general election, Iraq remains on the brink of an abyss, a slide into nationwide civil chaos. Across to the east lies another new reality for Bush. Iran, which exercises a subtle but increasingly powerful influence over Shia politics inside Iraq, is moving rapidly to acquire a nuclear capability.

The new national security strategy published this week nominates Iran as the US's top security challenge because of its suspected nuclear weapons program. The document reaffirms the notion of preventive war and Bush administration officials this week refused to rule out a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities in the coming months.

On Thursday, US and Iraqi forces launched Operation Swarmer - the biggest air offensive since April 2003 - against suspected al-Qa'ida strongholds near Samarra in the heart of the Sunni triangle, with more than 50 aircraft taking part. The continuing, grinding counter-insurgency inside Iraq is testing the resilience of the US military and the competence of the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

In Baghdad last week, coalition military commanders acknowledged that long-planned troop withdrawals may have to be reviewed in the wake of the new wave of sectarian strife. No one expects a big pull-out of coalition forces to occur before late 2007. The coalition's political and military leadership insist that events are still moving in the right direction in Iraq, citing that country's three elections since 2004 as an indicator of progress.

Visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday there was a very good chance that Iraq would have built the foundations for a stable democratic nation during the next couple of years.

"I believe they have been remarkable in what they have achieved thus far and I really do believe that we are going to look one day at a stable and secure Iraq," she said.

US central command chief John Abizaid says the US-led coalition forces must get through the wave of sectarian strife before future force levels can be determined. "It's interesting," he says. "When I'm in Washington everyone seems to think there is a set schedule, an exact plan. It just doesn't work that way. There is a theatre of war. The commanders in the field ... react to the facts on the ground."

Abizaid and senior US commander in Iraq George Casey remain emphatic that Iraq is not on the verge of civil war.

"The sectarian tensions in the region are historic," Abizaid says. "They exist, they are a fact of life that have to be dealt with. The question for us is whether these endemic, sectarian problems come to the surface to the point where it leads to a civil war."

Coalition military commanders point to the increasing capability of the Iraqi army as another reason for cautious optimism about progress in Iraq.e They cite this week's military offensive in Samarra, spearheaded by Iraqi units, as further evidence of an indigenous force mounting sophisticated counter-insurgency operations.

However, the performance of the Iraqi police, infiltrated in some cases by militia units, remains much more problematic.

As with the creation of a new civil service, the establishment from scratch of new security forces still suffers from two crucial decisions taken by Washington in May 2003, the early days of the US-led occupation. The overnight dissolution of the Iraqi army and the ousting of Baath party members from the top echelon civilian bureaucracy fuelled the Sunni-led insurgency and undermined the formation of new governing institutions.

A new Pentagon study of Saddam's regime reveals the former Iraqi dictator never planned for a counter-insurgency campaign against the foreign occupiers. Saddam, who never expected the US to attack Iraq, did pre-position a huge stock of munitions across the country, much of which fell into the hands of Sunni insurgents in the post-war chaos.

During the past fortnight, scores of people have been shot or strangled in and around Baghdad, raising communal tensions and prompting further questions about the loyalty of the newly trained security forces.

"I believe that there are elements of extra-legal militias that are moving around doing some of this damage," Abizaid says. "There may be people with misguided loyalties in some of the security services, although less in the army than in the police."

Coalition and Iraqi leaders agree that the highest priority is the formation of a national unity government to fill the dangerous power vacuum existing inside the country.

In Baghdad this week Iraq's new parliament, elected in last December's poll, met for the first time deep inside the city's heavily guarded international zone. But the Shia-dominated 270-seat chamber remains bitterly divided and still deadlocked on the three crucial appointments of prime minister, president and parliamentary speaker.

The new parliament's oldest MP, Adnan Pachachi, 83, opened proceedings acknowledging the gravity of Iraq's political plight. "The country is going through very difficult times and it faces a big dilemma after the Samarra bombing and the attacks that followed. Sectarian tension has increased and it threatens national disaster," he warned.

One of the US's leading Middle East experts and former head of policy planning at the Department of State, Richard Haass, says it's too early to be definitive about America's adventure in Iraq. But he argues the impact up to this point is clearly negative.

"It has absorbed a tremendous amount of US military capacity, the result being that the US has far less spare capacity, not just in the active sense but to exploit in the diplomatic sense," he says. "It has therefore weakened our position against North Korea and Iran."

At home Bush has promised to stay the course, warning of more "chaos and carnage" ahead in Iraq during a speech this week at George Washington University.

Iraq has helped the President's approval ratings to plummet to the high 30s, the lowest of his five years in office. Popular support for the war also continues to decline, with two-thirds of Americans believing the US is losing ground in Iraq. Less than half of those polled by the Pew Research Centre believe that US-led forces will leave behind a stable and democratic regime in Baghdad.

"As the third anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq approaches, public support for keeping US troops in Iraq has reached its lowest point and assessments of progress there have turned significantly more negative than they were just a few months ago," the Pew Centre concludes from its latest poll.

Three years on, John Howard remains the only coalition political leader to escape the political opprobrium attached to involvement in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

That this is so is due Australia's defence forces not suffering a single fatality in Iraq and their undoubted professionalism.

Howard has shown political dexterity in keeping our forces well away from the killing grounds of the Sunni triangle. But he has also been lucky. Even a handful of Australian casualties in Iraq could force a decisive change in public attitudes to our continued involvement in the theatre.

Australia's 700 defence personnel in Iraq have made a significant contribution to coalition operations out of all proportion to our modest numbers. But they have not been engaged in combat operations like the Americans and the British.

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