The
Coalition of the Willing. Remember them? It was basically America and the UK, and then 48 other countries that sent token forces.
So how is that working out? Well, 15 countries have since withdrawn all of their forces. Several more are about to. Almost all of the remaining countries have reduced the number of their troops in Iraq.
That isn't news.
What is significant is the number of countries that have withdrawn or reduced their troop deployments because of domestic opposition.
What is even more significant is the number of countries who's political leaders have lost their jobs simply because they backed Bush's invasion.
Of the COTW
only five of those nations contributed troops during the actual invasion.
The IPS study finds that "most were recruited through coercion, bullying, and bribery." According to IPS Middle East analyst Phyllis Bennis, "It's hardly a new phenomenon for the U.S. to use bribes and threats to get its way in the UN. What's new this time around is the breathtaking scale of those pressures -- because this time around, global public opinion has weighed in, and every government leaning Washington's way faces massive opposition at home."
You see, the Coalition Of The Willing didn't come together
willingly.
These nations, Guinea, Cameroon, Angola, Mexico, Chile and Pakistan have not only been subjected to promises of billions of dollars of rewards and threats of punishment, but they apparently have also been the targets of U.S. espionage. A report in the London Observer newspaper, based on a leaked document, details how American spy agencies have monitored communications at these countries' U.N. offices in hopes of gaining an edge in their arm-twisting campaign.
Some of the coalition "cashed in" after the invasion. For instance,
Poland sold bullets to the Iraq's transitional government at three times market value. They also sold $300 million in helicoptors that were found to be "largely unflyable".
Some "cashed in"
ahead of time. For example:
Hungary
Gives: Facilities for training the Iraqi opposition
Gets: Enhanced international status and financial support
Bulgaria
Gives: Vote on UN Security Council
Gets: US support for entry to EU and increased military co-operation within Nato
Turkey
Gives: Key military facilities for US invasion from the north and a regional ally
Gets: At least $26bn in direct aid and loans
Here's my short compilation of COTW = PKOD.
You are more than welcome to add to this list in the comments if I miss someone. If its juicy enough I'll steal your addition and add it to my diary.
None of these politicians lost their jobs
only because of their decisions to deploy troops in Iraq. In most cases it was a minor issue in the elections. However, the near simultaneous changes in both political leadership and troop deployment are too much to ignore.
Politicians who got tossed out for joining the illegal invasion of Iraq
Jose Maria Aznar
Spain is the most well-known of this list, so I won't go into the details. Needless to say, the conservative Popular Party was voted out after being a leader in the COTW, despite massive anti-war demonstrations. The Socialist Party removed their troops from Iraq after the election.
Afterwards, Republicans predicted that Spain would descend into terrorist chaos.
Such appeasement almost acts as an invitation for future terrorist attacks on democratic states.
Yet, Zapatero went even further than simply withdrawing Spanish forces. He denounced the Iraq War itself, describing the occupation as "a disaster." He additionally urged the United States and Great Britain to engage in "self-criticism," not over their occupation strategy, but their decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Zapatero also accused US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of lying to the world about the Iraq situation. What is perhaps most shocking about these statements is that they border on being simply anti-American and anti-British rhetoric.
So what has happened in the two years since Spain's withdraw? Well, if there was a terrorist attack in Spain from al-Qaeda I missed it. What's more, Spain just started
peace talks with the Basque ETF after they declared a "permanent ceasefire" four months ago. After 30 years and 800 deaths, Spain is on the verge of being terrorist-free for the first time in a generation.
Silvio Berlusconi
Italy, is probably the second-most well-known of this list.
Italy's new prime minister declared Thursday that the war in Iraq was a "grave error" that risked igniting conflict in the entire Middle East region. He said Italy would stick with plans to bring home its 2,700 troops stationed there but gave no timetable for their return.
The war "did not resolve, but rather has complicated, the problem of security," he said. "Terrorism has found in Iraq a new base and new pretexts for terrorist actions that are inside and outside the Iraqi conflict."
Right-wing president Berlusconi, like Aznar in Spain, sent troops to Iraq despite domestic anti-war protests in the millions. Unlike Aznar, he figured out that his position was going to cost him his job and had withdrawn 300 troops before being booted out of office. He figured it out too late.
To date Prime Minister Romano Prodi has still not totally withdrawn his troops from Iraq, although he has removed about half of them.
Viktor Yanukovych
Ukraine had one of the larger troop deployments in Iraq. The "Orange Revolution" that tossed out Yanukovych and put Viktor Yushchenko into power was about much more than just Iraq. Nevertheless, Yuschenko distanced himself from the sitting president early by vowing to pull out of Iraq during the campaign.
Mikulas Dzurinda
Slovakia has 105 troops in Iraq. Only three weeks ago the left-wing Social Democracy party defeated the center-right Movement for a Democratic Slovakia party. The new Prime Minister, Robert Fico, had promised to withdraw the troops during his campaign. Interestingly, his resolve was strengthened by a relatively obscure decision by the U.S. Senate.
Smer [the ruling coaltion] was outraged at a recent US Senate recent decision to lift visa restrictions on citizens of European Union countries that had provided at least 300 troops to US-led campaigns in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
"To tell us that 110 (soldiers) is not enough is to spit in our faces in the worst possible way," Robert Kalinak, deputy chairman of the Smer party, said in reaction to the decision.
Kjell Magne Bondevik
Norway had only 150 soldiers in Iraq. Nevertheless, the centre-right coalition that Bondevik led made a very unpopular decision to send troops to Iraq. Thus allowing a left-leaning Red-Green coalition to take power, led by
Jens Stoltenberg. The left-leaning party then withdrew the troops.
[note: are you noticing a pattern here? A conservative government defies popular opinion to send troops to Bush's war and then gets replaced by a more liberal government which immediately withdraws the troops.]
Peter Medgyessy
Hungary pulled its 300 troops out of Iraq in December of 2004. Medgyessy was the leader of a socialist government that took a brutal beating by the conservatives in the June 2004 elections. That election forced him out of office. After some political maneuvering, Ferenc Gyurcsany then assumed the roll of Prime Minister and quickly called for a troop withdrawal.
Rafael Hipólito Mejía Domínguez
Dominican Republican started pulling their 300 troops out of Iraq before the May, 2004 election. But it wasn't soon enough to keep Mejia from losing the election to Leonel Antonio Fernández Reyna. Like all the other countries listed above, the deployment of troops to Iraq was unpopular domestically. The difference (although like Hungary), was that the party kicked out of office was more leftist than the winning party.
Possibly related political turnover
These examples are more speculative.
Netherlands hasn't had a presidential election since January of 2003. In that election the Christian-Democratic Appeal party, a center-right coalition won a slim victory. Their next general election is in November 2006. However, in the municipal election in March, the Social-Democrat and Socialist parties spanked the conservative parties.
The Netherlands withdrew their forces from Iraq in 2005.
El Salvador has 380 special forces in Iraq. Their presidential election was early in 2004 and they won't have another until 2009. However, the legislative elections three months ago saw the socialist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front win a plurality of the vote.
Their forces are still in Iraq.