The Coming Crisis

I have maintained for several years that the biggest reason for our failure to pacify Iraq has been that we are operating in the "Iraq of our dreams," rather than the Iraq in which the various kinds of Iraqis live and which is regarded with mixed greed and fear by its neighbors. 

In the mind of George Bush, Iraq is a country inhabited by a unified single people who are governed (sort of) by a constitutionally elected regime headed by Nuri al-Maliki who is expected to fulfill the role of a George Washington in leading the unitary Iraqi people forward if only the pesky Sunni Arab insurgents could be suppressed or bought off with economic incentives that somehow have not yet been offered.  Another, unassimilable and unaccountable difficulty, is the similarly pesky alignment that exists among our George Washington candidate (Maliki) and the various Shia Arab factional party and militia leaders.  Conclusion and Decision:  Reinforce US forces in the Baghdad region to destroy the Sunni insurgents and force a separation between Maliki (Washington) and the Shia militia and political leaders.  Why the latter decision?  Because Bush's illision about Maliki is not tenable without it.

Problem:  Maliki is not George Washington.  He is only disguised as George Washington. He is in fact, just another Shia political and militia leader, and not the strongest either.  His Washingtonness exists only in the Mind of the Decider and in the "life illusion" (look it up) of many in the 3rd World (especially in poor Iraq) where many of the best people know what it is they should be and can not admit to themselves that they are not.  Is that their fault?  Hell, no! We broke their country and reduced it to a state of factional chaos.  We broke a country that had been trying to become a nation since the '20s.  I will here quote my hero, Mr. Jefferson, "I fear for my country when I know that God is just.

Because of the rich Bushian fantasy life it will be demanded in the New Plan that Maliki distance himself, and indeed fight, if necessary, to disarm and render impotent Shia Arab militias.  He is INCAPABLE OF DOING THAT!! He is one of the Shia Arab leaders.  His role in history is to empower the Shia Arabs and to consolidate their power over the Sunni Arabs.  Was that clear enough?

The United States is going to pressure Maliki HARD to confront Sadr.  He will not do that, and there will then be a massive crisis.

Danielle Pletka, the "sweetheart of the regiment" over at AEI said on "Late Editions," yesterday that Maliki knows that if he "does not perform"...

pl

Comments

[pbrownlee]

Pletka is among the scarier loons -- all those teeth -- and has the required rat terrier ability not to be deflected by the real world. Was it Sophocles who warned against threatening when you cannot enforce? This will be far worse than Vietnam -- perhaps it would have been prudent to hang Bill Kristol and a few Kagans rather than SH but you can see why Maliki may be wary of US u-turns and so moved a major piece off the board.

[Chris Marlowe]

The next Saddam Hussein is out there; we just don't know his name or whether he is Kurd, Sunni or Shi'ite.

Here are the questions he will be asking:

"How can I use the Americans to kill my enemies, while training and shepherding my best forces for the war of national liberation and unification after the Americans leave?"

"How can I position myself as the liberator of Iraq when the Americans leave, even though I do not plan to expend too much energy early on?"

"Who are the people I need to reach out to, so that I can bring their tribes and factions under control, and what do I need to give them in return, and how do I insure their continued support and loyalty?"

"Who are my early enemies, my middle enemies and my late enemies, and how can I get the Americans to neutralize them so that I don't need to use my own forces and resources?"

"How can I encourage my enemies to take the battle to the Americans so that they can destroy each other?"

"How can I get my enemies to consistently underestimate me until it is too late?"

"What is the right time to make the right moves?"

"Who is the main enemy I need to kill after the Americans leave, and what are his weaknesses?"

"What mistakes did Saddam make which I must learn from?"

Last of all, he would say: "I must use the Americans the right way; well-armed disciplined idiots are very hard to find."

[walrus]

Col. Lang, I've read Kagans expanded report on the AEI website and these AEI folks make me almost want to cry.

The bit that got to me was this totally naive description by Kagan of what a "clear and hold" operation (P22) would look like:

"They determine the enemy’s strength
and disposition, how the enemy is organized and
conducts operations, and so on. When the operation
begins, joint U.S.-Iraqi teams isolate the district
through checkpoints and other outposts, patrols,
surveillance, and obstacles. American and Iraqi
infantry then sweep through the district. They cordon
off each house or apartment block and then
knock on the door, asking to examine the inside. If
they are granted permission, they enter politely and
then examine every part of the structure for weapons
caches and evidence of enemy activity. The Iraqi
forces with them provide a vital cultural interface
with the inhabitants both by communicating with
them and by sensing irregularities. On the rare occasions
when the occupants attempt to refuse permission
to examine the house, Iraqi and U.S. soldiers
enter by force and continue their search".

This strategy is not going to survive the first IED, if indeed it is implemented at all.

The rest is equally Pollyanna-ish. It may have worked three years ago, but not now. Do you think Sadr and others are going to sit idly by while this is done to them?

We will have to reduce these suburbs to rubble and kill every male of military age to "pacify" or "secure" Baghdad, and the security we offer will be the security of the grave.

[meletius]

Ideologues always live in a world of illusions created mostly in their own minds.

As I recall, the Iraqis didn't even get to pick this George Washington as their national leader--they had picked al-Jafari and WE refused to "permit" his election as PM. So I guess he's really our Nouri al-Washington.

And if he's forced out for failing "to perform" (interesting choice of words by Miss Pletka), that'll really commend his American-approved successor to the Iraqis. More delusions and illusions.

All George Bush can do is foment crisis after crisis in Iraq--probably something to do with that "Iraq of our dreams" problem!

[J]

Colonel,

once again we see life being 'set up' through the prisim of a no-nuthin think-tank like the neocon aei. where life consists of plush chairs and suits and ties, where life has known no reality, only air.

we as nation started down a slippery slope when we let think-tanks do our thinking and policy making for us, instead of politicians doing what the American people pay them to do -- roll up their sleeves, put their thinking caps on and work and toil to achieve real substantive national policy and its subsequent putting policy to practice, practical practice.

pletka is just one more sad example of a senator aide put into a think tank decide-n-tater position with no practical experience or working background. and sadly our soldiers have to live and die by what a 'think-tank' sayz. what a sad way for a white house & congress to conduct national policy wouldn't you say?
harrumph.

[MarcLord]

Pat,

These are the kind of basic realities which are disgustingly, screechingly obvious, but which are somehow throttled into silence in the dark alleys behind the Muffled Zone.

There must be a lot of throttling going on. Even Tim Russert could see this one.

[John Shreffler]

Col.

It's all kind of rich, all this fantasy life that appears to be going on in D.C. Maliki came in under Sadr's wing and handed Saddam Hussein off to the Mahdi Army for execution. I can't imagine that he's going to attack Sadr City but I can imagine that when we do seeing all the Iraqi Army and Police formations very expertly attacking our communications and supply routes with Iranian assistance. What a pack of fools. Pity the troops--this is worse than the stuff I was hearing back in '71 about Nam from the returning vets.

[Frank Durkee]

Col. If , as I've read, the additional Iraqui troops are Kurdish, how will that play in either Sunni and/or Shia areas in Iraq? And are they able to operate at a decent level of readiness? Or is this another fools errand?
Thanks

[Frank Durkee]

Col. If , as I've read, the additional Iraqui troops are Kurdish, how will that play in either Sunni and/or Shia areas in Iraq? And are they able to operate at a decent level of readiness? Or is this another fools errand?
Thanks

[Will]

The conundrum is that if you only go after the Sunnis then Egypt, Jordan, Arabia, and the Gulf residents are offended. But if you go after the Sunnis and the Mahdi Army, then you risk driving them into each other's arms.
--------------------
from juancole.com

“It is an abiding paradox of contemporary Iraq that the Mahdi Army and the Sunni Arab guerrillas are slaughtering each other daily, but that young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the leader of the Mahdi Army) has a better political relationship with Sunni Arab MPs and leaders than any other Shiite.

During the first siege of Fallujah in late March and April of 2004, Muqtada's Sadrists sent aid convoys to the besieged Sunnis there. ........ This open accusation caused a political crisis between AMS [Sunnis] and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq........It was Muqtada al-Sadr who engaged in shuttle diplomacy to calm the two parties down. He could play this role because he had credibility with both sides.

From his side, Muqtada makes a distinction between "Sunnis" on the one hand, and "Saddamis" and "Nawasib" on the other. (Nawasib are those Sunnis who have a violent hatred for the Shiites and the family of the Prophet , and nowadays in Iraq "al-Qaeda" would be such a group in Muqtada's eyes.)

So many Sunni fundamentalist MPs and officials of the Iraqi Accord Front (some of them rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood) are acceptable to Muqtada. He would argue that the Mahdi Army is not killing Sunnis, only Saddamis and Nawasib.

From the Sunni Iraqi side it makes most sense to think of it in negative terms. Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq now hate the United States and Iran. Muqtada hates the United States and expresses resentment of Persian dominance of Shiism. So if you think of them as Iraqi nativists, they have a lot in common. If the fundamentalist Sunnis could gain the Sadrists as allies, they would have a better chance of getting rid of the Americans, their main goal in life. And, allying with Shiite Islamists who are perceived as real Iraqis isn't so hard for them.

The hardline Salafis in the mold of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the hardline neo-Baathists, both ethnically Sunni, reject this strategy of talking to Muqtada.”

[lina]

Ms. Pletka on 11/16/06:

"After 9/11 many Americans, the president among them, awakened to the reality that the only antidote to the poison of Islamic extremism was freedom. In the early days after the attack, the United States worked to empower Arab and Persian democrats to fight the extremists. Once liberated, those forces cannot be eliminated. And sooner or later, the United States will again turn to them as the only salvation against our shared enemy.

The president may no longer be persuaded, and the leaders of the Democratic party may be too consumed by antipathy toward even the relics of the Bush agenda, but George Bush's 2003 clarion call for liberty continues to resonate for a simple reason: it is true. 'Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.'"

# # #

Somehow I doubt she's spent much time in a war zone. I'd like to see her go work in a Baghdad hospital for a week and report back to us on stability being overrated.

HEY DANIELLE. . . go get a little taste of anarchy and chaos and come back to let us all know the value of President Bush's clarion call for freedom.

[John]

Colonel:

What a waste of time to listen to people from the AEI. When is the country going to wise up to these clowns.

[Babak Makkinejad]

In the eternal words of Humphry Bogart: "Who is the dame?"

[Davy]

I ran into this Pletka character on CSPAN today. In a word: odious. Lawd!

She introduced her boy Kagan before he got all excited about soldiers, and he means from Kansas not Kerbala, going door to door in Baghdad.

I saw the aftermath of a building collapse in Harlem last week (link to story below with ill prediction.)

Buildings can be more dangerous than dead dogs!

http://www.hardbeatnews.com/editor/RTE/my_documents/my_files/details.asp?newsid=11576&title=Top%20Stories

And what are we going to do when this surge fails? Send over suburban Philadephia girls singing Eagles fight songs?

I mean really. We's got some brains in this country. Bill Belichick and Vince Wilfork would know instinctively what to do.

A longtime lurker.
Thanks for your crucial contribution, Pat.

Davy

[zanzibar]

Thanks PL. This is something that even a 12 yr old should understand now.

Of course the Decider does not want to understand but instead continue with his fantasy.

[Peter Eggenberger]

The proponents of the "surge" argue: "We need a surge to win; otherwise, we face catastrophe." The probabilty of the surge succeeding seems to be near zero. On the other hand, the catastrophe will probably be less than catastrophic. But what is it likely to be?

[anna missed]

The implications of what you're saying are perhaps more frighting than the more obvious imperial narratives that we've all become used to in explaining our excellent adventure in Iraq

Could George Bush really be so far removed from reality to believe all the pervasive and relentless slicing and dicing of the Iraqi culture, economy, political, ethnic, and religious realities (so far undertaken) would somehow then be birth-panged into an innocent newborn babe of democracy?

Could this be the "Dick and Jane" of neo-colonial playbooks, or is the man an idiot, under a spell, or a believer of his own propaganda? Because if this is really what were workin with folks, we're way beyond incompetance -- and into the total realization, on a global scale, of "destroying the village to save it".

[PrahaPartizan]

So, what happens when Maliki doesn't perform according to the "benchmarks" (lordy, it sounds just the running joke in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean") as we try to implement our clear and hold strategy in Baghdad? Our only leverage is to deny Maliki finanical support. If we do that, we cannot support the rebuilding effort in Baghdad. Just how does our "strategy" in this fiasco intermesh?

Maliki knows Bush will not withdraw and, therefore, can disregard any "benchmarks" placed before him. Only our troops on the ground in the kill zone are going to be required to abide by the orders of The Decider.

[DeWitt Grey]

Colonel:

Historical analogies are tricky at best, but close to useless when those doing the analogizing don't even understand the history, much less how to draw the appropriate parallels.

How conveniently people overlook the fact that George Washington did not become president until 5-1/2 years after the British departed our shores, or that indeed 4 years elapsed before our Constitution was even drafted, and then subjected to a bruising battle over ratification. How conveniently also do people overlook the fact that while we would not have overthrown British rule without the French Navy, a French corps expéditionnaire, and French artillery, muskets and gold, neither did Rochambeau's troops remain in the United States, attempting to stop patriots from confiscating loyalist property and running them off to Canada, nor did we have a Talleyrand sitting in Annapolis and Philadelphia, meddling in the affairs of the Congress of the Confederation.

The irony, of course, is that the guy who more closely fits the bill of an Iraqi Bolivar (if not George Washington) is Moqtada al-Sadr.

The guy we really wanted was an Iraqi Sh'ia Mustapha Kemal -- but Bremer fired him, whoever he might have been, and now the chances of an Ataturk emerging are not very good.

[Will]

the appropriate psychological construct is "cognitive dissonance" ("CG"). Where a strongly held belief flies into the brick wall of reality. Aesops' fox in the fable when unable to reach the sweet grapes adjusts his belief to declare them falsely sour.

You can see it (CG) in Neokon Likudniks NYT columnst David Brooks' latest column-" Making the Surge Work." He scapegoats Gen'ls Abizaid & Casey and praises the Weekly Standard, Kagan, and Bill Kristol. All convenietly forgetting that it was the NeoKon Likudniks that set up for this Irak quagmire by 1)invading a country that neither threatned us nor desired war with us; 2) doing it lite and on the cheap despite and contrary to Shisenski's advice with the subsequent raping, pillaging, and looting of the infrastructre of said country; and 3) under the direction of the NeoKon Likudniks' No. 3 civilian pentagon' Douglas Feith and Vice POTUS's brain Irving "Scooter" Libby that one hapless Lewis Paul Bremer, III was directed to deconstruct the Iraki Army against Gen. Jay Garner's and Gen Petraeus's advice and therefore guarantee an insurgency.

Wars w/o end= NeoKon Likudnik agenda

[Stephen Calhoun]

Is it possible to intend unintended consequences? As in: "don't know what will happen but whatever happens will be salutary!"

This all reminds me of the nuttycon CHAOS THEORY proposed in the mid-nineties, surmising that chaos would be sobering for the despotic Muslim regimes of the mid-east. Oh, and there's a lot of money to be made too amidst the reconfiguration. Remember, Democratization wasn't central back then.

!The excerpt about hold and clear could not serve any training purpose!

The Pesh Murga? Oh, that will go over well.

This seems to me all headed toward a very long term world war in this region, and the escalation seems aimed at dealing a superhawkish political hand -with a card or two up the sleeve.

"All in" anybody?

[raincat100]

Col. Lang and others:

Here is a piece by Chris Floyd: New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush

I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Good to see you back on the Newshour.

[salabob]

"The hardline Salafis in the mold of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the hardline neo-Baathists, both ethnically Sunni, reject this strategy of talking to Muqtada.”

Will, you have an excellent grasp of the neoKhawarij and the targets for their wedge campaign. Bush's follies has been the perfect vehicle for establishing their Zone of Savagery, but their game turns complicated. They manipulate their American patsy to eliminate the one Shi'a that can credibly reach out to the yet-to-be- transformed Sunni masses, yet their patsy is a clumsy creature whose actions could forge the alliance that the neoKhawarij work so hard to break into Hobbesian hell.

Zarqawi smiles in his grave but ponders whether it is time to replace his unknowing American partner with the sons of the Bay'ah Council as well as continue to further entangle the Persians

[Will]

@salabob
the analysis was not mine but Don Juan Cole's. In my opinion, he is America's foremost expert on Shia Irak and Iran.

He says he was traveling when he heard that the golden dome had been blown off the Iskariyah mosque. He blogged from his Treo (like a blackberry) that all hell was going to break loose. Gen. Abizaid concurrs that the Golden mosque even is what loosed the sectarian violence past the tipping point of no return and wrecked his withdrawl plan.

The mosque is located in Samarra, a Sunni enclave. Recently a mock casket of SH was paraded through the mosque-- a singulary explosive and incindiary incident. Professor Cole wonders in his blog why adequate security can't be provided at the Iskariyah mosque so associated with the 12th imam, the Shiite Mahdi?

Iskariyah means military compound and the Abbasids a quasi Shiite dynasty kept the 11th imam in custdoy there and the 12th imam was born there. He went into occultation at the age of 5. The Iranians believe, if i'm getting it right, that he vanished into a well in Iran. He well return in the end days either after Jesus' return or with Him to establish justice. Yes Musllims believe in a living Jesus.

The Sunni Mahdi is not in occultation but when born if his not now living has a birth place of Medina. He is also named Mohammed.

[James Pratt]

'...operating in the "Iraq of our dreams" how true. This is what happens when powerful people perceive others with their tummies rather than their eyes and ears.America in Iraq now has echoes of America in Vietnam in the last two years of LBJ. The war planners tell themselves that the American people don't really hate the war, they just hate the poor results so far.
So the plan is to send even more of those occupiers the natives hate and bear down harder until the occupied natives learn to behave.
The likeliest outcome will be a surge in casualties and Iraqi anger.
What is the catastrophe that Mr. Kagan wishes to avoid?
The possibility that access to Iraqi oil reserves will be redirected back to the French and Chinese and away from the US/British/Dutch petro alliance that President Bush favors. It also would put on hold the plans to turn Iran into an American client state.So to avoid losing the game we will spend $8 billion and 50-100 lives a month to keep the lost effort for Iraqi Arab loyalty in overtime. Madame
Pletka's claim of Iraqi freedom reminds me of the Mahatma Ghandi's reply when asked what he thought of Western Civilization, "that would be a good idea". If the US allowed debate of the occupation in the Iraqi media and allowed overt anti-occupation candidates to campaign then that would indeed be freedom. All Iraq has now is an electorate voting in fear of losing their ration cards and of attracting the suspicions of the US and the militias. Mr. Maliki knows his support is paper thin and he needs Imam al-Sadr.The Sadrists could depose Mr Maliki by a vote of no confidence and the Americans could depose him the same way they deposed Mr.Jaafari. No wonder he wants to quit. The AEI types can find a fourth Shia prime minister. My guess is that it would require a much higher payment than what Mr.Bremer and Ambassador Khalilzad offered the first three.