Iraq, Libya, and Imperialism

View 697 Sunday, October 23, 2011

It has been an exciting week.

I keep hearing reports that the US was directly involved in the death of Qaddafi. Most reports are one of our drones was involved. There are rumors of US manned aircraft. Meanwhile his body is on display in the public market. One can only imagine what would have happened had the US Seals put bin Laden’s body on display, but that’s another matter.

Qaddafi was likely executed by one or another militia faction, or even by a militiaman, possibly for his possessions. He was shot by rebels, which may have been merciful compared to what they might have done with him. It’s hard to say that beating him to a pulp then shooting him out of hand wasn’t justice. Qaddafi wasn’t quite the monster that Uday Hussein was, but he’d done enough to earn his fate, and indeed the US Air Force tried to kill him with TFX fighter-bombers in the 1986 Operation El Dorado Canyon. They didn’t get him, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. It was an old fashioned harbor bombardment from the old days of Great Powers diplomacy. Reagan acted in retaliation for Libyan terrorist activities after consultation with the Congressional leadership of both parties. Had Gaddafi been killed in the raid the history of North Africa would have been considerably different.

In any event, NATO has brought the tyrant down, which must have been the mission. The official authorization for air NATO air strikes (including US acts of war) in Libya was a UN resolution mandating the protection of civilians from a Khaddafi massacre, but it’s very difficult – for me impossible – to connect an air strike against a convoy fleeing a city just before it falls to the rebels with the mission of protecting civilians. Even assuming that most of those in the convoy were military – and surely some were not since it was a chief of state and his entourage – there were likely to be civilian casualties from the air strikes, not to mention possible massacres in the looting that followed the convoy’s defeat.

And that does raise the question of whether the President of the United States has the authority to order such acts on his own authority. The UN cover mandate didn’t authorize regime change or execution of the chief of state of Libya. The President did tell Ghadaffi to get out (but apparently wasn’t willing to let him get out alive). He has given similar orders to the President of Syria. So far as I know he has not yet ordered either the President or the ruling ayatollah of Iran to vacate that land, and I think no such instruction has been given to the President of Yemen, nor has our President given instructions the Saudi Royal Family on who should be the next Crown Prince, or to the Emir of Bahrain to depart – but, alas, I see no reason why the President could not do something of the sort. He has plenty of precedent. Are those who question such Presidential powers automatically terrorists?

The Constitution empowers Congress to declare war. The President has the authority to protect and defend the Constitution, but unlike the King of England he has not the power to make war on whomever he pleases (a right that remains with the Ministers who act for the Crown to this day). In England you must go to Parliament to get the financing to pay for a war, but the King along can declare it. That right was specifically and intentionally taken from the President and given to Congress (along with the power of the purse). Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who passionately believed that the US ought to be involved in the War in Europe that began in September 1939, understood this very well. He could promise Churchill that the US would come to Britain’s aid, but that was restricted to support until December of 1941 when Germany honored the Axis alliance and declared war after the US and Japan were at war. In those days war was considered a serious event.

The problem with going to the rescue of the Libya rebels without any declaration of war is that the US has little say in what happens next. Perhaps we shouldn’t have any say.

On the other hand, we have spent about $1 Billion on our Libyan adventure, and we don’t know what we have put into power in Tripoli. We do know that one faction claiming to speak for the rebels has said that the basis of law in Libya will be Sharia. It is clear that had we not spent the $1 Billion, Libya would either remain unified under Khaddafi or be partitioned, probably at Marble Arch. Whether that would be a better outcome than unified under Sharia law is not clear to me. It is also not at all clear that the White House thought this through before committing us to borrow a billion dollars from the Chinese in order to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Was this outcome worth the cost?

It is also not clear that we have thought through the next step – or any succeeding steps – of what’s next in the Middle East. We’ll know more after the results of today’s elections in Tunisia.

President Karzai has announced that after the US has spent $1 Billion a month in Afghanistan, he would take the side of Pakistan if there were a conflict between the US and Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/world/asia/karzai-says-afghanistan-would-back-pakistan-in-a-conflict-with-us.html

I am not much in favor of imperialism as a policy for the United States, but I do favor competent imperialism over the present policies. If we must have an empire, should we not be competent at it? Of course there is the problem that Afghanistan has little to nothing that we want.

I was opposed to extending our Afghan adventure beyond the punishment of the Taliban for harboring out enemies; left to me we’d have been out as soon as Kabul fell to the anti-Taliban forces, with perhaps a billion dollars in bribe money squirreled away to be spent at the discretion of whomever we left behind as resident. Our policy in Afghanistan should have been simple: don’t harbor our enemies, don’t let your country be used as a base for attacks on the US, and apply to the Ambassador if you need anything. Been good to know you. A policy, by the way, that would have been as welcome to the Afghans as to the Legions.

Iraq is another story. We’re pulling out. We have spent $Trillions, we have left chaos, we have removed a major threat to the stability of Iran, and I am not sure what we got out of it. And Iraq certainly does have stuff we want. Oil, to begin with. A fair amount of Yellowcake – uranium ore. Lots of other stuff. And we’re running out because the Iraqis insist on applying Iraqi “law and order” to the US forces in Iraq.

I’d be tempted give them a $3 Trillion bill on the way out, and leave an occupation force in one of their major oil fields where we’d be pumping oil and selling it until most of the bill was paid, but that option was apparently never considered. Incidentally, we could defend our occupied oil fields with Sudanese and for that matter Libyan mercenaries, which we pay for out of the oil proceeds.We wouldn’t need a large US force in Iraq; they could be in Kuwait . Pumping lots of Iraqi oil would drop the world price of crude, and be a great jobs program for the United States.

There is no way that we could leave US troops in Iraq subject to the tender mercies of the Iraqi courts. US troops are not going to be subject to Iraqi law. But can you imagine the Japanese making that sort of demand as part of their surrender in 1945?

The result of the Iraqi war? We have removed Iran’s worst enemy. We have installed a Shiite government in Iraq. We have succeeded in changing the Middle East beyond Iran’s fondest and wildest dreams. This is the result Iran has worked toward since we invaded Iraq. They have their goals. Now we go home.

I don’t much like Empire as a policy, but if we are going to play Empire, can’t we find someone who knows how to do it competently?

The Libyan rebels have an official story about Qaddafi’s death. There will also be snuff footage. Maybe we could get the TV rights? They ought to be worth something. Not $1 Billion, but every little bit helps.