THE TOP TEN THINGS NOT TO DO IN IRAQ ( Ivan Eland)

[Zlatko Waterman]

( from AntiWar.com)


Top 10 Things Not to Do in Iraq

by Ivan Eland


Ever since the Iraq Study Group (ISG) issued its recommendations, the debate in Washington has swirled around what to do about the mess in Iraq. Unfortunately, both the recommendations of the study group and the contradictory inclinations of the Bush administration are "bridges to nowhere." Both groups are in denial about the chaos in Iraq and are not yet ready to offer the tough solutions that could stabilize the country. Perhaps they should accept the top 10 things not to do in Iraq:


1. Don't send more U.S. troops. By pursuing this course, the neoconservative armchair generals – such as Frederick Kagan – who helped Bush get into this mess want to help him dig the hole deeper. Yet the senior U.S. military officers on the ground in the Middle East are not keen on this option. They realize that the quagmire makes it impossible for U.S. forces to ever succeed, and they have been inclined toward withdrawal. Former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell seemed to reflect their views when he said that when deciding whether to send more troops, "I'd want to have a clear understanding of what it is they're going for, how long they're going for. And let's be clear about something else. … There really are no additional troops. All we would be doing is keeping some of the troops who were there, there longer and escalating or accelerating the arrival of other troops." Without having a clearly defined reason for sending more troops, the policy collapses into the usual "show the Iraqis and the domestic political audience that the Bush administration means business." But the domestic political audience has long soured on the war and wants the troops to begin coming home, and the Iraqis, like Powell, realize that the troop increase is not sustainable in the long-term.

2. Don't think that sending more U.S. troops is politically sustainable. In a democracy, putting more troops and money into a war that has lost public support rivals the stupidity of invading a country to bring democracy to a fragmented society with no prior democratic experience or culture.

3. Don't use any extra forces to secure Baghdad. The Bush administration can't seem to accept what the U.S. military command in Iraq has said: that more U.S. forces will only inflame Iraqi resistance. Recently, when the United States moved forces from other parts of Iraq into Baghdad, in an attempt to increase Baghdad's security, violence flared in reaction to the augmented U.S. troop presence.

4. Don't use any extra U.S. troops to train Iraqi forces. Even if the Iraqi army and police could be made larger and better quickly – which they can't be – the biggest difficulty is not their competence. The main problem is that they will fight for their religious sect, ethnic group, or tribe, not for their country.

5. Don't think that training Iraqi security forces is a viable U.S. exit strategy. Because of the fragmented nature of Iraqi society, training such forces is merely enabling one side's combatants in an accelerating civil war. Many of those already trained are now operating as Shi'ite death squads attacking Sunnis.

6. Don't think that the ISG's proposed withdrawal of combat forces by early 2008, while retaining about half the 140,000 troops to train Iraqi forces, is a viable solution. In addition to making the long-term situation in Iraq worse (see item #5), this proposal was merely a "cut and hide" strategy by the bipartisan foreign policy elite to diminish the importance of Iraq in the 2008 elections. If combat troops are withdrawn, the less visible training mission would incur fewer U.S. casualties and generate less intense media coverage back home during the next election season.

7. Don't pursue the "80 percent solution." This proposal would abandon any attempt at reconciliation with the Sunnis and throw all of the diminishing U.S. influence behind the groups that effectively control the Iraqi government: the Shia, which make up 60 percent of Iraq's population, and the Kurds, which make up another 20 percent. After the invasion, U.S. support defaulted to the Shia and Kurds because they were opposed to the rising Sunni insurgency. But the Shia have become more militant, have turned southern Iraq into an intolerant Islamic state, and have come under the influence of their sectarian brethren in Iran. Many of the Sunni guerrillas are thugs, but at least most are not religious militants. Besides, for long-term stability, all groups – including the Sunnis – have to be satisfied enough with any political settlement to attempt to quell violence from their members.

8. Don't think that talking to Syria and Iran will pay big dividends in Iraq. Right after the invasion, these countries were afraid that they would be next and thus were more amenable to helping out the United States. Now, they are both delighted that they have the United States over a barrel – that is, bogged down in a quagmire and less likely to put them in the cross hairs. So they will be in no hurry to help U.S. forces extricate themselves from the tar baby. Although assistance to various groups in Iraq is coming from Syria and Iran, Iraqi violence appears to be funded mainly through kidnappings and organized crime. Thus, although talks should be initiated with Syria and Iran, even if they agree to help, that help will not dampen most of Iraq's violence.

9. Don't continue talking about democracy or victory in Iraq. Neither is possible, and such rhetoric makes withdrawal harder before either is achieved.

10. Don't think Iraq can exist as a unified country. Iraq already has decentralized governance and militias dominating various areas. The United States should mediate a conclave of all Iraqi groups to recognize this decentralized governance and to negotiate a viable oil-sharing agreement. The decentralization option is the only one that has any hope of reducing and compartmentalizing the violence. At this late date, however, even this option might not prevent unbridled mayhem.

( personal note):

I can't help appending this direct quote from Donald Rumsfeld:

"I don't do quagmires."

(DR, October, 2005 news conference)

[Zlatko Waterman]

Abizad and Casey get out while the getting is good, and many other generals-- including General Colin Powell, question the decision to do a "surge."

The rudderless ship ( U.S. policy and tactics in Iraq), with DECIDER I, the eloquent and effulgent absolute ruler ( with the personal help of Jesus Christ). continues to founder and dither, dither.

How many thousands of humans would still be above ground if these millionaire white guys and their ignorant, savage method of "bringing freedom" had been kept in abeyance? Ninety percent of Iraqis recently polled maintain that things are worse now than they were under Saddam.

Here's a good article summarizing the generals' objections to "the surge.":

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061219/ap_ ... us_iraq_31


--Z

[stilltrucking]

Okay.
Meanwhile on the home front we must do two things.

We must make sacrifices, and we must keep shopping.


Did you here his ten minute speach at the begining of today's press conference?

I am pretty sure that is what He said.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Pretty sick. But I wouldn't put it past the COSMIC DOUBLE-YUH.

No. I didn't hear his speech.

Nice Robert Scheer piece ( below) wonders what they're smoking at The White House that puts them in mind of a "surge" . . .

Did any staunch Republicans notice there was an election on Nov. 7th that didn't applaud their policies . . .???

( paste from "truthdig.org")

Published on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 by truthdig



Bush Can’t Kick the Habit


by Robert Scheer

Here we go again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House?

Even as government statistics now show marijuana is America’s No. 1 cash crop, it is important to remember that militarism is the most dangerous drug threatening our sanity. Yet even formerly sober folks—first Colin Powell and now new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—get a contact high from cozying up to the walking hallucinogen that is our president.

Succumbing to the Bush fantasy that freedom is fertilized by firepower, a vision that has mucked up Iraq beyond recognition, Gates told CBS that “as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for generations to come.”

This from a man who recently made sense, during his confirmation hearings, when he told members of Congress that we are not winning this war, despite having committed, proportionally, as many troops as we did in Vietnam. But now, as a rising chorus of obsessed hawks calls for a “surge” in U.S. troop deployment in Iraq—a call echoed even by some prominent Democrats—Gates endorses the staying-the-course strategy for compounding the Iraq failure rejected by the voters. A member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) who had apparently supported its unanimous findings that the military strategy was bankrupt is suddenly blinded by Bush’s Iraq victory myopia.

In a sign of just how out there Bush is on Iraq, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff are in “unanimous disagreement” with “White House officials aggressively promoting the concept ... . [T]he Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission [in Iraq].”

All this despite the fact that the ISG report correctly underscored that the real failures in the Mideast have clearly been political, not military. The accurate subtext of the report is that the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq is the key source of chaos in the region—inflaming religious fanaticism from Beirut to Baghdad and leaving the United States dependent on the tyrants in Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to now bail us out.

So with Bush rejecting the sage advice of a commission headed by his father’s secretary of state to cut our losses is there any hope the Democrats who now control Congress will stop playing the role of enabler to these war junkies? After all, it was the Democratic congressional leadership that provided Bush with bipartisan cover for his irrational “anti-terrorism” invasion of a country that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Some, like John Kerry, now recognize that folly, and even Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, in her appearance on NBC’s “Today” show Monday, finally expressed her regrets for supporting the war and opposed a “surge” in U.S. troops for Iraq.

But other Democrats continue to play the dangerous game of supporting Bush’s escalation. Particularly alarming were the remarks on Sunday of incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsing a buildup as long as it aims at getting the troops home by 2008: “If the commanders on the ground said this is just for a short period of time, we’ll go along with that.”

Reid’s strategy is as obvious as it is opportunistic: This is a Republican war, goes the thinking, and the Dems will give the Republicans all the rope they need to hang themselves in ’08. This seems a deeply cynical position, when you consider that the Pentagon just announced that attacks on American and Iraqi targets are at their highest levels, with a 22 percent leap from just this summer. The difference between taking a position and positioning oneself is what determines leadership; if the Dems fail to provide real leadership on ending this war, they will deservedly lose the next election.

The convenient lie behind all of this is that U.S. military occupation is the indispensable agent of Mideast enlightenment. No, we have become the enablers of Iraqi madness, be it in the form of torture or the ascendancy of religious tyranny in Iraq, where daily life has been reduced to an unmitigated horror.

Yet, like a junkie who needs one more hit to get his life in order, Bush is hooked on the drug of military might. If the Democrats continue to feed his dangerous habit they will only help Bush visit greater mayhem upon Iraq while undermining the core values of our own country.

Robert Scheer is Editor and Chief of truthdig. He has written seven books, including “Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death: Essays on the Pornography of Power”; “With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War” and “America After Nixon: The Age of Multinationals;” with his son Christopher and Lakshmi Chaudhry, “The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq.” Most recently, he wrote “Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton--and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush

[Zlatko Waterman]

One final article from me on this topic:

Robert Fisk interviewed today by Amy Goodman on DEMOCRACY NOW.

I strongly recommend Fisk's book on the Middle East, THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION, in which he offers an antidote for mainstream U.S and British reporting in the area.

I do not always agree with Fisk, but he is not a strident and partisan ideologue. Nor is he "objective." He has lived in Beirut for thirty years and reported as an informed Englishman fluent in Arabic who is uncommonly energetic and insightful. The book I have recommended is written in a "literary" style in the best sense. Fisk would have made a very talented novelist.

The fact that the two of us ( he and I) are the same age, born in the concluding year of WWII, also helps my understanding of what he writes. He is, in every sense, my contemporary. But he is a contemporary vastly more knowledgable about the history of the Middle East than I am. And far more knowledgeable than most reporters from the U.S. and Britain.

In these interviews and a brief speech, he tries to act as a corrective to some of the hype from Washington that greeted the Baker/Hamilton report. Further, he tries to put a different point of view forward from that of the "embedded" press.

Here is the DEMOCRACY NOW link to Fisk's interviews:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl? ... 20/1443230



--Z

[stilltrucking]

It is all very well to talk about what we should or should not do. But we got nothing to say about it. We are not the decider.

"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush told the Washington Post on Tuesday, a direct rebuke of Powell's formulation, saying he was citing Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and adding, "We're going to win." Winning means not ending the war while he is president. Losing would mean coming to the end of the rope while he was still in office. In his mind, so long as the war goes on and he maintains his will he can win. Then only his successor can be a loser.

Emphasis mine.



"I encourage you all to go shopping more"

Interesting speech today. I have not been able to find a transcript yet. He said he is taking sleeping pills, "sometimes."