In 2003 the US lead Coalition came into Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people, capture and destroy the confirmed weapons of mass destruction, including possible nuclear capability we were assured existed, and overthrow a brutal tyrant who brutalized his people, led genocide in his own country and invaded his neighbor.
In 2004 we had thrown out the tyrant, and were now battling the pro-Saddam Iraqi insurgency and the followers of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr while trying to establish the legitimate Iraq Government institutions to facilitate the fledgling Democracy. Or so it would seem.
In 2005 we were battling Al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abdul Al Zarqawi in an effort to save the Democratic government from the scourge of the world wide terrorist movement led by Osama Bin Laden. We were told that the front lines of the war on terror was now in Iraq. We seemed to overlook the fact that Osama Bin Laden is a Saudi living in Afghanistan and, in fact, orchestrated the attack on 9/11 from Afghanistan through the loyal service of 19 terrorist followers from Saudi Arabia. None of the attackers were from Iraq.
In 2006 we were fighting the insurgency in an effort to fend off a sectarian civil war.
Sunni insurgents, Shia Militias, and corrupt Iraqi Government officials, all profiting from our presence, and all hoping to keep the dollars flowing for as long as possible. In the middle, the Iraqi people, the vast majority of whom are not in support of Islamic extremism, sectarian isolation, religious theocracy, or violence in any form against anyone or any group, but who were enduring incalculable suffering. An innocent people, now living in a hell they had no part of bringing.
(My own son was wounded in Iraq on July 2nd 2006).
Iraq, in December 2007, is not now, or in 2003, a country without professional organizations, associations, business structures and contractor networks. Iraqi engineers, construction contractors, lawyers, doctors, business managers, city planners and educators were present and readily available throughout Iraq. Almost none of the pool of Iraqi professionals were accessed or utilized by the coalition in its effort to begin the rebuilding of Iraq. Instead outside interest we brought in from the US, Great Briton, Kuwait, Turkey and other countries to fill all the essential requirements which could have easily been accomplished by Iraqi citizens and business interests. The leadership of Paul Bremer was a shallow and failed leadership in this regard. The point being, from the very beginning Paul Bremer put the Iraqi people at arms length, excluding them from any significant part of the initial rebuilding effort in Iraq. To this day, under the leadership and of the U.S. Military and U.S. State Department, that has not changed to any measurable or effective degree.
In 2007 the U.S. State Department Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), a program developed to assist Iraqi Provinces and cities in governance capacity building and development throughout Iraq, have expanded their efforts to more areas. Unfortunately this has occurred about three years late. The enormous good which could have been realized through the PRT, had it been allowed to expand in 2005 and 2006, will never be realized. Apparently Donald Rumsfeld did not approve of the State Department PRT concept and that was that.
In fact it has been official policy to exclude Iraqis from almost any coalition operation or endeavor. The Iraqi labor pool has been all but ignored. Third County Nationals have been shipped in by the tens of thousands to work in positions that should have gone to the people we came to Iraq to rescue, the Iraqis. The Iraqis who are allowed to work on any coalition Forward Operation Base (FOB) or, any coalition area around the airport in Baghdad, work as janitors and maintenance workers and are escorted at all times by armed guards. The only exception to this, I am aware of, is the US Embassy where hundreds of Iraqis are employed and are allowed to come and go without escorts
of any kind. There has been no incidents of violence by those employees.
(The unemployment rate in Iraq is thought to be about 70%).
We, the coalition, made it crystal clear, by our actions from the start that they, the Iraqi people, were not to be trusted. In our doing so, the Iraqi people were left without guidance, assistance, friendship or direction. The insurgents and militias were more than happy to fill that critical void left by the coalition, and they did.
Each and every Minister in the Iraq government is a member of a political or social party. In Iraq every party has its own militia or security force to do its bidding. The militia and security groups, with the exception of the Kurds, are operated like a mafia. Chaos is the environment they need to operate profitably. They benefit from the chaos by filling in social authority roles the government is not able to fill. From the beginning the coalition recognized this fact and actually, in some cases, considered it a "stabilizing" element within the population. The coalition, absurdly reasoned that these non-governmental forces would diminish as the Iraqi government became more able to perform its governmental and social responsibilities.
Today the very Iraqi government officials responsible for bringing social order, under the authority of government, are themselves profiting from the status quo and have already shown their reluctance to reign in the forces which have enabled them to prosper while the population at large suffers greatly. This unity government left to develop itself with little or no guidance from its US Mentors is more like a mafia than a government. There are two Deputy Prime Ministers and twenty Ministers in Nuri Al-Malikis government (complete list at the end). If one were to know the net worth of each Minister prior to being appointed and their net worth today, I think that would provide the graphic example of what I am talking about.
The Ministers? With few exceptions Iraqi men, some who, prior to April 2003, did not even live in Iraq and in some cases had not been in Iraq for over 20 years and most unknown to the Iraqi people at large. We left these former exiles, with little or no government experience or history, to decide how to start the government for an entire country while we stood there providing all the necessary assets and almost none of the guidance. Family and relatives were hired first.
Corruption was a natural derivative of this concoction of untested and primarily unknown players who we brought into Iraq to tell us what to do. To some degree, even the Iraqi people had no idea who these new leaders were that America brought into Iraq to lead them.
(Ask our government to reveal the amount of cash that has been handed over to individual members of the Iraqi government, sheiks, clerics and governors throughout Iraq. You will not get an answer). That answer would upset any American who works for a living.
The early failure of the Coalition to maintain close and constant communications with any level of the forming Iraqi government and leadership was wholly avoidable. The coalition did not initially create working circumstances which physically included the Iraqi leadership and middle management in the daily coalition planning and status sessions. Had they done this, a cohesion, or partnership may have resulted that does not exist today and has never existed. Even today, it is rare to find any middle level Iraqi in a planning, or staff meeting with coalition officials.
Although Iraq has thousands of registered attorneys, very educated and experienced in Iraqi law, common law and jurisprudence, there is not a single Iraqi lawyer on the staff of the U.S. managed Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) in Iraq which has the responsibility of mentoring and advising the provincial governments in "Rule of Law", Iraqi law. Throughout the entire country of Iraq, I would be surprised to find more than a small handful of Iraqi attorneys working directly with and for the Coalition.
In the Iraqi leadership planning and strategy groups there are few or no coalition members on a regular basis. The Iraqis did not create this separation from the beginning, we did, but they embraced the separation between us and them. We set them up in their own world and we had our own. We rarely included the Iraqi leadership in decisions effecting their country, whither the decision was minor with insignificant consequences, or serious with possible huge impact on the Iraqi people. We lived in an "inform" mode; we informed the Iraqis of decisions we made for their country.
At one meeting I attended in Iraq during 2006 a senior British General officer and Commander of much of the British forces, suggested that the Basrah Militia, loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, were a stabilizing force in the South. Hearing this, an American Army General, who I had come to have great admiration for, sarcastically asked the British General if he thought that "order" being accomplished through kidnapping, terror, murder and intimidation should be considered as "stabilizing" by the coalition. The British General, although not replying, had already made it clear what the British considered acceptable for the Iraqi citizens. It appeared, at that moment, the British were more than willing to allow the militias and the terrorist to define what is acceptable for the Iraqi people throughout Iraq in exchange for less British engagement with the enemy. I thought it sad, at least for those in the South of Iraq where the British are primarily responsible for protecting the Iraqi population; the population who were supposedly rescued in 2003 and who met the arriving British forces as heroes and liberators. How easily we forget.
In 2003 the objective of those U.S. forces, following the President's orders to invade Iraq, was good and the intention was honorable. That still applies today. Unfortunately that massive might and determined energy, filled with the right motives, needed a plan and the right leadership to carry the plan out. The good Iraqi people deserved at least that much. We did after all, arrive uninvited. Our American civilian leadership in Washington D.C. failed our Military and State Department planners.
The result of the Bush Administration’s poor vision and leadership in Iraq planning, combined with failed intelligence, has costs thousands of lives and has inflicted untold misery, fear and suffering upon an already repressed and fearful people. Iraq was never a threat to our national security and it still isn‘t. The Reverend Robert Schuler once said "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail". He was right.
What now? Where do we go from here in Iraq? We came to their country uninvited and literally destroyed it. Can we just walk out now? Hundreds of thousands Iraqis have died, mostly innocent civilians. About two million Iraqis have fled to Jordan and Syria where their presence has caused an overwhelming burden to those countries. We Americans have sacrificed thousand of our own sons and daughters lives. Tens of thousands of our American men and women have returned to us with brain injuries, lost limbs and shattered futures, my own son included among them. Over a trillion dollars has been virtually wasted and lost while Iraqi government officials, the U.S. Corps of Engineers, US, British and other civilian corporate interests are laughing all the way to the bank.
Iraq needs our commercial development, government capacity development assistance, logistics support and international support.
Iraq does not need, nor should it get, any U.S. Combat force assistance. All U.S. combat Forces should be withdrawn from Iraq, and that withdrawal should commence tomorrow morning. I am confident that all U.S. Combat Forces and equipment could be out of Iraq within one year if we started today.
We should, through a Diplomatic surge, assist the Iraqis in healing the wounds that have divided them as they have never been divided. The Iraqi Prime Minister needs to dismiss any Minister who is not above reproach and replace them with former Iraq civil servants. For that to occur, the Iraqi government themselves would have to want it. They do not.
The Iraqi people want peace. The Iraqi government officials, because of corruption and the benefits it brings them, have no motivation to change the status quo. For example, the former Minister of Interior, Bayan Jabr, up to his neck in corruption and "murder through death squad" accusations, simply left the Ministry of Interior and was appointed the Minister of Finance! Additionally, if one was to walk into the Ministry of Health today in Baghdad, one would see a large portrait of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr who is credited with the deaths of many Americans as well as Iraqis. I wonder how much assistance goes to the Sunni areas directly from the Ministry of Health. Sunnis in Iraq who I know tell me that no Sunni will dare go to any Baghdad hospital. Many Iraqi Sunnis have been killed right in their beds in Baghdad hospitals.
We can’t stay and we cannot leave. We brought a living hell upon these people of Iraq. Although very bad under the Saddam government, life in Iraq has never been as fearful and dangerous as it is today. The blood of Iraqis who supported the coalition, specifically, who supported the Americans, and who cannot leave Iraq, will most certainly flow. They trusted us and would most certainly be killed in revenge for having done so. The blood of all the American soldiers, my own son included, demands justice for the Iraqi people who are being slaughtered on a daily basis while their own government stands by getting rich and idly bickering about the finer points of governing. We, The United States of America, are responsible for bringing this upon them.
Our enormous military presence has already proven not to be the answer needed in Iraq. If sheer might, force and money could have solved the Iraqi dilemma, it most certainly would have by now.
Although I am an advocate of removing all combat forces from Iraq immediately, those clamoring for America to simply pack up and leave Iraq, completely to their own devises and resources, do not understand the deeper reasons as to why we cannot do that.
Those insisting that we increase our force presence and approve of the U.S. utilization of terrorist tactics, in order to defeat terrorism, have simply forgotten who we are as Americans. To become the thing we hate, for reasons of expediency, makes us exactly what they are, barbarians and inhuman.
Unlike the terrorist, we Americans respect human life and are willing to risk ourselves in order to save the helpless. Terrorist are only willing to risk the lives of others. Those who love freedom cherish it for all. Terrorist only cherish freedom for themselves. Those who love liberty see a world of free people living in peace. Terrorist only see the man in the mirror.
At heart, I am the forever optimist. I believe that there is a way to redeem what we have helped to bring about in Iraq. The vast majority of Iraqi people are resilient and longsuffering. They do understand the greater good means that forgiveness and tolerance will be necessary to bring about peace in their country. The Iraqis know that the coalition did not anticipate that those Iraqis assisted to power by the U.S. would turn so quickly to the corruption that would bring them the personal wealth and riches they have derived at the expense of the suffering Iraqi masses.
Iraqis in Baghdad know that the Prime Minister is actually the leader of the "Green Zone", while the rest of Baghdad and Iraq is ruled by the militias and by the corrupted Iraqi Police (IP) who apparently are themselves the Shia death squads, long rumored to act at the behest of the former Minister of Interior Bayan Jabr, now the Minister of Finance. Many Iraqis have told me that the coalition should never have initially allowed the new government Ministers the free hand to do as they pleased. It was not time to allow the Iraqi government to begin dictating Iraqi affairs. They were right and we simply failed to hear them. Now is the time to listen to the people of Iraq. Now is the time to help them in ways that will reach the common man and woman on the street. The Iraqi people need to be motivated to save themselves. We can help, but not with any more combat forces. The time of American blood spilling on Iraqi soil must end now. We must engage a "Diplomatic Surge", an "economic capacity building surge", an "employment surge" and an "International assistance and education surge" for Iraq. The Iraqis themselves will turn on the militias who rule them through fear and intimidation.
There is chaos in Iraq today. There will be chas in Iraq, for a time, after we leave, but the beginning of the end of chaos cannot happen until we leave Iraq.
Now is the time for America to change direction and remove all combat forces from Iraq.
Current Iraq Council of MinistersPrime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki
Deputy Prime Minister
Barham Salih
Deputy Prime Minister
Salam al-Zobaie
Interior Minister
Jawad Bulani
Foreign Minister
Hoshyar Zebari
Defence Minister
Qadir Obeidi
Oil Minister
Hussain al-Shahristani
Electricity Minister
Karim Waheed
Minister of Planning
Ali Baban
Higher Education Minister
Abd Dhiab
Minister of Municipalities and Public Works
Riad Ghareeb
Finance Minister
Bayan Jabr
Minister of Water Resources
Abdul-Latif Rashid
Minister of Environment
Narmin Othman
Trade Minister
Abdul Falah al-Sudany
Transport Minister
Karim Mahdi Salih
Minister of Labour and Social Affairs
Mahmoud al-Radi
Human Rights Minister
Wijdan Michael
Health Minister
Ali al-Shemari
Minister of Construction and Housing
Bayan Dezei
Education Minister
Khodair al-Khozaei
Agriculture Minister
Yaroub al-Abodi
Justice Minister
Hashem al-Shebly
Culture Minister
Suleiman al-Jumeily
Minister of Science and Technology
Raed Fahmy
Minister of Displacement and Migration
Abdul Samad Sultan
Minister of Youth and Sports
Jasem Mohammed Jaafar
Minister of Industry
Fawzi Hariri
Minister of State for National Security Affairs
Shirwan Waili
Minister of State for Governorate Affairs
Saad Taher al-Hashemi
Minister of State for Civil Society Affairs
Adel al-Assadi
Minister of State for Women's Affairs
Faten Mahmoud
Minister of State for Tourism and Antiquities
Liwaa Semeism
Minister of State for National Assembly Affairs
Safaaeddine al-Safi