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The Occupation

By Noam Chomsky at May 10, 2004

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The occupation of Iraq has been an astonishing failure. It should have been one of the easiest in history. The more serious correspondents there are well aware of that. Patrick Cockburn recently wrote that "It has been one of the most extraordinary failures in history." He's quite right. Why? The best explanation I've heard was given by a high-ranking official of one of the leading NGOs, who's had plenty of experience in some of the worst places in the world (can't identify him). I spoke to him on his (brief) return from several extremely frustrating months in Baghdad trying to get hospitals up and running. He said he had never seen such a combination of "arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence" -- referring not to the military, but to the civilians in charge: Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Cheney.. -- a weird collection of fanatics. The occupying army has succeeded in doing pretty much what the same people did in the international arena: they quickly turned the US into the most feared and often hated country in the world. In Iraq, they've succeed in turning the population overwhelmingly against them. The latest in-depth poll (Gallup-CNN) a couple of days ago found that among Iraqi Arabs (the great majority; Kurds have their own aspirations), the proportion of those who regard the US as an "occupying" rather than "liberating force is well over 10 to 1. That's probably higher than one would have found in France or Norway under German occupation. In Fallujah, the US forces had worked themselves into a dilemma: either withdraw, or conquer the city (which they could surely do) and turn a disaster into a catastrophe in Fallujah itself, with awesome repercussions elsewhere. The local Marine commander apparently made a decision on his own to get out of it by allowing a former general of Saddam's Republican Guards to take over -- which is what Iraqis want. For a long time now, polls have indicated that a very large majority want Iraqis to be responsible for security, and everything else too in fact, and that trust in the occupying forces (military and civilian) and the "governing council" they appointed is extremely low; single digits (trust in the Pentagon civilian's favorite, Ahmed Chalabi, was literally undetectable in the major poll). The propaganda story here is that the Iraqi forces may not be able to "maintain security" -- which means, ensure that elements that support the occupation remain in charge. But that's hardly the way Iraqis see it. From their point of view, it appears, the greatest threat to security is the occupiers. As for what would happen if Iraqis have a chance to run their own country, I don't know, nor does anyone else. And while we can have our subjective opinions about it, the responsibility of an occupying army is to get out as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in accord with the will of the population, and to turn over full sovereignty to them, also compensating them for the damages caused them -- in our case, going back 25 years, joined by others who should also be paying reparations to Iraq: not "forgiving debts," the current debate, but paying reparations.

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