Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

by Arnove, Anthony. 2006.
New York: The New Press.

Reviewed by Robert Sauté

Anthony Arnove has provided the antiwar movement with a valuable book. Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal explains how the Bush administration maneuvered the United States into the invasion and occupation of Iraq, why the United States chose Iraq, and how the war can/should be ended. It is an ambitious book that succeeds in explaining the run-up to the war, offers a plausible but not always convincing reason for why Iraq, but falls far short on its third aim telling us how the war can be ended. The book speaks mainly to the antiwar movement but argues with a second audience as well, those who may have lately come to the opinion that the US was probably wrong to have invaded but just cannot “cut and run.”

Run Up to War

The Bush administration argued during the run-up to the invasion that Iraq required “regime change” for three reasons: Hussein possessed WMDs; he was an imminent threat to the US; and Iraq was a staging ground for terrorism. The reasons all proved to be “false.” As the head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Hans Blix, the governments of France, Germany, “Old Europe,” hundreds of thousands of protesters in the US and millions throughout the rest of the world knew, the Bush administration’s claim for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq lacked credibility. A careful reading of the international press including some US papers such as the Christian Science Monitor and the Knight Ridder papers revealed that Iraq had neither the technical infrastructure to produce and deliver WMDs nor the ability to hide the efforts that such an undertaking would entail.

Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States or to any of its neighbors. As Arnove points out, Iraq, after more than a decade of UN sanctions, was militarily weak. US and British enforced “no-fly” zones had, in fact, created a de facto autonomous Kurdish region in the north and denied the central government effective control over much of Iraq’s south. In the wake of its military defeat in the Gulf War, none of the surrounding states could expect an invasion. It was so diplomatically isolated that all it could muster by way of allies were moral tribunes of the international far left. It should be noted that activists against UN sanctions – including Arnove who edited a book, Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War – had few if any independent allies within Iraq and were thus hampered in organizing against America’s immoral policy by an inability to distance themselves from the Hussein regime. They were indeed reduced to being voices in the wilderness – the name (no irony intended) of a solidarity group– but more on movement organizing later.

As for the terrorism threat, what is most clear is that the US occupation has turned Iraq into the world’s epicenter of terror. Despite CIA insistence that there was no link between Hussein and al-Queda, the Administration pushed the idea that Iraq was behind the attacks of September 11. Flacks like Richard Perle came right out with the accusation, and Vice President Cheney not so coyly insinuated a direct connect when he claimed that Mohammad Atta met personally with a senior Iraqi intelligence figure. Yet, the US war has spurred attacks against innocents. I wonder, has a day gone by in Iraq in the last three years when there hasn’t been a car bomb or suicide bomber? And, Arnove reminds us, Bush’s pretext for invading Iraq has encouraged North Korea and Iran to pursue nuclear arms.

Reason for War

If, as the Bush administration surely knew, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, posed no threat to other countries, and had no connection to al-Qaeda, why did the US invade and does it continue to occupy Iraq? Arnove, like many in the antiwar movement, have a simple answer. It’s the oil, stupid! With 112 billion barrels of high quality and easy to extract crude, Iraq sits on the world’s second largest known oil reserve. Add to the reserve large natural gas deposits and the ability to export the hydrocarbons via sea and a pipeline through Turkey to the Mediterranean and Iraq’s strategic economic importance becomes clear. In a resurrection of Lenin’s Imperialism, the author claims that the US wants to control the supply and flow of oil as a lever against its “economic and political rivals,” especially in Europe and Asia.

The argument that oil is the driving force behind the war is hard to sustain. Arnove never makes the case that physical control of the oil fields is necessary or sufficient for American economic hegemony. The occupation has done nothing to calm international oil markets; Iraqi production is below pre-invasion levels; and it is unclear what the author means when he implies that US would use oil as economic or military leverage over Japan, China, or India, let alone France or Germany. Does he mean that the US will threaten to cut off the oil supply of Western Europe? The Bush administration refused the sale of Occidental Petroleum to China, but that move may have only strengthened China’s ties to other oil producing nations.

A more compelling explanation, and one that the Logic of Withdrawal hints at, is a combination of domestic politics, ideological fervor, and the arrogance of power. Early in the book, Arnove attributes the invasion to oil and “maintaining the popularity and agenda of a ‘war president,’ as Bush fancied himself, and parlaying that into a second presidency for an otherwise unpopular president.” He might have added that Bush was a president who stole his first election. Not particularly popular and unable to seize upon any legislative initiatives despite control of both houses of Congress, the tragedy of 9/11 was veritable political godsend. A quick victory over destitute Afghanistan left the Administration feeling powerful but unfulfilled. Enter the cold war ideologues without an enemy around Cheney – Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and others – who had been itching for a chance to project American power since their first days in office. The final aspect of this juggernaut to war was the arrogance of power. At the highest levels of the Administration – and among many Americans – there was the expectation that Iraqis would welcome the invading troops with open arms. Bush’s declaration in May 2003 of “mission accomplished” was not the end of it. Every American military offensive, Iraqi election, and realignment of government has been met with a declaration of victory or the announcement that a new milestone has been passed. And Iraq descends further into civil war.

Arguing for Withdrawal

The logic for immediate withdrawal is a difficult but crucial argument to make. Life since the invasion has for most Iraqis been precarious at best and for many a nightmare. For urban residents outside of the Kurdish north daily life means a lack of electricity and clean water, open sewers and hospitals that breed disease and infection. The threat of falling victim to kidnappings, sectarian death squads, or the nervous or angry GI’s trigger finger must make the bitterest opponents of Saddam Hussein and the most optimistic Iraqis wonder whether the occupation will have been worth it.

Yet, a paradox haunts the antiwar movement: “we confront the strange situation of many people mobilizing against an unjust war but then reluctantly supporting the military occupation that flows directly from it.” As I understand the argument, those who advocate for a continued US presence in Iraq believe that even if the invasion was a mistake withdrawal now, or at any time in the foreseeable future, would abandon the country to fratricidal destruction. To his credit, Arnove does not dismiss the anti-invasion pro-occupation believers for their apostasy.

In his chapter “The Logic of Withdrawal,” he argues against the occupation by questioning the US’s motives for the invasion. He reminds us the gap between foreign policy rhetoric and the country’s militaristic policies is wide indeed. He also shows how universalistic calls for democracy and against terrorism hide the particularistic interests of powerful actors such as the oil industry, Halliburton, and neo-liberal ideologues. When he writes of the consequences of the occupation and addresses concerns of those who fear that Iraq will descend into chaos and civil war without a US presence, he asserts – and sometimes sloppily as for instance when he claims that the US was complicit in the Pakistan’s production of nuclear weapons – rather than demonstrates. He devotes four pages to how the US is not fulfilling its obligation to justice for Iraqis but only a few sketchy lines and a couple of quotes on how the US has created the conditions for and perpetuates the civil war that is going on.

Building a Movement vs. Organizing an Opposition

Arnove argues the antiwar movement has failed because its leadership, “the Left,” has supported the Democratic Party. Its support for the Kerry campaign was an especially “terrible and costly mistake.” He approvingly quotes journalist Jeremy Scahill’s comment that “[n]one of the horrors playing out today in Iraq would be possible without the Democratic Party.” Strictly speaking, Scahill is wrong; Bush could wage war if every Democratic member of Congress voted against his war plans. He is correct though that most of the leadership of the Democratic Party supports the Administration’s efforts– Democrats representing greater ideological and social diversity are divided. Republican congressional support for the president is nearly unanimous – the major reason Bush has yet to exercise a veto. Another way to put it is the American political class is behind the war in Iraq, although not as strongly as the Administration would like A majority of Americans may be opposed to the occupation, but they have yet to define themselves politically in terms of their opposition.

The antiwar movement has the obligation, moral and political, to organize and extend the opposition to the US occupation. As Arnove ably documents, a majority of the American people think the US was wrong to invade Iraq and two-thirds disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation. We now know that 72 percent of American troops in Iraq believe the U.S. should exit the country within the next year. One in four (29%) think the U.S. should pull its troops immediately.

Arnove essentially sees politics as about ultimate ends. Ending the war is but a means to those ultimate ends, inseparable from ending racism, imperialism, and capitalism. He cannot envisage office holders as potential allies of an antiwar movement but only as opportunistic manipulators who would “put themselves at the front of [the antiwar movement to] direct it back at into electoral channels.” Given the organized Left’s absolute powerlessness and lack of influence on institutions with any power, his position seems to me an ideological phantasm. The claim that “any movement to end the war in Iraq will need to mount a direct challenge to both major parties and the whole ideological framework used to sell the war” suggests that war will end only after “the broad consensus that underlies the war on terror, especially U.S. exceptionalism [the idea that the US is morally superior and more thoroughly democratic], Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, and liberal imperialism” is “challenged,” and presumably defeated.

The direction of causality may run the other way. Ending the war may give those who oppose the broad consensus of the political class the upper hand. It may give hope and a sense of power to those who feel cynical about and alienated from politics. Opposition to the Iraq War includes a wide array of differing forces from those who want to keep “our boys and girls” out of harms way to those who oppose all wars or imperialism as a moral imperative. Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal is useful in explaining how the Bush administration, and American foreign policy, in general, got us into the war. Now we just have to figure how to get out.