BY DOUG LORIMER
In the wake of the August 19 truck bombing of the United Nations mission in Baghdad, US President George Bush's administration is coming under increased pressure from within the US ruling elite to boost the number of troops in Iraq under Washington's command in order to quickly crush armed resistance and prevent the Iraq war developing into a Vietnam War-style "quagmire".
The attack on the UN offices in Baghdad, in which UN special representative Sergio Viera de Mello and 23 others were killed, came only a few days after Iraqi guerrillas severed the country's northern oil pipeline (which temporarily stopped the US-British occupiers' looting of Iraq's oil resources). Those events shattered the Bush administration's claims that it is making "progress" in imposing "security" in Iraq.
Reflecting the growing anxiety within US ruling-class circles that the Bush administration has not committed enough military resources to decisively defeat the Iraqi resistance movement, on August 20 the editors of the New York Times described the US occupation of Iraq as "the most important American foreign policy endeavour", but warned that it was a "mission imperilled".
"American soldiers cannot be left fearing so much for their own safety that they start treating all Iraqis as potential enemies", the NYT editors warned, since this would lead to a "further deepening [of the] the psychological chasm between [Washington's] reconstruction efforts and Iraqi civilians". "The Bush administration has to commit sufficient additional resources, and, if necessary, additional troops, to prevent that", the editorial argued.
At present, the US-led occupation forces in Iraq consist of 140,000 US troops, 11,000 British and 300 Australian troops, with another 10,000 foreign troops — mostly from Italy (3000), Poland (2400), Ukraine (1650), Spain (1300) and Bulgaria (450) — due to arrive this month.
The NYT's call for Washington to commit more US troops was echoed on August 24 by John McCain, a leading Republican senator. Speaking to the Washington Post, McCain said: "We must win this conflict. We need a lot more military, and I'm convinced we need to spend a lot more money."
Cain said the failure of the occupation authorities to restore basic services in Iraq was making it more difficult to pacify the country. "When it's 125 [oF] and people don't have electricity and water, they get very unhappy", Cain told the Washington Post. "Time is not on our side", he added.
'Bogged down'
Driving this point home, the Washington Post article noted: "A Newsweek poll released yesterday found that 60 percent of respondents thought the United States was spending too much in Iraq and should scale back, and that 69 per cent were concerned the United States would be bogged down for many years in Iraq without making much progress."
An editorial in the same edition, after noting that the Bush administration "seems convinced that time is on its side in Iraq", argued that "it seems at least equally plausible that time is working against the coalition".
Disputing the administration's claim that the US has sufficient numbers of troops in Iraq to crush armed resistance to its occupation, the Washington Post's editors declared: "There aren't enough troops, there aren't enough police and there aren't enough contributions from countries with competent militaries. In Karbala, a city in southern Iraq where occupation has been fairly successful, 1000 Marines are about to withdraw in favour of 455 Bulgarian troops. But the Bulgarians have no intention of assuming the civil administration functions the Marines have been carrying out, as the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, and a civilian team that was supposed to deploy there hasn't even been named. Given the stakes, and the potential for new problems, this kind of ragged, improvised, resource-poor effort is inexcusable and incomprehensible."
"There shouldn't be any debate about the need for more intense effort", the Washington Post's editors concluded, adding: "The longer the administration delays, the greater the chances of failure."
The same day's editorial in the NYT argued that getting more foreign troops to participate in Washington's war in Iraq "will not materialise until Washington changes its Lone Ranger approach".
NYT wants greater UN role
Noting that without the Bush administration's willingness to "accept a much larger UN role in developing independent Iraqi political institutions, other countries will continue to hold back", the NYT editors declared: "Without a stronger UN political presence, however, the Governing Council recently appointed by Washington risks being perceived as America's puppet."
Of course, the whole aim of the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq — enthusiastically backed by the US capitalist ruling class, including by the owners of the NYT and the Washington Post — is to impose an internationally recognised pro-US puppet regime that will legalise control of the lion's share of Iraq's vast and highly profitable oil resources by the big US oil corporations.
With control of Iraq's oil reserves — the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia's — in their hands, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco (Caltex in Australia), which already dominate the marketing of Saudi Arabia's oil exports, would gain a decisive advantage over European competitors, particularly the French oil giant Total, in the world oil market.
As the US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) radio network observed in April, this is what underlies the conflict between Paris and Washington over what role the UN should play in the construction of a new Iraqi regime.
"Already, the international battle for Iraq's oil resources is taking shape, as the rhetoric over who will administer post-war Iraq intensifies", RFE/RL reported on April 8. "On the one side is the US, which says that the coalition of nations now prosecuting the war should have control. On the other side are Iraq's traditional oil partners — led by the European Union and Russia — who are saying the United Nations must have the lead role. Although the word 'oil' is rarely used, it lies at the heart of the disagreement."
The EU — or more precisely, the French government — wants the UN Security Council, in which it has a veto power, to have a decisive role in selecting the key personnel in any new Iraqi regime so as to ensure that Iraq's oil resources do not become a US corporate monopoly, but are carved up "fairly" among the competing imperialist oil trusts.
New UN resolution
In the week following the bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad, US officials expressed a willingness to consider a new UN Security Council resolution that could provide political cover for countries such as France, Germany, India, Turkey and Pakistan to contribute between 40,000 and 60,000 troops to the US-led occupation of Iraq.
However, the August 26 London Financial Times reported that "movement towards a new UN resolution that would internationalise the peacekeeping efforts appeared to be stalled, with the US at loggerheads with French diplomats over the issue of sharing command and decision-making responsibilities".
"The tone of the Americans has changed, but not the substance", a senior non-US diplomat involved in the UN negotiations, who was quoted on condition of anonymity, told the August 26 Boston Globe. "You can't expect to share in the military side without political" involvement, the diplomat added.
According to a report in the August 27 NYT, some figures in the Bush administration are willing to allow a UN military force to operate in Iraq provided it is led by a US commander. In an interview with a group of reporters on August 26, deputy US secretary of state Richard Armitage said this plan, first floated a week earlier by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, was "one idea being explored" in discussions within the Security Council.
"The new show of flexibility on Iraq policy", the NYT reported, "appears to reflect deepening concern within the administration about the unwillingness of many other countries to contribute troops and money to the American-led effort in Iraq."
In an attempt to brazen out the growing criticisms from within US ruling-class circles that the Bush administration's imperial military adventure in Iraq is turning into a politically costly debacle, on August 25 US war secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly insisted that Washington had enough troops in Iraq. He also dismissed the current level of attacks by Iraqi resistance fighters on US troops — up to a dozen a day — as "a spike", which would soon dissipate.
Picking up the same theme, Bush told American Legion veterans in St Louis on August 26 that in most of Iraq "solid progress" was being made in restoring civil order — despite the fact that, as of August 26, more US troops had died in Iraq in the four months since he declared the end of major combat operations than were killed during the six weeks of the invasion.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, September 3, 2003.
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