Category: Iraq

Playing by the rules

This morning’s NYTimes proclaimed that:“The Biden administration, responding to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, unveiled its largest sanctions package to date as the war in Ukraine enters its third year.”

On November 30, 2023, Phillip Dean Hancock was executed in Oklahoma. As the death penalty has been eliminated in most countries and such killing is considered immoral by millions of people around the world, what sanctions would be appropriate for them to impose on the U.S.?

A quite different case arises from killing an enemy in someone else’s country (aside from in war, where anything seems to be “allowed.”)  On February 13 of this year, Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine, was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in Villajoyosa, a city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. The murder is suspected to have been organized by Moscow. What measures should Spain take against Russia in response (hopefully the U.S. will keep its nose out of other people’s business—fat chance)?

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, in Baghdad. More recently, on February 7, 2024, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. What measures should Iraq (and Iran) take against the U.S.?

The rule of law is a fundamental aspect of our freedoms and the prosperity it has made possible. The international rules based order is an extension of those principals internationally and has served, though imperfectly, the same purposes globally. The U.S. has become an Imperial power who doesn’t obey the rules it tries to impose on others. Thus, American influence in the world is declining rapidly. We will all suffer as a result.

The World on Fire

We just watched the first season of Masterpiece Theater’s production of “The World on Fire”. Masterpiece Theater remains the best of the best. The list of outstanding shows is long but at the top of my list is “The Jewel in the Crown.” I have watched its 18 hours of the very best of drama three times, once in an all day party. My love of Masterpiece Theater started in 1981 with “Brideshead Revisited.”  The only American show that tops them is “The Wire.”

Part of what I like about “The World on Fire” is that the horror and tragedy of war is shown as it impacts individual people and families. While I know that the little old ladies on the street thanking solders for their service have their hearts in the right place, their good wishes to the young men and women to go off and die for our country sickens me. Aside from Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and the Pentagon on 9/11, we have fought our many more recent wars (of choice) in far off places most of you have never been to.

I was never in the military nor fought in any war, but I have worked in many post conflict countries (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kosovo) and lost colleagues to assassinations while there. We need to understand what war is really like, and the thousands upon thousands of individuals and their families who suffer losses of limbs or lives and property and ways of life for what very often could have and should have been avoided. Why do we encourage Ukraine to fight to the last Ukrainian rather than agree to terms with Russia that could have prevented the invasion in the first place? There are those who profit from these far off wars but many more who suffer greatly. Unfortunately, the former buy more influence than the latter. Movies like “The World on Fire,” can help us better understand the ugly horror of generally unnecessary wars.  https://wcoats.blog/2014/06/19/war-bosnia-kosovo-afghanistan-iraq-libya/    https://wcoats.blog/2021/07/05/the-iraq-war/  https://wcoats.blog/2009/09/03/iraq-kidnapping-update/ 

More on constructive competition

In contrasting our treatment of others as competitors or enemies in my blog on “What to do About China”  I am reminded of the 120 days I spent in Baghdad as an advisor to the Central Bank of Iraq paid for by the USAID and supervised by the US Treasury. Our occupation of Iraq included staff from the US Treasury, USAID, Commerce Dept, State Department, and, of course, the Dept. of Defense. Competition by each of them to do a better job than the others would clearly be win-win making our overall occupation more successful. But too often one agency treated the others as enemies diminishing and undermining their efforts rather than supporting them. My biggest fear with my dual association with USAID and Treasury was that each would see me as on the other side, which would have undermined my effectiveness. Luckily the each saw me as on their own side.  “Iraq-An American Tragedy-My Travels to Baghdad”

Never Again

On this 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on America, many of us are saying “NEVER AGAIN”. What those saying it mean will determine the future of our country.

If “never again” means to you that we will never allow attacks on our homeland again, you are saying that out of your fear you chose safety over liberty. You support the authoritarian, repressive measures of the so-called Patriot Act and the related government intrusions in our privacy and liberties in the name of greater security. This is not the spirit of those Americans who continue to get into their cars to drive to work or wherever despite automobile accidents killing ten times more Americans every year as American soldiers who have died in Afghanistan in the past 20 years.

For me and thankfully for many other Americans, it means that we will never again surrender to the fear that blinded us to the tragic mistakes of American aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Uganda. Lawrence Wilkerson explains our self-destructive behavior in the following interview. COL Wilkerson was a senior official in the Bush administration when it launched the Iraq invasion. Now he calls it a mistake born of rage and fear. https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/09/10/amanpour-wilkerson-9-11.cnn

We have the most powerful military in the world. No military force could protect us at home (to the extent that our safety depends on military force) better. When it comes to its effectiveness in offensive attacks on other countries, its effectiveness is less clear and its effectiveness in efforts to rebuild the countries it has occupied…… well this fantastic three hour discussion reveals it as worse than zero https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkjsjBknWfo

We once revered and defended our liberty above all else and we were respected and envied around the world. We prospered. Over the last twenty years we have gradually, year by year, squandered our cherished traditions and our standing and respect in the world has declined as a result. Former President Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban promising to remove all American troops from Afghanistan by May 1 of this year. It was a bad agreement, but our departure was many years overdue. President Biden extended our stay for a few more months but has now honored Trump’s commitment. Why our military was unable to prepare properly for our withdrawal from Afghanistan with this two-year notice is a mystery we need to investigate.  

Never again should mean that we never again act out of fear. https://wcoats.blog/2021/09/05/nation-building-in-afghanistan-2/

The Iraq War of 2003

Former Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld, died on June 30. I am told that he was a very nice man personally, though I only met him a few times at our annual Pumpkin Papers Irregular dinners at the University Club in Washington, DC. But I cannot forgive him for lying the United States (and Britain) into the illegal and disastrous War in Iraq. “Rumsfeld-torturer-butcher”  At the end of Juan Cole’s article is a New America Foundation panel on Iraq moderated by Steve Clemons from 14 years ago. Near the end of the video you can hear me make a comment.

A war with Iraq served no U.S. interest, quite the contrary. Iraq balanced the influence of Iran, its traditional enemy. Why would we want to end that? Rumsfeld and Cheney/Bush invented the lie of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as their excuse to attack Iraq despite the refusal of the UN Security Council to endorse such an attack. I highly recommend: “‘Official Secrets’… a 2019 British drama film based on the case of whistleblower Katharine Gun, who leaked a memo exposing an illegal spying operation by American and British intelligence services to gauge sentiment of and potentially blackmail United Nations diplomats tasked to vote on a resolution regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_(film)

Many things can solidify and sustain political leaders in power, but none so well as war. And nothing keeps the tax dollar profits flowing to the military/industrial complex as much as war or the threat of war (real or imagined). And nothing threatens our liberties as much as the perpetual fear of war; the 9/11 war on terror being the premier example.

We are quite good at bombing and fighting but piss poor at governing occupied territories. In my rather considerable post conflict country experiences, Iraq was by far the worst example of imperial American mismanagement. I have written about my experiences in Iraq in https://wcoats.blog/2020/10/11/my-travels-to-baghdad/

Do what we say and not what we do

In his meeting with President Putin, President Biden is thought to have proposed red lines against the use of cyber weapons such as ransomware. The idea of shutting down something like Colonial Pipeline with a computer hack is surely repugnant. I seem to remember that many of us cheered when the U.S. (and Israel?) damaged the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz with a malicious computer worm called Stuxnet. Nor were many of us much bothered when U.S. financed coups topped unfriendly governments, or when we attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Haiti, Nigeria, Syria, to name but a few.

“The supreme international crime according to 2017 U.S. media reporting is interfering nonviolently in a democratic election — at least if Russia does it. William Blum, in his book Rogue State, lists over 30 times that the United States has done that. Another study, however, says 81 elections in 47 countries.”  https://davidswanson.org/warlist/

While this is hard to swallow, our bad behavior differs from that of Russia’s or of other autocrats. I will not go to jail for writing this. Most Americans (I like to believe) condemn such behavior contrary to our founding principles when they learn of it. Our press is happy to expose such breaches when they discover them. In short, while our government often violates our principles of individual rights and the rule of law and lies regularly about it, public scrutiny and outrage tend to check bad behavior and move us back toward conformity with our principles. We never get there but it is very important that we keep trying.  

My Travels to Baghdad

Iraq: An American Tragedy, My Travels to Baghdad

Warren Coats (2020)

Kindle and paperback versions available at: Iraq-American-Tragedy-My-Travels-Baghdad

From the corkscrew landing at Saddam International Airport (now the Baghdad International Airport) to adventures in the Green Zone and beyond, this recounting of my experiences helping the Central Bank of Iraq develop modern market tools of monetary policy exposes the disfunction of the U.S. lead Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in its attempt to govern and rebuild post Saddam Iraq, following one of America’s more foolish and damaging military adventures. The existence of weapons of mass destruction was a lie. American skill at imperial rule–from disbanding the Iraqi Army to De-Ba’athification of the Iraqi bureaucracy– was a myth. 

Regime changes usually don’t involve changes in the monetary system. However, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s government and the occupation of Iraq and the takeover of its government by the United States and a few allies in the name of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was accompanied by the replacement of the so-called Saddam dinar and modernization of Iraq’s monetary and financial system. The Iraq war was launched with “shock and awe” on March 20, 2003 and President George W Bush declared “mission accomplished” on May 1 a month and a half later. But when I retired from the International Monetary Fund and took up residence in Baghdad to advise the Central Bank of Iraq on developing Iraq’s financial markets and managing its new currency, the fighting was not over on many fronts. I lived in Baghdad the last two months of the CPA (May-June 2004) and made four two-week visits between then and December 2005

In this book, much of it written in diary form at the time, I share the challenges of advising the staff and management of the Central Bank of Iraq from my office in the central bank and of navigating the U.S. interagency rivalry from my office in Saddam’s Republican Palace in Baghdad’s Green Zone.  Security was always a challenge, producing many adventures. But the wisest advice I received was from a colleague in the CPA, who told me to “be careful who you talk to here (CPA headquarters in the Republican Palace), your worst enemies are in this building.” Over my 26 years in the International Monetary Fund and the technical assistance missions I lead to some 20 countries, many of them post conflict countries, I have never encountered the disfunction and resulting ineptitude of the U.S. led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Previous Books

One Currency for Bosnia: Creating the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina

by Warren Coats (2007)    Hard cover: One Currency for Bosnia

FSU: Building Market Economy Monetary Systems–My Travels in the Former Soviet Union

By Warren L Coats (2020)  Kindle and paperback versions available at: FSU-Building-Economy-Monetary-Systems

Afghanistan: Rebuilding the Central Bank after 9/11 — My Travels to Kabul

By Warren Coats (2020)  Kindle Edition:  “Afghanistan-Rebuilding the Central Bank after 9/11”

Zimbabwe: Challenges and Policy Options after Hyperinflation

by Warren L. Coats (Author), Geneviève Verdier (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

Zimbabwe-Challenges and Policy Options after Hyperinflation-ebook

Money and Monetary Policy in Less Developed Countries: A Survey of Issues and Evidence

by Warren L. Coats (Author, Editor), Deena R. Khatkhate (Author, Editor)  Format: Kindle Edition

Money and Monetary Policy in LDCs-ebook