What's the Matter With That al Maliki Guy Anyway?

I reprint here an interesting letter from Ed Peck, former U.S. Chief of Mission to Iraq.

A Simple Plan to Support Iraq's Prime Minister

Look, it's not really all that hard. If we are really serious about having Al Maliki, the Prime Minister of a democratically elected unity government, carry out his responsibilities, especially the ones we have publicly assigned him, let's give the guy a chance to demonstrate his problem-solving skills in an environment with challeges that are not only far less difficult but also far less dangerous to our interests. Oh... yeah, and his too.

What I propose is just a quick test, with visible benefits for all parties, that lets him show his stuff. Let's bring him over here, and turn him loose to: a) stamp out inner-city crime; b) settle the abortion issue to the complete satisfaction of all parties; c) win the war on drugs; d) end illegal immigration; e) eliminate corruption. Once those tasks are taken care of, and armed with the admiration and gratitude of the American people, plus the solid, no-longer tentative support of the current Administration, he can go home to Iraq - and fix it. (NB. "On the advice of the legal department, we announce that our Rule is no longer applicable in Iraq." - The Pottery Barn, Inc.)

Once back, with the augmented - No, wait, escalated... No, no... OK, got it, surged military presence required to insure that absolutely everyone, everywhere, understands that he is fully, totally, and completely in charge of every single aspect of goverance, the Prime Minister can address himself to resolving his country's issues.

We all know what he needs to do, and quickly: a) rebuild a totally destroyed infrastructure and the shattered economy it used to support; b) institute something resembling a universally accepted, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, cohesive and fully functional government; c) end sectarian violence; d) create large and effective police and military forces; e) institute total stability and security; f) induce forgiveness and, as necessary, memory loss in those who have suffered the most; and g) secure the blessings of liberty to himself and his posterity. Not necessarily in that order.

I estimate he will need a minimum of, say, eight to ten weeks, after which the entire secure and stable nation (Militias, Turkmen, Shia, Contractors, Sunni, Jews, Kurds, Yazidis, Saabeans, Christians, Collaborators) will be sitting around multiple campfires, democratic to the core, drinking steaming mugs of cocoa, singing Kumbaya and waving as our forces ride off into the sunset.

Won't that be swell? Won't the world admire us, and respect all that we have accomplished? And won't the Iraqi survivors love us?

However, and it is certainly seems entirely possible that those in leadership positions in this country may already have given a great deal of thought to this, we will clearly have someone else to blame when it doesn't work, despite all the help and support we have given Al Maliki What a loser, and it is all, all his fault.

What have we done, and are not yet finished doing, to ourselves, to Iraqis, and to our regional as well as global interests? A catastrophe while we stay; a different catastrophe when we leave. And I sincerely hope I am all wrong.

Amb. Ed Peck

(Please excuse this effort to employ weak humor to underline the arrogant stupidity of what we are asking of a man in minimal charge of a broken non-country. When our CNI delegation (www.cnionline.org) met with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad last January, after observing the Palestinian elections in Gaza, he told us that American officials always demand that he stop, right now!, people crossing the border into Iraq. He said he replies by asking for the Border Patrol to come over and explain how they did it with Mexico, so he can apply the same successful approach. Heavy silence follows, as it should.)

Ambassador Edward L. Peck is former U.S. Chief of Mission to Iraq and participated in a CNI delegation to monitor the Palestinian elections and meet with regional leaders in January 2006. A video chronicling the trip, titled "Islam and Democracy," is available on Amazon.com.

Mark Danner Article a 'Must Read'

Mark Danner has written an excellent article for The New York Review of Books on the decision-making background to the Iraq War. The article starts slowly but gets to some real meat in Part 4 and 5.

Anyone wanting to answer the question of "how we began" in Iraq has to confront the monumental fact that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, invaded Iraq with no particular and specific idea of what it was going to do there, and then must try to explain how this could have happened.

This is indeed the question I have asked myself again and again, how could we have gone into this without a postwar plan? I have often been most tempted to blame Rumsfeld because he was given so much control over the whole effort, war and postwar. However, Danner writes:

Irresistible as Rumsfeld is, however, the story of the Iraq war disaster springs less from his brow than from that of an inexperienced and rigidly self-assured president who managed to fashion, with the help of a powerful vice-president, a strikingly disfigured process of governing.... Ron Suskind, who has been closely studying the inner workings of the Bush administration since his revealing piece about Karl Rove and John Dilulio in 2003 and his book on Paul O'Neill the following year, observes that "the interagency" not only serves to convey information and decisions but also is intended to perform a more basic function: "Sober due diligence, with an eye for the way previous administrations have thought through a standard array of challenges facing the United States, creates, in fact, a kind of check on executive power and prerogative." This is precisely what the President didn't want, particularly after September 11; deeply distrustful of the bureaucracy, desirous of quick, decisive action, impatient with bureaucrats and policy intellectuals, the President wanted to act....

Suskind... argues that Bush and Cheney constructed precisely the government they wanted: centralized, highly secretive, its clean, direct lines of decision unencumbered by information or consultation. "There was never any policy process to break, by Condi or anyone else," Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, remarks to Suskind. "There was never one from the start. Bush didn't want one, for whatever reason."

To me this has the ring of truth. During the 2000 election the press was thoroughly preoccupied with 'who you'd rather have a beer with', Bush or Gore. Well, we got the guy the press would rather have a beer with and we got a singularly incompetent president who will likely go down in history as close to our worst. I really suspect Bush has immeasurably increased the 'decline' of America as a 'Great Power'. Read Danner's article, there's a lot more. This article focuses upon what I think are the key questions in understanding the Iraq War: 1) why was there no postwar plan? 2) who decided to order de-baathification and disband the Iraqi military and why? The article provides some of the best thinking I've seen on these key questions.

What True Conservatism Would Dictate in Foreign Policy

Two posts ago, in A Cogent View of Why Iraq Is So Divided I wrote:

How much evidence do our policymakers need that intervening in a foreign culture is an extremely difficult thing to do with any success; there are just too many unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes.

Any truly conservative government could never have lost sight of this idea. John Adams is almost universally celebrated as one of America's most distinguished conservatives and he fully understood this. Writing about taking the step of declaring independence from England he wrote:

All great Changes are irksome to the human Mind, especially those which are attended with great Dangers and uncertain Effects. No Man living can foresee the Consequences of such a Measure [independence], and therefore I think it ought not to have been undertaken until the Design of Providence by a Series of great Events had so plainly marked out the Necessity of it that he who runs might read (quoted in Y. Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology, 1964, p. 70).

But the radical pseudo-conservative government of George W. Bush of course showed no such caution, patience or acute understanding of the difficulties of their Iraq adventure; Bush, opposite to his father in 1990, rammed his war resolution through Congress less than one month prior to a Congressional election and couldn't have seemed more anxious to invade Iraq and turn it into a "beacon of democracy" in the Middle East. How absolutely opposite of conservative do radical rightists like Bush have to be before Americans recognize the con game being run on them when these radicals cloth themselves in the garments of 'conservatism?'

Bush Considering Three Iraq Strategies

The Washington Post reported that the Bush administration is rushing to come up with their own Iraq strategy, i.e., NOT the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, for a speech by Bush before Xmas:

The major alternatives include a short-term surge of 15,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops to secure Baghdad and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces. Another strategy would redirect the U.S. military away from the internal strife to focus mainly on hunting terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda. And the third would concentrate political attention on supporting the majority Shiites and abandon U.S. efforts to reach out to Sunni insurgents.

I'll bet they choose option 1 because it is the closest thing to 'Stay the course'. They'll boost troops in Baghdad, say its a 'new' strategy and buy more time to try to pull off a 'victory'. Unless the Congress is VERY watchful this 'new' approach could drag on for another year before national discouragement sets in again and we are currently rapidly approaching 3000 American troops dead. As the WaPo said:

While one of the options involves a surge of U.S. troops, there is no agreement on what the mission of those forces would be, sources say. Discussions center on accelerating the training of Iraqi forces and helping secure Baghdad before turning it over to the Iraqis. The goal generally could be to improve Iraq's defense capabilities so U.S. combat troops could begin to withdraw faster.

But of course the usual 'blame the victims' strategy is being used too:

But the growing undercurrent of discussions within the administration is shifting responsibility for Iraq's problems to Iraqis. Sources familiar with the deliberations describe fatigue, frustration and a growing desire to disengage from Iraq. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deliberations.

Option 2:

The second idea is the "al-Qaeda option," which would transform the U.S. mission to focus on fighting terrorism and would disengage forces from domestic aspects of the multisided conflict. U.S. troops would take a backseat on the Shiite-Sunni conflict and instead hunt down al-Qaeda operatives, the sources say. On the ground, for example, that could mean a shift away from operations in Baghdad's volatile Sadr City slum, or from efforts to stop car bombs and sectarian attacks. The administration is increasingly resigned to the fact that it can neither prevent nor intervene in Iraq's sectarian war, which has begun to supersede both the Sunni insurgency and al-Qaeda's operations, the sources say.

Option 3:

On the political front, the administration is focusing increasingly on variations of a "Shiite tilt," sometimes called an "80 percent solution," that would bolster the political center of Iraq and effectively leave in charge the Shiite and Kurdish parties that account for 80 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and that won elections a year ago. Vice President Cheney's office has most vigorously argued for the "80 percent solution," in terms of both realities on the ground and the history of U.S. engagement with the Shiites, sources say. A source familiar with the discussions said Cheney argued this week that the United States could not again be seen to abandon the Shiites, Iraq's largest population group, after calling in 1991 for them to rise up against then-President Saddam Hussein and then failing to support them when they did. Thousands were killed in a huge crackdown.

Does Cheney or anyone else realize that this option simply increases Iran's influence and alienates our Sunni allies in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? I guess it's foolish to expect rationality from Cheney. See my previous posts on this tilt to the Shia, e.g., Tilting Toward SOME of the Shia.

A Cogent View of Why Iraq Is So Divided

Laura Rozen cited some writing from Anthony Cordesman that is, I think, quite accurate:

the Iraqi government is weak as much because of US action as Iraq's inherent problems. The US destroyed the secular core of the country by disbanding the Ba'ath. The US created a constitutional process long before Iraq was ready, and created an intensely divisive document with more than 50 key areas of "clarification" including federation, control of oil resources and money, control of security, the role of religion, the nature of the legal system, etc. The US created an electoral system that almost forced Iraqis to vote to be Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds and divided the nation on sectoral and ethnic lines.

I believe this is somewhat overlooked: the US actually inadvertently exacerbated the sectarian strife in Iraq by decisions it made regarding the political process in Iraq. Thus the Bush administration didn't simply bungle the post-war but it positively contributed to the problems that are rending Iraq today. How much evidence do our policymakers need that intervening in a foreign culture is an extremely difficult thing to do with any success; there are just too many unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes.

Iraq Study Group Report, Part 2

I just saw an interesting interview with James Baker and Lee Hamilton on The Lehrer News Hour and the two were surprisingly candid and not just blowing smoke with a lot of politician-speak. One thing emphasized, especially by Hamilton, was how important it was that our support of the Iraqi government be conditional on their making progress on specific milestones rather than unconditional. Making rewards, support, etc. conditional on work, achievement, etc. is a fundamental part of the American Ideology. How many times have we heard that if say, workers are 'given' unemployment insurance this will create the 'moral hazard' of their not wishing to work! But the Personal Responsibility Crusaders (thanks to Jacob Hacker for this phrase) of the Bush administration seem to entirely forget this fundamental principle of the American Creed when it comes to the Iraqi government. The American taxpayer is being asked to support them to the tune of several billions of dollars per month until they are successful and secure, no conditions or strings attached. Apparently there's no 'moral hazard' or 'perverse incentive' that Iraqis will get used to our money and support and continue to squabble among themselves indefinitely and fail to be motivated to solve their own problems. This is just another example of how thoroughly inconsistent pseudo-conservatives are, their only principle is remember your 'talking points' and repeat them at every available opportunity.

Iraq Study Group Report

Okay, the long awaited Iraq Study Group Report is out and this will begin a phase where it's very important to watch carefully what actually happens besides talk. Not to put too fine a point on it, George W Bush is a liar and one who feels entirely justified in lying: this was clearly demonstrated, for those who need more evidence, when he lied about whether he'd replace Rumsfeld a few days before the election and then after he'd dumped Rummy after the election and was asked about this contradiction he blithely said that he believed political campaign tactics justified his lying. So now that he's lost the election the Rove-Machiavelli spin is how much he wants to come together and cooperate. Do not believe a word of it.

According to the Washington Post the report lays emphasis on "substantially expanding the American effort to train fledgling Iraqi security forces while pulling U.S. troops back from combat and patrols." The key is the latter part: will Bush/Cheney pull troops back out of harm's way so we are less likely to have more US kids killed? I tend to doubt it. I heard pseudo-con Kagan (Frederick?) on NPR call for 50,000 more troops. And yet the ISG report says: "The American military has little reserve force to call on if it needs ground forces to respond to other crises around the world."

Iraqi "Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Tuesday that he would send envoys to neighboring countries to plan a conference on Iraq, adding momentum to calls for a regional approach to quell the increasingly anarchic war here." (See New York Times.) This is apparently a change of mind for Maliki and may be a positive sign. The ISG report also places major emphasis about talking to at least Syria about Iraq but I'm not sure the pseudo-conservative generated hostility toward Syria hasn't already made this next to impossible: when James Baker advocated this today he felt the need to make all sorts of bows to the crazy pseudo-con nonsense, saying this wasn't "talking for the sake of talking" and we would be very tough with Syria in any talks having a whole list of things we'd ask of them. These are clear signs of the pseudo-conservative distortions that have been injected into US foreign policy: who in the world would advocate "talking for the sake of talking", this is one of those crazy strawmen erected by the pseudo-cons which everyone now seems to feel they must knock down. It's fascinating how the 'toughest' right-wing nonsense tends to set the terms of debate; no one will stand up and say the pseudo-cons have no clothes, that all the stuff they say about not 'talking for the sake of talking' is simply idiotic rhetoric that should simply be ignored.

Bad Signs Concerning Iraq War

We know al Maliki is saying the US troops should remain in Iraq. Now we have another significant Shia leader, al Hakim, saying the same thing. Al Hakim is also telling Bush to hit Sunni guerrillas harder so apparently no reaching out to Sunnis there. Apparently al Hakim does not want a regional conference of Arab nations on Iraq because he is close to Iran, Iran already has strong influence in Iraq, and a regional conference would mean Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Sunni regimes would gain control and Hakim opposes that.

To me this sounds like Vietnam all over again: our government leaders have become entwined with local leaders with their own local interests, the latter make them want to encourage us to keep our troops there while also opposing other potential paths to peace because these threaten their local power ambitions. The Bush administration can play these forces to keep us there till he leaves in 2009. Only a strong, courageous American leader determined to extricate us could get us out. And there are so many essential things we could do with the money being squandered in Iraq that would truly strengthen us here at home. This makes me think again of Paul Kennedy's warning in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000:

Most of the historical examples covered here suggest there is a noticeable ‘lag time’ between the trajectory of a state’s relative economic strength and the trajectory of its military/territorial influence…. An economically expanding power… may well prefer to become rich rather than to spend heavily on armaments. A half-century later, priorities may well have altered. The earlier economic expansion has brought with it overseas obligations (dependence upon foreign markets and raw materials, military alliances, perhaps bases and colonies)…. In these more troubled circumstances, the Great Power is likely to find itself spending much more on defense than it did two generations earlier, and yet still discover that the world is a less secure environment—simply because other powers have grown faster, and are becoming stronger…. Great Powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert potential resources from ‘investment’ and compound their long-term dilemma (emphasis added).

I believe there is a likelihood that the United States today is a "Great Power in relative decline" that is "spending more on ‘security,’ and thereby divert[ing] potential resources from ‘investment’."

There is a good chance our pseudo-conservative 'tough' leaders are running this country into a ditch and few will notice until it's too late. Through policies of failing to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting a terrorist-producing war in Iraq, spending vast sums of money on useless war and starving investments that need to made at home (see Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift), increasing the resources of the wealthy while advising working Americans to 'eat cake'--these pseudo-conservatives are destroying a great country while at the same time succeeding in convincing many that they are the true patriots. They are certainly masters of Madison Avenue PR, 'packaging', propaganda and 'spin'; you have to give them that.

And Now a 'Leaked' Rumsfeld Memo

The New York Times obtained a leaked memo Rumsfeld wrote about possible 'new' directions in Iraq; the memo was written two days before Rummy resigned. Here is NYT analysis of the memo. Here is Washington Post analysis. Finally, here's Juan Cole's interesting analysis.

Here are some thoughts of mine: Rumsfeld, the brilliant beureaucratic manager, former CEO of major drug companies, presumably a fellow who knows how to make strategic plans and determine methods to judge whether those plans are producing desired results, is apparently endorsing, after 3 years and 9 months of an unimaginably expensive war, some ideas that others have been calling for since nearly the beginning of the war:

1) "Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the Iraqi Government and the U.S. — political, economic and security goals — to chart a path ahead for the Iraqi government and Iraqi people (to get them moving) and for the U.S. public (to reassure them that progress can and is being made)."

It's taken this brilliant manager 3 years and 9 months to recommend the setting of benchmarks with which to judge whether we are succeeding or not!! Joe Biden and Richard Lugar were calling for those years ago.

2) Put "one or more Iraqi soldiers with every U.S. and possibly Coalition squad, to improve our units’ language capabilities and cultural awareness."

Frankly, I am simply appalled. How in the world could it possibly take nearly 4 years to suggest that our troops need to be able to have Arabic speakers with them and be more culturally aware of Iraqi beliefs and customs. This is so amazing I am left speechless; how do you explain this monumental blindness?

3) "Initiate an approach where U.S. forces provide security only for those provinces or cities that openly request U.S. help."

As I've pointed out in several previous posts, this seems like a fairly obvious idea when you are being seen as an occupier and want to change that and be seen as an invited helper. Brzezinski has been suggesting something like this for at least a year.

4) "Withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. — and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, operating from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces need assistance."

Hmmmmm. John Murtha? Who's John Murtha?

5) "Begin modest withdrawals of U.S. and Coalition forces (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat”), so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."

Aren't Republicans the ones who are always FIRST to tell us that placing responsibility upon those who benefit most from action is the golden path to fostering "individual initiative"? Aren't they the FIRST to warn of 'moral hazard' and 'perverse incentives' when people are provided too easily with aid? (See Jacob Hacker's marvelous new book, "The Great Risk Shift", for more on these topics.)

I've thought a good deal about how a smart guy like Rumsfeld could make so many stupid mistakes and, so far, the main cause I've been able to come up with is arrogance. This guy is perhaps one of the most arrogant of a notably arrogant group: politicians. He seemed to feel his judgment was close to infallible and thus if he thought it up it must be great; there was no real reason to respect anyone else's opinion. And, surrounded as he was by true believers like Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle, Wurmser, Rove, et al., there certainly was no stimulus to press him to come up with alternative ideas.

Maliki Says Iraqis Can Take Over Security By June 2007

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said that Iraqis could take over Iraqi security by June 2007.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready, to receive this command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next June our forces will be ready," Maliki said in an interview with ABC News after his meeting with Bush. Asked whether he would disarm militias such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric, Maliki, himself a Shiite, said, "Definitely. And the government is doing that with all militias, with no exception. There will be only the arms for government troops."

Will anyone remember this promise in June 2007?

Some Experts Critique Stephen Hadley's 'Leaked' Memo

In an interesting article by reporters for McClatchy Newspapers some experts were asked for their views on the feasibility of policy suggestions made by NSC advisor Stephen Hadley which was 'leaked' just before Bush met with al Maliki. Here are some of their views:

Trying to push anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr out of the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as the memo suggests, would be throwing gasoline on a fire, they said. Sadr's party is the largest in parliament, with 32 seats, and Maliki became prime minister only with his support. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia controls large parts of Baghdad and southern Iraq, and many Iraqi Shiites hail him as their only protection from attacks by rival Sunni Muslims, which American and Iraqi forces have failed to stop. 'Sadr is aware of the considerable extent to which his forces ... constitute a significant part of the power in the streets, and there is no reason why he would simply want to surrender that leverage,' said Paul Pillar, the former top U.S. intelligence analyst on the Middle East.

And again:

Trying to force Sadr out of the government - in which his followers control some of the key ministries - and crack down on his militia almost certainly would lead to the government's collapse. It also would ignite a wave of violence by his militia and supporters in Baghdad and the Shiite-dominated south, much of it probably aimed at the U.S.-led multinational force. 'Sadr is not going to rein in the Mahdi Army,' said Vali Nasr of the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, Calif., and the author of a new book on modern political Shiism.

On a second Hadley suggestion:

Hadley suggested that Maliki overhaul his Cabinet by replacing key members of Shiite and Sunni religious parties with "nonsectarian, capable technocrats." But the Iraqi Constitution requires that new ministers be approved by two-thirds of parliament, a vote that Sadr could block. A Cabinet shakeup also would unravel the power-sharing deal on controlling the ministries that took the religious parties months to negotiate. "The ministries are run like fiefdoms," Nasr said. "Most ministers don't even come to Cabinet meetings."

On a third Hadley suggestion:

Experts also were skeptical of a Hadley proposal that the United States provide "monetary support" for forming a new coalition of moderate Shiite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish parliamentarians to keep Maliki in power if he's unable to cut loose from Sadr. Several experts wondered what moderates Hadley was referring to. Moreover, such an alliance would require Maliki to forge stronger bonds with Sadr's chief rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. He's the head of another Shiite party that belongs to the ruling coalition and whose militia maintains even closer ties to the Islamic regime of neighboring Iran than the Mahdi Army does. Finding Sunnis to join such a grouping would be impossible, because Hakim has been a leading proponent of purging members of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from the bureaucracy and the military, Nasr said.

Finally:

Maliki already has tried unsuccessfully to implement some of Hadley's ideas, several experts noted. These include attempts to purge the police and Interior Ministry of sectarian death squads and to disarm militias. Phebe Marr, a leading U.S. expert on Iraq, said that some of the more modest ideas that Hadley proposed in the memo - such as appointing technocrats to the government and cleaning up the Interior Ministry - were achievable. "I think these small steps can be done. I think Maliki is doing them. But we have very different perceptions of time and timetable," Marr said, referring to growing political pressure in the United States to withdraw troops. As for a "spectacular breakthrough" from the Iraqi government in the near future, "forget it," she said.

Stephen Hadley's 'leaked' memo can be seen here.

What Will Bush Do About Iraq?

Thomas Powers writes on intelligence and has an interesting Op-Ed in today's New York Times. It points to the past stubborness of presidents faced with bad war options like Johnson in Vietnam. It points to Robert Gates' role in facilitating the secret war against the Contras even after Congress had passed the Boland amendment trying to stop it and how Gates proved a loyal CIA soldier for two presidents. Powers concludes:

Today the choice facing Washington is not quite as stark as the one that confronted Lyndon Johnson in 1965, but it is close. Mr. Gates has spent the last nine months working as a member of the Iraq Study Group, whose much awaited recommendations will be revealed next Wednesday. Getting out is the simplest remedy, but no one wants to shoulder the blame for what follows. Staying the course has already been rejected by the president. That leaves only some kind of altered or renewed effort to postpone the day of reckoning. Defeating the insurgents is only half of the challenge; harder will be finding some way to restrain or disband the Shiite militias without bringing them into the war against us. Down that road would lie a spiraling conflict as protracted and unwinnable as the war in Vietnam. The Republicans may have lost the midterm elections, but to my ear, on the subject of Iraq, the president has never sounded ready to accept anything that might be called defeat. Iraq is not Vietnam, but we are the same. We find ourselves, at a parallel moment, militarily committed to a policy on the verge of conspicuous failure. The American people, now as then, are unsettled by the phrase “cut and run” and reluctant to put their judgment ahead of the president’s. Above all, American presidents are the same. Bad news from Baghdad and opposition at home may point to a lowering of expectations, at the very least, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Presidents take failure personally, can lift their voices above the din of opponents, and can use the immense power of their office to force events in the directions they choose. The verdict of the elections was clear. The public wants to let Iraqis handle their own troubles from here on out, while we start bringing our soldiers home. But that’s not what President Bush has said he wants, so there will very likely be a series of fights over Iraq that will extend to the president’s last day in office. Robert Gates is smart, quiet, dogged and loyal: a well-considered choice for defense secretary by a president determined to bring home that “coonskin on the wall,” to borrow a phrase made memorable by an earlier president in a similar fix, Lyndon Johnson.

I agree with Mr. Powers that this is indeed the most likely outcome. The one possibility I hadn't thought of is that our actions might bring the Shia into the war against us; oh my, and I thought I was pessimistic.

Perhaps Iraq Study Group Might Make a Difference

This is an important article from the New York Times. It sounds like although the Baker-Hamiliton Iraq Study Group did come up with a compromise at least it recommends "a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop[s] short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal."

The compromise includes a recommendation for "pullback" which means redeployment and would presumably take a substantial number of our troops out of daily combat and thus limit casualties: "The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.)" By not insisting on a timetable and not telling the administration how to achieve this pullback it allows maximum flexibility to the administration and increases the likelihood the administration can more comfortably adopt the recomendation; very cagily diplomatic that Baker. (But I will NEVER forgive James Baker for being responsible for bullying George W Bush into the presidency in Florida in 2000; he foisted this ignorant, stubborn incompetent on us.)

The recommendations also agree with what I have previously argued is perhaps the key to getting out: "Committee members struggled with ways, short of a deadline, to signal to the Iraqis that Washington would not prop up the government with military forces endlessly." We have to put real pressure on the Iraqis to take over themselves and, I would add, offer to help the Iraqis when requested. Then we get out of the 'occupier' position and become an invited helper.

Finally, "the bulk of the report by the Baker-Hamilton group focused on a recommendation that the United States devise a far more aggressive diplomatic initiative in the Middle East than Mr. Bush has been willing to try so far, including direct engagement with Iran and Syria. Initially, those contacts might be part of a regional conference on Iraq or broader Middle East peace issues, like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they would ultimately involve direct, high-level talks with Tehran and Damascus."

This is to the good and perhaps it will help the administration get over its allergy to negotiation. What is not so clear to me is precisely how Damascus and Tehran can actually affect the situation in Iraq. However, if there is an increased and serious effort to make progress upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I suspect this would have manifold benefits.

It's Looking Like Laura Rozen Was Right

Laura Rozen reported on a possible tilt toward the Shia and against the Sunnis within the Bush administration. I'm coming to the conclusion she was right about this at least as a backup plan or a threat. Plan A seems to be to lean on the Iraqi Sunnis to give more support to the al Maliki government while also leaning on al Maliki to disarm Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi militia. I think there are a number of reasons this isn't likely to succeed (see my What Next post).

When and if this fails, Plan B could be to forget about reconciliation between Sunnis and Shia, forget about 'national unity government, and side with the majority Shia against the Sunnis. The Shia could probably drive the Sunnis out of Baghdad and perhaps isolate them in the Sunni Triangle. (There was a report today that our troops are admitting defeat in Al Anbar province, which, if I'm not mistaken is much of the Sunni triangle. What if all troops from Al Anbar went to Baghdad?) Of course if the administration sided with the Iraqi Shia, Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan would be very upset. At least the Saudis would worry about political mobilization of their Shia minority. The Shia Iranians and Shia Hizballah would of course be very much strengthened.

That such a Plan B is being considered, at least as a threat to pressure Iraqi Sunnis to compromise and cooperate with an Iraqi Shia-dominated government, comes from Laura Rozen's piece, from this video of an MSNBC interview with Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post who has superb Pentagon sources, as well as other hints. The other hints include: 1) this line from a New York Times article, "'There’s been some discussion about whether you just try to deal first with the Sunni insurgency, but that would mean being seen to be taking just one side of the fight, which would not be acceptable,' the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic practice." Obviously "taking one side" against the Sunni insurgency is being considered. 2) this other snippet from Laura Rozen re Cheney, "The fault lines going into that meeting included Cheney's office and some in the NSC arguing for more aggressively backing the Shias, and in particular, Hakim. Note the Hadley memo's recommendation to press Hakim/SCIRI to support Maliki, and the overall concern about whether Maliki is up to the task."

Since there are such significant downsides to Plan B I wonder if it isn't more in play as a threat with which to pressure moderate Sunnis to support al Maliki's government. My overall reading leads me to the hunch that the administration will send some more troops to Baghdad as a last ditch attempt to stop sectarian violence and disarm the Mahdi militia and that as usual there will be no benchmarks to judge whether this plan is succeeding and this will simply extend Bush's 'stay the course' stance in Iraq indefinitely. Bush and Cheney absolutely hate to compromise or admit they have been wrong so they'll do something that they package as a 'new' approach and keep on keepin' on. Never forget that 'packaging' is their longest suit and they'll say anything to 'sell' their latest gambit.

What Next for Bush in Iraq?

In the jockeying for power preparatory to any change in Bush administration policy in Iraq there has been a flurry of reports. As I noted in prior posts Laura Rozen is hearing that the administration may be tilting toward the Shia against the Sunnis. Tom Hayden reported a scenario that suggested a tilt toward the Sunnis against the Shia. The New York Times reported this yesterday:

When Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice arrive in Amman on Wednesday, they will try to enlist help from Sunni Arab leaders to try to rein in the violence in Iraq by putting pressure on Sunni insurgents…. Specifically, the United States wants Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt to work to drive a wedge between the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has been behind many of the Shiite reprisal attacks in Iraq, a senior administration official said. That would require getting the predominantly Sunni Arab nations to work to get moderate Sunni Iraqis to support Mr. Maliki, a Shiite. That would theoretically give Mr. Maliki the political strength necessary to take on Mr. Sadr’s Shiite militias. “There’s been some discussion about whether you just try to deal first with the Sunni insurgency, but that would mean being seen to be taking just one side of the fight, which would not be acceptable,” the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic practice.

This report suggests a two-prong strategy of putting pressure on Iraqi Sunni insurgents, using the Saudis, Jordan and Egypt to help with this while at the same time pressuring al Maliki to break with Moktada al-Sadr and disarm the Mahdi militia associated with al-Sadr. In an earlier post I mentioned Barbara Walter’s book on civil wars, Committing to Peace. One of the most difficult steps in negotiating the end of a civil war is getting each side to lay down its arms and trust that promises made in negotiations will be honored. To me it seems like this would be nearly impossible in Iraq because there are not yet even open negotiations between the al Maliki government and the insurgency much less any promises made. However, the Sadrist walkout of the parliament today and suspension of support for al Maliki’s government does show new stress on the relationship between al Maliki and the Sadrists.

This leaked memo of Stephen Hadley’s does seem to suggest that an important prong of the administration’s policy is to attempt to split al Maliki from al Sadr and to somehow get the Mahdi militia disarmed. This will be extremely difficult to do. My reading of the New York Times article on this leak suggests that it was planned by the administration. Why? Perhaps to place pressure on al Maliki just prior to Bush’s meeting with him tomorrow. Bush’s history suggests he likes to put pressure on people to get them to lean more his way.

One part of this program is to demonize Moktada al Sadr and it is remarkable what an unseemly rush the main stream media is to jump on this bandwagon. The news in the last few days has suddenly seemed to be filled with dramatic stories about this “most dangerous man in Iraq” (next Monday’s cover story in Newsweek!). I don’t have enough knowledge of al Sadr to make a strong judgment about him one way or the other but the way the press supinely presses the administration line of the moment is deplorable. They are so anxious to jump on the bandwagon and scapegoat someone. In their knee-jerk demonization of our opponents they fail in their duty to clarify and inform our public about reality and instead they encourage a soap opera version of the news.

The weakness in the administration’s blame al Maliki and demonize al Sadr move are pointed out in another article in the New York Times:

[It appears] American military and political leverage in Iraq has fallen sharply…. American fortunes here are ever more dependent on feuding Iraqis who seem, at times, almost heedless to American appeals, American and Iraqi officials in Baghdad say. They say they see few policy options that can turn the situation around, other than for Iraqi leaders to come to a realization that time is running out. It is not clear that the United States can gain new traction in Iraq with some of the proposals outlined in a classified [leaked] White House memorandum…. Many of the proposals appear to be based on an assumption that the White House memo itself calls into question: that Prime Minister Maliki can be persuaded to break with 30 years of commitment to Shiite religious identity and set a new course, or abandon the ruling Shiite religious alliance to lead a radically different kind of government, a moderate coalition of Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish politicians…. Against these judgments, some key passages in the Hadley memo seem at odds with the reality on the ground, as if the steady worsening of America’s prospects here has driven the White House to reach for solutions that defy the gloomy conclusions of America’s diplomats and field commanders, not to mention some of Mr. Maliki’s closest political associates…. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric, has been clear… that the Shiites must subordinate their differences to the cause of consolidating Shiite power. So it is hard to imagine Mr. Maliki approaching Ayatollah Sistani to win approval “for actions that could split the Shia politically,” as the Hadley memo suggests. Shiite leaders, who are tiring of Mr. Maliki, appear to be thinking of replacing him with another Shiite religious leader, and not of sundering the alliance and surrendering the power the Shiites have awaited for centuries. But if recent interviews in Baghdad with senior American and Iraqi officials are a guide, a bigger problem for the administration in effecting change here may be that the United States, in toppling Saddam Hussein and sponsoring elections that brought the Shiites to power, began a process that left Washington with ever-diminishing influence.
One reason for the declining American influence lies in policies that, for various reasons, alienated the political class, most of them former exiles like Mr. Maliki who rode back to Baghdad on the strength of American military power. Many Shiite leaders resent the Americans for compelling them to share power in the new government with the minority Sunni Arabs — a policy, the Shiites say, that guaranteed paralysis for the government. Sunni leaders still resent the American invasion, and the imposition of an electoral process that ended centuries of Sunni dominance. Just as much, they fume over the pervasive influence of neighboring Iran, which backs the Shiite parties. And secular politicians, marginalized by the Shiite and Sunni Islamist politicians who dominate the government, say they, too, have lost faith in the Americans, for failing to protect Iraq’s secular traditions. “Politically, their position is weaker in all aspects,” Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish leader, said of the Americans. “They just got weaker and weaker, and many more people who were supporting them are supporting them less.”

Tilting in Iraq, Part 2

Laura Rozen pointed out this from the Washington Post as evidence for her view that the Bush administration may tilt toward the Sunnis:

But in a sign of the discord in Washington, the senior U.S. intelligence official said the situation requires that the administration abandon its long-held goal of national reconciliation and instead "pick a winner" in Iraq. He said he understands that means the Sunnis are likely to bolt from the fragile government. "That's the price you're going to have to pay," he said.

This "senior U.S. intelligence official" was not identified in the article and note that the article says his comments were "a sign of the discord in Washington". Thus we still don't know what the administration is going to do and who, if anyone, they are going to tilt toward.

But here's a scenario stressing accomodating the Sunnis, under the title "Will Bush Rehabilitate the Baathists?" Juan Cole reports from Arabic newspaper Al-Zaman but doesn't say whether Al-Zaman tends to be biased toward Sunnis or not.

Flailing of the Bushies

Juan Cole observed that the Bush administration is panicked and hasn't much idea what to do in Iraq and thus is flailing around. Something like this does seem to be true.

This process sounds so muddled because Washington is flailing around without the slightest idea of what could be done, practically speaking, in Iraq, according to Time: "Several officials who are in touch with commission members said that with violence appearing to spiral out of control in Iraq, the group has been flummoxed about finding a solution. "There's complete bewilderment as to what to do," one official said. "They're very frustrated. They can't come up with anything. For the last couple months, they've been thrashing around, calling people, trying to find ideas."

I think this flailing around for a solution after the elections has also activated the various groups in Iraq to jockey more aggressively for power.

Nir Rosen on Iraq

Nir Rosen recently published a long and informative article on his reporting in Iraq. As a journalistic account it provides much information but in a somewhat difficult to assimilate fashion because of the way the subparts are strung together. But here is an important excerpt:

With the January 30, 2005, electoral success of the Shia parties, the balance of power between Shias and Sunnis shifted, initiating an apartheid process. In the ministry of health, pictures of Muqtada and his father were everywhere.... And in the ministry of transportation, walls were adorned with Shia posters, including some specifically supporting Muqtada. Sadrists instituted a program they called “cleansing the ministry of Saddamists,” with “Saddamist” defined so broadly that all Sunnis felt vulnerable. Ousted Sunnis were replaced by Shias with no apparent qualifications.... Efficiency dropped; the ministries of health and transportation barely functioned, and the ministry of the interior operated an anti-Sunni death squad. Its secret prisons were uncovered in November 2005.... Elections may have represented a victory for the Bush administration, but they also enshrined sectarianism more deeply in Iraq.

The bottomline, it seems to me, is that the very insistence upon Iraqi elections may have exacerbated sectarian splits between Shia and Sunni. This again underlines how devilishly complicated it is to intervene in a foreign culture, topple the existing government and then believe you will be able to easily and successfully take actions that will only have intended consequences. Apparently the U.S.'s actions in Iraq have frequently had the unintended consequence of fracturing the country into warring sectarian and tribal factions and encouraging civil war.

The Salience of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

I have been impressed how many times in my reading I have come across example after example of Middle Eastern governments placing primary emphasis upon resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict even in the context of other obviously important problems which might have taken precedence. I am collecting these examples for my book. Here is the latest one. In a New York Times article on the Middle East a portion was devoted to Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have a lot of worries at this time including the increasing influence of Iran, their fears of masses of Iraqi refugees flooding into their country, their worries that growing Shia power and confidence might inflame their Shia minority, etc. The Times reported:

During an interview on the ABC News program “This Week” on Sunday, [Saudi] King Abdullah said that his agenda with the president extended beyond Iraq, and that his top concern in the region was the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians — which he called the “core issue” in the Middle East — along with tensions in Lebanon.

I believe that the the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is certainly a core issue for the U.S. in that a satisfactory solution would likely do much to lessen the terrorist threat against the U.S., purportedly Bush's main goal. Yet the administration has carried out a policy that Bill Gallagher appropriately called "malign neglect".

Inanities of 'Tough' Foreign Policy Advocates

A perfect example of the absurd inanities uttered by 'tough' foreign policy advocates was offered by Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. In a New York Times article published today Mr. Hadley favored us with a gem of sage opinion that undoubtedly exemplifies the quality of advice he has been sharing with Bush for the last several years. In an article reporting that the Baker Iraq Study Group would recommend that the U.S. talk with Iran and Syria in an attempt to improve the situation in Iraq Mr. Hadley, in his wisdom, emitted this pearl: "'Talking isn’t a strategy,' he said...." My goodness, here is an insight so blindingly brilliant that it will surely be heard round the world: "Talking isn't a strategy." Many of us will be glad that Mr. Hadley has disabused us of the belief, certainly widely held, that 'talking' is a strategy.

I frankly have difficulty understanding how this nonsense is reported without some critical comment. Clearly, no one in their right mind thought 'talking' was a strategy, and yet the National Security Advisor of the United States of America is apparently allowed to erect this strawman and deftly knock it to the ground without comment by the New York Times. Apparently Mr. Hadley does believe that NOT talking to our opponents is a strategy because the Bush administration has pursued this 'strategy' all over the world: they haven't talked (much) to the North Koreans, they haven't talked to the Iranians, they currently aren't talking to the Syrians, they refuse to deal with the democratically elected Hamas government of the Palestinians, they have ignored the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for six years, etc. The Bush administration didn't even have a strategic vision for their war of choice in Iraq; and THEY are enlightening the rest of us benighted auditors on what is and what is not a strategy?

Such inane, knee-jerk opposition to talks and negotiations with our foreign opponents is a prime part of the explanation of Why Pseudo-Conservatives Can't Do Foreign Policy.