The withdrawal of the U.S. Army from Iraq proves once again that in America, like on our side, wars are launched easily; however, no one knows how to finish them.
In the months preceding the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, I had the opportunity to converse with an American senator who visited Israel. He was very sober: There’s no plan for the day after, he said. Our army will defeat Saddam Hussein, but nobody has a clue — and President Bush does not explain — how this military victory is going to turn into a real achievement, how long we’re going to be there, what Iraq is going to look like after we’re out of there. But despite this, he said, I’ll side with the president in the vote on the war. In the country I represent, to be against the war is instant political suicide.
That senator and his colleagues had no idea yet then that the operation in Iraq was based on false claims, obtained by the administration through coercion from intelligence agencies that could not stand the pressure. He was not cognizant that the rationale for the military campaign brought up by Secretary of State Colin Powell in the U.N. — that Saddam had developed weapons of mass destruction, was affiliated with al-Qaida and constituted a danger to his neighbors — had no factual grounds. He was just aware that what the government was planning did not meet any criterion making it appropriate to drag America to the battlefield. And only aware that when the tam-tam drums of war beat, only a few cared.
According to President Obama’s promise, American forces are to exit Iraq at the end of this year, more than eight and a half years after Bush announced that the mission was accomplished. In America, there are quite a few who believe that this is premature, that feeble Obama is unable to afford the price tag for attaining victory.
Thousands of killed, trillions of dollars (which, along with the cost of a decade-long engagement in Afghanistan, made a decisive contribution to the severe economic crisis) and the situation refusing to improve — won’t convince these people that if you just let the army be, it will win. Starting a war almost always boosts the popularity of the ruler; though he or his successor do not receive any dividends from the ending of the war.
The establishment in Israel quickly repressed its enthusiastic endorsing the American warfare in Iraq. Today, there are some claiming in retrospect that they had issued warnings: one who goes to fight in Iraq won’t be capable of fighting in Iran — which was what Israel really wanted the Americans to do. That’s a rewriting of history.
Wars Have an Opening Program, But None for the Day After
According to far-fetched conspiracy theories, the Mossad contributed the phony intelligence that served Bush, yet the Israel Defense Forces and the security system higher-ups who paid visits to Washington in those years voiced nothing but praise and support of Bush’s war of deception.* Aman, the Directorate of Military Intelligence, kept on searching for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction long after he fell.
Personally, I heard more than once in briefings and conversations about mysterious expeditions making their way to Syria, and who knows what was there. For us, it was hard to give up on the fake justification of the war of deception, noless than for the Americans themselves.
Worse than that, the political-security state of affairs in Israel is absolutely identical to that play of folly introduced to me by the senator who realized the truth but voted for the war. Government and intelligence branches encounter no barrier if they want to portray some enemy as an existential threat to justify going to war.
Any attempt to argue otherwise or vote against is public suicide. Wars always have a plan of opening, presented as self-defense and founded on the strengths of the army, but have no veritable plan for the day after.
Officers can say in lectures that the era of clear-cut decisive victories is over, but cannot come up with an alternative scenario of victory. The politicians do not require it so as to not face the truth, according to which there’s really no benefit in battling. And what about the people and its representative, the media? Here and there, they applaud to the troops taking off for the war, yet in a matter of years, ask for a commission of inquiry in order to find out how it is that we got out with our tail between the legs.
*Translator’s note: A term adopted in Hebrew after a title of the book on the 1982 Lebanon war.
Please know that most Americans did not realize when the war propaganda was in full swing that it was based on lies. And also know that today, there are few Americans who do not think that we were duped. Further, not all politicians are adherents to the neo-con philosophy which has unfortunately infected life in the United States. I offer as one example Ron Paul, Republican candidate for President. Moreover, these pathetic actions on the part of those few neo-cons and their supporters were and still are in violation of law as stated in the U.S. Constitution, and more Americans are waking up to this fact. Although we are beginning to reap the whirlwind for the actions of our so-called leaders, not all of us are silent and consenting, and the good news is more Americans are speaking out and acting.