[Peace-discuss] Iraq. What's up?

[Morton K. Brussel]

There are few clear minded, realistic, analyses of the situation in  
Iraq, but I find the following article one of them. What do you think?

Permanent War? Dealing with Realities in Iraq and Washington
by Robert Dreyfuss

One of the most unfortunate myths pervading American culture, the  
American psyche, and the whole American weltanschauung -- and it's  
one for which we might as well go ahead and blame movie director  
Frank Capra -- is that in most situations the good guys win. Morality  
triumphs. The greedy and self-interested, the cruel and mean-spirited  
are defeated. Ultimately, or so the myth goes, the bad guys win some  
of the battles, but in the end the good guys win the wars.

Sadly, in the real world, good doesn't always win. Sometimes, good  
isn't even there. When it comes to Iraq, the left, the liberals, the  
progressives (for the sake of argument, the good guys) sometimes seem  
to have their heads in the clouds. That's true in regard to the  
crucial question of whether President Bush's stay-the-course strategy  
can succeed. The answer, unfortunately, is: Yes, it can.
The Bush administration's strategy in Iraq today, as in the invasion  
of 2003, is: Use military force to destroy the political  
infrastructure of the Iraqi state; shatter the old Iraqi armed  
forces; eliminate Iraq as a determined foe of U.S. hegemony in the  
oil-rich Persian Gulf; build on the wreckage of the old Iraq a new  
state beholden to the U.S.; create a new political class willing to  
be subservient to our interests in the region; and use that new Iraq  
as a base for further expansion.
To achieve all that, the President is determined to keep as much  
military power as he can in Iraq for as long as it takes, while  
recruiting, training, funding, and supervising a ruthless Iraqi  
police and security force that will gradually allow the American  
military to reduce their "footprint" in the country without entirely  
leaving. The endgame, as he and his advisors imagine it, would result  
in a permanent U.S. military presence in the country, including  
permanent bases and basing rights, and a predominant position for  
U.S. business and oil interests.
Marshaling the Bad News

Many progressives scoff at such a scenario. They argue, with  
persuasiveness, that the American project in Iraq is doomed. To prove  
their point, they cite (what else?) the bad news. And there certainly  
is a lot of it.

First of all, the Sunni-led insurgency, metastasizing continually, is  
a hydra-headed army of armies representing former Baathist military,  
security, and intelligence officers, assorted nationalists and  
Islamists, tribal and clan leaders, and city and neighborhood  
militias. It has shown remarkable resilience. The elimination of Abu  
Musab al-Zarqawi is not likely to put much of a dent in the Sunni  
resistance and may only strengthen it.

Second, Iraq's Shiites are restive, at best, and bitterly divided  
among themselves. The two most powerful blocs, with the two most  
important militias -- the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution  
in Iraq with its Badr Brigade and Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army -- are  
to varying degrees unhappy with the American presence. The up-and- 
coming Fadhila bloc, one of whose leaders was just arrested in Najaf  
(allegedly for planning IED attacks against U.S. forces), is  
brooding. Throughout Iraq's mostly Shiite southern regions, Shiite  
parties and armies are battling among themselves for the control of  
important cities, including Basra, and of Iraq's Southern Oil  
Company, which produces the vast bulk of Iraqi oil and has provided a  
valuable stream of corrupt cash for Shiite party leaders. Some of  
them -- possibly all of them -- are turning to various factions in  
Iran for support.

Third, the Kurds, ensconced in the Alamo-like Kurdish region in the  
north, are happily waxing pro-American even as they quietly prepare  
for a unilateral grab of the key oil city of Kirkuk, of Iraq's  
Northern Oil Company, and of other territory contiguous to the  
Kurdish region -- thus threatening to set in motion an almost  
unavoidable clash with Iraq's Arabs, both Sunni and Shiite, and  
possibly nearby states as well.

Fourth, the American project to create an Iraqi army and police force  
is going badly. So far, at least, the main army and police units have  
been reconstituted from the Badr Brigade and Kurdish pesh merga  
militiamen, none of whom are loyal to the concept of a unitary,  
nonsectarian Iraq, nor have they been unable to grasp basic notions  
of human rights. The Shiites, in particular, are engaged in a bloody  
campaign of death-squad killings and kidnappings, along with targeted  
assassinations aimed at Baathists. It will be difficult, if not  
impossible, for the United States to use war-hardened, embittered,  
and power-hungry Shiite and Kurdish forces to keep peace in Sunni  
areas, including western Baghdad.

Fifth, of course, the economic reconstruction of Iraq is, shall we  
say, not going swimmingly.

Not surprisingly, many politicians and generals and most progressives  
have adopted a worst-case outlook. With bad news mounting, they argue  
that the American project in Iraq is lost. In truth, I've made the  
same argument, at various points over the past three years. Last  
November, in an article entitled Getting Out of Iraq for Rolling  
Stone, I wrote: "George Bush is just about the only person in  
Washington these days who doesn't know that the United States has  
lost the war in Iraq." I quoted former Georgia Senator Max Cleland,  
who told a congressional hearing organized by House progressives that  
the United States had better get out of Iraq before the resistance  
overruns the Green Zone. "We need an exit strategy that we choose --  
or it will certainly be chosen for us," said the grievously wounded  
Vietnam veteran. "I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends."

Last week, writing for the Nation, Nicholas von Hoffman echoed this  
theme, suggesting that it's too late to worry about exit strategies:



"We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk. In 1940 the defeated  
British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French  
seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and  
escape across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels,  
fishing smacks, yachts, small boats, anything and everything that  
could float and carry the defeated and wounded army to safety… [In  
Iraq,] there is no seaport troops could get to, so the only way out  
of Iraq would be that same desert highway to Kuwait where fifteen  
years ago the American Air Force destroyed Saddam Hussein's army."


What Staying the Course Means

Let me now admit to having second thoughts on this matter. I no  
longer am convinced that the U.S. adventure in Iraq is lost. There is  
no guarantee that the Bush administration cannot succeed in its goals  
there. The only certain thing is that success -- what the president  
calls "victory in Iraq" -- will come at the expense of thousands more  
American deaths, tens of thousands more Iraqi deaths, and hundreds of  
billions of taxpayer dollars.

Indeed, this war would have to be sustained not only by this  
administration, but by the next one and probably the one after that  
as well. For over three years, the United States has supported a  
massive military presence on the ground in Iraq, while taking steady  
casualties. It may be no less capable of doing so for the next two- 
and-a-half years, until the end of Bush's second term -- and during  
the next administration's reign, too, whether the president is named  
John McCain or Hillary Clinton. At least theoretically, a force of  
more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers could wage a brutal war of attrition  
against the resistance in Iraq for years to come. Last week, in a  
leak to the New York Times, the White House announced its intention  
to leave at least 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years to come. Last  
week, too, the son of the president of Iraq (a Kurd) revealed that  
representatives of the Kurdish region are in negotiations with the  
United States to create a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq's  
north.

Meanwhile, President Bush and his Rasputin, Karl Rove, took the  
occasion of the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to reiterate their  
unalterable commitment to victory in Iraq, whatever the cost. There  
is no reason not to take Bush at his word. And there is no reason not  
to believe that Rove will orchestrate a withering offensive against  
Democrats who question the president's goal of victory.

The frightening thing about last week's House and Senate debates over  
Iraq was that the mainstream opposition to the Bush administration --  
ranging from moderate Democrats to realist, if pro-military, moderate  
Republicans -- never challenges the goal of victory in Iraq. Yes, a  
hardy band of antiwar members of Congress (including Dennis Kucinich  
of Ohio, Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee of California, and others,  
joined by John Murtha of Pennsylvania) support the unconditional  
withdrawal of American troops. But the bulk of the Democrats,  
including the 42 Democrats who last week voted in favor of the  
bloodthirsty Republican war resolution, don't question the importance  
of victory in Iraq. They just question the Bush administration's  
tactics.

There are only two ways to thwart Bush's war. The first is for the  
Iraqi resistance to defeat the U.S. occupation. The second is for  
domestic public opinion to coalesce around a demand for unilateral  
withdrawal. So far, neither the Iraqi resistance, nor the antiwar  
movement have the upper hand; and sadly, so far they are loathe to  
make common cause with each other.

Where the Vietnamese resistance had a state, North Vietnam, and the  
support of the other superpower, the Soviet Union, as well as Mao's  
China, the resistance in Iraq is nothing but a grassroots insurgency.  
It neither controls a state, nor has the support of any state.  
(Contrary to the idiotic assertions of the neoconservatives and the  
Bush administration, Iran is not assisting the Sunni Iraqi  
resistance, and that fractured, fractious movement is getting only  
the most minuscule support from its Sunni Arab neighbors.)

Needless to say, there is no love lost between Iraq's Baathists and  
the kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The resistance in Iraq would  
benefit mightily if elements of the Shiite bloc hived off to join the  
insurgency; if, say, Muqtada Sadr's ragtag forces abandoned the  
government to join the resistance, as they toyed with doing during  
the destruction of Fallujah in 2004. That's unlikely, though.

So who believes that the Iraqi resistance can fight on indefinitely  
against the combined might of the U.S. armed forces and American- 
supported Shiite and Kurdish armies as well as militias, especially  
with ongoing American divide-and-conquer efforts that involve  
blandishments offered to the less militant wings of the insurgency?  
Still, it's not impossible that the resistance can hold on long  
enough to effect at least a stalemate. But their ability to do so  
might depend, in part, on the ability of the American antiwar  
movement to undermine the administration's commitment to staying the  
course in Iraq.

Was Iraq a "Mistake"?

Until now, truly antiwar Democrats have represented a minority force  
within the party. In opposition, they have largely been eclipsed by  
moderate Democrats and realist Republicans, both seemingly content to  
argue that the war in Iraq was merely a "mistake" and an  
inefficiently prosecuted "failure" without confronting the war  
itself. In fact, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic minority  
leader who (half-heartedly) supports Rep. Murtha's get-out-now  
position, used both of those words over and over during last week's  
debate. Both words are deadly -- and probably wrong as well.

The war in Iraq was not a "mistake." It was a deliberately calculated  
exercise of U.S. power with a specific end in mind -- namely, control  
of Iraq and the Persian Gulf region. It was illegal and remains so.  
It was a war crime and remains so. Its perpetrators were war  
criminals and remain so. Its goals were unworthy and remain so.

Few Democrats, and almost no Republicans, have been willing to  
challenge Bush's war on these terms, however. Neither have most of  
the Bush administration's so-called mistakes truly been errors: the  
brutal dismantling of the Baath party and the dissolution of the  
Iraqi armed forces, widely castigated now as "mistakes" by many Bush  
critics, were meant. They were thought out. They were planned with  
purpose. They, too, were deliberate actions aiming at U.S. hegemony  
in Iraq.

Nor is the war simply, or even largely, a "failure." As cruel and  
brutish as it is, it is grinding its way toward its goal. Victory for  
the United States in Iraq, as evidenced by the recitation of bad news  
I cited earlier, is by no means certain. But it is far too early to  
call it a failure either. To do so at this stage is Capra-esque. It  
assumes that bad guys don't win. But sometimes they do. And on Iraq,  
the jury remains out.

The danger of emphasizing the supposed "mistakes" and "failures" of  
the Bush administration's Iraq policy is that it plays into a notion  
held by an increasingly large component of centrists in both parties  
-- that, although the war itself was a "mistake," the only rational  
option for the United States now is to win it anyway. There are  
countless variations on this theme emanating from both Democratic and  
Republican centrists.

You hear it in the argument that, although the war was wrong, we now  
have a moral obligation to stay and prevent civil war. You hear it in  
the argument that the United States must be strong against the threat  
of global "Islamofascism," and that by leaving Iraq we will hand Al  
Qaeda and its allies a victory. There are other variations of the  
same, but all of those who make such arguments (while criticizing  
Bush for his alleged incompetence and mismanagement) end up arguing  
that the United States has no choice other than to stay.

In my discussions with them in recent weeks, several have brought up  
Colin Powell's absurd argument about the Pottery Barn rule: if you  
break it, you own it. Well, yes, we broke Iraq, but we don't own it.  
(In fact, the Pottery Barn itself has no such rule. If you mistakenly  
break a piece of pottery in one of its stores, you aren't actually  
liable.) We have absolutely no moral imperative to stay in Iraq. We  
have a moral imperative to leave -- and to apologize.

Just as the antiwar movement in the United States can strengthen the  
resistance in Iraq, the Iraqi resistance can aid the antiwar  
movement. The cold reality of the war in Iraq is that, had it not  
been for the Iraqi resistance, there would be no U.S. antiwar  
movement. Had Iraq's Sunnis collapsed in disarray and meekly ceded  
power to the Shiite-Kurdish coalition empowered by the U.S. invasion,  
President Bush's illegal war in Iraq might have succeeded far more  
effortlessly. But here's the truth of the matter: Led by Iraq's Baath  
party and by Iraqi military officers and their tribal and clan  
allies, a thriving insurgency did develop within months of the March  
2003 invasion. Some of the resistance is, of course, still made up of  
Iraqis passionately loyal to the person of Saddam Hussein. But  
studies of the insurgency show that most of its fighters are loyal to  
the Baath party, whose origins were among left-leaning Arab  
nationalists, or they are loyal to a more specific version of Iraqi  
nationalism, or they simply oppose the foreign occupation of their  
country.

Back to Capra Country

The antiwar movement in the United States developed not out of  
intellectual and moral opposition to the war itself, although that is  
at its core. It grew because mainstream Americans became increasingly  
disturbed by the prolonged war that followed the 2003 invasion. Many  
Americans grew outraged over U.S. casualties. But the fact that a  
prolonged insurgency followed the invasion and that U.S. casualties  
mounted is the result of the Iraqi people's unwillingness to submit  
to an American diktat.

Viewed from that standpoint, it's at least worth asking: Who are the  
good guys and who are the bad guys in Iraq? Are the good guys the  
U.S. troops fighting to impose American hegemony in the Gulf? Are the  
good guys the American forces who have installed a murderous Shiite  
theocracy in Baghdad? Are the good guys the Marines who murdered  
children and babies in Haditha in cold blood? Are the good guys the  
U.S. officers who brought us Abu Ghraib, or the generals who signed  
off on their methods, or the administration that set them on such a  
path in the first place? Who was it, after all, who pulverized the  
institutions of the Iraqi state and society?

So if the U.S. "cavalry" aren't the good guys, who then can we cast  
in that role? If Frank Capra went to Iraq, how would he divide the  
place neatly into good guys and bad guys and assemble his feel-good  
morality play? Certainly, most Americans still believe that the  
Americans are the good guys, even if 62% (according to one recent  
poll) no longer believe that the war in Iraq was "worth fighting."  
But my argument here is: Capra could make a plausible argument that,  
in the hell that Iraq has become in 2006, with resistance fighters  
killing U.S. soldiers and vice versa, there's at least as much good  
on their side as on ours, if not more.

That raises, once again, the question of a dialogue with the Iraqi  
insurgents. For the past year, off and on, Ambassador Zalmay  
Khalilzad has conducted secret talks with the resistance and has  
openly made a distinction between Zarqawi-style jihadists and former  
Baathists and military men. Since the creation of the new, allegedly  
permanent government under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraqi  
government officials once again have raised the idea of talking to  
the resistance. An aide to Maliki even suggested an amnesty for armed  
fighters who have killed U.S. troops. That's a good idea, and it's  
been raised more than once since 2003. In this case, though, an  
ignorant Sen. Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate minority  
leader, expressed outrage at the idea of an amnesty. According to the  
Washington Post, which first reported the amnesty idea, the Maliki  
aide who suggested it was fired.

Personally I'm suspicious of Khalilzad's dialogue offers. By dangling  
the idea, Khalilzad is more than likely using a divide-and-conquer  
tactic, enticing some insurgent leaders to join the new Iraqi regime.  
How else to interpret the offer at a moment when President Bush is  
insisting on an unconditional U.S. victory in Iraq? People  
knowledgeable about the resistance know that the only basis for  
serious talks with the insurgents is the offer of an American  
withdrawal from Iraq in exchange for an accord.

Still, whether one thinks the resistance fighters are good guys, or  
bad guys that we need to talk to, the left, the antiwar movement, and  
progressives don't have to wait for Zal Khalilzad. The time for  
talking to Iraq's Baath, former military leaders, and Sunni  
resistance forces is here. And now that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead,  
the nature of the Iraqi insurgency is partly clarified. It's a lot  
harder for supporters of the war to argue that extremist, head- 
severing Islamist extremists are its dominant face. In fact, of  
course, they never were.

Some of the antiwar movement's more perceptive leaders have already  
started the dialogue. Tom Hayden, the former California state senator  
and activist, has been talking to the Iraqi resistance in London,  
Amman, and elsewhere. Some members of Congress, such as Rep. Jim  
McDermott, have traveled to Amman, Jordan to do the same thing. The  
Bush administration might not be ready to do it openly -- yet. But  
wars end either with the utter defeat of one side or the other, or  
with a negotiated settlement. I'll take that settlement.

Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States  
Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for  
Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, Mother  
Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to  
TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, and other sites, and writes the  
blog, The Dreyfuss Report
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