Phyllis Bennis Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies Wednesday, August 20, 2003; 10:00 a.m. ET
A truck bomb explosion destroyed the hotel that housed the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad killing at least 15 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the chief U.N. official in Iraq. Since the end of the war, resistance to U.S. troops and violence has escalated. Phyllis Bennis, fellow and expert on the Middle East and U.N. Affairs at the Institute for Policy Studies, was online Wednesday, Aug. 20 at 10 a.m. ET to discuss the recent bombings in Iraq. She also takes a critical look at U.S. reconstruction and peacekeeping efforts. Bennis is the author of "Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN" and "Before & After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis." She is also a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She has been a writer, analyst and activist on Middle East issues for 25 years. Based at the United Nations, she has been involved in the work on Iraq sanctions, disarmament and U.S. policy towards Iraq. In 1999, Bennis accompanied a group of congressional aides to Iraq to examine the impact of U.S.-led economic sanctions on the humanitarian conditions there. In 2001 she helped found and currently co-chairs the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation. The transcript follows. Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Boston, Mass.: Is the violence being done by Hussein loyalists, as the Bush administration believes, or has Iraq now become a haven for all kind of terrorist organizations that were not allowed in before?
Phyllis Bennis: I don't think we know yet who is responsible. What we do know (despite U.S. administration efforts to deny it) is that many Iraqis -- I would venture to say a large majority -- are very angry about the U.S.-British occupation, however happy they may have been about the ending of the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. What we are seeing now is still the violence of revenge and anger -- real resistance is only just beginning, and unfortunately the United Nations civilian humanitarian staff have paid the largest horrific price. I think it is a huge mistake --intended or otherwise -- to dismiss all the violence as being the work of "Hussein loyalists" or left-overs of the Ba'athist regime. There is plenty of home-grown anger in Iraq, among Islamists, nationalists, and ordinary Iraqis, let alone whoever may be slipping over now un-guarded borders.
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Falls Church, Va.: Do you think that the international community will be more open help by sending to support the U.S. in Iraqi as a result of this attack on the United Nations Headquarters.
Can the U.S. control the situation alone?
Phyllis Bennis: This is a key question -- the UN, as you know, was largely opposed to the U.S.-UK war in Iraq, even including the majority of Security Council members. The U.S. had to fight to get its way in May, when the UN agreed to a kind of partial legitimation of the U.S. war. Just in the last couple of weeks, there was a huge fight in the Council when the UN tried very hard to get Washington to agree to actually share power with the UN -- which wasn't nearly enough, but would have been somewhat different. The U.S. refused to give the UN any real authority, and pressured it into agreeing to participate by sending a huge humanitarian team under U.S. authority. Lots of governments and peoples were opposed to that position. Now I'm afraid there will be a kind of additional pressure from the U.S. on countries that have refused to support the U.S. occupation -- countries like India, which has refused U.S. pressure to send 20,000 troops -- that could result in more countries agreeing to send peacekeeping troops, money, humanitarian workers, etc., exactly as you say "to support the U.S. in Iraq". I hope the UN will recognize that it was a mistake to agree to send its people under U.S. control -- without any authority. The U.S. still refuses to allow UN troops, as peacekeepers or even to provide protection for the UN itself (which Washington clearly failed to do) and I would hope UN member states and the secretariat would realize that this is an untenable situation that only provides more credibility to the U.S. occupation.
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Galveston, Tex.: The truck carrying the bomb was on a public road outside the UN compound. Is the U.S., as the occupying force, responsible for security in public places in Iraq, and if so, under which body of law?
Phyllis Bennis: With its refusal to allow UN troops into Iraq, even to provide security for the UN's own headquarters, the U.S. and UK remain responsible for all security in Iraq. Ironically, the UN even recognized this back in May when they acknowledged the U.S. and UK as official "occupaying powers" which, under the Geneva Conventions, are required to provide security among all other humanitarian needs for the country -- so in fact the U.S. and Britain, not the UN, are actually responsible for providing food, medicine, security, etc to the Iraqi people AND any UN staff working there.
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Lyme, Conn.: President Bush declared the war in Iraq over. Do you believe we understand the nature and extent of guerilla warfare in Iraq? In Viet Nam, we underestimated enemy soldiers and we did not know how to best combat guerilla soldiers. Do we understand our enemy in Iraq, or do you believe we have once again miscalculated?
Phyllis Bennis: A great question, Connecticut...
First of all the war is clearly not over, despite Bush's on-board carrier photo op. I don't know if what is happening right now in Iraq is yet a full-scale guerrilla war -- but it's certainly moving in that direction. You're right about the parallel with our ignorance regarding Viet Nam -- because there, we refused to acknowledge the nationalism and opposition to colonialism that undergirded the Vietnamese resistance in both northern and southern parts of the country.
In Iraq, certainly we have once again miscalculated. One of the big questions is who is "our enemy". I don't think Iraqis view Americans as their enemy, but U.S. troops are occupying their country, killing civilians, controlling their oil, failing to provide real security for anybody -- those policies may at some point be enough to end the existing distinction between American people and the American government or American policies.
Unfortunately some of the ideologues in control of the White House -- the Paul Wolfowitz-Richard Perle-Douglas Feith-Lewis Libby etc crowd -- actually seem to believe their own rhetoric that "our troops" would be "liberating" Iraq and would be greeted in the streets of Baghdad with flowers and rice ... What a surprise when that turned out to not be true. But they couldn't get past their own true-believer views that just getting rid of Saddam Hussein (which we haven't done so far, we should remember) would be enough, and after that everyone in Iraq would be happy, rich, would love Americans and everyone could go home and lilve happily ever after.
What a fairy tale.
Too bad so many lives had to be lost to prove it wasn't true.
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Vista, Calif.: What do you believe are the reasons why the UN headquarters in Bagdad was chosen as a target?
Phyllis Bennis: I'm guessing -- and so far all of this is all guesswork, speculation, whatever you want to call it, because we don't know much yet -- that the UN offices at the Canal Hotel were chosen because they were a more accessible, "softer" target than the U.S. headquarters scattered across the country. I think this was an attack derivative of anger towards the U.S. -- and since the Security Council agreed to participate in the U.S.-UK occupation under Washington's terms, it's not surprising that Iraqis would link the UN to the U.S.
It's certainly possible this was designed to undermine the humanitarian work the UN team was just beginning to take up, it's also possible that it was aimed specifically as an assassination of Sergio Viera de Mello, the UN special envoy. But I think the most likely explanation was that the U.S. was not providing adequate and appropriate (meaning not looking like a fortress) security to the UN as they were responsible for doing, and it was clear to everyone that the UN headquarters was vulnerable.
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Phyllis Bennis: Just a quick note, everyone.
Questions are coming in thick and fast, and lots of them are extraordinarily interesting.
Just a warning I don't think I can keep up with all of them! Hope to get to as many as I can in the next half hour...
Thanks.
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Washington, D.C.: Do the Iraqi people have as much resentment towards the UN as they do for the United States? Could this be in retaliation for the devestating UN sanctions after the Gulf War?
Phyllis Bennis: You raise a good question which I should have included in my earlier answer about why the UN headquarters may have been targeted.
There is certainly enormous anger in Iraq about the devastation caused by economic sanctions for the last 13 years. Unfortunately but certainly understandably, many Iraqis hold the UN responsible for those sanctions because they were indeed imposed in the name of the global organization. The reality, however, is that it was the U.S., alone, who insisted on maintaining the sanctions in place, and refused to allow the Security Council to lift them despite other countries' urging. It is certainly possible that anger regarding the sanctions was part of what made it at least more acceptable to attack the UN, even if the main reason was to undermine the U.S. occupation.
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Washington, D.C.: There's a lot of good things being said about Sergio Vieira de Mello. However, didn't he seriously compromise the U.N. tradition of impartiality by playing second fiddle to the U.S. occupation and pushing hard for the recognition of the Iraqi governing council? In addition, how many people know that he was the Bush administration's first choice for replacing Mary Robinson - a thorn for Americans and Israelis alike - as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights?
Phyllis Bennis: Sergio Vieria de Mello was a consumate UN diplomat, unusual in that he was principled enough to be respected as that rare thing, an "honest broker". Certainly the UN's tradition of impartiality has been violated by its acceptance of work in Iraq under U.S. occupation and control -- but that was the doing of the Security Council, not the secretariat and not Sergio de Mello. He was principled enough to have been honored and appreciated by the East Timorese leadership despite the contradictions inherent in the UN "trusteeship" that followed the 1999 independence crisis. As to his role as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, you're right he was Washington's approved choice for the job. Mary Robinson was the exception, who got and maintained that position DESPITE being, as you said "a thorn for Americans and Israelis alike". She was also a thorn regarding China, Russia, and other powerful countries, but certainly her reputation will be her willingness to challenge Washington and its friends.
(I would note that the UN's "tradition of impartiality", in fact, is a tradition that is the exception rather than the rule. You might want to take a look at my book, CALLING THE SHOTS: How Washington Dominates Today's UN)
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Arlington, Va.: So why are Americans still supportive of the Bush Administration's policies even in the wake of this fiasco. I think they loathe the notion that the weak-kneed "serial protesters" may actually have been on the mark, so they'll hold onto Bush at all costs.
Phyllis Bennis: The good news is that Americans AREN'T as supportive of the Bush administration as they have been. What's frustratingly true is that even as more and more press reports -- good, probing journalism for a change -- comes out in the mainstream press, what's still missing is any sense of outrage by the press or by most Americans. Everything is still too cautious, too careful -- and I think, too fear-driven since 9/11. The scene in the UK, for instance, is far different, where the outrage is high, Tony Blair's career is balancing on a knife-edge, and the papers are screaming "HE LIED" in huge banner headlines.
I think that what you call the "serial protesters" were really, more this time around than maybe ever before, an astonishingly representative cross-section of average Americans, multi-racial, cross-generational, cross-class, etc. -- with lots of different reasons for being against the war but knowing that they were against it. Our so-called 'political leaders' certainly didn't lead that movement (and later didn't listen to its cries) but luckily lots and lots of Americans (millions, in fact) didn't listen to our so-called political leaders.
We should remember too, that in that amazing period from the spring and summer 2002 until the war began in the spring of 2003, there was also a huge split within elite circles across the U.S., with the White House fighting the State Department, the Pentagon's civilian hawks fighting the uniformed services, the New York Times fighting the Washington Post... And the UN, during that period, was also on the side of that global mobilization for peace.
We also shouldn't forget that Americans have a strong commitment to the notion of "supporting our troops" -- even though the best way to support them would be to demand that they be brought home, instead of remaining under threat in an unnecessary, illegal war.
And, finally, the legacy of September 11 is very much still alive. We were a nation in search of leadership -- what we got, unfortunately, was a call to war instead.
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Brussels, Belgium: Is this what president Bush meant with "BRING 'M ON" and how are these ongoing attacks going to influence the presidential elections in 2004 (e.g. the Dean factor) ??
And what about Israel? Didn't the White House predict that peace would follow, once Sadam was removed from power ?
Phyllis Bennis: I'm not even going to pretend to understand the working of Bush's mind [sic] on that remark.
What is certainly true is that his macho cowboy posturing, when translated into policy for the world's 'hyperpower', keeps us in a stage of perpetual threat, making us far more vulnerable, not safer.
Maybe too soon to say how this is going to affect the 2004 elections -- except to say that polls (always suspect, but still...) seem pretty consistent in showing a continuing decline of support for Bush. Now there's an opportunity for the Democrats to articulate a different policy, a different set of values for our country. If only those Democrats would remember where they left their collective backbone... (despite the good principled work of Dennis Kucinich, the anti-war stance of Dean, Sharpton, Mosley-Braun...)
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Penfield, NY: Now that we're thoroughly into this situation in Iraq, is there any door to get out without facing a Viet Nam type defeat. Does the US have any "thought out" exit policy that has a prayer of working?
Phyllis Bennis: Okay, Penfield, I think you get the last question... (Sorry to everyone else, questions were all quite fascinating!)
There is a "door to get out" -- but unfortunately I don't think the U.S. has any intention of walking through it. That door would be a rapid and total end to the U.S.-UK occupation, to be REPLACED BY (not supplemented by) a truly international, UN-led peacekeeping force and a continuing stream of money (starting with the same $75 billion the U.S. spent on the war) from the U.S., which is responsible for the war in the first place.
Such a conclusion to this crisis would help restore international legitimacy to the United Nations, would get the U.S. out of a dangerous and illegal occupation, and would give Iraqis, finally after so many years of dictatorship, war, sanctions and more war, a chance to rebuild their country.
Let's hope some kind of sanity takes hold here in Washington to give something like this a chance. Then maybe the horrific bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad would maybe become the last such atrocity, instead of, as currently is the danger, only the first.
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Phyllis Bennis: Thanks everyone... Looking forward to another chat some time!
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washingtonpost.com: That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.
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