Shlonkom Bakazay?

Sometimes, you read something and agree with it so much that you yourself could have said it. This is the case with Professor Cole's latest installment at Informed Comment. Here it is quoted in full...

Critique of US Policy in Iraq

Bush Administration policies in Iraq have largely been a failure. It has created a failed state in that country, which is in flames and seething with new religious and ethnic nationalist passions of a sort never before seen on this scale in modern Iraqi history. The severe instability in Iraq threatens the peace and security of the entire region, and could easily ignite a regional guerrilla war that might well affect petroleum exports from the Oil Gulf and hence the health of the world economy.

The relatively small number of US fighting troops that the US has in Iraq, some 60,000 to 70,000, cannot possibly hope to provide security to a country of 26 million under such conditions of ethnic and political civil war. The much smaller British presence in Basra appears not to have been effective in halting that city's spiral down into insecurity, with tribal and militia grudge fights and assassinations having become common.

The inauguration of a new Iraqi government was marred by the enormous amount of time it took to form it (5 months!), by open US imperial intervention in the choice of prime minister and in other negotiations, by the walk-out of over two dozen parliamentarians from both the Shiite (Virtue Party) and Sunni (National Dialogue Front and Iraqi Accord Front) parties, and by the failure of the new prime minister to name three key cabinet ministers central to the country's security-- Defense, Interior, and National Security. The Iraqi government is among the more corrupt in the world, working by bribes and a party spoils system.

The new parliament is virtually hung, and Prime Minister al-Maliki governs as a minority prime minister, being able to count on less than 115 MPs from his own party, in a parliament with 275 members. He is therefore hostage to the Kurds, who want to move Iraq in the direction of having a very weak central government, a degree of provincial autonomy unknown in any other country in the world, and who want to unilaterally annex a fourth province, oil-rich Kirkuk, to their regional confederacy, despite the violent opposition of Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arab populations to being Kurdicized.

The Bush administration reconstruction project in Iraq has largely failed. In part, it was foiled by sophisticated guerrilla sabotage, so that billions have had to be diverted from actual reconstruction to security. And nor has security been achieved. In part, it was foiled by a degree of corruption, cupidity, embezzlement, lawlessness and fraud that is unparalleled in US history since the Gilded Age. And in part is has been foiled by a US insistence on making most often unqualified US corporations the immediate recipient and major beneficiary of funds, so that Iraqi concerns get much less lucrative sub-contracts and relatively little of the money benefitted the Iraqi economy directly.

Military engagements between Sunni Arab guerrillas and US troops of some seriousness have been fought at Ramadi in the past week, though little noticed by the mainstream US press. Fallujah is dangerous again. Neighborhoods of the capital, Baghdad are blown up every day. A nighttime hot civil war produces some number of corpses daily, sometimes dozens, to the extent that morning corpse patrol has become a central duty of Iraqi police. A lot of us suspect that some units of the police themselves are involved in these kidnappings and killings, so that often they know just where to look for the corpses.

The main US military tactic still appears to be search and destroy, a way of proceeding guaranteed to extend the scope and popularity of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. The guerrillas appear more well-organized, determined, and effective than ever, and no lasting and effective progress appears to have been made in counter-insurgency anywhere in the Sunni Arab heartland. The human toll of the war has been deeply depressing. The number of Iraqi dead in the war and its aftermath (killed in political violence by any side) cannot be estimated, but certainly is over 100,000 and could easily be more. The 30,000 figure often cited comes from counts of reports of deaths in Western wire services, which are demonstrably a fraction of the true total. None of the nearly 1,000 Iraqis assassinated in Basra during the past month, possibly with police involvement, appears in such statistics.

The US has lost over 2400 troops dead, and the number of wounded in action is over 17,000, some significant proportion of them seriously wounded, with long-term disabilities. Some Iraq War vets are suffering mental problems and were discharged because of them under circumstances that make it difficult for them to get VA care. Some Iraq War vets are showing up homeless in US cities already. Meanwhile, Halliburton is back from the brink of bankruptcy. US troops have fought bravely in unfamiliar terrain, and have often done unheralded community developoment work. Their enemies have included ex-Baathist serial murderers and Salafi Jihadi terrorists. Their sacrifices for the sake of removing Saddam and his regime, and attempting to stabilize Iraq, must be honored. But some of their enemies have been honorable resistance fighters, as recognized by the present Iraqi government itself, and US troops have had the profound misfortune of being ordered into an illegal war and then becoming caught up in a series of guerrilla wars for local autonomy, of a sort that no imperial power has been able to win since about 1960.

There is no evidence of the new Iraqi army and security forces proving themselves effective against the guerrillas. The security forces with the possible exception of the new army are heavily infiltrated by partisan militias. A recent news article quoted an approving US officer as saying that Iraqi troops in Baqubah fought a guerrilla attack right down to the point where the troops ran out of ammunition. These were almost certainly Shiite and/or Kurdish troops fighting Sunni guerrillas, so this was actually another battle in the Civil War. No wonder they fought to the bitter end. But what I take away from this anecdote is that the guerrillas have more ammunition than do the poor s.o.b.'s in the Iraqi army, and I don't see that as a good sign. A unified military is almost impossible to achieve in conditions of civil war, in any case. Lebanon had an army when the civil war broke out there in the mid-1970s, but President Elias Sarkis was unable to commit it, for fear it would split along ethnic lines. The same problems now exist in Iraq, and are unlikely to be resolved for some years, if ever.

Iraq cannot be stabilized without the active help of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the neighboring countries. But the Bush administration has actively attempted to alienate Iran and Syria, threatening them with regime change or military attack, and guaranteeing that they would be hostile to US success and continued presence in Iraq. The US has also alienated Turkey by allowing the violent leftist Kurdish guerrilla movement, the PKK, to base itself in northern Iraq and to attack Turkey and Iran from that safe haven. The US has alienated Saudi Arabia in a whole host of ways, from insinuations that the Wahhabi form of Islam is in an unqualified way a source of terrorism, to US insensitivity to Saudi fears of the rise of a Shiite Crescent.

Bush administration ineptitude, ignorance, and often stupidity is matched by some regional players. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud El Faisal came to the US in fall of 2005 and castigated the US for allowing Iraq to fall into the hands of the Iranians (i.e. pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites), provoking a severe diplomatic tiff between Baghdad and Riyadh. Instead of being helpful to a fellow Arab country, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt alienated the Shiite south of Iraq by saying that Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. After these incidents, which enraged the Iraqi Shiites, the prospect for a fruitful role in Iraq for the Arab League have receded substantially, since Shiite Iraqis cannot see it as an honest broker.

The Bush Administration trumpets that a defeat of "al-Qaeda" in Iraq would be decisive for defeating terrorism in the world at large. But Bush and his policies led to there being anything like an effective Islamic radical terrorism in Iraq in the first place. The tiny Ansar al-Islam group that operated in the north before 2003 had been hunted by the Baath security and only survived because of the US no-fly zone that prevented Iraqi armor from being deployed against it. Bush has not shown any particular ability to put this genie, which he unleashed, back in the bottle. His war in Iraq has been an enormous boon to the international Salafi Jihadi movement, encouraging angry youths from all over the world to join it to fight to the US. Bush by his aggressive and inept policies is creating the phenomenon he says he is fighting, and so can never defeat it.

The prospect lies before us of years, perhaps decades of instability in the Gulf and eastern reaches of the Middle East. There is a danger of it doubling and tripling our gasoline prices. There is a danger of it forming a matrix and a school for anti-US terrorism for years to come. Are people in Fallujah, Tal Afar and Ramadi really ever going to forgive us? And there is no guarantee of the Shiites remaining US allies for very long, either. Many, of course, already have conceived a new hatred of America as a result of over-reaction of green National Guardsmen, who often have killed innocent civilians in the south, and as a result of iron fist policies when US troops were fighting the Mahdi Army.

The Bush administration has pushed us all out onto a tightrope in Iraq, 60 feet up and without a net.

God save the American empire for delivering such a wonderful gift as the new and highly competent Iraqi government. I mean, I'm breathless at the effective transition in the last 5 months, from the concrete accomplishments of election to formation of our new democracy.

I'm sure now that we've got a taste of democracy in the last few years, we'll quickly see an end to everything bad happening in Iraq. Of course, we couldn't say how long this would be...but looking at how fast our newly elected lists formed the government (a mere 5 months!!!) I believe within another 12 years or so, we'll have functioning institutions and concerts in the park. I can't wait. But I know I'll have to...

It won't be long!

And I know I have you, Viceroy Khalilzad, to thank for this :D

God bless Iraq being included in the neo-imperialist (and neo-liberal) project I'd like to call Pax Americana. You can plunder our oil fields, but you'll never take away the intoxicating feeling of freedom via elections. Screw running water, give me a ballot.

Ballots for the pawns of empire! Ballots for the pawns of empire!
Yipeeee yeaaaaaa! yipeeeee yoooooooo!

And I'd like to add one more thing. Because I know I have this platform to express important ideas and discuss pressing issues. And I must use it responsibly. So...Please world, pay attention to what is happening in Africa. Air drop some ballots of love on Darfur! Stop the madness! I can't stand those poor people dying there any longer. A travesty, I tell ya.

Good night and happiness to all...

First in

Big UP to Thought Riot...
Reminds me of myself when I first started blogging at the Agora.
[via Where Date Palms Grow - which is another great new blog]

I'm back and feeling good. We've had a new addition to the family. I'm a proud uncle once more! I believe Najma's sister had a baby recently too. So congratulations to her and all her family too!

peace out,
lim

Q: What do Mother Teresa and Bernardo Provenzano have in common?


Take a deep breath. And count to ten.

Time to go Joe: Joe Leiberman's a mole.
Russ Feingold points out that Democrats don't have balls. And we all already knew Barbara Boxer has more balls than all other democrats on the hill combined.
Hillary is one sketchy biatch for bunking with Rupert Murdoch.
Fundamentalism 101: Fundamentalists don't speak to other fundamentalists.
David Blaine is a dickhead.
Fatal Irony: The Dead Sea is dying. I'm glad I visited it this past winter.
The most consistent thing in life with death: Iraq. Sadly, yes.
And it seems Lebanon ain't never gonna change. What a bunch of tools.

A: They both have black and white pictures of when they were young on the internet.

Because it's such a neglected issue and seldom spoke of in the new Iraq, I want to bring some attention to the following article in the Guardian. Women are the newly repressed lot in the new Iraq. Never before have women been so crushed there. And their plight be told by "Zeina" in a new film...

The film-maker, who lives in Baghdad, wants to keep her identity secret because she fears reprisals, so I'll call her Zeina. When I spoke to her by telephone, the first first thing I asked her was why it is that she feels she has to hide her identity, and in her answer she does not distinguish between the government and the insurgents, in the way that we are taught to do here. "I feel the threat from the government and from the sectarian militias," she says. "The danger in Iraq comes from the Americans, from the sectarian militias - and, of course, it also comes from the crime, the gangs, the random kidnappings."

She decided she wanted to make this film because the things she saw every day were not being seen by the outside world. "No one sees what we are going through. All Iraqis are psychologically traumatised by what is happening. I have seen an eight-year old child who has involuntary tremors, whenever she hears an aeroplane or sees soldiers. I have seen families displaced. I have seen women forced into prostitution because of the poverty of their families."

Zeina was not a supporter of Saddam Hussein's regime. During his rule, she worked as a journalist and a translator of literary criticism. "Politically, before the war, I was not happy," she says. "So many things were not right. We had no freedom of speech, no freedom of expression. But I never imagined the change would be this way, so bad. I never imagined that at all."

Click to read more.

Hats off completely to Stephen Colbert for confronting the president!

Here's the video (26 minutes) or here: part one & part two or the torrent

Here's the 60 Minutes piece on Colbert.

Here's the Daily Show recap on Colbert's speech.

Here's Stephen Colbert's audition for WH press secretary.

...is one of the oldest tactics in the book!

I suggest Iraq is already split up and will get much worse as time passes, unless something concrete and effective is done immediately. And was making Iraq split what was meant by the "Mission Accomplished" speech 3 years ago? Was a chaotic Iraq a mission objective? If so, it's a success based on creating ethnic tensions, which leads Iraq further down the current path of destruction, which creates a climate allowing for theives and terrorists both professional and not to run amok in Iraq doing whatever they like at will...while conveniently and so coincidentally undercutting this possible natural enemy of Israel by causing more instability??? I'm sorry. How is this success? As far as I'm concerned, the entire project of invasion and occupation is just fanning the flames and creating more problems for both America and Israel later down the road...and new problems now! I'm getting off-subject but...

But if you split it up correctly, Iraq's integrity as a nation might be saved. Starting on that basis, Professor Cole recently offered some possible solutions on his blog that I found interesting. More on the debate by the following people: Senators Biden & Gelb (still uninformed about Kirkuk) and Anthony Cordesman (whom I agree with...I am also against Iraq splitting up, for the record.)

I implore US officials to look into the most level-headed of the recommendations offered by such accomplished persons above. That is, unless you would enjoy Iraq turning into another Iran...which you so ironically created too!!!

I look at the situation now...and I just laugh with dread at knowing what really happened...and what's happening now. So painfully similar to, say, Lebanese sectarianism...and never before has the cliche , history repeats itself , been made so fresh with so much blood since,,,well, since Darfur last week...Congo last year....and Rwanda in the mid 90s.
Face it...so disgusting, huh?
Humanity is cruel.
Enjoy yourself.