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August 9, 2006
Can We Keep Iraq?
You don't have to be an anti-war moonbat to be taken aback when this came out last week
"I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war," Gen. John Abizaid testified at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.Fueling this possibility, he said, was the combination of "sectarian violence, al Qaeda terrorists, insurgents and Shia militants."
"Failure to apply coordinated regional and international pressure ... will further extremism" and could lead to a widening and more perilous conflict, he said.
The US military says that attacks are up by 40% in the Baghdad area,
Not only that, but attacks are up all across Iraq
"Right now, much like all of Iraq, the attack levels are up," (Maj. Gen. Richard )Zilmer told The Associated Press. "While numbers of attacks are up, the effectiveness, the complexity (of the attacks) has not risen."
Last May I wrote that we had entered Phase IV of the war, one in which we would concentrate on consolidating the government and taking down the militias. I think I was correct about that. The problem is that it is apparent that we should have gone after the militias from the beginning. We underestimated their ability to make trouble, and the support they would receive from Iraqi politicians. As Andy McCarthy relates, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is upset that we are going after Shiite militias.
David Frum, writing on his blog over at National Review, said what many of us are thinking; that moving a few hundred troops into Baghdad is not going to stabilize the situation. We need thousands brought into the country, and the fact is that we don't have the political will to do that. What then, he asks?
Uncontrolled militias (some of them working tacitly with the pro-Iranian Islamists at the Ministry of the Interior) will wage intensifying war against each other.The Sunnis will use random terror: car bombings, suicide bombings, kidnappings and massacres.
The Shiite militias - supported by their friends in the Ministry of the Interior and in the police forces - will respond with increasingly coordinated terror, such as that which killed dozens of Sunnis in the al-Jihad neighborhood on July 9. It is hard to imagine that a few hundred American advisers can put a stop to such atrocities.
As the tide of urban warfare turns in the Shiites' favor, those Sunnis who can flee the city will do so .
Gradually, Baghdad will come to look like Basra, Iraq's Shiite-dominated second city, now effectively ruled by Iranian-backed Shiites with the tacit acquiescence of the British military authorities.
Baghdad - and therefore central Iraq - will in such a case slide after Basra and the south into the unofficial new Iranian empire.
The danger, as Kirk Sowell says to me in a comment on this very problem at ThreatsWatch, is that "the worst case scenario, as I see, is not Iraq as a proxy state, but Iraq as a failed state, since this is possible but the former is not." He goes on to say that Sadr's "only holds sway among a minority of the Shia, both general population and religious leaders." He's probaly right. StrategyPage has said much the same (though I can't find the link just now. Kirk says that he's going to write more about this in future, and I advise everyone to make ThreatsWatch part of your regular reading.
The Bottom Line
al-Qaeda appears to be retreating from Iraq, which is certainly good because it significantly lessens the chance that if we lose the country it turns into the seat of the global caliphate that Osama bin Laden dreams of.
We also have to take care from becomming too gloomy over the current situation, because we know that some editors spike "good news" stories in favor of bad news, and so many military officers returning from Iraq say that the situation is better than it's reported by the msm. Further, as Powerline blog points out, it's not as if Iraq was a peaceful place before OIF.
Nevertheless, the current problems are tribal and ethnic based. The Washington Post, accurately, I think, calls it a "family feud". The power has shifted from the Sunnis to the Shi'a, and the current battles are over the new power structure.
Richard Fernandez sums it up well over at Belmont Club
A realistic assessment should include what has already been gained and what is left to gain. Some people think the Belmont Club is guilty of unwonted optimism simply because it is willing to accept what Zarqawi has practically admitted: that the Sunni insurgency is militarily beaten -- and that the struggle for the political outcome is now underway. And some readers may believe that I've gone all "gloomy" because I think the political outcome still hangs in the balance. But that is nothing more than stating a fact. Yet the essential difference is this: it's in context. Those who have done some rock climbing know that while it is important to grope for the next handhold along the line of climb it is equally important to remember the footholds you have already won. Forget where you are standing and you are lost. Unfortunately, much of the regular media coverage is almost designed to conceal where where we are standing and where we have to go. There is no context, as Bill Roggio once put it on a television interview. For most casual listeners of the news the US is trapped in a featureless and starchy soup, with no beginning or end. The War on Terror becomes portrayed as a shapeless shroud from which it is imperative to escape at all costs.And that's sad because as Baron von Richthofen said, "Those who are afraid to take the next step will have wasted their entire previous journey."
We've beaten the Sunni insurgency. Whether we'll have a satisfactory political outcome is still in question.
Posted by Tom at August 9, 2006 8:12 AM
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Comments
Tom,
I don't think there is any question that the outnumbered Sunni insurgents would ever be able to hold off the Shi’ia militias, especially since so many Shi’ia groups have connections (and support) from Iran. The most important question is reflected in David Frum's thinking: as the Shi’ia ascend in power (with the help of the MOI Islamists, "Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)" militias with ties to Iran, and Sadr's bunch (while they do not have a large following, they do control a portion of Baghdad, i.e 'Sadr City'). Looking to the future, we need to assess where the Iranian backed Shi’ia leadership in Iraq is going tot take the country. I think the big question is if this democratically elected group will use their power to create a state based on Islamic Sha'ria Law (like in Afghanistan or Iran.) Five to tens years, how will this new form of democratic theocracy function in the Middle Eastern region? Unfortunately, it seems logical to me that they will be closely allied with the Iranian Mullahs (you have to admit that even the name SCIRI is a copy of the name of the Iranian 'revolutionary' regime) and their form of puritanical Sha'ria will be close to Iran.
While you discount Sadr's national support, you have to realize that Sadr City (named for his father, a murdered opponent of Saddam) is a Shi'ia slum in Baghdad with over 2 million residents. Imagine trying to police this sector of Baghdad alone. That is like a neighborhood in New York, with 2 million people who are controlled by a local militia and actively kill people of other sects in the rest of the city. Sadr presides over the Medhi army, which gets beaten on the battlefield by the US in open combat, but controls day-to-day affairs and security in this area. The Shi'ia who lived here under Saddam were poor, and now I would bet they are eager for reprisals against Saddam’s kinfolk the Sunni's. The problem with Baghdad is that there is a majority of Sunni there, with pockets of Shi'ia, even though the national percentage of Shi'ia is higher, it is diluted in the capital city. Again, 2 million people in Sadr City, where the Medhi army enforce their own puritanical version of Islamic Sha’ria. To me, this is close to the definition of a failed state. Like Somalia, Baghdad seems like a capital city, which has sectors under control of various militias, not the national government. If they can't control their own capital city, how is this country considered a real and functional state? At this point, I’m not sure we have much control over the situation. The time is coming where the Iraq’s will ‘stand up’ and take control of their country. The question now is, where will they take their country? Will they follow their namesake party, and create an Islamic Republic of Iraq? Or will they teeter off and become some semblance of the stability and liberal society we hoped to create in the Middle East? At this point, I really think it is up to them to decide.
Posted by: jason at August 9, 2006 3:17 PM
Thank you for your comments and information, jason.
It is Iraq turning into another Lebanon (the "failed state" you mention) that I'm most worried about. And you're right, I'm not sure we have that much influence over the situation either.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at August 10, 2006 9:16 PM
Tom,
I think we need to acknowledge upfront that while toppling Saddam Hussain's regime wasn't a difficult task for the American military, creating a democracy in the Arab world is a huge and challenging project. Perhaps creating an Arab-Muslim democracy is the most difficult job American foreign policy has even attempted.
Given that, the Belmont Club is correct. Iraq has come a long way. It held three elections in 2005 and formed a democratic government that genuinely represents all of the main Iraqi factions. Perhaps too genuinely.
Because Fouad Ajami (currently my favorite analysts on Iraq and author of "The Foreigner's Gift: Americans, Arabs and Iraqis in Iraq") has said that the Sunni members of parliament sit in parliament by day and wage sectarian warfare by night. Same for some of the Shia members of parliament.
But still, consider how turbulent the American South was after the American Civil War. It wasn't all peace, love and understanding for blacks in the South. It wasn't for pro-black Northerners either. The KKK was formed and ruthlessly intimidated anyone opposed to Southern White Supremacy. By 1900 the North had for the most part given up on meddling in Southern business. In the 1900 congressional elections not a single black was elected in the South, even though blacks represented near a majority in a few Southern states. This wasn't due to jerrymandering. It was due to widespread voter fraud and terrorism against blacks and their allies.
Back to Iraq. There is a limit to what America's military can do for the development of Iraq's civil and democratic society, especially considering the political debate these days. And Iraq does have 275,000 trained Iraqi troops, if I read Powerline's recent post correctly.
I don't believe that we should cut and run from Iraq. But I do think we have to be realistic about the societ we are dealing with and the neighborhood in which Iraq is located. Perhaps the best contribution the American military could make to Iraqi democracy would be toppling the current regime in Iran, since Iran is stirring up so much trouble in Iraq and since Iran is working on developing nukes, which would certainly make democracy in Iraq a more difficult proposition.
How defiantly would Iraqis resist Iran if Iran were a nuclear power?
Posted by: Mark at August 10, 2006 10:43 PM
