Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

From the outset of the Iraq invasion the Bush Administration has acted as a force of instability in Iraq. Continued American presence in Iraq will only add to further instability. The smart kids in Washington are warning against a "precipitous withdrawal". Instead, the adults are talking about an "orderly withdrawal" from Iraq that will take up to 18 months. In the mean time, the Surgin’ General, David Patraeus, has embarked on a strategy that will make that withdrawal a failure.

For four years the Bush Administration has armed Shiite militias in Iraq - a strategy that had made political reconciliation in Iraq a non-starter. Recently the Bush Administration has begun arming Sunni militias in a bid to "buy time for political reconciliation":

U.S. commanders are offering large sums to enlist, at breakneck pace, their former enemies, handing them broad security powers in a risky effort to tame this fractious area south of Baghdad in Babil province and, literally, buy time for national reconciliation.

American generals insist they are not creating militias. In contracts with the U.S. military, the sheiks are referred to as "security contractors." Each of their "guards" will receive 70 percent of an Iraqi policeman’s salary. U.S. commanders call them "concerned citizens," evoking suburban neighborhood watch groups.

But interviews with ground commanders and tribal leaders offer a window into how the United States is financing a new constellation of mostly Sunni armed groups with murky allegiances and shady pasts.

This new strategy, much hailed in Washington as a sign of progress, is setting the stage for a bloody confrontation between Shia and Sunni in the wake of an American withdrawal. Far from creating conditions for political reconciliation this strategy is in effect arming both sides of a civil war. This strategy of arming both sides in a civil conflict will serve to further delay an American withdrawal from Iraq. This strategy, and the entire "surge" in general, is predicated on the misguided notion that the violence in Iraq must be brought under control first before national reconciliation can take place. What Mr. Bush and his Surgin’ General ignore is that the violence is being driven by political divisions, not causing it. By arming both sides the prospects of national reconciliation becomes even more remote. What is hailed as "success" by the so-called "pundits" who got us into this mess is in fact creating conditions for continued failure in Iraq.

There is a well-established protocol for pacifying conflict zones that the Bush Administration would do well to consider. It is known as Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR). DDR is an integrated program to pacify conflict zones after political reconciliation efforts have begun. It consists of first disarming the combatants and the civilian population. Second, the armed factions are demobilized and given compensation or other assistance as they transition to civilian life. Finally, the demobilized armed parties are provided training and income generating activities as they reintegrate into civilian life. For DDR to succeed it must be well-funded and undertaken under the umbrella of political reconciliation. The Bush Administration made a half-hearted and ill-funded attempt at DDR when it disbanded the Iraqi army in the early days of the occupation without any attempt at political reconciliation (most notably undermined by its ill-conceived debaathification program). Without a comprehensive DDR plan the disbanding of the Iraqi army became one of the major failures of the American occupation of Iraq. According the United Nations guidelines on DDR, this failure was entirely predictable:

In the short term, the failure to disarm and demobilize former combatants effectively may contribute to an immediate relapse into war. In the medium and long term, incomplete or ineffective reintegration of ex-combatants into civil society may lead to armed criminality by those former soldiers who have no other means of earning a living. In States where internal structures for civil order have already been weakened by an internecine conflict, this increase in armed criminality would be a further detriment to consolidating peace.

Today the Bush Administration is further fueling the conflict by its short-sighted arming of both Shia and Sunni combatants in Iraq.

In the past four years the United States has become a party to the civil conflict in Iraq. It is almost certainly no longer in a position to broker a political reconciliation in Iraq. The past four years of conflict and the counter-productive strategies of the Bush Administration may have made the possibility of political reconciliation without a bloody settling of scores all but impossible. But if there is any hope of averting a bloody collapse of Iraq it lies in political reconciliation. It may be time for the Bush Administration to politically and militarily disengage from Iraq and transition responsibility to a third party such as a regional working group or the United Nations. Under the auspices of this third party a renewed effort can be made to secure regional cooperation and begin the process of political reconciliation. It may also set the stage for the withdrawal of American troops and the beginning of DDR under an international force without an American face.

However, for political reconciliation to begin the Bush Administration must first stop arming the warring sides in Iraq. The alternative is a continued, counter-productive and bloody occupation of Iraq.

The killing in Iraq continues.

We are told we are there to avoid further killing. We were led into war by a President who ignored warnings that he would create a mess in Iraq. Last week the same President, the "commander guy", dismissed those warnings by saying "we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn’t happen."

Now we are being warned that leaving Iraq would be, in the President’s own words, "catastrophic". Now we are told our children are in danger - that they will follow us here if we leave Iraq, presumably to attack our children.

The New York Times this morning joins CNN from a few weeks ago in laying out the frightening fear of withdrawal:

Would the pullback of American forces unleash an even bloodier round of civil conflict that would lead to the implosion of the Iraqi government? Or would it put pressure on Iraqi politicians to finally reconcile their differences? More bluntly: how bad would things get?

…

If the American forces were reduced too soon, military officials say, the fledgling Iraqi Army and police forces could not hold the line against a rising tide of suicide bomb attacks by insurgent groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Shiite militias that had decided to lie low would resume large-scale attacks on Sunni residents. Mixed Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, already growing scarce, would disappear, and Iraqi forces would fracture along sectarian lines. [Emphasis added by me.]

In other words, if the United States leaves Iraq an all out civil war will break out. That apparently is the justification for sacrificing more American and Iraqi lives.

However, continued American presence in Iraq is making the very end game that experts warn against more likely. The United States is not a stabilizing force in Iraq. The United States is creating the conditions for instability in Iraq and the region. The longer we stay the more difficult it will be for us to extricate ourselves from Iraq. The longer we stay the bloodier it will be in Iraq once we inevitably leave.

It is time to examine what our presence has wrought.

Already nearly 15% of Iraq’s population, 4 million citizens, have fled their homes. Amongst the killing the battle lines are being drawn on the map. The American presence provides just the minimal level of protection needed for the warring sides to arm and fortify themselves without fear of a full scale attack by an opposing side. Furthermore, for years now, the United States has been training and equipping one of the warring sides in this civil war. A report from December 2005 (months before the Samarra mosque bombing) offers some chilling perspective:

OF ALL THE bloodshed in Iraq, none may be more disturbing than the campaign of torture and murder being conducted by U.S.-trained government police forces. Reports last week in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times chronicled how Iraqi Interior Ministry commando and police units have been infiltrated by two Shiite militias, which have been conducting ethnic cleansing and rounding up Sunnis suspected of supporting the insurgency. Hundreds of bodies have been appearing along roadsides and in garbage dumps, some with acid burns or with holes drilled in them.

Even before the Samarra bombings of 2006, Iraq’s minister of civil war, Bayan Jabr, with American money and support had turned the business of killing into an efficient enterprise. Today the killing continues in spite of the "surge".

Baghdad, the target of the "surge", is being systematically ethnically cleansed. In just over a year, Baghdad has disintegrated into Shia and Sunni camps. A comparison of the sectarian map of Baghdad from before 2006 and now illustrates the point dramatically [Source: BBC]:

Baghdad Sectarian Map - pre 2006

Baghdad Sectarian Map - 2007

The Bush Administration has created the very conditions in Iraq that it warns against. There is no indication that further American occupation of Iraq will reverse the worsening conditions. It certainly will not reverse under the policies of Mr. Bush, who still fails to understand the sectarian nature of the chaos in Iraq and his own role in bringing it about.

If there is any hope for Iraq it lies in an orderly withdrawal of American forces. The United States should begin the diplomatic and political groundwork necessary to bring about an American military pullback. This will require working with Iraq’s neighbors, including especially Iran, Turkey and Syria, to try to contain the instability that may follow. This will also require the United States to cut the Iraqi government loose. Working without the protection of the Green Zone may clarify the minds of the incumbent Iraqi leaders.

Bloodshed in Iraq in the wake of an American pullout may be unavoidable. But without an American withdrawal, bloodshed in Iraq is guaranteed.

Is this the mission? (Warning: Please do not watch the following video if you cannot handle reality.)

Does this man know what the mission is?

BLITZER: But there is a terrible situation there.

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime…

BLITZER: And…

CHENEY: … and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically written constitution, the first ever in that part of the world. They’ve had three national elections. So there’s been a lot of success.

We still…

BLITZER: How worried are you, Mr. Vice President…

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation…

BLITZER: How worried…

CHENEY: But the president has put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario — that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then, in the end, they’re going to turn against the United States?

CHENEY: Wolf, that’s not going to happen. The problem is you’ve got…

BLITZER: They’re very — very — warming up to Iran…

CHENEY: Wolf…

BLITZER: … and Syria right now.

CHENEY: Wolf, you can — you can come up with all kinds of what- ifs. You’ve got to be deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is we’ve made major progress. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There’s more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now is the danger than the United States will validate the terrorists’ strategy, that, in fact, what will happen here, with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, with the pressures from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists’ strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task…

What is the United States doing in Iraq’s civil war?

The talk of Washington is the Iraq Study Group. Everyone, including the Democrats, is waiting for the two beltway sages, James Baker and Lee Hamilton, to rescue them from the chaos in Iraq. You will recall that some time ago Washington was eagerly awaiting a similar sounding group, the Iraq Survey Group, to rescue George W Bush from his temper tantrum in Iraq, although in a different way. The Iraq Survey Group failed to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction (remember them?) buried in the Iraqi desert, so now its successor, the Iraq Study Group will try to dig out George W Bush’s legacy from the sands of Iraq.

George W Bush, however, is not so easily saved. Rumor has it that Barney has blessed the "stay the course" strategy in Iraq. While others see civil war in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Barney see a mission in need of completion:

President Bush, rejecting what he called "pessimistic" assessments of his Middle East policy, pledged Tuesday to make necessary changes in Iraq but vowed never to pull out U.S. troops before completing the mission there.

…

Bush said, "We will continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there’s one thing I’m not going to do. I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are "part of a struggle between moderation and extremism that is unfolding across the broader Middle East," he said. "And in this struggle, we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."

Apparently, the mission in Iraq has been "accomplished" but not yet "completed".

Save Mr. Bush’s determination to achieve "victory", the parlor game in Washington is all about when the United States will withdraw and how much damage will be caused, both to the United States and to Iraq, before the withdrawal takes place. Now that the mainstream media has started calling the Iraq Civil War a civil war, we can also now discuss what the possible outcomes of this war will be and what role, if any, the United States should play in that outcome.

In order to not be left out of the parlor game, I offer below my thoughts on the future of Iraq.

Last summer Harvard Professor Monica Toft discussed the three possible ways civil wars can end in an article for the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project:

Civil wars end in one of three ways: (1) negotiated settlement; (2) partition; or (3) military victory. U.S. support for any of these options comes with considerable costs and only a slim possibility of an outcome that advances U.S. interests beyond what they were at the close of Saddam Hussein’s rule in April of 2003.

She does not see a negotiated settlement as a long term solution in Iraq:

In a negotiated settlement, warring factions agree both to end violence and to become partners in a new government. Although negotiated settlements are the most popular policy option (promising high short-term benefits and low risk), they may not be best if we want a permanent settlement to civil war.

…

A negotiated settlement is what the U.S. has attempted to implement for the last two years in Iraq and it has failed. The process of writing and adopting a constitution and electing a president and parliament were all designed to give each of Iraq’s different communities a say in the government. Although the Kurds and the Shiites fully participated in the process, the Sunnis did not.

…

A key factor in the failure of negotiated settlements has been that both sides maintain a capacity to harm each other by force of arms, and because the fighting has not reached a clear outcome, both sides can claim legitimacy in their pre-cease-fire resort to violence. Negotiated settlements by their very design leave a state’s offices divided, both in terms of physical infrastructure and human capital. … The bottom line is that most often civil wars ended by negotiated settlement re-ignite within five years, often leading to escalated violence and destruction (and not inconsequently increasing levels of authoritarianism). This is Iraq today.

She also does not see partition as a viable option in Iraq:

Theoretically, partition is an ideal way to end a civil war and keep it ended; especially when that violence involves identity groups that live in largely separate enclaves.

…

In effect, Iraq is becoming partitioned today, with the Kurds maintaining their grip on the north and the Sunnis and Shiites consolidating their control over the west and south respectively. The unmixing of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad is only consolidating the populations into concentrated and mutually hostile enclaves. Concentrated enclaves turn out to be one of the most dangerous settlement patterns of ethnic and religious groups in terms of the likelihood of violence and civil war. Think of Chechnya, which continues to fight Russia for independence.

…

Partition of Iraq would work only if two conditions held: (1) the parties were consolidated into internationally recognized states and Iraq’s resources were distributed in a way that made each state economically viable; and (2) the partition into independent states was enforced by a generation of occupation by skilled and politically well-supported troops (preferably Muslims). Given that Iraq’s Sunni minority has been implicated in decades of persecution of both Kurds and Shiites, getting Kurds and Shiites to agree to support creation of a viable Sunni state will be difficult to achieve. Moreover, one can hardly imagine a third party both capable and willing to maintain an occupation of Iraq for twenty years to insure the interests of each of the parties, but this is what would need to be done. … Finally, given the long-standing reluctance of the international community to support partition as a general solution to civil wars, the U.S. is unlikely to find much support for partition from its allies. Regional actors will be even more intransigent: Kurds, for example, currently inhabit four of the region’s states (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey). These bordering states would steadfastly resist the creation of an independent Kurdistan.

She sees victory by one of the warring sides as a more lasting option:

A final option is military victory: one side in civil war – rebels or incumbents – demonstrably defeats the other side by force of arms. Military victory is not only the most common type of civil war outcome historically, but also the one which most often results in enduring peace: military victories are far less likely to break down than are negotiated settlements. 

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The U.S. can choose to support either the Sunnis or Shiites. Supporting either side to achieve victory would be difficult and costly in terms of time, taking as long as a decade to succeed given Iraq’s porous borders and the support each of the sides receives from across those borders.

Supporting one of the two sides in the civil war comes at a cost of tipping the regional balance of power either toward the Arabs or toward Iran.

Finally, she suggests the throwaway option of pulling out of Iraq and letting the chips fall where they may. She also suggests a way that Mr. Bush could walk away and declare victory:

Having gone to Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has discovered that what the people of Iraq wanted most was to be free of Saddam Hussein; but once free (a negative objective), positive objectives varied. The Shiites wanted representation in the control of Iraq commensurate with their population (and many wanted revenge for the persecution they suffered under Sunni rule). The Sunnis wanted to maintain their preferential status. The Kurds wanted their own state. To the extent that the war in Iraq, under U.S. auspices, has become a civil war, the civil war itself represents the success of a U.S. policy of bringing freedom to the people of Iraq.

Although Professor Toft’s listing of the three outcomes of civil wars is sound, she only discusses the three options in the context of an American occupation. She does not discuss fully the throwaway option of an American pullout, and what the three possible outcomes in Iraq then look like. To me, the latter discussion is much more interesting and more relevant since the United States has, dare I say, decided to pull out of Iraq.

I think there is a strong case to be made that the American presence in Iraq is fueling the civil war by delaying its resolution. That is not to say that the United States has effective control of the situation on the ground - it does not, but the presence of American troops gives the respective parties cover to arm and consolidate control of areas of the country. Without a doubt, the American presence guarantees that the Kurds in the north are able to consolidate their hold on Kirkuk and beef up the peshmerga. The American presence also allows the Shia factions to consolidate power in the various arms of the government, especially the security forces. The American forces also act as a buffer between the Shia and the Sunni by providing some measure of protection to the Sunni community to arm and consolidate their power in the western parts of Iraq. The American presence has also allowed the systematic ethnic cleansing of Iraq by Shia, Sunni and the Kurds. The ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad and other parts of the country has now effectively drawn geographical battle lines in Iraq’s civil war. The American presence also holds together a fractious Shia coalition that would otherwise collapse, and probably needs to if Iraq is to survive as a nation.

It seems to me that it is essential that the United States pull out of Iraq. After an American pullout, the Iraqi civil war may start to resolve itself. The Iraqi civil war has regional implications. Those regional forces can, without the constraints of American occupation, begin to pull Iraq toward a resolution.

As cited above, one possible outcome is military victory by one warring side. The conventional wisdom is that if the Americans leave the Shia will prevail in a civil war by virtue of their majority. I do not believe that is likely to occur for three reasons. First, the Sunni Arab countries of the region would see a Shia victory in Iraq as an expansion of Iranian hegemony into Arab territory. Without an American presence, the Sunni Arabs are likely to get significant support from regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. The risk of a regional conflagration is likely to dampen any hopes of a Shia military victory in Iraq. Second, the Shia in Iraq are fractured between pro-Iranian groups such as SCIRI and more nationalistic Shia such as the Sadrists. Moqtada al-Sadr, like his father the Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, represents an Iraqi nationalist Shia movement. Sadr’s Shia movement and the Mahdi Army are likely to come into open conflict with the Iranian backed SCIRI and the Badr Brigade when the American occupation ends. Al Maliki’s Dawa Party sits in the uncomfortable middle between Sadr and SCIRI while being at the mercy of both. With an American exit, the Dawa Party is likely to see its fortunes dwindle. Lastly, the Shia cannot prevail over both the Sunni and the Kurds. Any military victory by the Shia would have to accept an independent state in the Kurdish north.

The other possible outcome of a civil war is partition. However, any partition of Iraq that leaves the Kurds with an oil-rich independent country in the north of Iraq will be fiercely opposed by Turkey, and to a lesser extent by Iran and Syria. Turkey has between 25 to 30 millions Kurds who have been long persecuted. Any Kurdish country to Turkey’s east will endanger Turkish territorial integrity and will be a non-starter. The Sunnis in the west and center of Iraq also cannot form a viable country without having access to the oil rich north and south of Iraq. There is no three country map that can be carved out of Iraq that does not deny one of the group’s much needed oil revenue.

The only remaining outcome for Iraq is then a negotiated settlement. The negotiated settlement may however come after an attempt at all out military victory is fought to a stalemate. The negotiated settlement will happen not because it is the preferred outcome, but because it is the only viable outcome. A negotiated settlement will certainly have to include the major regional players such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. The negotiated settlement will come after realization by the Arab states, and acceptance by Iran, that Iraq is, and historically has been, the Arab bulwark against Persian influence. Iran will find once again that the Iraqi Shia are not Iran’s fifth column in Iraq. An American departure from Iraq will eventually lead to a restoration of the balance of power in the region between the Arabs and the Iranians.

The Kurds of Iraq will once again be denied an independent homeland. But that denial will likely come at a price for Turkey. Turkey may be forced to give autonomy to its Kurds as a condition for Kurdish guarantee of Iraq’s territorial integrity.

The Iraq that is likely to emerge through the meat grinder of civil war will owe its stability to a regional need for stability, not to some gift of freedom given by George W Bush. Ironically, Mr. Bush is likely to see this precarious yet stable Iraq emerge from the ashes of his failed policy. Yet, it will emerge because Mr. Bush will finally have left it alone, and not because of his efforts at playing puppet master to the Arabs.

"Rock The Casbah" is probably the most misunderstood political song of modern times, but like this post it has nothing to do with rock and roll and everything to do with politics and religion…

I don’t often write about Islam directly. The last time I wrote about my views on Islam was over a half a year ago. But I read a post yesterday via Crooks and Liars that I feel I need to address. The post, entitled "Western Muslim Opinion On The War In Iraq", either inadvertently or deliberately puts up the mother of all straw men. The straw man and its attempt to knock it down is in large part the reason we are still in Iraq. We are in Iraq still because for too long the American public has been fed a steady diet of misinformation about the nature of the conflict there - and this post propagates the misinformation.

I am a Muslim, I live in the West, and I have an opinion on the war in Iraq. Given that the title of the post addresses me directly, I feel that I am well positioned to answer it. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I am a Sunni Muslim.

The post, from Eteraz.org, exhorts Muslims to speak out against the methods of Muslims in Iraq:

I have to say, I am severely hurt by what Islam has become in Iraq. In fact, to say that this blatant murdering of civilians by the militants contains any remnants of Islam, is difficult if not impossible. The Islam of the Sunni militants is a theology of anarchy which has no respect for the rules of war, or the values of Islam. The Shi’a themselves are no less. Islam does not stand for total war, but the Sunni and Shi’a militants violate that prescription almost regularly (to the tune of thousands of murders of average Iraqi civilians). We Western Muslims can oppose the American occupation, but we also have to oppose the way the insurgents are brutalizing and defilling life and human dignity.

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The Sunni militants’ version of "insurgency" and "freedomfighting" is non-sensicial; they want not to fight the "occupier" but to kill the occupied. It is the most heinous and disgusting form of "resistance" I have ever seen in my life, or read about. Their strategy is: if we murder enough Iraqi elders, women and children, then the Americans will leave. I beseech Western Muslims to take heed of this. I know you are anti-war, and I know you wish that Americans left Iraq, and I know you think Bush is a liar. I think all these things. But please, for God’s sake, can you at least recognize, that the strategy of "resistance" being employed by the militants is barbaric. I challenge any person to find me any instance in the history of Islam where murdering civilians as a way to resist an opponent was considered legitimate under Islam. There is no such event.

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The "Islamic" thing for the insurgents would be to attack only military targets. If they cannot attack the military targets, then they have lost. These are the rules of Islamic Law. The Shariah doesn’t say that "well, if you can’t attack the military, go ahead and slaughter any one who comes across your way." That’s not Islam. Please recognize that. That’s nihilism. It has no honor. It is not Islamic.

My point is pretty simple: a Muslim that opposes the War in Iraq must also oppose the methods of the insurgents and speak out against them. I don’t care if you think that criticizing the insurgents bolsters the American occupation. If your condemnation of murder is based on political strategy, then I have to say, you need to check your Islam.

The post buys into the meme that Muslims are complicit in the "War on Terror" if somehow they don’t denounce as un-Islamic actions by those designated as "them" in George W Bush’s "War on Terror" in Iraq. It feeds the notion that the Iraq conflict is a part of the "War on Terror" and the "them" is Islam or a "hijacked" version of Islam.

I do not consider it a duty of Muslims to oppose the violence in Iraq as "un-Islamic". The post lays it out: "a Muslim that opposes the War in Iraq must also oppose the methods of the insurgents and speak out against them." Why? Specifically, why Muslims? Who says that Muslims, just like everyone of good conscience, are not horrified by the violence and killings in Iraq? Who says that Muslims are not opposed to this chaos? I feel no inclination to draw a line here between me, a supposed "good" Muslim, and "them", who are the "bad" Muslims in Iraq. Killers and murderers are just that, as they have been throughout history, and I feel no inclination to give them the mantle of Islam, however "bad" their use of it may be. The War in Iraq was not, and is not, a "Clash of Civilizations", and I feel no desire to label it as such. I feel no desire to conflate Iraqis with al Qaeda as "them" as George W Bush’s "we must fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here" slogan implies. Suggesting this conflict has something to do with "what Islam has become in Iraq", as the writer asserts, is a gross misreading of the conflict in Iraq and is the kind of thinking that fuels the remaining support for George W Bush’s ill-advised policy in Iraq.

Iraq has been, since at least March of this year, in a state of civil war. It is a civil war not over religion, but over tribal and sectarian lines. The Shia-Sunni split in today’s civil war is a convenient shorthand but it is not quite accurate. The writer of the post states:

The Sunni militants’ version of "insurgency" and "freedomfighting" is non-sensicial; they want not to fight the "occupier" but to kill the occupied. It is the most heinous and disgusting form of "resistance" I have ever seen in my life, or read about. Their strategy is: if we murder enough Iraqi elders, women and children, then the Americans will leave.

The killing in Iraq right now has very little to do with "resistance" to the occupier. The killing of Shia by Sunnis is not meant to drive the Americans out of Iraq. The American presence in Iraq currently is almost irrelevant. The American invasion and occupation was the catalyst for the civil war, and to that end, it has succeeded spectacularly in destroying civil society in Iraq.

There are a number of conflicts going on in Iraq. There is first the sectarian civil war between the Shia and Sunni Arab communities. There is the struggle for Kirkuk taking place between the Iraqi Arabs and the Kurds (this in many ways is the most intractable of the conflicts facing Iraq). There is a fight emerging between the multiple factions within the Shia community - this is the bloody struggle between the Sadrists and the SCIRI. The government of al Maliki will be a casualty of the battle within the Shia community. There is an Iraqi nationalist insurgency going on against the Americans. And lastly, there is a battle between foreign Islamists and the American forces in Iraq. So, when Iraqis butcher Iraqi, they are settling their own scores - they are not killing Iraqis to expel the Americans. Only people like Dick Cheney in their narcissistic existence believe that Iraqis kill each other because they don’t like him or his boss.

The current Shia-Sunni violence in Iraq is driven by tribal loyalties. It is a political fight and not a religious one. When civil society broke down in Iraq during the American occupation, the country began to disintegrate along tribal and sectarian lines. The so-called debaathification of Iraq essentially decapitated Iraqi civil society - what was left was chaos.

The Shia-Sunni split in Iraq has in many ways come full circle. The Shia-Sunni split in Islam originated in Iraq. The split started as a political and tribal dispute, not a religious one. The dispute is over who should have succeeded Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, as the first caliph (ruler) of the Muslim community. After Muhammad’s death, his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, was elected the first caliph. However, some in the Muslim community felt that Muhammad’s son-in-law (husband to his daughter Fatima), Ali, should have been the first caliph. These followers of Ali, or Shiat Ali (Shia, for short), are the modern day Shia. The Shia believe that the caliphate should pass down the descendants of Muhammad, not through elected position. It is worth noting, at the risk of blasphemy, that Ali is not a direct descendant of Muhammad.

The dispute, between Shia and Sunni, then is all about who should wield political power. It is a tribal dispute between the tribe of Abu Bakr and the tribe of Ali. Its western analogue is the difference between electing your leader and believing that your leader has been divinely ordained, as in western monarchies.

To round out our foray into Islamic history, I should note that the last descendent of Ali was Muhammad al-Mahdi. He is considered the last of the twelve Imams by the Shia. At the age of four, after inheriting the title of Imam, al-Mahdi disappeared. The Shia believe that al-Mahdi did not die, but was "hidden". When al-Mahdi failed to reappear after a few centuries, the Shia chose to elect a supreme Imam from a council of twelve scholars as their spiritual leader. The Shia believe that the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, will return some time in the future.

So, in modern day Iraq, the fight between the Shia and the Sunni once again is over political power. To put it crudely, the dispute is over which tribe should rule Iraq after Saddam Hussein. The unresolved tribal dispute that has its origins in Islamic history, continues to rage in Iraq now that civil society has collapsed. In this fight, George W Bush’s "War on Terror" is irrelevant.

 [Cross posted on Taylor Marsh]

The verdict is in. Saddam Hussein has been found guilty of crimes against humanity. News flash: the Butcher of Baghdad is guilty of being a butcher.

From the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the United States faced a conundrum. It could either fight the fierce Iraqi nationalism or it could undermine it. However, undermining Iraqi nationalism required a disintegration of Iraqi society into sectarianism. The Bush Administration chose to try to undermine Iraqi nationalism. Weakening Iraqi nationalism meant that it was easier to enter Iraq, however, creating sectarian strife means that it will be harder to leave Iraq. Today’s verdict is another milestone in the dismemberment of Iraqi nationalism.

The Bush Administration has actively pitted the Shia and Sunni against each other in a bid to defeat the insurgency. The ascendancy of the Shia led government in Iraq is no accident - it was anointed by the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration has equipped a massive police force in Iraq comprised largely of the Shia militias (the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade). Faced with a rising insurgency, the Bush Administration has reportedly resurrected the Reagan era "Salvador Option" to try to deal with the Sunni insurgents:

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.

As in El Salvador, the option of pitting one group against another in Iraq has also been a "success". It has transformed the war in Iraq from one that was primarily a nationalist struggle against occuppiers to a much more complicated affair that features a bloody sectarian civil war between Iraqi Shia and Iraqi Sunni. One can argue that this strategy, the "Salvador Option", succeeded spectacularly with the attack on the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra on February 22, 2006. Iraq has been spiraling into chaos ever since.

Iraqi nationalism, within the larger Arab nationalism, has always been a counter-balance to tribal and religious sectarianism. What bound Iraqi Shia and Iraqi Sunni together was that they were Arabs and Iraqis. Iraqi Shia are distinct from Iranian Shia in that the former are Arabs and the latter are Persian. That distinction is significant and has historically been the key to the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. When Iraq and Iran fought a bitter eight year war, Iraqi Shia fought along side their Sunni countrymen against the Iranians.

The rise of the Ba’th movement ( or "renaissance" ) in Iraq and Syria was an attempt to unify the Arab nation under a secular banner. For all its ills, the Ba’th party in Iraq represented the supremacy of Iraqi nationalism over religious sectarianism. The Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq and then later de-ba’thification of Iraqi society unleashed tribal and religious forces that have now led to the near collapse of Iraqi society. Without a strategy to fill the vacuum of the Ba’th party, the Bush Administration opted for sectarian dismemberment of Iraq.

In the context of the ongoing sectarian violence, where Shia and Sunni are butchering each other, the Saddam Hussein trial and verdict will offer the last little push to Iraqi society on its path to chaos. Allowing the Shia leadership of Iraq to try the Sunni leader Saddam Hussein while a sectarian war is raging was a monumentally stupid decision by the Bush Administration. It has compromised the validity of the trial, which should have been held under an international tribunal, and it has poured fuel onto a raging sectarian fire. The guilt of Saddam Hussein was never in doubt. What was on trial was the trial itself. This trial and verdict will further divide Iraq’s Shia and Sunni populations.

Iraq’s future is being sacrificed at the altar of American domestic politics today. Mr. Bush is so intent on capturing the news cycle on the weekend before the mid-term elections that he has sacrificed untold American and Iraqi lives in the process. Vice President Cheney asserts that the violence in Iraq has increased because the insurgents are trying to influence the elections in America. The notion that Shia and Sunni are butchering each other to influence congressional elections in the United States is absurd. Yet, Mr. Cheney and his boss are quite content to add to the sectarian violence in Iraq for their own political purposes.

Mr. Bush has always looked at Iraq through the prism of domestic politics. Today the verdict is in on Saddam Hussein. On Tuesday, the American people will deliver a verdict on Mr. Bush.

[Cross posted on Taylor Marsh]

What do you do when your incompetence leads to failure? You blame others.

What do you do when a recession occurs on your watch? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when your economic policies cause massive job losses? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when a massive surplus leads to a massive deficit? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when you ignore warnings about terrorist attacks on the homeland? You blame the CIA. What do you do when Bin Laden attacks the United States? You blame the Clinton Administration. What do you do when you are caught fiddling while New Orleans drowns? You blame the local government. What do you do when North Korea tests nukes? You blame the Clinton Administration.

What do you do when you fail to provide basic security after destroying a country? You blame the Iraqis.

Faced with chaos in Iraq, Mr. Bush has said that he will not change his strategy in Iraq, although he might change his tactics:

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said that while Bush might change tactics, he would not change his overall strategy.

"He’s not somebody who gets jumpy at polls," Snow said of Bush.

Bush, at a political fundraiser in Washington for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, railed against Democrats who criticize the war. Calling the Democrats the party of "cut and run," Bush said voters need to ask: "Which political party has a strategy for victory in this war on terror?’ "

I am a voter and I am asking myself what exactly Mr. Bush’s strategy is in Iraq. As far as I can tell, his strategy from the start of this fiasco has been, "Blame others."

Blaming the Iraqis is something of a parlor game in Washington. It has been a constant theme in Mr. Bush’s attempts to hide his own incompetence from the rest of us. This week, the "blame the Iraqis" strategy became the backbone of an emerging exit strategy in Iraq. The New York Times is reporting this morning that the administration is drafting a timetable for Iraq and will lay down a set of benchmarks that the Iraqi government will have to meet to quell the violence:

The Bush administration is drafting a timetable for the Iraqi government to address sectarian divisions and assume a larger role in securing the country, senior American officials said.

Details of the blueprint, which is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki before the end of the year and would be carried out over the next year and beyond, are still being devised. But the officials said that for the first time Iraq was likely to be asked to agree to a schedule of specific milestones, like disarming sectarian militias, and to a broad set of other political, economic and military benchmarks intended to stabilize the country.

Although the plan would not threaten Mr. Maliki with a withdrawal of American troops, several officials said the Bush administration would consider changes in military strategy and other penalties if Iraq balked at adopting it or failed to meet critical benchmarks within it.

A senior Pentagon official involved in drafting the blueprint said Iraqi officials were being consulted as the plan evolved and would be invited to sign off on the milestones before the end of the year. But he added, “If the Iraqis fail to come back to us on this, we would have to conduct a reassessment” of the American strategy in Iraq.

Let me be the first to make this rather obvious prediction: The Iraqi government will not be able to meet the benchmarks to stabilize the country.

Already administration gophers like Mr. Rumsfeld have been telling us that the Iraqis are the ones responsible for providing their own security:

Mr. Rumsfeld alluded to discussions about benchmarks on Friday at a Pentagon news conference, noting that Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey “are currently working with the Iraqi government to develop a set of projections as to when they think they can pass off various pieces of responsibility.”

He emphasized the urgency of transferring more security and governing responsibilities to the Iraqis. “It’s their country,” he said. “They’re going to have to govern it, they’re going to have to provide security for it, and they’re going to have to do it sooner rather than later.”

Yes, it is their country. However, we are the ones that invaded and occupied their country. It is quite clear under international law who is responsible for the security of Iraq. According to the Law of Occupation it is the duty of the United States, as the occupying power, to provide security in Iraq. The Law of Occupation is codified by the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Conventions, and the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare.  Article 43 of the Hague Regulations state:

The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

While it may be politically convenient for the Bush Administration to blame the Iraqis for the worsening situation in Iraq, it is the failure of the Bush Administration to provide any semblance of basic security to the occupied country of Iraq that is the primary culprit. Instead of providing security, we were given lighthearted quips when the whole world saw the chaos in Iraq immediate after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.

He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was "part of the price" for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

"Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here."

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.

Stuff happened because Mr. Bush’s ideology only could envision people throwing flowers at our feet.

The Bush administration was ill-prepared for post-war Iraq. They compounded the problem by handing over Iraq to the Iranian-backed SCIRI and the Iranian nurtured al Dawa party. How dense do you have to be to not understand that the platform of a political party named "The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq" might not exactly be in line with the western liberal democracy the neo-con fantasy envisioned? Is it really a surprise that Shia death squads are roaming the country, wearing police uniforms, and massacring Sunnis, and is it really a surprise that Sunni suicide bombers are targeting the Shia?

Is it really a surprise that Mr. Maliki, a hard-line al Dawa leader with a dubious past, would not want to crack down on the militias that are his pillar of support? After all, it was Mr. Maliki’s own party that invented the modern car bombing, that has killed Americans in Kuwait and in Lebanon, and that has now been given control of a country by the historically challenged George W Bush.

So, as we watch George W Bush cut and run from Iraq, we must not forget that we are at this unfortunate situation because of Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived and ill-executed invasion and occupation of Iraq. Mr. Bush can point fingers anywhere and everywhere he chooses, but he only need look in the mirror to find the man responsible for this fiasco.

The "central front" on the War on Terror (more commonly known as the fiasco in Iraq) has been going badly. So, Mr. Bush claimed this week to have opened another front in the War on Terror: Lebanon. Rumor has it that the new front in the War on Terror is not going well either.

Earlier this week after meetings at the Pentagon and State Department, Mr. Bush took out his "War on Terror" brush and once again painted broadly. In his remarks to reporters, he added a new front to his ever-widening war:

We discussed the global war on terror. We discussed the situation on the ground in three fronts of the global war on terror: in Lebanon and Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is probably a matter of time until Mr. Bush adds Syria and Iran to his list of fronts. As long as new fronts continue to be added, he can reasonably argue that the War on Terror is not lost. Perhaps the hope is that Iraq will get lost in an ocean of fronts and utter failure there will not be seen as humiliation.

While the definitions are fiddled with in Washington, the civil war in Iraq rages without pause. While we were away watching the collapse of Ehud Olmert’s political career at the cost of Lebanese and Israeli lives, the cadence of death in Iraq has accelerated. According to the Iraqi Health Ministry, July was the deadliest month in Iraq since George W Bush decided to do a photo op on a tax-payer financed aircraft carrier:

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths last month — 3,438 — is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June, and nearly double the toll of January.

The rising numbers suggest that sectarian violence is spiraling out of control, and they seemed to bolster an assertion many senior Iraqi officials and U.S. military analysts have been making in recent months — that the country is already embroiled in a civil war, not just slipping into one, and that the U.S.-led forces are caught between Sunni Arab guerrillas and Shiite militias

The pace of killing is staggering and is on par with or exceeds the pace of death in other modern civil wars: notably the Lebanese Civil War and the Algerian Civil War. It has now become fashionable in Washington to use the "C" word when talking about Iraq. The shift in rhetoric and direction began in June after the Maliki government began to voice sentiment about an American pullout. It was a sure sign of a parting of the ways between the Iraqis and the Americans. Since that time, U.S. officials have started to edge the rhetoric toward "civil war" - a civil war that arguably began in March of this year. At that time, I wrote these words to mark what I saw as the beginning of the civil war in Iraq:

This week marks the beginning of the Iraqi Civil War. The American mission in Iraq is over. We can either stay and fight everyone, pick sides, or leave. No choice open to America now will improve the situation on the ground.

The events kicked off by the Samarra bombing have now been book-ended by the attack on the mosque in Baghdad. We have entered the fray in a big way with the attack on the mosque. Images of the dead lying in a prayer room in the mosque and reports that the 80-year-old imam of the mosque has also been killed are being beamed continuously to everyone with a TV and electricity in Iraq. The American military’s protestations that the mosque was not entered will fall on deaf ears. We have no credibility there - not only because we are not trusted, but also because we have been unable or unwilling to stop the bloodletting there.

The ingredient missing from Iraq’s slide into civil war was mainstream outrage and anger and an embracing of the sectarian militias as the only guarantors of security. We have, perhaps unwittingly, provided the last piece of the puzzle and now the civil war picture is complete.

In tandem with an admission that Iraq is either sliding into civil war or is in a civil war, there has been a shifting of the blame to the Iraqis for the failure of the Bush Administration’s mission in Iraq. There was always an element of this in the mantra: "We will stand down when the Iraqis stand up." After all if the Iraqis don’t "stand up", can it possibly be the fault of the Bush Administration? Lately, however, the blame potential has been cashed in for large helpings of blame. Last week our man in Baghdad mouthed the "blame the Iraqis" talking points:

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview last week that Iraq’s political leaders have failed to fully use their influence to rein in the soaring violence, and that people associated with the government are stoking the flames of sectarian hatred.

"I think the time has come for these leaders to take responsibility with regards to sectarian violence, to the security of Baghdad at the present time," Khalilzad said.  

Of course the Iraqi leaders should be able to "rein in" sectarian violence with their ill-equipped and ill-trained military forces where 130,000 American soldiers have failed. Even the President let it be known this week that he was disappointed with the Iraqis for failing to join his freedom parade:

“I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally — that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget,” said one person who attended the meeting. “The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”

…

More generally, the participants said, the president expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices the United States had made in Iraq, and was puzzled as to how a recent anti-American rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad could draw such a large crowd. “I do think he was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States,” said another person who attended.

The President’s spokesman later denied that Mr. Bush had misgivings. Nonetheless, the rumor of Presidential disappointment was already laid and a rationale for washing our hands of Iraq had already been articulated.

Although it is politically convenient to blame the Iraqis for this Administration’s failures, it is also demonstrably false. The current sectarian violence is a direct result of the Bush Administration’s failure to secure Iraq after the initial invasion in 2003. Securing Iraq was not an optional part of the war plan - it was a required duty of the United States as the occupying power according to the Law of Occupation as codified by the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare.  Article 43 of the Hague Regulations state:

The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

The United States failed to provide basic security to the civilians in Iraq. No amount of finger pointing will whitewash that fact. The Bush Administration not only failed to protect the Iraqi civilians, it also showed a callous disregard for their plight. As Iraq started to descend into chaos after the American invasion, that bumbling buffoon of a Defense Secretary had this to say:

Declaring that freedom is "untidy," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday the looting in Iraq was a result of "pent-up feelings" of oppression and that it would subside as Iraqis adjusted to life without Saddam Hussein.

He also asserted the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports have indicated and said there was no major crisis in Baghdad, the capital city, which lacks a central governing authority. The looting, he suggested, was "part of the price" for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.

"Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here."

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said.

Civil wars apparently happen too. Especially when those responsible for the protection of the civilian population fail to provide the necessary security.

I would venture that any major American city would descend into chaos if law enforcement decided to take a 3-year holiday and leave the citizens to fend for themselves. I would guess that rather quickly neighborhoods would start taking steps to protect themselves from thieves and other intruders, militias would form and start offering protection at a price to helpless civilians, tribalism would start to take hold, a steady disintegration of civil society would occur.

It may seem easy and convenient to blame the Iraqis for sectarian violence, but this violence became inevitable when this neo-con fantasy of an invasion was set in motion. Ever since this fiasco began, Mr. Bush has been blaming everyone but himself. Earlier this year, he famously and laughably blamed Saddam Hussein for the current violence. Now Mr. Bush’s finger of blame has moved on to the Iraqi leadership and the people. Perhaps it is time to place a mirror in front of Mr. Bush.

Over the weekend Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki offered a national reconciliation plan to the Iraqi National Assembly. The plan offered to the Assembly was lacking some of the more controversial clauses that were part of an earlier draft. Nonetheless the plan signals the beginning of the end of the American occupation of Iraq.

The Prime Minister’s gambit comes a week after his national security advisor floated the idea of a timetable for an American military withdrawal from Iraq. Maliki’s plan highlights the important cross currents in Iraq that the Bush Administration has thus far failed to appreciate or understand. There are three separate wars raging in Iraq. There is a war between the occupying forces and the Iraqi national resistance; there is a war between the United States and the jihadists; and, finally there is a civil war between the Shia, Sunni and Kurds. The United States is fighting only one of these wars - the war against the jihadists.

Maliki’s reconciliation plan aims to end the war against the occupation only. This is the war the United States has been sleepwalking through in its quest to fight the War on Terror on Iraqi soil. The key elements of the national reconciliation plan that address the occupation are:

• A call for a timetable for the withdrawal of all occupying forces
• Release of all security detainees being held by the occupying forces
• Amnesty for resistance forces but not "terrorists" 

These elements of the reconciliation plan have appeal to all major factions in Iraq with the possible exception of the Jihadist foreign fighters. An American withdrawal will take the oxygen out of the Jihadists’ campaign in Iraq. With the Americans gone, the foreign Jihadists become easy targets for native Iraqis and are likely to be driven out rather quickly. With the American withdrawal, Iraq will cease to be a battleground in the war between the United States and the jihadists; a new battleground will undoubtedly be chosen, but at least Iraq will be spared.

A withdrawal of American forces has been the goal of Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurds from the outset. However, they have had differing agendas on when and how the withdrawal should take place. The Sunni have always resisted the Americans because they understood that the longer the Americans stay in Iraq, the more firmly the majority Shia will consolidate their hold on power.

The Shia have used the American occupation as cover to consolidate power. They have very astutely managed to ride the American occupation without losing their political independence. You will note that the spiritual leader of the Shia, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has never once met with any American official - choosing instead to work through intermediaries to influence events. Having now consolidated power, the Shia are ready to remove the "training wheels" by asking the Americans to leave.

The Kurds are the faction in Iraq who can afford to wait the longest for the Americans to leave. However, make no mistake, they certainly want the Americans to leave. They have used the occupation to quietly position their militias around the city of Kirkuk. However, they have made no attempt to take Kirkuk while the Americans are on the ground in Iraq. The Kurds view Kirkuk, with its vast oil wealth, as the future capital of Kurdistan. They will almost certainly take Kirkuk after an American withdrawal from Iraq.

The release of all security detainees being held by American forces is another plank of the plan to end the occupation. Iraqis view these detainees as the resistance and similar to prisoners of war. Thus, they expect that at the end of hostilities, that is, when the Americans withdraw, these prisoners will be released.

The call for amnesty for the Iraqi resistance is perhaps the most controversial element of Maliki’s plan. However, it is a necessary condition for the Iraqis. The earlier draft of the plan made a distinction between "resistance" and "terrorists". This is a crucial distinction for the Iraqis. But the definition of "terrorist" is not the same in Baghdad as it is in Washington. It is clear to the Iraqis that the "resistance" is any Iraqi engaged in attacking American soldiers. To Washington, what Iraqis call the "resistance" are "terrorists". However, when Maliki or the Shia ruling alliance call someone a "terrorist" they are referring to both foreign Jihadists and Sunnis who are engaged in sectarian violence against the Shia. Washington makes no such distinction when it comes to "terrorist"; in Washington, everyone involved in violence in Iraq is a terrorist. When Maliki’s plan calls for offering amnesty to the "resistance" he is aiming to end the occupation, not the civil war. This is an important distinction that the Bush Administration and much of the American press fail to understand.

The American occupation of Iraq was always destined to end. Whether President Bush chooses to "cut and run" or leave at the request of the Iraqis, the occupation by its very nature was always time limited. The Iraqis have always known it. The only unknown was how much havoc it was going to cause Iraqi society. Unfortunately, the more intractable conflict will continue to rage. That is the civil war between the three main factions in Iraq. There is little indication that the civil war is going to subside any time in the future. All indications are that it continues to rage and is likely to get worse. Maliki’s plan, even if it is implemented, will do very little to quell the civil war. The tensions that have been unleashed by the American invasion of Iraq are now set to play themselves out. That tension, manifested in the current Iraqi civil war, has the potential of becoming a regional conflict. If that happens, the legacy of George W Bush will not only be a failed invasion of Iraq but also a destabilization of the entire region.

Dateline Ramadi June 18, 2006 from the Associated Press:

RAMADI, Iraq - Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops set up outposts Sunday in southern parts of Ramadi as part of an operation to establish Iraqi army bases in the country’s largest Sunni Arab city and wrest it away from months of insurgent control.

The United States Military is poised to retake the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi from the Iraqi insurgents. Keeping with the theme of progress this week, the press is dutifully reporting "progress" in the Iraq war.

The White House is busy taking victory laps after the killing of al Zarqawi a week and a half ago. In his latest "Freedom is on the march" tour, the President has snuck into the Green Zone bunker in a display of virtual freedom, Maliki has cracked down in Baghdad for the cameras, and the city of Ramadi is being retaken from the insurgents.

In spite of the PR blitz, the picture in Iraq remains largely the same and is getting steadily worse. The American Embassy in Baghdad, having not received the Karl Rove memo, reports in a cable to Washington that things are going from bad to worse.

The pundits in the press want to hear none of it however. The more interesting news is the bounce President Bush is likely to get in the polls. The more interesting news is how Karl Rove can now use Iraq to bludgeon the Democrats into defeat in November. Well, at least that was the preferred storyline this week until the deaths kept on piling up in Iraq. President Bush’s dead cat bounce in the polls is not translating into progress in Iraq.

So, how do we measure progress in Iraq? At a bare minimum, in a war, one sign that you are winning is defined by how much territory you control. Arguably, the United States and the Iraqi government do not control very much outside the Green Zone in Baghdad and the Kurdish regions. Since Ramadi is in the news now and the press is breathless about the impending violence, it is worth looking at how many times we have taken Ramadi only to lose it again. Surely, if we are doing the same thing over and over again, we are not making progress; we are at best treading water. And given the loss of lives and treasure in recapturing the same city over and over again, we are in fact going backwards, i.e., losing.

Dateline Ramadi December 2, 2005 from the BBC:

US and Iraqi forces have launched a military operation in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, the day after insurgents staged a show of strength in the city.

Dateline Ramadi February 26, 2005 from the BBC:

Reports said three died in a gun battle in Ramadi, as US and Iraqi forces try to clear insurgents from key areas in the so-called Sunni Triangle.

People in Ramadi said there was a prolonged exchange of fire.

Dateline Ramadi July 23, 2004 from the Christian Science Monitor:

RAMADI, IRAQ – Some of the heaviest fighting in months erupted on Wednesday in the troubled city of Ramadi. Throughout the day, the thud of mortars, bombs, and machine-gun fire echoed down desolate streets as insurgents battled hundreds of US Marines.

An estimated 25 insurgents were killed, and 25 people - including two Iraqi police - were detained in a day of clashes, which saw 13 US soldiers lightly wounded in firefights and multiple ambushes.

At sunset, as American helicopters swooped over central Ramadi, a small funeral procession for Iraqis killed in the fighting moved slowly through town. But stores remained locked behind metal gratings and few residents ventured onto streets littered with debris and cratered by bombs.

The pattern in Ramadi, and much of Iraq, has been insurgents fleeing the area as US troops move in. When the troops inevitably leave the insurgents creep back in. After the insurgents come back in, they kill or chase away whoever the US has put in charge:

Large swaths of Ramadi have been in insurgent control for months. Powerful roadside bombings and gunbattles take place every day, confining U.S. patrols to small sections of the city. Prominent tribal leaders who have cooperated with U.S. forces have been assassinated or forced to flee outside the country.

It’s the same story every time. Ramadi is a microcosm of what is happening throughout Iraq. Add to the insurgency the sectarian violence and growing civil war and you have a real quagmire.

This is apparently the "progress" Karl Rove accuses the Democrats of "cutting and running" from. Our Iraq policy is no longer (if it ever was) about winning. It is not even about avoiding defeat. Our Iraq policy is now all about domestic politics. The Republican National Committee has officially dubbed the Democrats’ Iraq policy alternatives as "Cut and Run". Serious policy debate is no longer possible. The RNC political strategy is quite shameless. It will use our troops and the Iraqi people to try to garner enough votes in November to retain control of Congress.

I think the Bush Administration must know by now that they have failed in Iraq. The best thing the United States could do right now for the Iraqi people is to start pulling out. Unfortunately, having lost Iraq, the Administration and its allies are now trying to salvage their political careers. American soldiers and Iraqi citizens are dying in the battle for control of the United States Congress.

So, once more unto the breach. Once more into Ramadi we go.