The US, Afghanistan, Iraq and US

Today is 19 March 2012. The day and the month of March are significant in the lives of many people - some celebrating birthdays, some wedding anniversaries, while others nurse what is yet left over from the hangover of the three day drawn encounter that we experienced a week ago or the limited over Royal Thomian match, over the weekend, which was made less than a wholesome win for the Thomians by a Duckworth and Lewis.

 

The invasion of Iraq

Today is also the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition forces.  It was on 19 March 2003 that the US and its “Coalition of the willing” invaded Iraq. The coalition called it the “Shock and Awe Attack” (possibly an American term). The world watched in shock and awe at the manner in which Saddam Hussain’s forces were crushed immediately.  This of course was not surprising since the US spends on its own an amount similar to what the rest of the world together spends on defence.  Iraq’s economy at the time was less than 1% of that of the US.  Iraq was also after 10 years of a futile war with Iran where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had died and this was followed by the Gulf War in which another hundred thousand had died.  It was also after a decade of sanctions. Thus crushing Iraq was not a tall order. American citizens and those of the “Coalition of the willing” would have been truly embarrassed and perhaps in “Shock and Awe” if America had not been able to overrun the Iraqi military.

Gloating Bush

Just six weeks after the war started there was Bush – President Bush – beaming and gloating in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.  We often fault South Asian, African, Central American, South American or perhaps even certain post soviet nations (some of whom I have been to) when they claim to have achieved a milestone even before a journey has begun.  This is not ordinarily expected from developed western nations let alone the most powerful. This is not what one would expect of a nation, which President Obama recently, obnoxiously called, a “Triple A country” just after a credit rating agency had downgraded his motherland. Whether it was six weeks after the war started or nine years later today, I do not think anyone could claim what Bush claims “A Mission Accomplished.” Of course, the mission was not to defeat the Iraqi Army but to create a “Viable Democracy.” What kind of report card do we give the USA today?

Kabul Afghanistan

Five years ago in March 2007 I was on an assignment in Kabul Afghanistan for most of the month. I missed three important events – my birthday, my wedding anniversary and the Royal Thomian match. As background work for my country specific assignment, which was more to do with financial management and infrastructure, I took time to read the Afghanistan Compact where several countries and multilateral and bilateral development banks and the United Nations got together to pull Afghanistan out of a rut – A rut it is yet in. This is what motivated me, three years later, when the EU GSP was withdrawn from us, to write the article entitled “Engaging the International Community with Dignity” which appeared in my column the “Though Leadership Forum” on Monday 19 July, 2010.  Today’s article is a sequel to that article.  Let me first recall a few comments I made then, and in the subsequent paragraphs endeavour to explain why I have decided to do this sequel.

I began the article in 19 July, 2010 by saying that “over the last year and more, I have found the less than objective dialogue on what I term “The EU, GSP Plus and Us” quite distasteful. Among other things I said that we need to get real and practical and also referred to my writings in the Thought Leadership Forum four years before that in January 2006, in the then Daily Mirror Financial Times, where I articulated the need for “Credibility and Reputation Management,” now that we are a country, with a credit rating. I said that reputation management however is a challenging task, first protecting what we have and building upon what we have, and that it is not about, ‘an after the fact’, or post-disaster type of management, unless it is an unexpected natural disaster such as the tsunami. It is about preventing, pre-empting and hedging against events, I said. I trust that readers can identify with this strategy in the current context.

Regaining what we earned

In the context of the EU GSP, I said that “the apparel, footwear and tableware companies and all others who are affected, have worked long and hard for years, have invested time, money and technology, have foregone returns, carried costs, carried losses and people, to achieve world-class status. These industries did not get to where they are because they were domiciled in a nation with a long history, rich culture, proud heritage, warm climate, and scenic beauty. They did not earn this concession because somebody somewhere called us a big miracle or a small one or because we promoted the nation as a destination for tourism as a “land like no other.”

“The industry strived to be globally competitive. They became eligible, and were enjoying this preferential market access not necessarily as a hand out. It was earned with dignity. It was earned over time. It was earned by investing in processes and people. Having done so, they sweated, toiled and persevered to remain there. Our people from the cities and rural parts who worked with these industries and had food put on the tables of their families as a result, worked hard and complied with good manufacturing practices and persevered to progress towards quality. Thus, a progressive leadership has a responsibility to protect their position in the global marketplace.”

Idle rhetoric and the local marketplace

I said further that the answer is not to walk away from the EU as a market while engaging in idle rhetoric for consumption in the local marketplace, while we lose our position in a global marketplace. This will only raise the hopes of people, that there are other markets whether in Eastern Europe or Asia. That statement is not wholesome, honest or sincere. Industrialists do not simply establish a beachhead, plant a lion flag as it were, and start selling their wares. If Eastern Europe and Asia are potential markets let us target those markets anyway, but not as a “new girl” in order to spite the previous one, who rightly or wrongly, we have been estranged from by default or otherwise. It is the industrialist who will know how hot or not, these so called “new markets” are” whether they sell Victoria’s secret lingerie or Dankotuwa Porcelain’s fine china.

Not a one-way concession

I said also “that those who buy our products in the EU, do not do so out of compassion or philanthropy, to help a nation that was at war or battling a tsunami or a recession. They buy these because they either look good in them or find them good to showcase on their fine dining tables or elsewhere. Those who procure our goods and wholesale or retail them in Europe at a profit, and those who are employed by them are all beneficiaries. So are their individual consumers at a time when Europe itself has to stimulate consumption rather than impose measures of austerity.

While we simply do not have the right to demand its continuity, or to make a public spectacle at the highest levels by fasting to death, or by organising protests against the EU, I am also unsure whether it is “right” just or fair, or to use a typically English term “proper” for the EU to deprive us of GSP Plus in its entirety. We on our part have a responsibility to protect the good name of the country while maintaining our dignity and self-respect. We can adopt several approaches-one a “sour grapes” defeatist approach, the other a negotiated programme and an action plan to incrementally and progressively achieve a higher level of respectability.

The latter does not require compliance with the entirety of the wish list of the EU or even if taken piecemeal and in a phased out manner, does not require to be done because they wish it done, but because we wish to do it for ourselves. If on our part, we are not to be defensive, offensive or defeatist, the EU should also not be rigid.

Heads and hearts

Articulating my expectations of the West I said that “Nations world over and their leaders, who have their heads and hearts in the right place, must lend a helping hand to Sri-Lanka, to get up and begin to walk again. Their response then must be to find a way to seek convergence on a way forward rather than to impose an inventory of conditions with unrealistic deadlines. If the world got together to pull Afghanistan out of a rut, a rut it yet has to get out of, the same magnanimity, creativity, passion and patience, collective thinking and incremental assistance must drive that response. The world has an ethical and moral responsibility to do so.”

Policy space

While the US calls its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan “progress” and requires time for itself, referring to the need for policy space for us, I said “the European Union itself must be mature enough not to marginalise a country, which to them may not be as strategically important as China or the ASEAN nations. Sri-Lanka requires and indeed deserves the policy space and time to progress to the next stage. In the meanwhile the industry and those who depend upon it should not be victims. Allowing them to become victims, by default on the part of either the EU or Sri-Lanka, would be incompatible with some of the basic reasons for nations or trading blocs to grant concessions-viz. poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

On the latter score has the country and the industry not been compliant? If the answer is yes, does the EU throw the baby out with the bath water? I think that would be irresponsible.”

Building bridges, not burning them

Urging our political leadership to look inwards I said “We do not do have to do anything because an IMF or the World Bank or the EU or the UN says that we must do it. We do what we have to do, for ourselves – for the benefit of the people of the country, for the benefit of the current generation and generations yet unborn.

For example, we commit to fiscal discipline and financial prudence, since we know it is a healthy thing to do. We do so because we have a responsibility to the nation’s balance sheet and our people, not because we signed letters of intent, or agreements with conditions or caveats with any single country or institution off shore or to please the resident representative of any single institution, whether bi-lateral or multilateral on shore. A political leadership does not have the privilege to urge the people to live in a nation in isolation or aligned only with some countries and estranged from others. That was a policy and a dogma of the past. It is now out of style. China and Russia and even Cuba have learned from these lessons of the past.”

“On our part, we must build bridges not burn them. Those bridges are not only with the international community but bridges our industrialists have, to the market place. It is a fundamentally necessary infrastructure, of a growing nation - a small nation, whose marketplace is limited. On its part, the international community must have the maturity to understand that change does not happen because we sign a letter of assurance. Progressive change is possible –but it requires a partnership. A partnership – which in turn requires an alignment of interest. A sincere alignment of interest.”

The following will perhaps convey why I chose to write again today. I have no intention of embarrassing the US, a country I lived and studied in and yet have affection for. But I am Sri-Lankan and the recent events have provoked me to do so.

Joseph Stiglitz

During the course of my travels to the Caucasus -particularly Armenia, I endeavoured to connect with writings of Russian Empires (from pre history to Puttin) and writings on Afghanistan, Iran and several of the post Soviet nations such as Azerbaijan near the Caspian Sea.  It was on such an occasion in 2008 that I picked up a book titled, ‘The Three Trillion Dollar War’ - the true cost of the Iraq conflict authored by the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz who was the Chief Economist at the World Bank and Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors. The book was co-authored by Linda Bilmes, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

In the preface to the book written in 2008 it says, “By now it is clear that the US war on Iraq was a terrible mistake, nearly 4,000 US troops have been killed, and over 58,000 wounded. By 2008, in Afghanistan, over 7,000 were wounded and seriously ill. Over 100,000 thousand US soldiers had by that time returned from war with serious mental disorders.  Miserable though Saddam Hussain’s regime was life is actually worse for the Iraqi people now.  The country’s roads, schools, hospitals, homes and museums have been destroyed and its citizens have less access to electricity and water than before the war.” This is what these two respected Authors had to say and to say boldly despite being American and living and working there as far back as 2008.

Lessons Learned by the US

On 19 March 2008, the US had been in Iraq for five years, longer than the three years and eight months the US was involved in World War II, more than the two years and two months in world war one, more than the three years one month in Korea or the four years America fought each other in a civil war. Stiglitz and Bilmes questioned the progress of the Iraq invasion as far back as 2008.  

There were many shocking revelations not only about the way the war in Iraq was conceived executed funded and administered but there were many lessons learned from this war led by the US.  Our own war here in Sri-Lanka, was raging at the time and I was unsure whether the continuation of that war was prudent.

However, we in Sri Lanka endured the pain and bore the brunt of the brutalities for three decades. We won that war just three years ago and are yet licking our wounds, cleaning up the debris, carrying the memories of our dead and endeavouring with difficulty to get up and start walking again.

Esto Perpetua Economic Forum

In early 2008, more than a year before we won our war against terror I was naturally concerned about the many representatives of the next generation who I thought would not realise their full potential in our country by the right age and certainly before they passed their best before dates. I was invited by the Current Affairs Forum of my alma mater, S. Thomas College Mount Lavinia to speak to over 400-500 students in the College Hall in a segment of the Esto Perpetua Economic Forum.

I thought I should speak on the Cost of War and the Dividends of Peace, and while not touching on our own war, which was sensitive, I chose the to refer to “The Three Trillion Dollar War” and the learned comments of Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. I decided to draw an analogy between a decision at a personal level, whether academic or professional or career, at corporate leadership level about a decision to invest or divest, at diplomatic or political level and conveyed what Stiglitz and Bilmes revealed about America’s decision to invade Iraq and its consequences.

A discussion of these would have provided insight to a young Thomian potential leadership that the decision of the US and the “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq was ill conceived, not honest, under estimated, ill planned, non transparent, unjust, unfair and irresponsible. Stiglitz and Bilmes say, “We could have had a Marshall Plan for the Middle East or the developing countries, that might actually have succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the people there. Even more modest ambitions could have been achieved for a fraction of the costs spent on Iraq.” This they said in 2008.

Sarbanes-Oxley and the US DOD

A discussion of the non transparent and less than honest decision making processes, poor budgeting and estimation, sub par and inaccurate accounting, incomplete financial disclosure, and the horrendous consequences for future generations which are yet under accounted or not estimated, will embarrass right thinking Americans. I know and continue to keep in touch with many Americans who have their heads and hearts in the right place. I wish them well.

My accounting buddies locally and globally know all about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This comment is for them in particular. Stiglitz and Bilmes say, “It is ironic that Congress is willing to tolerate lax standards  

and limited accountability. It enacted (almost unanimously) the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires CEO’s to take personal responsibility for their companies financial statements, and imposes criminal penalties for violations.”

“Sarbanes-Oxley was passed in 2002, in response to the scandals of the late nineties at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco whose senior officers are now behind bars. If the Defence Department were held to similar standards of accountability, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his former Deputy Paul Wolfowitz might be held personally liable for some of the profiteering and financial lapses at the Pentagon during their stewardship.”  This is not what I say. This is what Stiglitz and Bilmes said in 2008.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan are yet in a rut-perhaps a bigger rut than what they were in.

We on our part are just trying to get out of one. We have a lot to do on our part. Yes we have to get back on the drawing board. We do not have a coalition of stakeholders to lend us a helping hand, but let me borrow from the words of Martin Luther King and say, “We shall overcome.”