05 Jan 2007

www.rockfordinstitute.org

Good and Bad News on Iraq

by Srdja Trifkovic

The appointment of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Iraq would appear to signal a more nuanced approach to the problem that will dominate the White House agenda this year. General Petraeus is a military intellectual with a Ph.D. from Princeton who believes that military force must be combined with winning hearts and minds in order to defeat insurgency. In his current post as Commanding General of U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and Commandant of Army Command and General Staff College he supervised the writing of the new Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual . Released three weeks ago, the document notes that in addition to fighting insurgents, the role of the military is also to facilitate the establishment of local governance and the rule of law.

On the other hand, the shift of John Negroponte from his current post-that of Director of National Intelligence -to Condoleeza Rice's No. 2 does not bode well for the State Department, long bereft of useful ideas under a weak and inept Secretary of State, or for the willingness of the Administration to look for new ideas. Negroponte is a clever and cunning bureaucrat, but he is not someone to question the decisions of his political superiors. During his ten months as ambassador to Baghdad (2004-2005) he must have witnessed first-hand the schism between the extravagant assertions of "progress" in Iraq, routinely made by Mr. Bush and his team, and the grim reality on the ground. Both then and later, however, he remained a staunch loyalist and refrained from any hint of public criticism of "staying the course." There is no public record of his effort to jolt his bosses back to the real world; but, as The New York Times points out , "That will have to change if he is to have any chance of improving things. Before confirming him, the Senate should make sure he understands that asking hard and unwelcome questions is an essential part of the job."

In addition, it now appears certain that President George W. Bush will announce a further increase in troop numbers in Iraq next week, by up to 20 thousand, to around 150,000. He is likely to link this supposedly short-term "surge" in U.S. troop levels to political milestones or other conditions, in order to secure the support of the Democrat-controlled Congress. The supporters of the plan admit that a troop surge into Baghdad and western Anbar Province will not solve problems overnight, but hope that by helping to establish security they can weaken the insurgency, which is the first step to addressing most of Iraq's other problems, including the growth of Shiite militias.

It remains unclear, however, what those additional soldiers can change in the overall equation. The hanging of Saddam Hussein in the early hours of December 30 has sealed the sectarian schism in the country that claimed over 16 thousand Iraqi lives last year . In December alone some two thousand civilians were killed. (Adjusted for population size, the U.S. equivalent would be 30,000 deaths, or ten World Trade Centers.)

The vindictive gloating of Saddam's Shiite executioners, clad in black leather jackets and balaklava helmets like members of Muqtada al-Sad 's death squads (whose name they chanted at the scene, and to whom they presented the noose that was placed around Saddam's neck), came at the end of an irredeemably flawed, politicized quasi-judicial process. Iraq's prime minister Nuri al-Maliki-a Muqtada protege-violated a series of constitutional, legal and religious norms to ensure a speedy execution. The event itself was paradigmatic of the country itself almost four years after "Operation Iraqi Freedom": a violent, lawless, hopelessly divided ruin of a country that is doomed to sink deeper into a civil war. Saddam's death will be remembered as a landmark event in the history of that war. It is rightly seen as Shia revenge not only on Saddam, but also on his fellow Sunni Arabs.

Gen. Petraeus undoubtedly understands that a viable exit strategy demands the development of a working rapport with Iraq's six million Sunnis, who provide the backbone of the insurgency. The result of the hanging, however, is that all Sunnis, for now at least, have become pro-Saddam , viewing him not as a convicted killer but as a victim, mercilessly lynched by a vengeful, U.S.-backed Shi'ite government. It strengthens the belief among Sunni Arabs that members of Muqtada's Imam al-Mahdi Army and other Shi'ite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces at the highest levels. By seeing that they cannot expect fairness or justice from this, or any other Shia-dominated government, however, those Sunnis who have taken up arms will have their resolve stiffened; and many others will be more motivated than before to join their ranks. And many Iraqis-not all of them Sunni-already hark nostalgically for the time when there were no suicide bombers and death squads roaming the streets.

Almost four years after the war started, with over three thousand young Americans dead (109 last month alone), the Bush strategy in Iraq has failed. It is more accurate to say that no viable strategy for turning Iraq into a stable and U.S.-friendly country had ever existed. The "job" has never been clearly defined, and therefore-to paraphrase the disastrous Mr. Rumsfeld-the presumed moment of its successful completion always has been an unknown unknown.

With the Democrats taking control of Congress for the first time after 12 years , and simultaneous important personnel changes in Baghdad and Washington, the end-game in Iraq should be under way. The moment is reminiscent of December 1970, when President Nixon decided to pull U.S. forces out of Vietnam by the end of the following year. The major difference is that Nixon's decision was very much his own-his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, among others, had opposed it-whereas President George W. Bush would have preferred to "stay the course" "until the job is done."

It is noteworthy that Dr. Kissinger himself, ever the realist, declared last November that the United States would have to choose between stability and democracy in Iraq-and that democracy was the one out of reach. "That was true from the beginning," he said. "Iraq is not a nation in the historic sense. The evolution of democracy. usually has to go through a phase in which a nation [is] born. And by attempting to skip that process, our valid goals were distorted into what we are now seeing."

What we are seeing is an open-ended nightmare that can be ended only if and when the U.S. makes it clear to the Shi'ite-controlled Baghdad government that American troops will depart and leave it to its fate if it does not end sectarian violence. This is essential: at the moment the Shiites are using American military power as a means of prevailing in an ongoing civil war. That Iraq is in the grip of a civil war is no longer a matter of semantic dispute, and the United States must act immediately to end the perception of acting in support of the Shiite side in that war. The Shiites have willingly upped the ante by executing Saddam, and performing the act it in the most provocative manner possible, and Washington should call their bluff.

To control the situation the U.S. will need to create a split within the ranks of Iraqi insurgents between those who are driven primarily by nationalist and tribal motives, and the ideologues of jihad who don't give a hoot for Iraq as such but simply want to use it as a chapter and a focal point in their global struggle. This would require overcoming distaste for a dialogue with former Baathists and Saddam loyalists, but such dialogue will be much more difficult now that Saddam was hanged under the noses of American soldiers and administrators.

The shift to even-handedness as a prelude to disengagement risks the breach with the Shiites, of course, which would make Iraq even less governable than it is today. Since such breach is ultimately inevitable anyway, it is better to risk it now and level the playing field, than to continue pandering to Shia designs that are fast turning most of Iraq into an Islamic republic in Iran's image.

Mr. Bush's Shia partners, prime minister al-Maliki included, are steeped in an Islamist ideology that would make the late Ayatollah Khomeini proud. They are controlled from Tehran more effectively than anyone in Washington wants to admit. They can hardly believe their luck that American arms, blood and treasure are giving them what they could never hope to achieve on their own. In the meantime the war will continue, and we do not know how it will end, but we can predict with near certainty that the winner will be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his fellow "twelver" millenarians.

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