Another humiliating taunt came this week. The only person the United States has managed to catch and convict over the events of September 11, 2001, had nothing to do with it, according the man who organised the evil acts: Osama bin Laden.
How could the US, with all of its power and wealth, have so comprehensively bungled its response to September 11? How could it have gone from having the sympathy of nearly the whole world to being reviled by much of it? By invading Iraq.
The US now has an impossible condundrum in Iraq: it says it will not leave until the country is secure and peaceful. But the country will never be secure and peaceful until it does leave.
Too many inaccurate comparisons are being made with Vietnam. In some respects the position is worse than in Vietnam, though the body count is far lower.
At least in Vietnam the United States had an enemy with which it could negotiate to concoct an “honourable” peace with which the President it could live politically. At least in Vietnam what was left behind was a fairly ethnically unified country.
On any measure the presence of US troops is adding to violence and insecurity, not reducing it. Staying is doing more harm than goping. The US should just pick up now and leave.
The Brookings Institution has been keeping a tally of progress since the invasion. The murder rate has gone up and is now at 95 per 100,000 (three times the rate of the most violent city in the US). The number of people in jail has gone up 50 per cent. There have been 5000 kidnappings. At least 25,000 Iraqis have died. Infant and child mortality are higher now than before the invasion and life expectancy is lower. A third of the doctors (12,000) have fled.
Production of clean water is at a third what it was before the war and 70 per cent of peole say they do not have safe water and sewerage. Up to 40 per cent of people are unemployed.
Bombings per month are going up.
The first reason for the invasion – Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction – came to nought. And now the second reason – to rid Iraq of a tyrant so people could be more secure – is now also at nought.
The foreign troops are having the exact opposite effect to their stated aim.
Eighty percent of Iraqis say in polls that they are strongly opposed to the presence of the coalition of the willing; 70 per cent say they are less secure than in Saddam’s day; between 40 and 45 per cent say attacks on US forces are justified; three quarters says the US is doing a poor job or should not be doing it at all.
The US should leave even on the grounds that Iraqis are ungrateful to the US for its role in ridding them of a tyrant.But on democratic grounds, if the people do not want you, why stay, especially if it is costing you a fortune?
A similar thing happened in Northern Ireland. The Catholics welcomed British troops as protectors from Protestant extremists when they first arrived in force at the beginning of the Troubles in the 1970s. Then it went belly up.
Some things in Iraq have improved. The oil is flowing at near pre-war levels – presumably a major priority of the Americans. Seven million Iraqis have phones (mainly mobiles) and there are now 44 TV stations; 72 radio stations and more than 100 newspapers where before there were none.
Consumer spending is up (alas, so many electrical items have been brought in that the grid cannot stand it).
But life is more insecure and violent than in Saddam’s day. Of course, Saddam should have been removed and it was wonderful that he was. Despite the subsequent shemozzle nearly 80 per cent of Iraqis say it was worth it.
But the same could be said of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and a dozen other Saddam-like dictators around the world. But they would be better removed by international pressure not by unilateral action by the US.