Iraq: Another Fake Liberation

Will Americans Fall For the Same Lies Again?

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"The Defense Department claims:
12 nations with nuclear weapons programs,
13 with biological weapons,
16 with chemical weapons, and
28 with ballistic missiles as existing and emerging threats to the United States. But only one of those countries sits atop the second largest oil reserves in the world."

Charles PeÃ±a, Senior Defense Policy Fellow of the Cato Institute, for The Chicago Tribune

NEW YORK--The American invasion of Iraq promises to be a blockbuster. They've designed the logos, focus-grouped the test audiences, and run the trailers. At this late date Bush wouldn't dare disappoint us with a boring old peace agreement. There's just one thing still missing from the script: the happy ending.

During his radio address a few weeks back, George W. Bush promised that the U.S. would "lead a coalition to disarm the Iraqi regime and free the Iraqi people." Once Saddam is dead or has flown safely into exile, Bush and his allies at Fox News swear, America will stick around to help liberated Iraqis. We'll rebuild whatever we've bombed better than it was built in the first place. We'll supervise democratic elections. Then, without asking for anything in return, we'll leave.

"We were told by American officials that they want a broad-based Iraqi government...with no direct American role," Hamid al-Bayati, a representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an anti-Saddam Shiite group expected to join a postwar government, reported in October.

What about oil? After all, Iraq holds one-tenth of the world's supply--it's the second-biggest producer after Saudi Arabia. Not to worry, a fatherly Colin Powell assured: "We would want to protect those fields and make sure that they're...not destroyed or damaged by a failing regime on the way out the door."

Safety is always job one.

The Bushies insist they have no interest whatsoever in Iraqi oil. Their war aims, they say, are the elimination of a dangerous dictator and his potential arsenal, liberating the Iraqi people, rebuilding the country and spreading democracy, all while keeping nosy neighbors--Iran, Turkey, Syria--out. Sounds nice. Maybe the cost--billions of dollars, thousands of lives--will be worth it.

There's just one thing. Does anyone remember September 2001?

Bush marketed the invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan exactly the same way. First we were going to go in and get Osama and his buddies, "dead or alive." Then we'd liberate the long-suffering Afghan people from Taliban rule. After supervising free elections, we'd wish Central Asia's first democracy all the best and drive off in our Humvees.

Since our intentions were purely honorable, we'd never try to revive the idea of building a Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to carry gas and oil from landlocked Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Indian Ocean oil tankers. Liberation, not exploitation, was what we had in mind for Afghanistan.

One year after Hamid Karzai--a former consultant for the oil company that came up with the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline--took over as interim president, it's become painfully apparent that neither liberation, nor rebuilding, nor democracy, have begun.

Under the Taliban, Afghans were subjected to brutal Islamist law. Women, banned from holding jobs, rarely ventured outside. Punishment was medieval--adulterers were stoned to death and thieves had their limbs amputated in the local soccer stadium. But if nothing else, these strictures eliminated the banditry and rape gangs that terrorized the nation before 1996.

Post-Taliban Afghanistan is essentially the Taliban Afghanistan minus law and order. Stonings continue and women remain under burqas, but now thugs and rapists roam the streets unchecked.

The New York Times reported Jan. 2 that in Kabul--the only place governed by Karzai--not a single house has thus far been built with international assistance. According to the U.N., 650,000 Kabuli refugees urged by the U.S. to return home to Afghanistan are now homeless. Millions of Afghans in outlying provinces are without shelter. Few have received food or housing. British troops were forced to dip into their own pockets to buy a generator to heat Kabul's Indira Gandhi hospital. If the U.S. has plans to rebuild Afghan roads, install a telephone system or otherwise create an viable infrastructure, it has yet to announce them.

The Afghan people have given up on democracy. After U.S. representatives bullied members of last summer's loya jirga into ditching King Zahir Shah, Karzai's role as an American puppet became evident. Few expect the promised 2004 elections to be held on schedule.

Bush didn't liberate Afghans. He didn't rebuild anything. He spread dictatorship, not democracy. And he didn't even try to catch Osama.

Bush's one accomplishment in Afghanistan, it turned out, was the one thing he promised that he would never do. On Dec. 26, Karzai met with the president of Turkmenistan and the foreign minister of Pakistan to work out the final details of the $3.2 billion Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Bush's friends had sworn would never be built.

Deputy Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones says the U.S. supports the project, which I describe in detail in my new book Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan. Gas War makes the case that the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline, not the "war on terrorism," was the impetus for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Bush fooled us once. You know the rest of the cliche.

(Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline and the motivations behind the war on terrorism. Ordering information is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.)

RALL 1/7/03

Originally Published on January-07-2003