by Leah C. Wells

Saddam is gone, but Iraq is not much different. The chaotic post-invasion reality provides good cover for the purely cosmetic reinvention of this nation still at war.

Milan Rai, founder of the UK chapter of Voices in the Wilderness, has painstakingly outlined the international processes involved with the most openly illegal war in recorded history which reinstated many of the same Ba’thist ideologues and henchmen who were supposedly purged.

His book, “Regime Unchanged”, weaves together a shrewd narrative of quotes and analysis from across the political spectrum to demonstrate how the U.S. steamrolled through global opinion on its path toward conquering Iraq. Milan Rai asserts that the war nearly happened without the participation of the British, giving particular attention to the global anti-war movements, most notably within the United States and Great Britain.

Pre-invasion, the U.S. government insincerely attempted to utilize international channels of communication, negotiating and dialoging, haggling and rehashing agreements and sticking points, all the time knowing that the American timeline and agenda would prevail regardless of international sentiment. Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and even George W. Bush himself presented their cases at notable venues, like the State of the Union Address and the United Nations General Assembly, for why Iraq posed such an imminent threat at numerous podiums hoping to light a fire under the seats of potential ‘coalition’ members.

Yet despite exhaustive bargaining, begging and bribery, the United States had pitiful international support for their plan to liberate Iraq.

Public anti-war sentiment in the U.K. was so great that the Blair government seriously considered withdrawing military support for invading Iraq, posits Rai. The massive anti-war demonstrations in the United States doubtfully had a direct impact on the Bush administration’s determination to invade Iraq; the U.S. government in fact publicly discounted their impact. The millions of people who democratically took their concerns to the streets in the U.S. did have global influence, however, as their pavement pounding sent thunderous waves worldwide. Solidarity protests sent powerful messages to governments who do take heed of their constituencies, resulting in a vacuum of overt support for the U.S. government’s plans.

President Bush’s appeal at the Azores meeting, flanked by the leaders of Great Britain and Spain, created a visual illusion of wider support with a blindingly repetitive backdrop of the three countries’ flags. What was mockingly called the “coalition of the coerced” trekked onward into Iraq, without the evidence of weapons of mass destruction nor intent to use them, without the completed work of the weapons inspectors, without the support of the United Nations and moreover the global community, and without the right to traverse Turkish soil in the Northern Iraq invasion.

Given these “obstacles”, how did the U.S. do it? Citing the ambiguous “material breach” language as being one factor, Milan Rai writes that U.N. Resolution 1441 set the standard for Iraqi compliance so high that unqualified compliance was unthinkable. The timeline for readmitting weapons inspectors was seriously delayed in November 2002 and then cut short in March 2003 by White House impatience after the Iraqi government openly agreed to sensitive site inspection. Moreover, the United States continued to imply Iraqi connections to global terrorism and Al Quaeda as well as a dead link to purchasing African uranium.

The bottom line was that United States needed a war with Iraq, and on a tight schedule had to keep reigniting public fear of terrorism and evil dictatorships regardless of whether or not their threat was real or their motives were murky.

Critical to understanding the objectives of the war is the notion of leadership change rather than regime change.

The U.S. wanted at least figuratively, perhaps literally, to cut off the head of the Ba’ath party, retaining the structures and authorities already in place, like the Republican Guard and the police forces. The ideology behind the war never meant to redesign the fabric of Iraqi society, and certainly did not want a Shi’a leader to come to power. Consequently, the war might have decapitated the figureheads but certainly did not transform the political structures of Iraqi society.

Unbeknownst to Rai at the time of his book’s publication would be the multitude of foibles which would unravel in the months after invading Iraq.

One such blunder was the embarrassing outing of Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative. Wilson, dispatched to research the African uranium connection, criticized U.S. motives in Iraq and found his wife a target of a White House leak as her work with the Central Intelligence Agency was reported by Robert Novak, a well-known Republican commentator privy to inner White House dialogues.

The number of post-war casualties for the occupying troops has also proven surprising. Iraqis have maintained efforts to resist the occupation on a chillingly consistent basis, hitting targets like the United Nations offices at the Canal Street Hotel and the Red Cross, which has since ceased work in Iraq.

Gone are the regulated, predictable days of bureaucracy under Saddam. His era of control and terror which consolidated the multitude of ethnicities and agendas has crumbled into a disarray of foreign troops, explosions and random acts of terror, failing to produce a credible new leadership and to dismantle the old regime.

For the people of Iraq, liberation has not yet arrived.

Leah C. Wells is a freelance journalist and peace educator who has made several trips to Iraq. Learn more about Regime Unchanged and the Justice Not Vengeance campaign at www.j-n-v.org. Ms. Wells may be reached at leah@peaceed.org.