The Demonstration Effect in Iraq

Instead of demonstrating strength and inspiring awe, the Bush administration demonstrated imperial arrogance and provoked defiance. Instead of advancing respect for democracy, it demonstrated how easily it can be abused.

The obvious reasons for the invasion of Iraq are the drive to ensure unfettered access to the oil of the region, and the strategic priority to protect Israel against any deterrence to its hegemony over the region.

But secondary reasons for the war also include the determination to dissuade allies and competitors from aspiring to global leadership roles, to prevent the re-emergence of Russia as a rival superpower, and to discourage other powers from aspiring to challenge US domination. These are US strategic priorities spelled out in official documents prepared shortly after the end of the Cold War.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq were supposed to demonstrate to friends and foes alike the awesome military might of the only superpower left in the world, as well as Washington's readiness to use that power to impose its will.

The demonstration effect also included, belatedly, the disingenuous claim that the war was meant to establish democracy in Iraq and demonstrate to the region the value of democratic governance.

The demonstration effect intended is not the demonstration effect that four years of occupation have produced.

What has been clearly demonstrated after four years of war is that the most powerful military country in the world has been powerless in imposing its will on the Iraqi people, or stamping out resistance to its occupation.

On April 12, insurgent groups bombed the Iraqi parliament situated in the most securely guarded Green Zone in Baghdad, killing eight people. The Bush administration admitted that even the Green Zone is no longer safe. And this came after two months of the latest military strategy dubbed "surge' which brought more American troops to Iraq but not more security.

This is being realized and admitted by the influential opinion makers. Thus, the editors of the New York Times urged the White House to realize that "Victory is no longer an option in Iraq, if it ever was. The only rational objective left is to responsibly organize America's inevitable exit." (March 29,07)

Even members of Bush's own party are deserting him. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska voted with the democrats in a Senate vote calling for a withdrawal date from Iraq. Hagel said: "There will not be a military solution to Iraq. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. It doesn't belong to the United States. Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost." (NYT. March 28.07).

Far from being intimidated, President Putin of Russia recently toured the Middle East in a highly visible diplomatic offensive, after harshly denouncing American foreign policy around the world and especially in the Middle East. China, flexing muscles, recently successfully tested an anti-missile system that underscored its global status aspirations.

Far from inspiring awe in the region, the Iraq war and the demonstration effect of militarized foreign policy and paralyzed superpower, has emboldened Iran to assert itself more forcefully. Traditional allies such as Saudi Arabia have strongly condemned the illegality of the Iraq occupation and called for Arab unity to deny outside powers control over the region.

Even Hizboallah, far from being intimidated, mounted effective resistance to the American-supported Israeli assault on Lebanon last summer.

The demonstration effect of democracy anchored in governing institutions in Iraq and spreading to the rest of the Middle East has also produced a different demonstration.

First, it has demonstrated that democracy imposed by the guns is a fragile import unsustainable unless its procedures of plurality of parties and regular elections were legitimized by popular consent freely expressed and popular participation in the political process. Democracy in Iraq lacks both.

Democracy is also more than market economy, which the US occupying power rushed to implement, awarding no-bid contracts to major American corporations, with little or no regard to the national interests of the Iraqi people.

Democracy is also and fundamentally about rule of law and respect for human rights. Here again, instead of demonstrating respect for these principles by observing international law in the treatment of prisoners, the war demonstrated the Bush administration's anti-democratic tendency.

The administration condoned the use of torture and abuse in Iraq, in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and in Bagram in Afghanistan. In Iraq, torture was widespread and not limited to the scandalous behavior of a few American soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

Human Rights Watch condemned the US for eroding global human rights in 2004. In an open letter to President Bush, dated May 7, 2006 Amnesty International said: "abuses allegedly committed by US agents in the Abu Ghraib facility in Baghdad were war crimes."

Rule of law in democracy also means accountability of elected officials. And here undoubtedly the most striking demonstration effect after four years of war and occupation is the failure of Anglo-American democracies to hold accountable those responsible for the war and the suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people. 

This failure is striking in view of the growing body of evidence that both the Bush administration and the Blair government misled their people, colluded in waging an illegal war, and may be responsible for war crimes.

The overall demonstration effect has been one of imperial arrogance: awesome but incompetent superpower waging unwinnable colonial war, unable to stamp down resistance to its occupation, flouting international law, grossly violating human rights, while making hollow claims about promoting democracy.

Prof. Adel Safty is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Novosibirsk, Russia. His latest book, Leadership and Democracy, is published in New York.