[Peace-discuss] Permanent bases in Iraq (AKA Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States)

[Michael Shapiro]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174869/a_basis_for_enduring_relationships_in_iraq

  Tom Dispatch

posted 2007-12-02 20:53:31
Tomgram: A Basis for Enduring Relationships in Iraq

[*Note for Tomdispatch readers:* *For anyone interested in the often ignored
but crucial subject of the U.S. garrisoning of the planet and the Pentagon's
system of imperial basing, there is a single indispensable book: Chalmers
Johnson's The Sorrows of
Empire<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805077979/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
volume two of his Blowback Trilogy. The third volume, Nemesis, The Last Days
of the American
Republic<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805079114/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
is almost as relevant on basing (and riveting in its own right). Tom*]

Iraq as a Pentagon Construction Site *How the Bush Administration "Endures"*
By Tom Engelhardt

The title of the
agreement<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-11.html#>,
signed by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in a "video
conference" <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/26/5468/> last
week, and carefully labeled as a "non-binding" set of principles for further
negotiations, was a mouthful: a "Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term
Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and
the United States of America." Whew!

Words matter, of course. They seldom turn up by accident in official
documents or statements. Last week, in the first reports on this
"declaration," one of those words that matter caught my attention. Actually,
it wasn't in the declaration itself, where the key phrase was "long-term
relationship" (something in the lives of private individuals that falls just
short of a marriage), but in a
"fact-sheet"<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/11/20071126-1.html>issued
by the White House. Here's the relevant line: "Iraq's leaders have
asked for an *enduring* relationship with America, and we seek an
*enduring*relationship with a democratic Iraq." Of course, "enduring"
there bears the
same relationship to permanency as "long-term relationship" does to
marriage.

In a number of the early news reports, that word "enduring," part of the
"enduring relationship" that the Iraqi leadership supposedly "asked for,"
was put into<http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/white_house_iraq_wont_have_to.html>(or
near) the mouths of "Iraqi leaders" or of the
Iraqi prime minister<http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3914932>himself.
It also achieved a certain prominence in the post-declaration
"press gaggle" conducted by the man coordinating this process out of the
Oval Office, the President's so-called War Tsar, Gen. Douglas Lute. He said
of the document: "It signals a commitment of both their government and the
United States to an enduring relationship based on mutual interests."

In trying to imagine any Iraqi leader actually requesting that "enduring"
relationship, something kept nagging at me. After all, those mutual vows of
longevity were to be taken in a well publicized civil ceremony in a world in
which, when it comes to the American presidential embrace,
don't-ask/don't-tell is usually the preferred
course<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IL01Ak01.html>of
action for foreign leaders. Finally, I remembered where I had seen
that
word "enduring" before in a situation that also involved a "long-term
relationship." It had been four-and-a-half years earlier and not coming out
of the mouths of Iraqi officials either.

Back in April 2003, just after Baghdad fell to American troops, Thom Shanker
and Eric Schmitt reported <http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/042103B.shtml> on
the front page of the *New York Times* that the Pentagon had launched its
invasion the previous month with plans for four "permanent bases" in out of
the way parts of Iraq already on the drawing board. Since then, the Pentagon
has indeed sunk billions of dollars into building those mega-bases (with a
couple of extra ones thrown in) at or near the places mentioned by Shanker
and Schmitt.

When questioned by reporters at the time about whether such "permanent
bases" were in the works, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
insisted<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A7264-2003Apr21&>that
the
U.S. was "unlikely to seek any permanent or �long-term' bases in Iraq" --
and that was that. The *Times'* piece essentially went down the
mainstream-media memory hole. On this subject, the official position of the
Bush administration has never changed. Just last week, for instance, General
Lute slipped up, in response to a question at his press gaggle. The exchange
went like this:

"Q: And permanent bases?

"GENERAL LUTE: Likewise. That's another dimension of continuing U.S. support
to the government of Iraq, and will certainly be a key item for negotiation
next year."

 White House spokesperson Dana Perino quickly issued a denial, saying: "We
do not seek permanent bases in Iraq."

Back in 2003, Pentagon officials, already seeking to avoid that potentially
explosive "permanent" tag, plucked "enduring" out of the military lexicon
and began referring to such bases, charmingly enough, as "enduring
camps."<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/59774/a_permanent_basis_for_withdrawal_>And
the word remains with us -- connected to bases and occupations
anywhere.
For instance, of a planned expansion of Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, a
Col. Jonathan Ives
told<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/07/news/afghan.php>an AP
reporter recently, "We've grown in our commitment to Afghanistan by
putting another brigade (of troops) here, and with that we know that we're
going to have an enduring presence. So this is going to become a long-term
base for us, whether that means five years, 10 years -- we don't know."

Still, whatever they were called, the bases went up on an impressive scale,
massively fortified, sometimes 15-20 square miles in area, housing up to
tens of thousands of troops and private contractors, with multiple bus
routes, traffic lights, fast-food restaurants, PXs, and other amenities of
home, and reeking of the kind of investment that practically shouts out for,
minimally, a relationship of a distinctly "enduring" nature.

*The Facts on Land -- and Sea*

These were part of what should be considered the facts on the ground in
Iraq, though, between April 2003 and the present, they were rarely reported
on or debated in the mainstream in the U.S. But if you place those
mega-bases (not to speak of the more than
100<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/21/AR2005052100611_pf.html>smaller
ones built at one point or another) in the context of early Bush
administration plans for the Iraqi military, things quickly begin to make
more sense.

Remember, Iraq is essentially the hot seat at the center of the Middle East.
It had, in the previous two-plus decades fought an eight-year war with
neighboring Iran, invaded neighboring Kuwait, and been invaded itself. And
yet, the new Coalition Provisional Authority, run by the President's
personal envoy, L. Paul Bremer III, promptly disbanded the Iraqi military.
This is now accepted as a goof of the first order when it came to sparking
an insurgency. But, in terms of Bush administration planning, it was no
mistake at all.

At the time, the Pentagon made it quite clear that its plan for a future
Iraqi military was for a force of
40,000<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E6D6153BF937A15755C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print>lightly
armed troops -- meant to do little more than patrol the country's
borders. (Saddam Hussein's army had been something like a
600,000-man<http://www.senate.gov/%7Elevin/newsroom/release.cfm?id=214720>force.)
It was, in other words, to be a
*Military Lite* -- and there was essentially to be no Iraqi air force. In
other words, in one of the more heavily armed and tension-ridden regions of
the planet, Iraq was to become a Middle Eastern Costa Rica -- if, that is,
you didn't assume that the U.S. Armed Forces, from those four "enduring
camps" somewhere outside Iraq's major cities, including a giant air
base<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302994_pf.html>at
Balad, north of Baghdad, and with the back-up help of
U.S. Naval forces in the Persian Gulf, were to serve as the real Iraqi
military for the foreseeable future.

Again, it's necessary to put these facts on the ground in a larger -- in
this case, pre-invasion -- geopolitical context. From the first Gulf War on,
Saudi Arabia, the largest producer of energy on the planet, was being
groomed as the American military bastion in the heart of the Middle East.
But the Saudis grew uncomfortable -- think here, the claims of Osama bin
Laden and Co. that U.S. troops were defiling the Kingdom and its holy places
-- with the Pentagon's elaborate enduring camps on its territory. Something
had to give -- and it wasn't going to be the American military presence in
the Middle East. The answer undoubtedly seemed clear enough to top Bush
administration officials. As an anonymous American diplomat
told<http://www.fpif.org/papers/oil.html>the
*Sunday Herald* of Scotland back in October 2002, "A rehabilitated Iraq is
the only sound long-term strategic alternative to Saudi Arabia. It's not
just a case of swopping horses in mid-stream, the impending U.S. regime
change in Baghdad is a strategic necessity."

As those officials imagined it -- and as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz predicted -- by the fall of 2003, major American military
operations in the region would have been re-organized around Iraq, even as
American forces there would be drawn down to perhaps 30,000-40,000 troops
stationed eternally at those "enduring camps." In addition, a group of Iraqi
secular exiles, friendly to the United States, would be in power in Baghdad,
backed by the occupation and ready to open up the Iraqi economy, especially its
oil industry<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174779/michael_schwartz_the_prize_of_iraqi_oil>to
Western (particularly American) multinationals. Americans and their
allies and private contractors would, quite literally, have free run of the
country, the equivalent of nineteenth century colonial extraterritoriality
(something "legally" institutionalized in June 2004, thanks to Order
17<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174840>,
issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority, just before it officially
turned over "sovereignty" to the Iraqis); and, sooner or later, a Status of
Forces Agreement or SOFA would be "negotiated" that would define the rights
of American troops garrisoned in that country.

At that point, the U.S. would have successfully repositioned itself
militarily in relation to the oil heartlands of the planet. It would also
have essentially encircled a second member of the "axis of evil," Iran (once
you included the numerous new U.S. bases that had been
built<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GC30Ag01.html>and were
being expanded in occupied Afghanistan as part of the ongoing war
against the Taliban). It would be triumphant and dominant and, with its
Israeli ally, militarily beyond challenge in the region. The cowing of,
collapse of, or destruction of the Syrian and Iranian regimes would surely
follow in short order.

Of course, much of this never came about as planned. It turned out that,
once the Sunni insurgency gained traction, the Bush administration had
little choice but to reconstitute a sizeable, if still relatively lightly
armed, Iraqi military (as a largely Shiite force) and then, more recently,
arm Sunni militias as well, possibly opening the way for future clashes of a
major nature. It had to accept a Shiite regime locked inside the highly
fortified Green Zone of the Iraqi capital that was religious, sectarian,
largely powerless, and allied to some degree with
Iran<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174838>.
It had to accept chaos, significant and unexpected casualties, continual
urban warfare, and an enormous strain and drain on its armed forces (as well
as a black hole of distraction from other global issues). None of this had
been predicted, or imagined, by Bush's top officials.

On the other hand, the Bush administration has demonstrated significant
"endurance" of its own, especially when it came to the linked issues of oil
and bases. In a recent report for *Harper's Magazine*, "The Black Box,
Inside Iraq's Oil Machine," Luke Mitchell describes traveling the southern
Iraqi oil field of Rumaila with a petroleum engineer working for Foster
Wheeler, a Houston engineering firm hired by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers "to oversee much of the oilfield reconstruction," and protected by
private guards employed by the British security company Erinys. He describes
what's left of the Iraqi oil industry after decades of war, sanctions, civil
war, sabotage, and black-market theft -- a run-down industrial plant with a
rusting delivery system that, at a technical level, is now largely in the
hands of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Department of Energy, the State
Department, and private contractors like KBR, the former division of
Halliburton. At the most basic level, he reports that many of "Iraq's native
oil professionals," who heroically patched up and held together a broken
system in the years after the first Gulf War, have (along with so many other
Iraqi professionals) fled the country. He writes:

"The *Wall Street Journal* in 2006 called this flight a 'petroleum exodus'
and reported that about a hundred oil workers had been murdered since the
war began and that 'of the top hundred of so managers running the Iraqi oil
ministry and its branches in 2003, about two-thirds are no longer at their
jobs.' Now most of the [oil] engineers in Iraq are from Texas and Oklahoma."

 Similarly, in Baghdad, the government of Prime Minister Maliki is not
expected to handle the crucial energy problems of its country alone. Here's
a relevant (if well-buried) passage from a
recent<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/washington/25policy.html?_r=1&ei=5088&en=7b03ec702b26838a&ex=1354078800&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin>
*New York Times* piece on the subject: "Earlier this month, the White House
dispatched several senior aides to Baghdad to work with the Iraqis on
specific legislative areas. They include the under secretary of state for
economic, energy and agricultural affairs, Reuben Jeffery III, who is
working on the budget and oil law�" This is what passes for "sovereignty" in
present-day Iraq.

In this context, the following line of text about agreed-upon subjects for
negotiation in last week's Bush/Maliki "declaration" caused eyebrows to be
raised (at least abroad): "Facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign
investments to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the
reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq." As the British *Guardian* put the
matter <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/26/5468/>: "The promise
was immediately seen as a potential bonanza for American oil companies." A BBC
report <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7115131.stm>commented,
"Correspondents say US investors benefiting from preferential
treatment could earn huge profits from Iraq's vast oil reserves, causing
widespread resentment among Iraqis." (American coverage regularly ignores or
plays down the oil aspect of the Bush administration's Iraq policies, even
though that country has the third largest reserves on the planet.)

*Bases, Bases Everywhere*

Among the most tenacious and enduring Bush administration facts on the
ground are those giant bases, still largely ignored --
with<http://blog.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2007/11/permanent_bases_in_iraq_how_ab.html?nav=rss_blog>honorable
exceptions<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/28/AR2007112802050_pf.html>--
by the mainstream media. Thom Shanker and Cara Buckley of the
*New York Times*, to give but one example, managed to write that paper's major
piece<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin>about
the joint "declaration" without mentioning the word "base," no less
"permanent," and only Gen. Lute's slip made the permanence of bases a minor
note in other mainstream reports. And yet it's not just that the building of
bases *did* go on -- and on a remarkable scale -- but that it continues
today.

Whatever the descriptive labels, the Pentagon, throughout this whole period,
has continued to create, base by base, the sort of "facts" that any
negotiations, no matter who engages in them, will need to take into account.
And the ramping up of the already gigantic "mega-bases" in Iraq proceeds
apace. Recent reports indicate that the Pentagon will
call<http://iraqvote.reviewpublic.com/2007/11/28/staying-on-in-iraq/>on
Congress to pony up another billion dollars soon enough for further
upgrades and "improvements."

We also know that frantic construction has been under way on three new bases
of varying sizes. The most obvious of these -- though it's seldom thought of
this way -- is the gigantic new U.S. Embassy, possibly the largest in the
world, being built<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174789/the_mother_ship_lands_in_iraq>on
an almost Vatican-sized plot of land inside Baghdad's Green Zone. It
is
meant to be a citadel, a hardened universe of its own, in, but not of, the
Iraqi capital. In recent months, it has also turned into a construction
nightmare <http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/20277.html>, soaking up
another $144 million in American taxpayer monies, bringing its price tag to
three-quarters of a billion dollars and still climbing. It is to house 1,000
or so "diplomats," with perhaps a few thousand extra security guards and
hired hands of every sort.

When, in the future, you read in the papers about administration plans to
withdraw American forces to bases "outside of Iraqi urban areas," note that
there will continue to be a major base in the heart of the Iraqi capital for
who knows how long to come. As the Washington
Post's<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/06/AR2007100601450_pf.html>Glenn
Kessler put it, the 21-building compound "is viewed by some officials
as a key element of building a sustainable, long-term diplomatic presence in
Baghdad." Presence, yes, but diplomatic?

In the meantime, a relatively small base, "Combat Outpost
Shocker,"<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2007/09/mil-070928-rferl01.htm>provocatively
placed within a few kilometers of the Iranian border, has been
rushed to completion this fall on a mere $5 million construction contract.
And only in the last weeks, reports have emerged on the latest U.S. base
under construction, uniquely being built on a key oil-exporting platform in
the waters off the southern Iraqi port of Basra and meant for the U.S. Navy
and allies. Such a base gives meaning to this passage in the Bush/Maliki
declaration: "Providing security assurances and commitments to the Republic
of Iraq to deter foreign aggression against Iraq that violates its
sovereignty and integrity of its territories, *waters*, or airspace."

As the British Telegraph<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml;jsessionid=P5KRTIERL15PJQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/11/17/wgulf117.xml&site=5&page=0>described
this multi-million dollar project: "The US-led coalition is
building a permanent security base on Iraq's oil pumping platforms in the
Gulf to act as the �nerve centre' of efforts to protect the country's most
vital strategic asset." Chip Cummins of the *Wall Street Journal* summed up
the project this way in a piece headlined, "U.S. Digs In to Guard Iraq Oil
Exports -- Long-Term Presence Planned at Persian Gulf Terminals Viewed as
Vulnerable": "[T]he new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S.
military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are
girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry."


Though you'd never know it from mainstream reporting, the single enduring
fact of the Iraq War may be this constant building and upgrading of U.S.
bases. Since the *Times* revealed those base-building plans back in the
spring of 2003, Iraq has essentially been a vast construction site for the
Pentagon. The American media did, in the end, come to focus on the civilian
"reconstruction" of Iraq which, from the rebuilding of
electricity-production facilities to the construction of a new police
academy<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134_pf.html>has
proved a catastrophic
mixture<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101453.html>of
crony capitalism,
graft <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n21/harr04_.html>, corruption, theft,
inefficiency, and sabotage. But there has been next to no focus on the
construction success story of the Iraq War and occupation: those bases.

In this way, whatever the disasters of its misbegotten war, the Bush
administration has, in a sense, itself "endured" in Iraq. Now, with only a
year left, its officials clearly hope to write that endurance and those
"enduring camps" into the genetic code of both countries -- an "enduring
relationship" meant to outlast January 2009 and to outflank any future
administration. In fact, by some official projections, the bases are meant
to be occupied for up to 50 to 60 years without ever becoming "permanent."

You can, of course, claim that the Iraqis "asked for" this new, "enduring
relationship," as the declaration so politely suggests. It is certainly true
that, as part of the bargain, the Bush administration is offering to defend
its "boys" to the hilt against almost any conceivable eventuality, including
the sort of internal coup that it has, these last years, been rumored to
have considered launching itself.

In an attempt to make an end-run around Congress, administration officials
continue to present what is to be negotiated as merely a typical SOFA-style
agreement. "There are about a hundred countries around the world with which
we have [such] bilateral defense or security cooperation agreements," Gen.
Lute said reassuringly, indicating that this matter would be handled by the
executive branch without significant input from Congress. The guarantees the
Bush administration seems ready to offer the Maliki government, however,
clearly rise to treaty
level<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ackerman29nov29,0,3241305.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail>and,
if we had even a faintly assertive Congress, would surely require the
advice and consent of the Senate. Iraqi officials have already made clear
that such an agreement will have to pass through their parliament in a
country where the idea of "enduring" U.S. bases in an "enduring"
relationship is bound to be exceedingly unpopular.

Still, a formula for the future is obviously being put in place and, after
more than four years of frenzied construction, the housing for it, so to
speak, is more than ready. As the Washington Post described the
plan<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/26/AR2007112601120_pf.html>,
"Iraqi officials said that under the proposed formula, Iraq would get full
responsibility for internal security and U.S. troops would relocate to bases
outside the cities. Iraqi officials foresee a long-term presence of about
50,000 U.S. troops�"

No matter what comes out of the mouths of Iraqi officials, though, what's
"enduring" in all this is deeply Pentagonish and has emerged from the Bush
administration's earliest dreams about reshaping the Middle East and
achieving global domination of an unprecedented sort. It's a case, as the
old Joni Mitchell song put it, of going "round and round and round in the
circle game."

[*Note:* Spencer Ackerman has been offering especially good coverage of
developments surrounding the recent Bush/Maliki declaration at TPM
Muckraker<http://tpmmuckraker.com/>.
I'd also like to offer one of my periodic statements of thanks to
Iraq-oriented sites that give me daily aid and succor in gathering crucial
material and analysis, especially Juan Cole's invaluable Informed
Comment<http://www.juancole.com/>,
Antiwar.com <http://www.antiwar.com/>, and Paul Woodward's The War in
Context <http://www.warincontext.org/>.]

*Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the
co-founder of the American Empire
Project<http://www.americanempireproject.com/>.
His book, The End of Victory
Culture<http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>(University
of Massachusetts Press), has recently been thoroughly updated in
a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn
sequel in Iraq.*
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