There are 796 more reasons why the folks who declared the Surge a success should hang their sorry heads in shame. That is the number of Americans (52) and Iraqis (744) killed during the month of April in an uptick in violence that was going to occur sooner or later because the Surge has not been a “success” by any appropriate use of that term.
As I noted back on February 1 and has been noted by others far more sage than I am since then, war is not a linear thing, but rather something that ebbs and flows in stops and starts. This is especially true in Iraq, which is why the military gains of the Surge were not only temporarily, they were illusory.
Spencer Ackerman, one of those sage heads, references OODA, a jargony mouthful coined by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, to make the point. OODA stands for “Observation / Orientation / Decision / Action,” and the bottom line is that the combatant who can achieve a faster OODA than his enemy can disrupte his enemy’s OODA Loop:
Ackerman explains that:
“At the risk of saying something disputable, from 2003 to mid-2007, the insurgencies in Iraq had faster OODA Loops than the U.S. did. That’s not to say that there weren’t discrete tactical successes: there were, and lots of them. But those developments are coterminous with the concept of the Loop — you adjust and inflict pain on the enemy; but the enemy does so faster and more powerfully. Once Operation Phantom Thunder (the Surge) began in the late spring of 2007, lots of people on the right and on the fake-left declared, without using Boyd’s term, that Petraeus and Odierno had finally broken the enemy’s Loop.
” . . . what Petraeus and Odierno actually did — and it is not a small achievement — was disrupt the insurgencies’ Loops more than any other U.S. commanders were able to. They kept the insurgencies in a state of confusion for months and prevented successful orientation. But the rise in U.S. and Iraqi civilian casualties demonstrates that the insurgencies’ Loops have now closed. To cash it out, the U.S. military under Petraeus and Odierno bought as much calm as possible, and Iraq has been so horrific for so long that half the horror could seem like paradise to the hopeful American. But even with half-the-horror, no strategic goal was achieved. And no strategic goal can be achieved now that the insurgencies’ Loops have closed.”
Ackerman further notes that by any definition there cannot be victory in Iraq, only mitigation. To which I would add, 100 years of mitigation in John McCain’s case.
Please click here to read the rest of this roundup at Kiko’s House.
As Frederick Kagan spins Neo-Con daydreams of “turning a corner,” McClatchy reporters on the ground are telling a different story:
“One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.”
Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, as “Tehran’s point man on Iraq,” is manipulating election of pro-Iranian politicians, meeting often with Iraqi leaders and backing Shiite elements in Iraqi security forces in the torturing and killing of Sunni Muslims.
According to American and Iraqi officials, Suleimani is Iran’s Petraeus who has succeeded, among other things, in slipping into Baghdad’s Green Zone in 2006 to orchestrate the choice of a new Iraqi prime minister and building intelligence networks in Iran’s embassy while providing Shiite Muslim militias with generalship, cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the US Embassy and advanced roadside bombs that have killed hundreds of Americans and Iraqis.
How do Iraqis feel about Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the fact that for the past three years, it has been permitted to operate as a de-facto part of the Iraqi state - in the process driving away a good portion of Baghdad’s non-Shiite population? Now that Baghdad seems serious about putting a stop to the Mahdi Army, Fateh Abdusalam asks in Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper:
“One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years … Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” … Why is a person who was above the law three years ago, now wanted by the law? What has changed: the person or the law or the ones in charge of overseeing that law?
By Fateh Abdusalam
Translated By Nicolas Dagher
April 24, 2008
Iraq - Azzaman - Original Article (Arabic)
There’s a king of perverse equality in Iraq, which is that no one has a right to ask questions. Or everyone has a right to ask questions, according to Democratic theory, but not everyone who asks a question has a right to an answer.
The same can be said about questions on political matters. There are those who excuse this situation and exempt the Iraqi government from any responsibility on the grounds that, ‘the eye cannot overcome the will” … or the American administration of Iraq, where the file of outstanding problems remains suspended in the Pentagon.
One of the many questions that are forbidden or that can only be asked with great difficulty - like something that’s so hard to swallow, one needs a drink afterwards - is this one: Why was the Mahdi Army permitted to operate day and night for three years - and especially the last two years - since the eruption of sectarian strife [since the bombing of the Golden Mosque] and the failure of the notorious government of al-Jaafari, which showed leniency toward all parties involved and failed to control the strife, all of which only served to pour oil on the fire?
Why was the Mahdi Army allowed to parade in front of the public and guard areas of central Baghdad, flouting what passes for democracy, the rule of law and the fiction of a “just constitution?” The public airwaves reported on these “authorities” as though they comprised part of the new Iraqi state - until three-quarters of Baghdad’s original population comprised of various sects and groups were forced to flee because they weren’t “loyal” to those who prevailed in the street … or to those who prevailed in the secret/or open headquarters of public authorities or armed parties.
Why does the Mahdi Army remain silent about the “renegades and infiltrators” who used its name and address for years, through the consent of alliances and friendships. … until a crisis of “existence” and “authority” broke out with a party that was smarter and better equipped logistically [the Badr Brigades of al-Hakim?] and which caused all parties to expose the dirty laundry of their opponents.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated coverage of the Iraqi side of the war.
Now it’s Condoleezza Rice’s turn to take a hand in putting up the false front the Bush Administration is trying to construct and pass off as “victory.” She follows President Bush last September, Vice President Cheney and the war’s heir apparent, John McCain, last month in projecting a perception of peace with smoke and mirrors.
In a surprise trip last weekend, the Secretary of State was cheerleading “a coalescing of a center in Iraqi politics in which the Sunni leadership, the Kurdish leadership, and elements of the Shiite leadership that are not associated with these special groups have been working together better than at any time before.”
The “special groups” are militias of the Mahdi Army. If the central government continues to attack them, as it did ineptly in Basra this month only to be bailed out by US forces, al-Sadr is threatening “all-out war.”
While Rice hailed the coalescing, there were three rocket attacks–the first as she was meeting with Maliki at his office, another while returning to the Green Zone from a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talibani, a third that delayed a ceremony at which she unveiled a plaque commemorating civilian deaths in the Green Zone.
Are Iraqis beginning to feel better about the the U.S.-led occupation and the state of their nation? In our continuing effort to help answer that question, WORLDMEETS.US has translated this article from Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper. Fateh Abdusalam writes in part, “In the sixth year of the new dispensation and still looking for excuses to justify its policies, Iraq’s war-mongering government is isolated from Iraqis. … Iraq remains an ever-shifting Read the rest of this entry »
It’s semi-annual Iraq progress report time for David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker. But, alas, there has been no progress beyond a return to 2005 death-toll levels, which merely has given Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki an opportunity to try to exterminate his chief political rivals, so the general and the ambassador desperately need a carrot or a bogeyman to appease the few restive senators and representatives among the fawning congressfolk to whom they will report.
You may recall that the duo dangled a carrot when they last checked in back in September.
While they both equivocated about whether the Al-Maliki government was making progress (of course it wasn’t), Petraeus was able to say that the number of troops in country might return to the 130,000 pre-Surge level by this summer.
Well, events on the ground, notably Al-Maliki’s recalcitrance, and statements from President Bush have effectively swept that wee glimmer of hope off the table, so Petraeus and Crocker need a bogeyman.
Anyone who takes a politician’s statements literally over and over again is either a hopeless optimist or a fool. Or likely both in the case of John McCain supporters upset over the cottage industry in misquoting his statement about being just fine with American involvement in Iraq for 100 years.
Back on January 3 at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, McCain said that he could see a 100-year American presence in Iraq like the U.S.’s presence in Japan and South Korea “where Americans are not being injured or harmed or killed.”
Good enough.
But to keep focusing on the contextual sleight of hand employed by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and a small army of pundits, Yours Truly included, in not taking McCain’s comment literally is to miss the larger and more important point: Dragging Japan and South Korea, let alone any other historic antecedent involving an American presence in a foreign country, into the Iraq quagmire is like a stripper wearing pasties to conform with a no-total-nudity law.
It is amazing that there are even any pro-war literalists left. Or maybe they’re just doing some really fine pharmaceuticals since what they have been told about the war by the White House has been one lie after another:
Americans were not greeted as liberators.
There were no WMD.
The troops were not home by Christmas 2003.
They were not properly trained or equipped to fight an insurgency.
There was a catastrophic civil war.
And the Surge has not been a success.
The truth is that the Surge has succeeded in lowering American and Iraq death tolls to 2005 levels through a combination of military smartwork and bribery while giving the Iraqi government ample opportunity to prove that it has no interest in trying to mend deep sectarian rifts as long as it is guaranteed a long-term American troop presence – in McCain’s case a presence rounded up to 100 years.
* * * * *
My own view of McCain has been a long, evolving and painful odyssey.
His father, John S. McCain Jr., was a beloved four-star Navy admiral and my commanding officer during the Vietnam War. His son’s exploits in combat, his capture, his heroic refusal to buckle under torture and his homecoming after five and a half years in the Hanoi Hilton are deservedly the stuff of legend. And despite some differences on the issues that I care about, I was able to rationalize voting for him a year ago in what seemed then to be the unlikely event that he would be the Republican nominee and the Democrats ran another weakling against him.
That is until I started taking a close look at what McCain has been saying about the war since its outset.
Gen. Tommy Franks was off the mark when he called Douglas Feith the dumbest effing guy on the planet. On 60 Minutes last night, Feith showed that stupidity alone is not enough to describe a clueless academic intoxicated by power and willing to stoop to intellectual dishonesty that would shame any used-car salesman
“What we did after 9/11,” he told Steve Kroft, “was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack.”
“So you’re saying,” an incredulous Kroft followed up by asking, “you didn’t think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it–more important to go after people who weren’t responsible for it?”
Feith, who helped cook the intelligence to justify the invasion, was pimping his doorstop book that blames everyone else, especially L. Paul Bremer, who ran the Iraq occupation for the first two years, for the ensuing fiasco.
If he had had his way, Feith claims, he would have turned the country over to con man Ahmad Chalabi, who fed him and his Neo-Con rubes $33 million of false information to lie us into the war.
Dumb isn’t enough. Try shameless, arrogant and deceitful. There is at least one like him on most campuses. Just our luck that this specimen ended up in Rumsfeld’s Defense Department.
Iraqi forces head to Basra on an American C-130, April 3. But will they battle their feuding Shiite brethren after they arrive?
In light of the recent Shiite-on-Shiite battles raging in Iraq’s most important port city, Basra, what do the words ‘patriotism,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘sovereignty‘ mean to Iraqis? After being occupied by the United States and others for the past five years, according to this op-ed from Iraq, their definitions of these terms bear little resemblance to our own.
Fatih Abdulsalam writes for Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper, “In Iraq, everything is relative. What the official political parties see as lawlessness, others inside and outside Iraq see as the most legitimate activity under the law, linked as they are to spiritual and humanitarian beliefs … and patriotism.”
Writing about patriotism and freedom and alluding to Iran and the United States, Abdulsalam reflects the anger an frustration of Iraqis. “The word patriotism is just a relic from a prior age or Saddam’s toppled regime. Being a collaborator with a foreign power is accepted as the surest way to achieve strategic advantage. Freedom means simply being able to stand in Baghdad’s Liberation Square under the Memorial to the Unknown Soldier cursing and accusing all other Arab capitals of treason against the Iraqi nation for refusing to show respect to our own lame politicians - who are nothing but influence peddlers, mercenaries, thieves and charlatans who rely on F16s to maintain their power and legitimacy over the people.” Read the rest of this entry »
It will doubtless come as no surprise to readers of the Moderate Voice that people around the world have been outraged by the Bush Administration’s conduct of the Iraq War. But the passing of the fifth anniversary of the war has triggered a particularly strong upwelling of anger, which one can get a sense of by reading this article by Reinaldo Spitaletta of Colombia’s El Espectador.
Spitaletta writes, “Is it worth killing over 450,000 people, mostly civilians? Yes. And destroying a culture thousands of years old? Yes. And as if the matter was of little consequence, torturing prisoners in a jail? Yes, indeed. That’s how the president of the United States, George W. Bush, sees it, now five years after invasion of Iraq.”
As for the Iraqis, Spitaletta writes, “Perhaps it never occurred to the Gringos that their bombers, their infantry, their paraphernalia - yes- of mass destruction, would be unable to overcome an entire people … the Iraqi people, who today are suffering through the most unspeakable criminal invasion, know that never in their history has any foreign occupier triumphed. Neither the Romans nor the British. Today, without jobs, without social security, without tranquility but with the living hope of expelling the invader, they continue their resistance. And for those who have been displaced and mutilated - for the humiliated Iraqis of today - it will all be worth it to reverse the situation and defeat the troops of the superpower.”
By Reinaldo Spitaletta
Translated By Douglas Myles Rasmussen
March 25, 2008
Colombia - El Espectador - Original Article (Spanish)
Is it worth killing over 450,000 people, mostly civilians? Yes. And destroying a culture thousands of years old? Yes. And as if the matter was of little consequence, torturing prisoners in a jail? Yes, Read the rest of this entry »
T.E. Lawrence and John McCain are bona fide war heroes, but when it comes to Iraq, that’s where any similarity between the two men ends.
Lawrence (top photo), one of the most astute observers of Iraq and the Middle East of any generation, knew impending disaster when he saw it and warned three years after the British occupation of Iraq commenced in 1917 (bottom photo) that it:
“Is a trap which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. The [British people] have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told . . . It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.”
McCain, devoid of Lawrence’s nuanced insight and lacking his first-hand experience, offered a warning of another kind in a major policy speech last week:
“It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our national character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing, and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible, and premature withdrawal.”
The British occupation of Iraq, which when adjusted for population then and now involved about 10 times the number of troops the U.S. deployed for the Surge, ended with a whimper after four decades.
This is because the Brits didn’t belong there in the first place and never were able to understand the Arab mindset and historic sectarian enmities. The Americans also don’t belong in Iraq, and McCain, acting for all the world like an imperialist poobah, has famously remarked that it would be fine with him if America troops stayed in Iraq for 100 years.
This despite the reality that presence would be a fraction of the troops that Britain deployed and the opposition today is far better organized – and armed — and it is long past time for the Iraqis to pick up the pieces from a disastrous American occupation and cobble together some sort of confederation.
McCain may have trouble telling Shiites from Sunnis, but he does know one thing that Lawrence didn’t and it is an important but largely unspoken element of why the presumptive Republican nominee has made staying in Iraq indefinitely the centerpiece of his presidential campaign: Oil.
Although it at first may seem like a strange way to look at the latest round of bloodshed in Iraq, it’s all about Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki casting the first vote in that country’s much anticipated provincial elections.
The result is a troubling new chapter in the Forever War: Basra city and parts of Baghdad are under siege, the seven-month ceasefire called by Moqtada al-Sadr is history and Iraq has entered a perilous new phase that no amount of bribing by General Petraeus’s paymasters or speechifying by George Bush can change as U.S. troops get sucked into a maw that the White House and Pentagon were instrumental in creating in giving the prime minister no-strings-attached support.
Al-Maliki’s stalled offensive, which would have collapsed without U.S. air and ground intervention and eventually will, is all about politics, not national reconciliation. For Bush to call it “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq” on top of the Pentagon’s contention that it is a “byproduct of the success of the Surge” is laughable in an Orwellian sort of way.
Here’s the real deal:
Provincial elections, one of the few Bush administration benchmarks for measuring Iraqi progress that have not been discarded as utterly unrealistic, are to be held on October 1.
The Madhi Army of Al-Sadr, the anti-America Shiite cleric, holds the keys to Basra and has since the British Army ceded its role as American helpmate because the number of casualties it was taking had become a public-relations nightmare for the Labor government back in London.
Al-Maliki desperately needs Basra, the oil-rich province on the porous border with Iraq, but the British are cowering in their barracks and there is no American military presence, hence the botched offensive on Basra city, the second largest in Iraq, where the 30,000-man Iraqi army and security forces find themselves surrounded by the Madhi Army, which has set up checkpoints and is now controlling access to the city.
Al-Sadr’s gunmen are thugs, but so are the gunmen belonging to the Badr Organization, the militia affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which is joined at the hip with the prime minister.
Iran not only has a dog in this race, it has all the dogs in the form of close ties with Al-Maliki, Al-Sadr and ISCI, which makes Washington’s breast beating over the meddlesome Tehran regime so tiresome.
The seven-month ceasefire brokered by anti-American radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is, for all an intents and purposes, off. Times Onlinereports that neighborhood after neighborhood in Baghdad is being taken by militia gunmen, some with heavy fighting and others without a shot being fired.
Meanwhile, The Washington Postreports that U.S. troops have taken the lead in fighting in the capital.
* * * * *
One, two or three years (pick one) after the Iraqi army was ready to stand up so that U.S. troops could stand down, Shiite milita gunmen with comparatively meager weaponry and far fewer logistical resources still have the upper hand after three days of ferocious fighting in the key southeastern city of Basra.
Napoleon, as Daniel reminds us, famously remarked that “If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna!”
Methinks there are three reasons why Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s gamble is backfiring:
* White House and Pentagon claims that the Iraqi army has finally gotten its act together as usual have no basis in reality.
* As Fester notes here, even with tactical air support from the U.S. and U.K., the Iraqi force seems to be a little on the thin side.
* And most importantly, the militamen are fighting for their very existence while Iraqi boots are fighting their own countrymen, in many cases members of their own religious sect, for the political gain of the unpopular Al-Maliki.
Then there is Iran’s machinations in all of this, which range from big and evil to paltry and passive depending upon your view of the Tehran regime.
Mine is that the ayatollahs find themselves in the difficult position of having to both support and rein in Al-Sadr. who is the key player in this drama, not the prime minister and certainly not George Bush, who for all his bloviating has essentially tied his own hands because of years of wrongheaded policy making that determinedly put politics ahead of more practical concerns.
As it was, the president packed an extraordinary number of misstatements into his speech yesterday before yet another “safe” audience, chief among them that it “makes no sense” to divert troops from Iraq for the real War on Terror.
The question of the hour is what happens next. The answer is nobody knows, but here are a few scenarios:
* All hell breaks loose as U.S. ground troops are further drawn into the fighting, which has already taken out one of Iraq’s two major oil pipelines as it has spread from Basra and Baghdad to several other cities. As it is, they are now battling militants in and around the Sadr City slum in Baghdad.
* All hell breaks loose as Al-Sadr, who enjoys far more popularity than the prime minister among Shiites, calls for an end to the seven-month ceasefire against U.S. troops.
* All hell breaks loose as Al-Maliki’s already tenuous political situation is further undermined by the escalating violence and his ineffectual army and security forces.
My guess is that none of the above will happen in the short term because it may be in the best interests of Al-Sadr and Al-Maliki, who has extended by 10 days the deadline for militias to take bribes in return for turning in their weapons, to negotiate some sort of truce.
That, however, would only delay the day of reckoning that was bound to come after the prime minister failed to even make an effort to fulfill his end of the Surge bargain.
Photo by Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud/The Associated Press
Below is an excerpt of a translation of an article in the Saudi newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat by editor Tareq Al-Homayed that offers a fascinating insight into how the U.S.’s closest ally in the Middle East sees the outburst of violence in Iraq as the presidential race goes into overdrive.
Marc Lynch, who says he checked the accuracy of the excerpt compared to the original Arabic before posting it at Abu Aardvark, notes that Al-Homayed is hard wired to the Saudi royal family and his views probably reflect theirs:
“Muqtada al Sadr is a mighty but reckless force; he is not as intelligent as Hassan Nasrallah and does not speak the language of politics, however he was an important factor in enforcing the Iranian influence at the moment in which Saddam Hussein’s regime fell. Today, it appears that Tehran no longer needs al Sadr – so long as it has control over Iraq within the political framework.
“Nouri al Maliki’s regime, with its political prowess as opposed to the Sunni political crudeness, has managed to win over Washington – or neutralize it – as well as bring about American-Iranian rapprochement over the Iraqi issue. This was achieved whilst taking advantage of the political situation in Washington in light of US President George W. Bush’s weakness following the Democratic victory in Congress and at time when the US has entered into a state of political paralysis as a result of the upcoming elections.
“Iran no longer needs Muqtada al Sadr but rather wants a sophisticated model that is even more progressive than Hezbollah’s in order to take over Iraq. A government in control is much better than an opposition whose only possession and demands are the right to disrupt – such as the case in Lebanon.
“The importance of the ‘Knights’ Assault’ operation does not lie in American participation but rather in the outcome of Ahmadinejad’s most recent visit to Baghdad since it is impossible to target the Mehdi army – the same army that Muqtada al Sadr declares cannot be dismantled except at the orders of the Imam himself, and without Iran’s blessing.
” . . . Today at a time when Muqtada al Sadr receives a blow Iran remains tight-lipped, same as the Shiaa clerics and all this is because there is only one control button and it belongs to Tehran. Clearly the opportunity is convenient for Iran to tighten its grip on Iraq and to exploit the US desire for Iraq’s stability at any price before the US elections take place. After the elections a new US president will arrive at the White House to find himself/herself obligated to deal with a reality that enforces itself upon Baghdad. Even if people change in the next Iraqi government, it will still continue to orbit around Iran.”
To those of us who are up to our necks in the Clinton-Obama-McCain slugfest, the observations on American politics and how the outcome of the election may impact on U.S. policy on Iraq seems somewhat naïve. But recall that the American media makes sweeping pronouncements on the Middle East’s ever shifting tectonic plates all the time that probably strike Saudis, Iraqis and Iranis much the same way.
Now that the fog around the battle for Basra and upturn in violence elsewhere in Iraq is lifting a bit, we can conclude that:
* The Pentagon’s spin that the bloodshed is a consequence of the “success” of the Surge would seem to be silly on its face, but it isn’t.
* This is because the violence is the result of a carefully planned Al-Maliki government offensive to destroy the prime minister’s Shiite opponents in the advance of provincial elections in October.
This is especially important in Basra, the major city in oil-rich southeastern Iraq where government-militia clashes (photo) are in their third day, because it has been controlled by loyalists of radical anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr since the British cut and run.
Since Tuesday, clashes in Basra and throughout Iraq’s Shiite heartland have left more than 100 dead and many wounded in Basra, Baghdad, Hilla, Kut, Karbala and Diwaniya.
This state of affairs yet again puts the Bush administration in the position of backing the wrong horse, as Eric Martin puts it, but I don’t think there are any “right” horses because political fault lines, even within sectarian interest groups, run so deep.
And while the militiamen are lightly armed, they are highly motivated. There would be no amount of Pentagon spin to explain away an end to Al-Sadr’s seven-month-old ceasefire against U.S. troops since the Surge was supposed to give Al-Maliki the breathing room to bring warring parties together, not an opportunity to crush his opponents with U.S. troops and air support.
Then there is a biggest reason why there will be a major American presence in Iraq indefinitely: Oil.
Saboteurs blew up one of Iraq’s two main oil pipelines near Basra today, severely reducing exports and pushing the price of crude up by more than a dollar a barrel.
UPDATE
In another by-product of the success of the Surge, the Iraqi government spokesman for the Baghdad security plan has been kidnapped and his three bodyguards killed.
A PERSONAL NOTE
There are an especially pernicious pair of bloggers who delight at bashing The Moderate Voice who shall remain nameless.
One of them accused me of “joyfully claiming vindiction” in my post yesterday on the upsurge in violence.
This is a libel on two counts:
First, there was nothing joyful in my noting I had predicted weeks ago that Iraq was a hiccup away from sliding back into cyclical violence because Al-Maliki has had no interest in using the military success of the Surge as intended.
Second, I am a Vietnam War veteran who bleeds for the men and women fighting their hearts out in this never ending war. Yes, it is possible to support the troops and not the war, something that this blogger is unable to comprehend because he is so determinedly small minded.
I invite skeptics to read my 18-installment series on the Triangle of Death abductions as well as many other deeply personal and joy-free posts on U.S. troops.
As noted here on February 1, you don’t have to be a bloody genius to know that sooner or later the window of opportunity for Iraqi national reconciliation and a lasting reduction in sectarian violence as a result of the military successes of the Surge would begin to close unless there was progress by the Baghdad government.
Well, there has been no progress of consequence despite the wishful thinking of pro-war pundits who endlessly write that the Iraqis are working on This, That or The Other, while the last 72 hours have brought an explosion of violence reminiscent of the Bad Old Days that coincides with the 4,000th American combat death.
There has been no progress because Prime Minister Al-Maliki has no reason to upset his Shiite-dominated applecart knowing that President Bush is committed to maintaining present U.S. troop levels through Election Day and then dumping the whole mess on his successor.
Does this mean that the window of opportunity has closed? No. Not yet.
Does this mean that an unraveling of the success of the Surge is underway. No. It’s too soon to tell, but the omens don’t look good.
The more things change the more they remain the same, and that certainly is true of the mainstream media’s abysmal coverage of the Iraq war.
While there are occasional exceptions, most media outlets continue to swallow the Bush administration’s lies, obfuscations and talking points whole, which it has done since the run-up to the March 2003 invasion, and that is why a casual viewer or reader is left with the impression that things are going rather grandly as the war lurches into its sixth year.
After all, U.S. and civilian casualties are down because of the bang-up job that General Petraeus and his troops did in executing the Surge strategy.
What the MSM is not reporting is why, if the Surge has succeeded, are there no plans to begin a drawdown of U.S. troops and why President Bush is arguing that present levels must be maintained for the indefinite future.
The answer is an open secret: The other half of the Surge strategy, a good-faith effort at national reconciliation, was stillborn and any drawdown of consequence could tip a country into chaos that lives a day-by-day existence and in recent days has been showing some serious signs of bloody backsliding.
The mainstream media had plenty of company in its epic rollover. Congress and most Americans also drank the Bush Kool Aid, but the MSM should have known better, which makes the abrogation of its responsibilities all the worse.
The reasons it bailed on the war are twofold:
* A retreat from good old-fashioned reporting. You know, sussing out the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How of every story that used to be drilled into journalists from Day One.
* The consolidation of the MSM into the hands of a few corporations more interested in good profits than good journalism. You know, we can’t really go after the Bush administration because that might drive away advertisers and otherwise hurt our bottom line.
As the grim milestones in Iraq pile up, Americans aren’t the only ones wondering how long the war will go on. Jean-Claude Kiefer writes for France’s Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace, ‘the United States has been discredited; Islamist terrorism is expanding; there is extreme tension throughout the Middle East; the Israeli-Palestinian crisis with Hamas has radicalized Gaza; Iran has been declared a regional power and may soon go nuclear; the regimes of the pro-Western Arab states are shaky; and the major routes of oil - which is already very expensive - are threatened … And this is not an exhaustive list!’
By Jean-Claude Kiefer
Translated By Philippe Guittard
March 23, 2008
France - Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace - Home Page (French)
Tens of thousands of Iraqis killed, millions of refugees, nearly 4,000 American soldiers killed in daily attacks, a country devastated … And, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a bill of direct and indirect costs of $3 trillion which was paid for on credit, and which has greatly contributed to the decline in the dollar! And yet to draw up a complete accounting of five years of war in Iraq is impossible. Read the rest of this entry »
I have excerpted some of her key points and arguments, many of which are already in the process of being twisted and taken out of context by her opponents. Here’s what she actually said in what I thought was an eloquent and crucial speech.
Hillary began by expressing what many Democrats believe: the surge can’t be said to be working unless its purpose is being realized: political reconciliation within the Iraqi government. Otherwise, we are simply polic[ing Iraq’s civil war." If elected, she said:
I will start by facing the conditions on the ground in Iraq as they
are, not as we hope or wish them to be. President Bush points to the reduction in violence in Iraq last year and claims the surge is working. Now, I applaud any decrease in violence. That is always good news. But the point of the surge was to give the Iraqis the time and space for political reconciliation. Yet today, the Iraqi government has failed to provide basic services for its citizens. They have yet to pass legislation ensuring the equitable distribution of oil revenues, yet even to pass a law setting the date of provincial elections. Corruption and dysfunction is rampant….
Pointing out that neither Petraeus nor the Iraqis are satisfied with the progress toward reconciliation, Hillary argued that it is not feasible for the US to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely simply to keep down the violence. We simply cannot afford to police Iraq’s civil war without mounting threats "to our national security, our economy, and our standing in the world."(GWU speech)
As General David Petraeus prepares to testify before Congress about the surge, the question will arise, “How much progress has there been toward Iraqi national conciliation since the surge began.” In order to help answer that question, WORLDMEETS.US has translated this news account from the Al-Iraq News about the status of talks between the Shiite-led government and opposition parties. Adnan al-Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accord Front - the largest Sunni coalition - calls for, ‘The participation of all Sunni sons and not just those of The Accord Front - including supervision in the area of security. Effective control over the nation’s security services by a single sect must end. This would solve many of the country’s existing problems, because having one sect monopolize the area of security has created great harm.’
Izzat Al-Shabandar of the secular Iraqi Accord is quoted as saying, ‘There will be no concessions on our existing demands, in particular because these are the demands of all Iraqis … which include abolishing all sectarian-based quotas and establishing a national project based on performance, good citizenship and integrity - none of which can be waived or conceded.’
Translated By James Jacobson and Nicolas Dagher
March 3, 2008
Iraq - Al-Iraq News - Original Article (Arabic)
Not a single Iraqi opposition party is willing to offer the government concessions on their demands about how to address the tense political situation. Some of these parties attribute their hard line to the government’s failure to pay proper attention to their proposals.
Fadel Al-Sharaa, an advisor to Prime Minister al-Maliki, said “the government is serious about finding solutions that will contribute to improving the political process. In order to rebuild a basis for progress, we are negotiating with blocs that have withdrawn their support.” A number of blocks, including the Iraqi Accord Front [the largest Sunni bloc ], Iraqi National Accord [secular bloc lead by former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ] and the al-Sadr faction , have withdrawn from the Maliki Government.
Al-Sharaa said, “the government is continuing its dialogue with these political blocs,” adding that the demands and proposals of these blocs would be closely examined, but emphasizing, “these groups must show their seriousness about reforming the political situation.” He added, “the status quo won’t do, in particular because the political situation doesn’t only pertain to political factions, but to the Iraq people, who expect the political blocs to confront the challenge of finding a way out of the impasse and put forward serious proposals that are commensurate with the heavy responsibility they bear for achieving a successful political process in this country.”
For his part, Adnan al-Dulaimi of the Iraqi Accord Front [Sunni], said that the Front was prepared to return to the Government when it is willing to back down from its hard-line demands and agree to compromise. “The demands of the Accord Front are clear and they are popular demands.”
The Front has called for a greater role in government decision-making and the release of detainees [Sunnis]. On the government’s position regarding these demands, Al-Duleimi said: “Unless the government responds positively, we cannot return to the Government.”
On the adoption of the General Amnesty Law [for former Baathists] which was passed by Parliament and was one of the demands of the Accord Front, Al-Duleimi said, “The General Amnesty Law is an important law, but we expect seriousness on the part of the Government in implementing it and speeding up its execution. This is what we hope the government will do.”
He added, “There are other conditions that the Accord has put forward, such as demands for real participation in making decisions and administering the country, as well as finding a balance between the parties in regard to how to create a successful political process. This would require the participation of all Sunni sons and not just those of The Accord Front - including supervision in the area of security. Effective control over the nation’s security services and plans by a single sect must end. This would solve many of the country’s existing problems, because having one sect monopolize the area of security has created great harm.”
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing coverage of how Iraqis themselves view the Iraq War.
Iraqi forces head to Basra on an American C-130, April 3. But will they battle their feuding Shiite brethren after they arrive?
Now that the fog around the battle for Basra and upturn in violence elsewhere in Iraq is lifting a bit, we can conclude that:
![[The Times, U.K.]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00303/PeterBrookes385_303670a.jpg)
