[Peace-discuss] What we've done

[C. G. Estabrook]

	The Bloodbath We Created
	Gareth Porter, TomPaine.com
	December 14, 2006

Of all the faults of the Iraq Study Group the most serious was its 
warning, highlighted by Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton, that a "precipitate 
withdrawal" would cause a "bloodbath" in Iraq as well as a region-wide 
war. The cry of "bloodbath" -— now given bipartisan status -— will 
certainly be used to crush any attempt in Congress to advance a plan for 
a timetable for withdrawal.

In offering this bloodbath argument, the ISG has unconsciously mimicked 
the argument used by President Richard Nixon to justify continuing the 
U.S. war in Vietnam for another four years. Nixon, too, warned of a 
postwar "bloodbath" if there was a "precipitate withdrawal" of U.S. 
troops. If the Vietnam era bloodbath argument sought to distract the 
public’s attention from the very real bloodbath that the U.S. war was 
causing, the new bloodbath argument distracts attention from the 
relationship between the U.S. occupation and the sectarian bloodbath 
that is continuing to worsen with every passing month.

You would think that the political elite might be wary of an argument 
suggesting that the U.S. military presence in Iraq somehow helps 
restrain the Shiites and Sunnis from civil war -- in light of the 
escalating sectarian killings in Baghdad since thousands of U.S. troops 
poured into Baghdad ostensibly to curb the sectarian war. Yet that is 
exactly what we are asked to believe by the ISG.

The bloodbath argument evades the central fact that the U.S. occupation 
has never been aimed at avoiding or reducing sectarian war between 
Sunnis and Shiites. On the contrary, the U.S. has used sectarian 
conflict for its own purposes. The main purpose of the U.S. occupation 
has been to claim victory over those who resisted it, which has meant 
primarily suppressing the Sunni armed resistance throughout the Sunni 
zone. The Bush administration had to have Iraqi allies against the Sunni 
resistance, and after Sunni security units showed in 2004 that they 
would not fight other Sunnis on behalf of the occupation, the 
administration began relying primarily on Shiites to assist its war 
against the Sunnis.

Thus the militant Shiite political parties and their military wing 
became the administration’s primary Iraqi allies. Unfortunately those 
were the very sectarian organizations that were motivated by revenge 
against Sunnis. As soon they had gained control of the state organs of 
violence through the January 2005 election, those organizations began to 
unleash retribution against the Sunni community in Baghdad -- seizing 
Sunni mosques and killing Sunni political and religious leaders. The 
torture and killing of Sunni detainees by such Shiite paramilitary 
groups as the Badr brigade and the Wolf brigade were well documented by 
mid-2005.

The Bush administration was hardly unaware of the dangerous rise of the 
pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Baghdad who intended to carry out ethnic 
cleansing against Sunnis. Their closest Iraqi collaborator, the secular 
Shiite interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was warning them in no 
uncertain terms. In July 2005 , Allawi warned publicly that Iraq was 
"practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak."

For a period of months in late 2005 and early 2006, the administration 
fretted over the new threat of sectarian civil war. Ambassador Zalmay 
Khalilzad publicly resisted Shiite control over the interior and defense 
ministries and threatened to reconsider U.S. assistance if they were not 
put in non-sectarian hands. As reported by the Sunday Times of London 
December 10, Khalilzad even carried on secret negotiations with Sunni 
resistance leaders for two months on their offer to be integrated into 
the national army and to "clean up" the pro-Iranian militias in Baghdad 
with arms provided by the United States.

In the end, however, Bush pulled back from making a deal with the 
Sunnis. When a permanent government was finally negotiated under firm 
sectarian Shiite control in April 2006, the administration resumed its 
support for its Shiite allies in the official war against both the Sunni 
resistance and al-Qaida-related terrorists. The interests of the 
military command and the White House in claiming a success in "standing 
up" an Iraqi army and police force trumped any concern about sectarian 
civil war.

The ISG failed to consider the full implications of that policy. 
Contrary to the official administration line that involvement in 
sectarian violence is limited to a minority of "extremists" in the 
military and police, in fact virtually the entire structure of Shiite 
military and police units is either actively participating or complicit 
in terrorism against Sunnis. When the SCIRI and its allies took over the 
interior department in 2005, its Badr militia was given wide latitude to 
infiltrate thousands of its loyal militiamen into the national police.

Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militiamen dominate the police both in 
parts of Baghdad and the Shiite south. Both Badr and Mahdi army recruits 
have been implicated in sectarian killings. The Defense Department 
admitted in its August 2006 report to Congress that it has no system for 
screening police for membership in Shiite militias. Wayne White, who was 
Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and 
Research’s Near Eastern Division and coordinated Iraqi Intelligence 
until his retirement in 2005, and an adviser to the ISG, says the Iraqi 
police force have such close ties with the Shiite militias that it is 
"probably beyond help."

The U.S.-sponsored Iraqi army is scarcely less sectarian in nature. The 
ISG itself admits that there are "significant questions about the ethnic 
composition and loyalties of some Iraqi units -- specifically whether 
they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a 
sectarian agenda." Reporter Tom Lasseter, who was imbedded in the 
all-Shiite first brigade in October 2005, was told by one sergeant that 
they would do to the Sunnis what Saddam did to Shiites: "Start with five 
people from each neighborhood and kill them in the streets and go from 
there."

Nevertheless, the United States has already transferred 287,000 AK-47 
rifles, 17,000 machine guns, 7,600 grenade launchers, and 1,800 high 
mobility wheeled vehicles to these forces, according to official Central 
Command figures. The transfer of weapons to the police accelerated this 
past year, despite the well-known involvement of police units in death 
squad activities. And the Defense Department plans to send yet another 
50,000 rifles to the police and another 86,000 to the army—along with 
3,000 more vehicles.

We have every reason to fear that these weapons will become the basis 
for a higher level of warfare by Shiites against Sunnis in the future. 
Despite the administration’s complaints that Iran is supporting the 
Shiite militias who are causing sectarian violence, the United States 
itself is the quartermaster of the forces of sectarian civil war. And 
the recommendations of the ISG would continue this role for the 
indefinite future.

Why, then, should the occupation be considered as representing a 
restraint on the sectarian civil war already underway? It has no 
realistic plan or strategy for protecting the victims of "sectarian 
cleansing" except for "pressure" on the Shiite prime minister, which 
Shiite leaders rightly regard as serving domestic U.S. political 
purposes. And the idea that thousands of U.S. trainers swarming into 
Iraq will somehow transform the existing sectarian anti-Sunni army into 
one that will effectively oppose sectarian violence is, of course, 
laughable.

The notion that years more of U.S. military occupation will help stanch 
the bloodletting between Shiites and Sunnis is a self-deception of 
monumental proportions. If the objective were really to end the 
bloodletting, the United States would actively seek a peace agreement 
with the Sunni resistance based on a rapid, phased withdrawal and stop 
supporting the Shiite war against them. That would give international 
diplomatic efforts a more serious chance to succeed.

The bloodbath argument foisted on the public by the ISG is really about 
the refusal of a large segment of the political elite to accept the fact 
that the United States has broken Iraq in a way that can no longer be 
fixed by U.S. power -- and has lost a war it entered into with such 
arrogance. It is a statement of ideological belief by an elite still 
deep in denial.


Gareth Porter is a historian and national security policy analyst. His 
latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War 
in Vietnam was published in June 2005. During the Vietnam War, Porter 
was a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Vietnamese history and politics 
who debunked the Nixon administration's "bloodbath" argument in a series 
of articles and  monographs.


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