Biyokulule Online

German Commentaries View US Combat Troop Withdrawal from Iraq
Spiegel Online
Friday, August 20, 2010

U.S. soldier watches as a statue of Iraq`s President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad April 9, 2003.

An Iraqi man is dragged away for questioning outside the besieged southern Iraqi city of Basra March 30, 2003.

The World from Berlin: `The Invasion of Iraq Was Wrong, Unjust and Damaging`

Has American credibility been severely damaged by the Iraq War? One day after the last US combat unit left the country, some in the German press say that it has. Commentators are pessimistic about Iraq`s ability to cope alone.

It has been seven and a half years since Shock and Awe, the military campaign launched by US and UK forces to topple Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. On Thursday (19 August), the last US combat unit crossed the border into Kuwait with far less fanfare than when those first coalition forces arrived in March 2003.

Just before dawn on Thursday morning the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division passed through the border posts at the Khabari Crossing to Kuwait. One soldier, Luke Dill, now a staff sergeant, had been part of the initial invasion back in 2003 when he was just 18 years old. Now aged 25, he told the Associated Press that he would proud for the rest of his life that “I came in on the initial push and now I`m leaving with the last of the combat units.”

Yet the cost of the war has been enormous both financially and in terms of human lives. Over 4,400 US troops and 100,000 Iraqi civilians died during the conflict. And the country is by no means completely pacified, with sectarian and ethnic tensions still present and insurgents thought to be regaining strength.

US President Barack Obama had pledged to bring the troops home during his election campaign. And by Aug. 31 there will be just 50,000 US troops in the country, a contingent which is to take on a non-combat role. Yet doubts persist that Obama can fulfil his promise to have all the soldiers out of the country by the end of 2011.

Filling the Vacuum

While the violence that raged during the sectarian warfare of 2006-2007 has dropped significantly, there are still suicide bombings and attacks by Islamist insurgents. And five months after the elections in March, there is still no sight of a stable government. There are fears that sectarian violence, pitting Sunnis against Shiites and Arabs against Kurds, could return to fill the vacuum left by the Americans` departure.

According to a US-Iraq military pact from 2009, US troops must be out of the country by Jan. 1, 2012 yet last week Robert Gates, Obama`s defense secretary, said that if a new Iraqi government is formed “and they want to talk about beyond 2011, we`re obviously open to that discussion.”

Those comments are not likely to have been welcomed by much of the Democratic party, which faces tough midterm elections in November. The US public is weary of almost a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and Obama, who is up for re-election in 2012, will have to tread carefully.

Just last week Iraq`s military commander, Lieutenant-General Babakir Zebari, caused consternation when he said his troops would not be in a position to protect the country until 2020 and that Washington should keep its forces in Iraq until then.

The German press on Friday takes a look at the costs and consequences of the war, both for Iraq and for the US.

The center-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung writes:

“The US could wage this war because after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 the country was prepared for and even expected a large armed conflict. ... The Bush administration believed that a war would give the country back its authority as the global super power. But the US could only wage the war because Iraq was so weak and easy to defeat.”

“The invasion of Iraq was wrong, unjust and damaging.”

“For the Iraqi people one inscrutable, violent regime has been replaced by another. And the promises of freedom and democracy are worthless if they can`t run a generator or help buy food.”

“This practical disillusion is paired with the strategic defeats that America has suffered... Because the invasion of Iraq broke international law, it reduced the meaning of that law for regulating how states deal with one another and damaged the UN`s legitimacy, which is responsible for enforcing it.”

“But the U S has also weakened itself, where it was classically strong: as a hard power. America showed itself to be helpless during the worst years of the Iraq civil war and incapable of dealing with the complex insurgency. ... America still plays an important role in the Middle East but Iran`s intractability and the polarization of the Sunni and Shiite worlds can be blamed on the Iraq War.”

“America`s claim to leadership is broken, its credibility severely damaged. The world has become more confusing and less safe. That is the legacy of this war.”

The business daily Handelsblatt writes:

“The Iraqi Army is hardly in a position to provide security. The people will have to suffer much bloodshed in the future because the roots of terrorism have not been dealt with. Iraq is not able to deal with this by itself. It still doesn`t have a functioning government after the elections in March. This double vacuum provides a fertile breeding ground for extremist groups.”

“Washington has suffered terrible damage to its image in the Middle East. Iraq is not pacified and the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan because the US concentrated its military capacity in Iraq. Neighboring Iran is playing cat and mouse on the nuclear issue while peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is out of reach.”

“The Iraqis have few grounds for optimism. The US is not only leaving behind a security gap, but also a political mess. The institutional structures are too weak and the army too inexperienced to prevent the country from descending into chaos and anarchy.”

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

“President Barack Obama wants to make clear that he is sticking to one of his most important election promises and is bringing the troops back home. There is nothing much more to it. The war is far from over, never mind won.”

“Around 50,000 American soldiers are staying in Iraq and contrary to what the government seems to be suggesting, they are fullfledged soldiers who will attack if need be.”

“The Iraqi soldiers and police are not able to provide security everywhere in the country ... and the number of terrorist attacks has increased recently, while five months of attempts to form a government have failed so far.”

“In such a volatile situation, the US cannot simply stubbornly stick to its withdrawal plans. ... Instead of fixating on a date, the US should set concrete goals. The Iraqi security forces need better training so that they will be able to cope one day without American help.”

“Above all the Americans have to ensure that the Sunni minority is protected and well integrated in the political system. Otherwise there is a danger that radical Shiites -- possibly with support from Iran -- could take sole control.”

The conservative Die Welt writes:

“After years of being on the defensive and of strategic drift the US military proved itself capable of learning and turned around a war that hardly anyone thought was winnable. An amazing achievement.”

“It is now up to the Iraqis to make this experiment in Arab democracy work. The political elite are not creating a good image at the moment due to their inability to reach a compromise. And one of the region`s favorite sports is blaming the Americans for every ill in the Arab world. The Iraqis will not have this excuse if they waste this opportunity for freedom that the Americans have given them -- one that many Iraqis have paid for with their lives. Freedom means deciding one`s own fate. And Iraq`s politicians must finally accept this responsibility.”

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

“The Anglo-American war in Iraq and the subsequent occupation was a severe breach of international law. The collected justifications by the Bush and Blair governments for the war were lies from the beginning. A later attempted justification was the deposing of Saddam Hussein, a dictator who the West and the Soviet Union had backed in the late 70s and armed for his war against the Isla mic revolutionary regime in neigboring Iran.”

“What price was paid for the overthrow of Saddam? Over 100,000 civilians have died as a direct consequence of the war and other acts of violence since March 2003.”

“In Iraq 4,419 US soldiers lost their lives and tens of thousands came home injured or with terrible trauma. The Pentagon budget since 2003 for the war and occupation was over $740 billion. Some experts put the actual cost for the US economy at $3 trillion. Yet despite these huge costs and victims, Iraq is neither pacified in the long-term nor politically stable.”

(Description of Source: Hamburg Spiegel Online in English -- English-language news website funded by the Spiegel group which funds Der Spiegel weekly and the Spiegel television magazine; URL: http://www.spiegel.de/)

A U.S. Marine searches an Iraqi in civilian clothes on a bridge called New Baghdad High Way Bridge in the suburbs of the Iraqi capital April 7, 2003.

Turkey: Column Urges Muslims To `Overcome` `Basic Assumptions` of `Modernity`
Today`s Zaman Online
Friday, August 20, 2010

Column by Ali Bulac: “Three Islams”

The Muslim world has revised its socio-political system in order to help overcome problems inherited from the recent past and has opened relatively more liberal spaces for Muslims.

However, this should lead us to make a critical, selective and conscious decision on what we should take from the outside world, because failing to do so could cause a radical change in our essential goals without us even being aware of it.

Even if the participation of Muslims -- against whom there has been an effort over the past century to exclude not only from political systems, but also from social life -- in current institutional structures (economy, politics, education, culture, arts, etc.) is “beneficial,” failing to ask how, how much and why we should participate could lead to great damage that could be hard to compensate for in the future.

We should always be conscious about this issue. When we say, “Let`s focus on life,” we may unknowingly “join the system and become a piece --with the identity and image Islam -- of the given world.” There are two drawbacks to this. The first is believing in a separate and autonomous phenomenon that can exist independently from the Muslim world and community while dealing with problems in the nation state and downgrading Islam to a nation-state`s geographic, economic and political issues. The other drawback is secularizing, materializing and nationalizing Islam in connection with the former. This situation could force us to adopt one of two attitudes in the face of the modern world, which can be seen as either our rival or our goal. These two unhealthy attitudes are known as “conflictive Islam” and “compatible Islam.” These two concepts are different from the “radical Islam” and “moderate Islam” dilemma that the media have recently been emphasizing. “Conflicting Islam” and “compatible Islam” look different, but are essentially the same. Both perceive the given world -- in other words, modernity -- as the whole of correct and mandatory values that need to be acquired and can be partially modified to fit Islamic principles.

The only difference between “Iran`s radical Islamists,” who are committed to challenging the West in the areas of military, technology, economics, science and politics, and Malaysia`s “conciliatory Islamists,” who argue that one can become a military, technological, economic, scientific and political power by becoming a sub-component of the great world system, is the form and methods they use. There is no difference between them in nature.

But the main problem facing mankind, including Muslims, is the problem of “overcoming the modern world,” which is based on concentrating power in those fields mentioned above. A religion, especially if this religion is Islam, should not be expected to define itself according to its rival or to look like it and use its means and methods. Instead, it should be expected to point to the horizons of a new world using its own unique goals and authentic means and methods. Christianity suffered great pains in its first 300 years. But then it emulated its oppressor, the Roman Empire, and evolved into a Romanized church. Islam should not go through the same tragic experience. Therefore, it is a top priority for Muslims who develop good-intentioned ideas about the modern world to crystallize their goals and plans.

In this respect I think they need to make clear suggestions on the following topics:

1) The humanization and liberation of people after witnessing the death of the individual

2) Determining the genuine meaning and purpose of life, which has lost meaning and purpose with the process of secularization

3) Ending the conflict between people and nature, and people and life

4) Recommending a new model of organization and a new art of living together with others for people who are losing the desire as well as the experience and skills to do so

What needs to be overcome is modernity and its basic assumptions, such as individualism, secularizat ion and the nation-state. This is possible by turning to that which transcends modernity, not by emulating and repeating the modern world.

Muslims, whether they adhere to “conflicting Islam” or “compatible Islam,” cannot create the individual in the name of Islam. They cannot attempt to regulate worldly life by ignoring the spiritual and otherworldly dimensions of religion and the divine love, and they cannot ignore the reality of the Muslim community and deal solely with the problems that occur within their national borders.

(Description of Source: Istanbul Today`s Zaman Online in English -- Website of English-language daily published by the Zaman media group, supported by Nurcu Sect leader Fethullah Gulen; URL: http://www.todayszaman.com)