OCR Text |
Show THE ZEPHYR/ APRIL-MAY 2007 IRAQ: WE BROKE IT...NOW WHAT? BY RICHARD LANCE CHRISTIE When advising President Bush on the decision to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, Secretary of State Colin Powell invoked the “Pottery Barn” principle: You break it, you [buy] own it. Well, we broke it. Saddam Hussein’s police state held together a country composed _of rival Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims and Kurds, in the same way that Marshal Tito’s the Wolves: Iraq, a crudely anti-American film showing a group of Turkish Rambos on a rampage against “evil” American soldiers. Another reason for withdrawal: the Sunni v. Shia civil war is a proxy war supported by Shia Iran on the one side and Sunni Saudi Arabia, with collusion from Sunni Jordan dictatorship held together the unnatural state of Yugoslavia, cobbled together out of rival and Egypt, on the other. I think this covert but abundant flow of explosives, arms, money, and jihadist combatants from states in the region makes the Iraq situation non-compara- Slavs, Croats, Albanians, and Montenegrans, among others. ble to the Balkan War, the Phillipine Insurrection, and all the other insurrections cited as After Tito’s death, Yugo- slavia disintegrated into the genocidal Balkan civil war between Croats, Serbs, et al, in which the U.S. intervened through the U.N.. That war was resolved through a negotiated peace treaty which produced separate Balkan nations for each of the major ethnic groups. Why would anyone with a knowledge of history expect that deposing Saddam Hussein would not result in exactly the same scenario: a genocidal civil war between rival religious/ethnic groups once police state repression was removed? Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, compares the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war to the disastrous Allied campaign on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli during World War I, described in the 1926 book Perils of Amateur Strategy. “1 sometimes wonder whether the administration isn’t laying the groundwork for the sequel. It’s that old saying: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it precedent in the history of warfare. It appears to me that the continuing presence of U.S. military forces in strength in Iraq is only capable of maintaining a status quo. I suspect that the Sunni and Shia states acting out their regional power interests in Iraq have carefully created the conflict level which serves their interests best through moderating the flow of support to their agents. Our newest intelligence consensus indicates that further outside support of the civil war in Iraq is unnecessary; it has become self-sustaining and is not amenable to political reconciliation. In February, 2007, the new National Intelligence Estimate representing the consensus sure rhymes a lot.” — = Why would anyone with a knowledge of history expect that deposing Saddam Hussein would not result in exactly the same scenario: a genocidal civil war between rival religious/ethnic groups once police state repression was removed? After “breaking” Iraq, we've been paying for it at $2 billion dollars a day and 100 U.S. troop lives a month, on average. There is a major difference in Iraq relative to the civil war in the former Yugoslavia in the Balkans. In Iraq, we seem to have a proxy war being fought, where the Sunni Saudi Arabians are supporting the Sunni insurgents, and the Shia Iranians are supporting the Shia insurgents. As a professor from the U.S. War College said on National Public Radio, there is no instance in history where an insurgency was ever successfully suppressed when that insurgency was being supplied with arms and warriors by major nations outside the arena of conflict. One side argues we must keep combat troops in Iraq until a stable national government and competent police and military is in place which can keep national order. If we pull out, they fear, Iraq will slide into outright civil war. The nightmare scenario they seek to forestall is this civil war being resolved through the emergence.of one or more Taliban-like radical Muslim theocratic states. Such state(s) would be sitting on top of the world’s second-largest known petroleum reserves. Such state(s) could sponsor international terrorism and destabilize the other Persian Gulf oil states fueled by oil rev- enues: the Taliban on petrochemical steroids. They argue that the lesson from successful suppression of past insurgencies such as the Phillipine Insurrection, Huk Rebellion, and Malayan Emergency is that resolution requires 10-15 years of persistence, adapting tactics, and iron will. CIA’s Michael Hayden: “An al Qaeda victory in Iraq would mean a fundamentalist state that shelters jihadists and serves as a launching pad for terrorist operations throughout the region and against our own homeland.” And unlike what happened after Vietnam, the enemy will “undoubtedly follow America home if we withdraw.” Finally, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi professionals have fled to other countries, a brain drain which will accelerate if we are not committed to remaining until self-governing order in Iraq is achieved. The other side argues that we should pull out our combat troops. They point out that over 80 percent of Iraqis polled want us to leave. In poll after poll, a vast majority of Iraq citizens say they think we are in Iraq as an occupying force to control their oil, and approve of murderous insurgent attacks on U.S. troops. Some analysts have argued that our presence as an occupying force in a nation which has resisted invaders for thousands of years is the mainspring driving the insurgency. If we left, they predict civil violence would virtually collapse because the Iraqis would not put up with it - expelling or killing foreign jihadists - when a “legitimate” foreign target for the violence was no longer present. Our withdrawal from occupation of Iraq would also undercut the resentment which is the main recruiting force for Muslim fundamentalist groups throughout the Middle East, they argue. Indeed, in Turkey which is the most moderate and secular majorityMuslim nation in the Middle East, the most popular movie in late 2006 was Valley of Moab's Oldest Legal Brewery! SA at Meet me at judgment of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, says that the involvement of Iran (or Syria) “is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics.” In other words, interdicting Iranian support of Iraqi militias will not have much effect on sectarian violence at this point. The NIE concludes that, while a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces would “almost certainly” lead to much higher levels of violence, prospects for political reconciliation in Iraq remain low, and Iraqi security forces would be “hard pressed” to take on significantly more security responsibilities. After “breaking” Iraq, we’ve been paying for it at $2 billion dollars a day and-100 U.S. troop lives a month, on average. However, the Bush administration’s Iraq policy at this point seems to be to put broken Iraq back together better than it was when we broke it. Is this possible? What is the most realistic consequence of our remaining in Iraq and attempting to subdue the insurgency through a “troop surge” or any other stratagem, versus our doing a phased withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq? To meaningfully assess this question, we need to review some ill-reported historical background on Iraq, international terrorism, and the Bush administration’s motives for invading Iraq. Failing to follow military doctrine: Mortimer B. Zuckerman writes that “Putting 21,500 more troops into Baghdad may well be repeating the error of under-commitment, which doomed Bush’s Iraq venture in the first place.” According to our War College, the canonical figure for both counterinsurgency and stability operations is 20 security personnel (military and police) per 1,000 citizens to repress an insurgency and maintain order. The 4 million Kurds enjoy stability under 70,000 peshmurga fighters. The remaining 22 million Iragis would require 440,000 security personnel. The U.S. has had 135,000-160,000 troops in Iraq at a given time; there were about 10,000 British and Australian and other coalition troops, and some 60,000 Iraqi security personnel capable to assist. At best, we have had 230,000 security personnel available, yielding the ability to stabilize 11.5 million Veweya icy WIRELESS INTERNET SERVICE McsStiiff's..... Older men declare war. But it is EDDIE ACSTIFFS Restaurant &3 Microbrewery Ae nna eciine nema: Gos the youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation and the sorrow that are the aftermath of war. her ee www.eddiemcstiffs.com 16 © |