CAIRO: American journalist Mark Danner delivered a sobering assessment of US involvement in Iraq to students and faculty at the American University in Cairo (AUC) Tuesday.
Looking around at the intricate mashrabia windows of AUC’s Oriental Hall hosting his lecture, Danner opened by commenting on the beauty of the room, saying “I’m afraid this is the end of the cheerful portion of this lecture.
He then launched into a searing condemnation of the Bush administration’s unrealistic goals in Iraq.
“I’m standing here at a fascinating moment: one month from the midterm election, on the eve of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq study group report, said Danner, positioning his words in current US events.
As a political analyst, Danner could detail the workings of the Bush administration with ease. He credited some of the mistakes in Iraq to Bush’s certainty in his own judgment, and his small decision-making circle, which included few people beyond the Secretaries of Defense and State, the Vice President, and the National Security Advisor.
In his opinion, there were too few people making swift and careless choices for the sake of quick implementation.
“Why did American officials make momentous decisions in an uniformed, ignorant atmosphere? You find time after time the government making decisions it knew would be catastrophic … They emphasized the ‘hows’ rather than the more complex ‘whys’, he said.
“The people who actually knew something about Iraq, like the State Department, were completely cut out.
He summarized the reasons for going to war in Iraq that many have cited: efforts to trigger regional political change in the Middle East; a wish to respond overwhelmingly to the 9/11 attacks on the US; or a long-seated desire among Paul Wolfowitz and other administration members for a “neocon revolution to democratize the Middle East.
These lofty goals have done little good in Iraq, according to Danner. Trying to make the scale of the Iraq war more concrete, Danner put the Iraq death figures in proportion to the American population, calling Iraq “extraordinarily bloody.
One hundered to 150 people die per day in Iraq. In the US, that casualty rate is about equivalent to 30,000 Americans dying per month. The scale of the Iraq war death toll dwarfs the Vietnam War, which killed about 58,000 Americans in ten years.
The deteriorating situation in Iraq, which Danner sees as a civil war along religious lines, has accomplished none of the US’s stated goals so far. After describing how unrealistic the Bush administration’s initial assessments of Iraq and the Middle East were, Danner went on to say, “If you look closely at the American policymakers, the war of the imagination persists.
Stephen Hadley’s recent assessment of Iraq, leaked two weeks ago, encouraged a change of the political coalition around Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, to a more moderated and secular one. This document did not give Danner any hope that the Bush administration is learning from its mistakes.
Danner outlined how Al-Maliki’s entire political career has been supported by the Shi’a community in Iraq, so that Hadley’s idea of asking him to ally himself with other religious communities is similar to, in Danner’s words, “asking the Pope to support Planned Parenthood.
As for what to do next, Danner did not see any hope of success. When he asked whether anyone in the audience was optimistic about Iraq’s future, only one person, out of an audience of over one hundred, raised his hand.
“Everyone says ‘what is the solution to Iraq?’ It is a failing that policymakers think there must be a solution. There often isn’t one, he said. “There are degrees of failure.
The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group’s report, released Wednesday, confirmed many of the conclusions that Danner discussed in his speech to AUC.
The report stated that any course of action must be based on a realistic understanding of the situation in Iraq, which has been absent from much of the US’s work there until now.
As the report makes its first waves through the American policy-making establishment, it remains to be seen whether the US government’s latest attempt at understanding what is needed in Iraq will be any different than the “war of the imagination chronicled by Danner.
Despite the depressing nature of his talk, Danner was positive about his visit to Cairo. In an interview on Wednesday, Danner told The Daily Star Egypt that he was impressed with the AUC audience. “I’ve found a level of political seriousness here that you don’t often see in the US, he said, “A sense that this situation is important and will actually affect people’s lives.
Danner is a seasoned writer who works for the New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times, among other publications. His latest books analyze certain facets of the Iraq War. They include The Secret Way to War: The Downing Street Memo and the Iraq War’s Buried History and Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror.
