So much for the idea of putting Iraq on the campaign backburner

March 30, 2008

The conventional wisdom about the role of the war in Iraq in the presidential campaign now appears to be in its third iteration. In early 2007, we were told Iraq would easily be the most important issue in the ’08 cycle. By early 2008, media coverage of the war had slipped badly, the daily violence on the ground wasn’t quite as horrific, and economic concerns became paramount in the campaign.

And now that Iraqi and Mahdi forces are fighting in Basra, Iraq apparently matters in a campaign context again.

The heavy fighting that broke out last week as Iraqi security forces tried to oust Shiite militias from Basra is reverberating on the presidential campaign trail and posing new challenges and opportunities to the candidates, particularly Senator John McCain. […]

Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has made the Iraq war a centerpiece of his campaign; he rode to success in the primary season partly on his early advocacy of the troop buildup. The battle in Basra broke out as he returned from a trip to Iraq this month, proclaiming that violence there was down and that the troop escalation was working.

Mr. McCain, of Arizona, said he was encouraged that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government had sent its troops to reclaim Basra from the Shiite militias. “I think it’s a sign of the strength of his government,” Mr. McCain said Friday at a stop in Las Vegas.

How anyone, least of all journalists, can continue to take McCain seriously on Iraq remains a mystery. Maliki launching a major offensive for dubious reasons, and then failing, is not a “sign of the strength of his government.” This kind of analysis is more than wrong; it’s silly.

Worse, McCain seriously wants to use the fighting in Basra to argue for a sustained U.S. military presence in Iraq.

The Democrats, who are calling for phased troop withdrawals, are beginning to point to the fighting in Basra as evidence that the American troop buildup has failed to provide stability and political reconciliation — particularly if the fighting leads one militia, the Mahdi Army, to pull out of its cease-fire; that could lead to a new spate of sectarian violence across the country. Some are saying the fighting strengthens their case for troop withdrawals.

But the McCain campaign is hoping to turn that argument on its head, asserting that the battle in Basra shows just how dangerous the situation on the ground in Iraq is. It says this bolsters Mr. McCain’s argument that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to more widespread violence, instability and perhaps even genocide.

“I think that what this demonstrates is that there are very powerful forces that still remain that do not want to see the success of the central government and that would relish the prospect of the American withdrawal so that they could try to fight or shoot their way into power,” said Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign’s senior foreign policy adviser. “Would you rather have the Maliki government in control, or the Iranian-backed special groups in control, or Al Qaeda in control?”

First, as Scheunemann presumably knows, there’s no way on earth al Qaeda in Iraq could take “control” of the country. It is, after all, a small, “fragmented, clandestine, non-Iraqi terrorist organization,” which most Iraqis have already turned against.

Second, the senator’s (and his campaign’s) characterization of the conflict in Basra is simply detached from reality. Like the Bush gang, the McCain gang wants to frame this as some kind of fight between good guys and bad guys. The truth, as Anthony Cordesman, military analyst for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained, is that we’re watching “a power struggle” between rival “Shiite party mafias” for control of the oil-rich south and other Shiite sections of the country.

McCain, in a nutshell, is insisting that U.S. troops stay in Iraq in order to fight in a “mini civil war between competing Shiite groups vying for power” — and that we stick with the side that’s losing on the streets of Basra.

If the Democratic nomination fight could end one of these days, we might even be able to have a substantive debate over Iraq policy, highlighting for voters just what kind of approach McCain prefers. I have a hunch Americans might prefer a different policy.

I posted this link to ongoing McCain fluff by the newspapers on this issue on another thread, but this one is more relevant. See here:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bal-ed.mccain30mar30,0,4592461.story

Money quote:
“But the Arizona Republican’s surprisingly straight talk last week was a public repudiation of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. His sober assessment of the challenges the United States faces in the world in the years ahead should serve the Republican presidential candidate in good stead as he pursues moderates and independents from both political parties.”

Sigh…

  • So much for the idea of putting Iraq on the campaign backburner

    Just because it is on the backburner doesn’t mean it is not cooking;>

  • The Democrats, who are calling for phased troop withdrawals, are beginning to point to the fighting in Basra as evidence that the American troop buildup has failed to provide stability and political reconciliation — particularly if the fighting leads one militia, the Mahdi Army, to pull out of its cease-fire; that could lead to a new spate of sectarian violence across the country. Some are saying the fighting strengthens their case for troop withdrawals.

    Can you say “The Tet Offensive”???

    There were idiots back then, too, who argued that this meant we needed to send another 250,000 troops to “stabilize” the situation.

  • The truth, as Anthony Cordesman, military analyst for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, explained, is that we’re watching “a power struggle” between rival “Shiite party mafias” for control of the oil-rich south and other Shiite sections of the country.

    Not only that, but everything I have read says that the side we’re backing (Maliki) is actually closer to Iran, which makes all of McCain’s war-posturing against the Iranians even more dishonest. Of course he’s a Republican so I guess a foreign policy composed entirely of lies is to be expected.

  • Maliki just gave in to Sadr

    Aide to Iraq’s Sadr: “No handover of arms”
    Sun Mar 30, 2008 9:39am EDT

    NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) – Followers of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr will not hand over their weapons as part of a move to end a week of fighting in Iraq, a top Sadr aide said.

    The aide, Hazem al-Araji, also said that Sadr’s followers had received a guarantee from the government that it would end “random arrests” of Sadr followers.

    “The weapons of the resistance will not be delivered to the Iraqi government,” he told journalists at Sadr’s office in the holy city of Najaf after distributing a statement from Sadr calling on followers to stop fighting.

    Sadr’s statement also called for the government to halt arrests of his followers and implement an amnesty law to free prisoners.

    “We confirm that there were guarantees taken from the Iraqi government to fulfill all the points in this statement. Thus, no more random arrests,” he said.

    The Iraqi government launched a crackdown on Sadr followers in the southern city of Basra last week. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered them to surrender and has offered cash in return for heavy and medium weapons handed over by April 8.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-Iraq/idUSL30162220080330

  • For all of us who’ve been paying better attention than our elected officials, Iraq has become a classic money pit filled with death, destruction and decay, (the 3D, all the way live tragedy this current president initiated under false pretenses).

    To advocate more of the same is foolduggery, and it seems the entire Republican party is just waiting to take on Iran. For Graham to oversimplify the conditions on the ground is unfathomable unless seen in this context: we need to stay to secure the oil so he feels the need to obfuscate the conditions to confuse the American public and further the madness.

    LIndsay Graham, from impeachment in the 90s to hocking for this WH in 2008, hasn’t really provided any good ideas or leadership for us or our nation. -Kevo

  • What Shalimar said.

    In addition, I would note that Da’wa and ISCI are less connected to the Iraqis who are supposed to be the ones we’re supporting in this endeavor, and by throwing our support to the those parties which had the acumen to not boycott the election (and tell us that they will allow continued US presence [i.e., access to oil contracts]) we’ve made someone like al-Sadr the good guy in the minds of many Shi’a who weren’t hiding in Iran [or ‘fighting for Iraqi freedom in the discotheques of Europe’ like our erstwhile allies, the INC] during the dark days of the US sanctioned Saddam regime.

    If we really wanted to reduce al-Sadr’s (or anyone’s) influence, we should start to ostentatiously supporting him.

  • look, i wish the democratic campaign had ended the day after iowa, but it is what it is. still, i do not understand this notion that if only there weren’t an obama-clinton fight, there could be a substantive debate over iraq.

    look, day after day, you document the free ride the media gives mccain on “national security” issues: don’t you read your own material?

  • Adding to Martin’s well said quip…just because it’s on the back burner doesn’t mean that it won’t boil over.

    Does this change Sen Clinton’s withdrawal no matter what mantra?

    Will we ever learn that you can’t fight an insurgency with air power?

    More importantly, will we ever learn that black and white are merely two shades of gray?

    The longer one let’s an insurgency fester, the stronger it becomes…and the weaker the conventional forces arrayed against it get. This is the whole point of insurgent warfare: to slowly wear down the opponent with a thousand tiny cuts. It’s the only way to win when the opponent is much bigger and stronger. At some point, the thousands of cuts weaken the opponent enough to allow offensives like Tet to be successful (even though Tet was not militarily successful in the classical definition).

  • How about we make a deal with the Clintons? Hillary can have her futile battle all the way to the conventions IF she starts hammering McCain on Iraq and continues it for the next five months. How? By asking McCain some questions and insisting on answers:

    What, specifically, is your plan for pacifying Iraq, other than keeping American troops in the crossfire? If the “surge” was supposed to provide “breathing room” for political reconciliation, how can the the
    “surge” be succeeding if there has been no political reconciliation?

    Do you realize the Maliki government is an ally of Iran? If so, why are you supporting it?

    The difference between the “earmark” savings you propose to pay for the Iraq war and the war’s actual cost is hundreds of billions of dollars. How do you propose to make up that shortfall without mortgaging America to China or bankrupting it?

    How do we explain to our children that we poured the wealth of this nation and their future into the sands of Iraq and have nothing to show for it?

    If Clinton (and Obama) are willing to keep asking McCain these questions until he answers them, I’m willing for the endless primary to continue.

  • McCain like Bush is an idiot. Iraq is now costs 4000 dead, 30,000 wounded and $5000 a second.

    This doesn’t even begin to cover what we have done to the people of Iraqi or the rest of the Middle East. We have made far more terrorist that existed prior to Iraq. We have effectively given Iraq to Iran and have only begun to see how this plays out (hint: $4/gal gas is the tip of a huge iceberg heading towards us).

    Just how this helps our country is any way is a mystery to me (and the vast majority of Americans.)

    The worst US foreign policy mistake EVER.

  • “But the McCain campaign is hoping to turn that argument on its head, asserting that the battle in Basra shows just how dangerous the situation on the ground in Iraq is. It says this bolsters Mr. McCain’s argument that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to more widespread violence, instability and perhaps even genocide.”

    What, he thinks that dropping American bombs on a portion of the Iraqi population unwilling to be ruled by collaborationists isn’t a form of genocide?

    We are helping the Iraqi government attack ONE of the militias in Basra, which is taking sides in a Iraqi sub-civil war, and we are attacking the one with less Iranian influence (the Mahdi Army) rather than the one with more Iranian influence (the Badr Brigade) because the leader of the Mahdi Army is an outspoken critic of the U.S. Occupation while the Badrists are perfectly happy to manipulate us into doing their dirty work.

    This whole thing just demonstrates how unfit John McCain is to be president (or a senator). He is either ignorant of what is going on there, and too stupid and lazy to find out, or he is deliberately lying to the American people to conflate our enemies to justify an attack on Iran. Thus he is either a continuation of George W. Bush’s administration…

    … or Dick Cheney’s.

  • Glen said, “The worst US foreign policy mistake EVER”

    Nah, I’d say this is the third worst foreign policy mistake in our nation’s history. The first was to not become a member of the League of Nations. This led to a period of isolationism which led to the US ignoring what was occuring in Germany, Italy, Japan, Ethiopia and Spain. The second worst foreign policy mistake was to not fully implement Wilson’s Fourteen Points and to allow the French and British to harshly punish Germany for WWI. These mistakes led to economic collapse in Germany which then led to the rise of fascism and another, even more bloody, conflict.

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