by Oliver Stone
Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. . . . To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is farfetched. . . . Sunnis . . . now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. . . . The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave. . . . a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side. . . . the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. . . . In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise. . . . the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed. . . . our presence . . . has . . . robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are—an army of occupation—and force our withdrawal.175
In early 2008, Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard economist Linda Bilmes calculated that the cost of the Iraq War would actually reach $3 trillion, or 1,765 times what Natsios had estimated.176 What did Iraqi citizens and U.S. taxpayers receive in return? In 2008, the International Red Cross reported a humanitarian “crisis” in Iraq leaving millions without clean water, sanitation, or health care: “The humanitarian situation in most of the country remains among the most critical in the world.” Twenty thousand of the 34,000 doctors who had practiced in Iraq in 1990 had left the country; 2,200 had been killed and 250 kidnapped.177 In 2010, Transparency International ranked Iraq the fourth most corrupt country in the world, just behind Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Somalia.178
But the starkest display of what the United States achieved came in March 2008, a month in which Baghdad received two prominent visitors: Dick Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cheney sneaked into Baghdad under a veil of secrecy, protected by a massive security force, and then beat a hasty retreat before his presence was known. Ahmadinejad broadcast his plans in advance and drove in a motorcade from the airport. The Chicago Tribune reported:
Ahmadinejad was greeted with hugs and kisses on the first day of his historic visit to Iraq . . . , marking a dramatic break with the past for the two former foes and a new challenge to U.S. influence in Iraq. . . . Ahmadinejad . . . planned to spend two days in Baghdad. He is sleeping outside the relative safety of the Green Zone. . . . Iraq and Iran are expected Monday to announce a series of bilateral agreements concerning trade, electricity and oil. “There are no limits to the cooperation that we are going to open up with our neighbor Iran,” al-Maliki told reporters. Ahmadinejad was the first national leader to be given a state reception by Iraq’s government. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Ahmadinejad held hands as they inspected a guard of honor, while a brass band played brisk British marching tunes. Children presented the Iranian with flowers. Members of Iraq’s Cabinet lined up to greet him. . . . At every step, Ahmadinejad and his Iraqi hosts underlined the common interests of the two countries, whose long-hostile relationship has been transformed by the installation of a Shiite-led government following the U.S.-led invasion. . . . “The two people, Iraqi and Iranian, will work together to bring Iraq out of its current crisis,” Ahmadinejad pledged. “. . . Iraq is already in the hands of the Iranians. It’s just a matter of time,” said independent Sunni parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi. “Ahmadinejad’s message is: Mr. Bush, we won the game, and you are losing.”
Standing in the U.S.-controlled Green Zone alongside the Iraqi prime minister, Ahmadinejad dismissed Bush’s repeated allegations that Iranian agents were arming and training Shiite militias and demanded that the United States “accept the facts of this region: the Iraqi people do not like or support the Americans.”179
He was right. The Americans were the big losers, and Iran turned out to be the big winner. Its principal enemy had been eliminated, and its influence was now paramount in the region.
Already bogged down in two disastrous wars, there was little the United States could do about Iran, a charter member of Bush’s “axis of evil,” besides repeatedly decrying its expanding nuclear program, its meddling in Iraq, its support for terrorism, and the inflammatory statements by its president. Because Bush was bent on confrontation with Iran, he missed a historic opportunity to mend relations in the early part of the decade and to do so on the United States’ terms.
Following 9/11, Iran assisted the United States in its fight against the Taliban—their mutual enemy—in Afghanistan. Then, after extensive informal discussions, Iran proposed a grand bargain in May 2003. In exchange for enhanced security, mutual respect, and access to peaceful nuclear technology, Iran offered recognition of Israel as part of a two-state solution; “full transparency” on its nuclear program; help in stabilizing Iraq; action against terrorist groups in Iran; the halting of material support for Palestinian opposition groups, including Hamas, and pressuring them to “stop violent actions against civilians” in Israel; and a concerted effort to transform Hezbollah into a “mere political organization within Lebanon.” But because the administration neocons were intent on toppling the Iranian regime, not improving relations with it, they rejected the Iranian initiative and girded for war.180 It was a blunder of epic proportions.
In 2005, Philip Giraldi, a former senior CIA official, reported, “The Pentagon, acting under instructions from . . . Cheney’s office,” had ordered the U.S. Strategic Command to prepare plans for a “large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.”181 Nuclear weapons were reserved for hardened and underground facilities and the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Vehement objections by the Joint Chiefs forced Bush and Cheney to remove this option. In 2007, the Bush administration again began stirring the pot with Iran. As late as October of that year, Bush warned that Iran was intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and that its doing so might cause World War III. His effort to drum up war sentiment was derailed in early December when the intelligence community released a new National Intelligence Estimate concluding with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, repudiating its findings of only two years earlier.182
The greater threat to U.S. interests came from neighboring Pakistan, which had played such a crucial role in creating and sustaining the Taliban. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had also maintained close ties with Al-Qaeda, even sending Islamic militants for training in Al-Qaeda camps. The militants were then deployed to wage a war of terror to dislodge Indian control of the disputed territory of Kashmir. Just two days after 9/11, Bush gave the Pakistanis an ultimatum. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed General Mahmood Ahmad, head of the ISI, a list of seven nonnegotiable demands, including ending Pakistani support for and diplomatic relations with the Afghan Taliban, granting overflight rights to U.S. airplanes and access to naval bases and airports, and publicly condemning terrorism. According to President Pervez Musharraf, Armitage told Ahmad that Pakistan would be bombed “back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t comply. Though the Pakistanis mistrusted the United States and blamed it for many of their problems—“After the Soviets were forced out of Afghanistan,” said Shamshad Ahmad, Pakistan’s UN ambassador and a former foreign secretary, “you left us in the lurch with all the problems stemming from the war: an influx of refugees, the drug and gun running, a Kalashnikov culture”183—Pakistan had little choice but to comply. Pakistan’s acquiescence, though half
hearted at best, opened the door to a flood of U.S. military aid as Bush lifted the ban on arms sales to India and Pakistan that Clinton had put into place following their 1998 nuclear tests. Despite Pakistan’s promise to assist U.S. efforts, its primary focus remained on India, and the ISI continued to support anti-U.S. Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Tensions between India and Pakistan had flared anew when Islamic militants staged an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001. War between the two nuclear-armed states seemed imminent. A million soldiers confronted each other across the Line of Control in Kashmir. Experts feared that the Indian army would overrun its Pakistani counterpart and that Pakistan would retaliate, as it threatened, with nuclear weapons. The Pentagon estimated that 12 million people could die almost immediately if nuclear weapons were exchanged. The insanity of the situation was driven home by the comments of General Mirza Aslam Beg, a retired chief of Pakistan’s armed forces, who said, “I don’t know what you’re worried about. You can die crossing the street, hit by a car, or you could die in a nuclear war. You’ve got to die someday anyway.”184 The Indians were almost as obtuse. General Sundararajan Padmanabhan, India’s army chief, remarked, “If we have to go to war, jolly good. If we don’t, we will still manage.”185
The U.S. arms that began pouring into Pakistan further inflamed tensions. Though the crisis was temporarily resolved, large-scale U.S. arms transfers to Pakistan increased to over $3.5 billion in 2006 alone, ranking Pakistan first among U.S. arms recipients. This was even more galling following the disclosure, in 2003, that A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear industry, had run a network that sold nuclear bomb designs and bomb-making materials to North Korea, Libya, Iran, and possibly other nations over a fifteen-year period. Khan and his associates were known to have also visited Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Chad, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, and Sudan. Evidence indicates that senior Pakistani military and government officials had supported Khan’s activities. And the United States had turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s bomb project in return for Pakistani aid against the Soviets in Afghanistan—a policy suggested by Brzezinski but enacted under Reagan. Khan confessed publicly to his transgressions, and, the very next day, Musharraf pardoned him, calling him “my hero.” Khan remained under de facto house arrest for five years, but Pakistani authorities never brought charges and refused to allow U.S. officials to question him. A Pakistani senator chortled, “America needed an offering to the gods—blood on the floor. Musharraf told A.Q., ‘Bend over for a spanking.’ ”186
That was more than the United States demanded of Musharraf. A former senior U.S. intelligence official complained to journalist Seymour Hersh, “Khan was willing to sell blueprints, centrifuges, and the latest in weaponry. He was the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world and he’s pardoned—with not a squeak from the White House.”187 The United States instead lavished military aid and political support on Musharraf, who had seized power in a military coup in 1999 and ruled with an iron fist until he was ousted in 2008. U.S. support for the dictator and his military did little to win friends in that impoverished Islamic republic. A 2007 Pew poll found that only 15 percent of Pakistanis had a favorable view of the United States, significantly less than the 23 percent who the previous year had reported a favorable view of Pakistan’s archenemy, India, against which Pakistan had fought four wars.188 In 2007, 46 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of Osama bin Laden. Nine percent viewed Bush favorably.189
Nor was Bush making many friends in Russia. Although he said he had looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s soul and liked what he saw, Bush, as had Clinton before him, treated Russia with contempt. Shortly after taking office, Bush, ignoring strong Russian opposition, withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty to pursue his missile defense initiative. But he and Putin had a surprisingly friendly meeting in June 2001. After the September 11 attacks, Putin was one of the first foreign leaders to phone Bush and express condolences. On September 24, he announced a five-point plan to support the U.S. war on terrorism. Not only would he share intelligence and open Russian airspace to the United States, he said, but he would acquiesce in and even facilitate the stationing of U.S. troops in the Middle East, which many in Russia’s military and intelligence community strongly opposed.
A. Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear industry, who, it was revealed in 2003, ran a network that sold nuclear bomb designs and bomb-making materials to North Korea, Libya, Iran, and possibly other nations over a fifteen-year period. The United States had turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s bomb project in return for Pakistani aid in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Bush repaid Putin’s largesse by breaking his father’s promise to Gorbachev and expanding NATO ever closer to Russia’s borders, effectively encircling Russia with U.S. and NATO military bases, some in former Soviet territories. This second wave of expansion began in late 2002 and concluded with the admission of Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in March 2004. The Russians objected vehemently. Extending NATO to former Warsaw Pact nations like Bulgaria and Romania was objectionable enough, but extending NATO to former Soviet republics like Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia was adding insult to injury.
Openly contemptuous of Russian opinion, Bush pressed NATO to expand even farther. Croatia and Albania joined in 2008. And he made it clear that he also wanted to add Georgia and Ukraine, despite protests by Russia and warnings from other NATO members that this would seriously damage relations between Russia and the West. Russians were convinced that U.S. democracy programs in Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus were simply a ploy to further expand NATO and isolate Russia.
U.S.-Russian relations, which had looked so promising in 2001, were badly damaged in 2003 when the United States decided to invade Iraq. Russian officials threatened to veto a war resolution in the United Nations if Bush chose to go that route. Russia’s mistrust of the United States ran so deep that it withdrew the strategic arms treaty designed to eventually mandate substantial cuts in nuclear stockpiles.
In April 2005, Putin used his annual state of the nation address to parliament to lament the breakup of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century.” Given the Russians’ hardships under capitalism, many ordinary Russians also looked back nostalgically to life in the Soviet Union.190 In parts of Russia, a Stalin revival was even under way as many citizens wanted to honor his contribution to the Soviet Union’s history, especially his role in World War II, and were willing to downplay his crimes. “They never miss a chance in the West to rewrite history and diminish our country’s role in the victory over fascism, so that’s even more reason not to forget Stalin now,” said Lyubov Sliska, a parliamentary first deputy speaker.191
The Russians also felt threatened by Bush’s nuclear policies. While inveighing against nonexistent WMD in Iraq, Bush substantially and dangerously lowered the threshold for the use of real WMD. His 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) deliberately blurred the line between nuclear and conventional weapons and began targeting nonnuclear nations, which not only eliminated the incentive for such nations not to acquire nuclear weapons, it encouraged them to do so to avoid being targeted. The NPR asserted that the United States had the right to use nuclear weapons (1) if WMD of any sort were used against the United States; (2) to penetrate hardened or underground targets that couldn’t be destroyed with conventional weapons; and (3) if the United States encountered “surprising military developments.”192 Recognizing the terrifying implications of this new policy, the New York Times ran a powerful editorial on March 12, 2002, titled “America as Nuclear Rogue,” which insisted, “If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating preemptive strikes against a list of nonnuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. . . . Where the Pentagon review goes very wrong is in lowering the thresh
old for using nuclear weapons and in undermining the effectiveness of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”193 According to the treaty, the United States and the other nuclear powers were legally obliged to move toward eliminating their nuclear arsenals. Not only did Bush ignore that provision, he advocated developing a new generation of miniature nuclear weapons and bunker-busting bombs whose smaller size would make them more usable in combat situations.
Bush’s nuclear policy threatened to destabilize the entire nonproliferation regime. In his riveting Peace Declaration of August 6, 2003, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba lashed out at the United States’ recklessness: “The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the central international agreement guiding the elimination of nuclear weapons, is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is U.S. nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear first strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called ‘useable nuclear weapons,’ appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.”194
Russian leaders took issue with several aspects of the NPR, but their reaction was muted compared to the shock caused by a spring 2006 article in the March–April issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the seat of the nation’s foreign policy establishment. In the article, Keir Lieber of Notre Dame and Daryl Press of the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the relative strengths and weaknesses of U.S., Russian, and Chinese nuclear forces and concluded that the dramatic post–Cold War improvement in U.S. nuclear capabilities, combined with the “precipitous decline of Russia’s arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China’s nuclear forces,” created a situation in which neither the Russians nor the Chinese could effectively retaliate against a U.S. nuclear attack. That gave the United States its long-sought first-strike capability. The United States could destroy Russia or China with impunity. The United States’ long-standing adversaries were unable to retaliate and would remain so for the foreseeable future.
