How Do You Spell “Cam Ranh Bay” in Arabic?
“Go away! There ain’t no monorail and there never was!” - Monorail Café Employee
On Wednesday I got a new London Review of Books and the very first article was a speculation on just what we’re going to be doing with all those bases we’ve quietly constructed in Iraq. (The LRB is nice enough to have the entire article on-line - it’s not long, I promise.) The author, Jim Holt, points out that the current chaos and de facto division of the country might…could…maybe…just be exactly what an American government would want in order to secure the massive, and I mean really massive, oil reserves in Iraq. Divided cities, a weak central government, and American troops stationed in impenetrable (and comfortable) desert fortresses make the entire country an oil gusher with Washington’s hand on the spigot.
After putting this all down in a fresh and imaginative way, he points out at the very end that for this to be true you have to believe that, “a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw, and that almost never happens.” I’ll agree with that immediately, but the article got me to thinking about those bases and just what the plan was and is. Setting aside the fact that this theory ascribes a competence to the Bush Administration that is uniformly unearned, I have always been extremely skeptical about the permanency of those bases, or “enduring camps”, or whatever the en vogue bullshit term may be.
Without putting too fine a point on it, Iraq is neither Cuba nor Kuwait. This isn’t like Guantanamo, where we have a semi-legal claim, port access and close proximity. Nor is it like our bases in Kuwait, we literally saved that country (and it’s very wealthy citizens) from death and dispossession; they owe us, know it, and seem happy with the arrangement. Iraq is a country that is on the other side of the planet, almost entirely landlocked, and full of people who want us to leave. On those simple facts alone our long term presence seems dubious as hell.
The idea that we could maintain bases in the face of all that smacks of the ignorant arrogance that got us into this mess in the first place. It assumes that whatever government is nominally in charge will want us around. Nevermind that they have a theoretically democratic government that is supposed to be answerable to a populace that wants us gone. Nevermind that the flimsy institutions we have created may not be sustainable. Nevermind that it’s in the interest of any number of powerful parties to see us go, including the Shiite and Sunni factions within Iraq, the Iranians, the Syrians, and any country with an oil company that might not be content with scraps from an American table.
We ignore all that because the conventional assumption is that whatever government exists in Iraq will always be beholden to us. What, exactly, is the reasoning behind that? That they’re grateful? If you believe that I’ve got some “Welcome American Liberators” banners for sale (still in the original packaging). That we can bribe or co-opt enough elites to turn the country into a petrol republic? We tried that once already, it was called Saudi Arabia and even though we made a much better first impression there you’ll note that we no longer have any troops in the Kingdom. That they need our troops to fight and keep the government secure? If American casualties continue the US public will eventually force a withdrawal.
That last point is potentially bigger than any of the others. Decreases in casualties are nice, but only the elimination of casualties can snuff out the Iraq War as an American political issue. I know I’m not the only one who remembers that we spent most of the nineties and the beginning of this decade, right through the Afghan War, waging a low level air war against Iraq. The strikes rarely made the news and never stayed very long because there were no American casualties, there was no Capt. Scott O’Grady. That may be the template our government has in mind. If so, then it becomes even more important that someone who promises to end the war takes office a year from January.
There are a lot of problems with barricading ourselves in bases and bombing things from the air. The first and foremost of those problems should probably be the fact that it kills and maims a lot of otherwise healthy, innocent human beings. That particular problem isn’t first and foremost because no one in any position of real authority actually gives a shit about dead Iraqis. Dead Americans, on the other hand, matter. And if we’re going to remain relevant to Iraqi politics, American troops are going to continue dying in a land not their own. Sure, we can bomb away from safe distances and altitudes, but doing so doesn’t usually make a damn bit of difference outside of the immediate blast radius.
Iraq is in a state of civil war, and looks like it will be for a while. That means that politics and violence are very closely linked. The kind of violence that matters in this situation isn’t the ability to kill every living thing in a certain area or collapse a building from miles away. Just because we’re good at something doesn’t make it useful. The kind of violence that carries weight at the moment is a close in kind: urban infantry combat and intelligence gathering. That cannot be done without casualties and if we recuse ourselves from it we become useless or worse, malingerers.
We have been militarily exposed and strategically neutered by these people and we continue to expect their unconditional respect for our hyperpower might. It boggles the mind. Stupidity of this magnitude rarely lacks for precedent, and this is no exception. During our last fiasco war we went on blithely constructing a super base at Cam Ranh Bay. It was to be one of the great outposts of American military might in Southeast Asia for decades. Instead the Vietnamese turned it over the Soviets and it was one of their great outposts right up until they went out of business. I wonder who will eventually use these newer versions.
