None of the conflict’s roots have ‘been addressed, much less resolved’

December 5, 2007

Obviously, anyone watching events in Iraq has to be pleased with the military progress. In recent months, there’s been a decline in the number of fatalities, casualties, and bombings, all of which have offered a glimmer of hope after nearly five years of failure, incompetence, and disaster.

But the talk in most conservative circles that the war is effectively over, and that Bush’s “surge” policy has somehow solved Iraq’s problems, is more than just overly optimistic; it’s actually foolish.

The NYT’s Alissa Rubin has a very good piece today explaining the genesis of the encouraging developments, and more importantly, why the military progress can turn on a dime without the original purpose of the surge — political progress.

Officials attribute the relative calm to a huge increase in the number of Sunni Arab rebels who have turned their guns on jihadists instead of American troops; a six-month halt to military action by the militia of a top Shiite leader, Moktada al-Sadr; and the increased number of American troops on the streets here.

They stress that all of these changes can be reversed, and on relatively short notice. The Americans have already started to reduce troop levels and Mr. Sadr, who has only three months to go on his pledge, has issued increasingly bellicose pronouncements recently.

The Sunni insurgents who turned against the jihadists are now expecting to be rewarded with government jobs. Yet, so far, barely 5 percent of the 77,000 Sunni volunteers have been given jobs in the Iraqi security forces, and the bureaucratic wheels have moved excruciatingly slowly despite government pledges to bring more Sunnis in.

Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained the broader dynamic nicely: “The military solution has gained enough peace to last through the U.S. election, but we have a situation that is extremely fragile. None of the violent actors have either been defeated or prevailed, and the political roots of the conflict have not been addressed, much less resolved.”

The point here isn’t to deny the encouraging news. A reduction in violence and bloodshed is clearly a positive sign of conditions in Iraq. Rather, the point is we’re not looking at a new normal — we’re looking at a temporary respite. It’s absurd to think Iraq can just skate along, indefinitely, under the status quo.

Mr. Sadr was able to pull his militias back in large part because his community of poor Shiites was no longer under attack by Sunni militants. But if the broader Sunni population is not integrated into the new Shiite-dominated power structure, it is likely that the old divisions will rapidly resurface as the United States reduces its troop levels. If that happens, extremist Sunnis will renew their assaults on Shiites and Mr. Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia will respond in kind.

The government has a limited amount of time to integrate these formerly renegade Sunnis, said Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni and one of Iraq’s two vice presidents. The men want jobs, respect, and above all a guarantee that they will not be prosecuted for their past activities with the insurgency, he said, a concession that the Shiite majority government has given little indication it will make.

Stay tuned.

“Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni and one of Iraq’s two vice presidents.”

Isn’t he the VP who’s bodyguards where caught with explosives on them, and one of them having the keys of a car rigged with explosives ready to be used?

  • None of the violent actors have either been defeated or prevailed

    Now there is a dangerous idea – none of them are about to be defeated, or to prevail – and as far as I can see, the only way to peace is when they can be brought to accept that.

  • CB

    While it’s polite to take the administration at its publicized word, even if it shifts more than a leaf in running water, and address whether it has met its stated objectives, we ALL know the administration changes the goalposts almost daily, thereby giving lie to the stated objective of the day before. If we accuse Congress of being dupes for believing the Bush propaganda about Iran after he fooled them on Iraq, we shouldn’t be dupes about Bush’s Iraq-objectives propaganda.

    I’ve NEVER thought the Bush administration publicized their actual objective for the invasion of or staying in Iraq, which I believe was to nail down those PSAs for Western oil companies and establish a regional presence that has many effects and consequences, thereby ensuring that American energy interests are firmly entrenched there.

    I’m convinced this is what Cheney’s secret “energy meeting” with US oil giants back in 2001 was all about, laying out the invasion plans and asking for their political support in exchange for the administration’s demand that the Iraqis give the PSAs to Western oil companies.

    So I firmly believe that when they’ve been signed, sealed, and delivered, that’s when Bush will claim the war is won, using whatever justification that can be applied at the time. Then I think the administration will make a grand gesture of “bringing the troops home” while leaving thousands in Iraq to guard US oil interests.

    You and others may not agree, but I see addressing the Bush administration’s claims or justifications for its objectives in Iraq as pure wheel-spinning, and I think that’s what the administration hopes everybody will do, keep busy chewing on what they offer, while the actual story plays out just below the horizon.

  • Puh-lease.

    Does anyone else have a hard time believing that the Iraqis can’t read? That they don’t know the “surge” is unsustainable? They know damn well that we can’t keep pissing our forces away, so they’re just waiting us out.

    Duh.

    I’m sure the Sunnis are preparing for the inevitable when we leave and the Shiites move to consolidate their power. And Iraq’s Sunni neighbors are no doubt pouring arms into Iraq for the coming civil/regional war. This isn’t a powderkeg, it’s a volcano (as Churchill so aptly put it). And wingnut who says otherwise should be encouraged to move there. I hear they’re looking for people at the embassy with the fancy swimming pool.

    What I really love is how “conservatives” keep parroting whatever the latest Bush line is, knowing full well that he’s been wrong about literally every single thing he’s ever said about Iraq. When you ask them if they really believe Bush is telling the truth, they can’t even maintain eye contact. They’re parroting lies, and they know it.

  • At look at this way – what would be the probable scenario if we had pulled troops out before the surge? Answer: an ineffective central government that falls apart during a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. What would be the probably scenario if we pull troops out now? Answer: an ineffective central government that falls apart during a civil war between Sunnis and Shiites. I don’t see how conservatives can say that the surge really improved things but Iraq will still fall apart if we pull our troops.

  • The American public is still under the delusion that Iraq is a nation just like us, rather than a region containing many centuries-old inter- and inter-tribal hatreds within an artificial boundary which also happens to contain a major supply of what we, in our short-sightedness, desperately need, oil.

    I wonder (in the absence of independent reporting) whether the temporary respite is due to our “surge” (which implies increased military presence and activity) to our having hunkered down (i.e., reduced actual military presence and activity). I guess we’ll have to wait for the history books to find out since Democrats in Congress have shown no signs of investigative interest.

  • Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained the broader dynamic nicely: “The military solution has gained enough peace to last through the U.S. election, but we have a situation that is extremely fragile. None of the violent actors have either been defeated or prevailed, and the political roots of the conflict have not been addressed, much less resolved.”

    We have long known that the Bush White House only does politics and not policy. The whole point of the surge very likely was to buy time to find a political solution for the Republican party not the Iraqi people. If BushCo can keep a lid on Iraq until after a Democrat sits in the White House, then,when the shit hits the fan and it eventually will, the great Republican noise machine will spring into action blaming the Democrats for losing Iraq.

    What can the Democrats do to avoid this fate? Any ideas?

  • Our now expected enduring presence in Iraq should have been a wakeup call to the skeptics who refuse to accept that oil and American hegemony were the primary reasons for invading Iraq, but unfortunately that revelation had a pretty minimal effect. And this understanding with Iraq will probably have the force of a treaty, that can’t be undone, which means taxpayers will be supporting an enormous security force for decades to protect the interests of the American petroleum industry. We pay, they profit. Here’s a link for a more detailed explanation than anney’s #3 comment:

    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120507K.shtml

    I don’t know why this view of the invasion is considered so radical and wacky, even by the left. It is the only explanation that makes sense, that explains everything from its inception, and predicts the enduring presence, the permanent bases and the huge embassy. Sure, it’s also likely that Bush is being incredibly stubborn about Iraq for personal reasons – his legacy – but that doesn’t obviate this theory. It’s quite likely, in fact, that Bush doesn’t understand our reasons for being there anymore than we do, that he was sold on it by the real architects of this fiasco just as we were, albeit for different reasons.

  • hark

    That report is dated today but I hadn’t seen it. Thanks for the link.

    I first grew suspicious about the oil factor at the very beginning, when US troops immediately surrounded and protected the oil ministry in Baghdad on their arrival, letting everything else be looted and destroyed. I was sick about the library and the museums housing thousands of years of human history. But I did keep in mind Bush’s assurance that Iraqi oil would pay for the invasion and not cost Americans a penny. I initially thought this might be the actual reason the oil ministry alone was protected. Well, look what the invasion and occupation have cost America in money and human life, much less the Iraqis. Iraqi oil sure hasn’t paid for anything.

    Yet not long after the invasion, I read about the administration’s proposed PSAs for Iraq, close to the time that Cheney’s secret energy task force meeting participants were partially revealed. All this was going on while the suspicion was growing that Iraq didn’t HAVE any WMDs. Yet, the PSAs were pushed by Bremmer from the get-go. To me, it eventually became patently clear what the administration’s ultimate goal was, though the experts do talk about Iraq’s strategic position in the midEast and oil pipelines, as well as the Iranian Bourse and what kind of dollars will be used for the sale and purchase of oil, making the picture a little more complex than just Iraq’s oilfields. But all focused on oil.

    Seems to me it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper for America to buy Iraq’s oil than spend trillions to steal their development rights to it, though the profits would be Iraq’s, not American corporations.

  • Anney and hark are both right, but being right is unlikely to change American foreign policy. The slobbering adulation of the Charles Krauthammers and the David Brookses are less for the turnip at the head of the government as for that government’s unswerving drive to Middle East domination and acquisition. More unfortunately yet – at least in my estimation – a Hillary Clinton presidency would be unlikely to back off much from that goal. The war in Iraq is immensely unpopular, but set against that is the crippling expense that has already been poured into it. Cutting losses and walking away is simply not going to be an option, even if the whole mess could be (rightly) blamed on Bush. The electorate’s anger at being lied into war would quickly turn to anger at the wasted money – with no appreciable return – and speculation on what that money might have bought had it been pressed into service for Americans’ direct benefit.

    No, America will be in Iraq in significant military strength yet awhile, regardless who the next leader is. I think Obama might withdraw quicker, but it’s difficult to predict what he might do once his advisers conferred with him and presented him with the distinct downside that will be the heritage of the president who acknowledges that “victory” in Iraq is – and always was – a pipe dream. The first thoughts of a first-term president are always a second term.

    Meanwhile, the Brookses and Krauthammers and Podhoretzes will continue to exhibit the crazed elation of the martyr.

  • Does the public relations bullying of the Republican Noise Machine have to end all intelligent thought?

    Why does the Left consistently fail to marshal a narrative about Iraq, which takes account of the absolutely terrible shape that country is now in? By almost any measure, Iraq is actually in worse shape than it was under sanctions and Saddam.

    After spending $20 billion of American money on reconstruction projects that did nothing but fuel corruption in the Republican politics and in Iraq, more than a third of Iraqis live on a $1 a day. Electricity, potable water and waste treatment are in desperately short supply, preventing any kind of economic revival.

    Political reconciliation? Give me a break. In a country, where every institution and support of a modern economy and government has been ground to dust by American incompetence and corruption, making nice among the politicians is most unlikely.

    The sheer continuing horror of what Bush has done in Iraq has been disappeared, and the American political process is paralyzed. Iraq cannot be saved, but America might be, if someone started speaking the truth.

  • Mark

    From all indications, I agree that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t back off from midEast domination, and that’s one reason I’d never vote for her, though there are several other reasons, too.

    The electorate’s anger at being lied into war would quickly turn to anger at the wasted money – with no appreciable return – and speculation on what that money might have bought had it been pressed into service for Americans’ direct benefit.

    For years my anger has grown hotter and hotter about the cost of Bush’s war, aside from the death and destruction. So my fantasy grows that the entire administration will be prosecuted for war crimes and all their personal wealth confiscated to apply to the debt the Bush administration has accrued for America before a penny of taxpayer money is applied toward it. I’d like to see them all homeless and wandering the streets of Baghdad begging for food and their lives. Let their vengeful God take care of them… Such evil should not be without severe consequences.

    [I certainly understand the Old Testament Israelites’ prayers for Jehovah to rain down justice and punishment against those who are evil. Too bad it doesn’t happen.]

  • Hey, Anney; personally, I’d like to see the heads of Bush and his crony cabinet on pikes outside the Pentagon. Too bad that won’t happen, either. However, a great deal of information that can no longer be kept secret – or its seekers stonewalled – will be revealed once Bush is no longer president. The big question is whether it will remain unavailable to the public “for the good of the country”. If Bush cannot be prosecuted for war crimes (unlikely, although not impossible), he may have served a greater purpose by ensuring his brother will not be president in 2012, or one of his daughters at some future time.

  • Originally, the whole boondoggle that’s the I-wreck occupation was called Operation Iraq Liberation. But the acronym was too close to the truth, so it was changed to Operation Iraq Freedom

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