Send Us Your Tired…

Will we ever get the truth about Iraq?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 — The number of detainees held by the American-led military coalition in Iraq has swelled by 50 percent under the troop increase ordered by President Bush, with the inmate population growing from 16,000 in February to 24,500 today, according to American military officers in Iraq.

Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the minority faction in Iraq that ruled the country under the government of Saddam Hussein, with the other detainees being Shiite Muslims, the officers say.

Of the Sunni detainees, about 1,800 claim allegiance to a group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, military officers said. Another 6,000 identify themselves as takfiris, meaning Muslims who believe some other Muslims are not true believers. Such extremists view Shiite Muslims as heretics.[1]

It looks like our solution to the insurgency is to lock everybody up, as the number of detainees’ increase I think that the warm welcome we have received so far from the Iraqi people will dissipate rather quickly with this news. I find it hard to believe that the only people fighting our troops are the Sunnis, yet they are the majority of the detainee population.

If I didn’t know any better I would make the assumption that we are being the pawns of the Shia majority in rounding up those Sunni troublemakers. While I have no doubt that many of those incarcerated are who they are reported to be, it has been my experience that there are many who are not. Whenever you have military personnel doing policing maneuvers there is always the potential of innocents being included in the roundups. The reason this is important is that there is no true civil court system in place in Iraq and I believe many of those rounded up are turned over to the Iraqi police, who we have documented are rife with sectarianism. This will inevitably lead to torture and abuse for a lot of innocent Sunnis, which in turn will fuel more sectarian violence. It is easy to see how this civil war will continue to feed itself regardless of if we are in the middle or not.

There’s one other thing this administration has neglected to disclose. The majority of detainees’ are not al Qaeda foreign fighters, but in fact Iraqis.

“Interestingly, we’ve found that the vast majority are not inspired by jihad or hate for the coalition or Iraqi government — the vast majority are inspired by money,” said Capt. John Fleming of the Navy, who is spokesman for coalition detainee operations in Iraq.

“The primary motivator is economic — they’re angry men because they don’t have jobs,” he said. “The detainee population is overwhelmingly illiterate and unemployed. Extremists have been very successful at spreading their ideology to economically strapped Iraqis with little to no formal education.”[2]

Not only are they Iraqis, but they are resisting the occupation not on philosophical grounds, nationalist principles, or killing the infidels although I am sure these things play a role. The main reason is money. The majority of insurgents are just poor Iraqis trying to make a buck and their best option, to try and kill Americans. This free the Iraqis from oppression gets better by the day, you couldn’t make this stuff up. We have created the conditions where the best source of some quick cash is planting roadside devices targeted at US troops, is capitalism great or what?

How can we expect our military to combat this? We have placed them in an untenable position that we cannot get them out of, I guess no one in this administration has ever heard of the Powell Doctrine. The more people we detain, the more insurgents we create, the more insurgents we create, the more people we have to detain. This can go on to infinity. No matter how you process this war, it does not end well. There will be no clean break; there will be no victory parades. We just keep digging a bigger and bigger hole. And the best rationale we have for continuing is we don’t want another Vietnam?

The foreign policy wonks still don’t understand how much economics fuel the wars we are prosecuting. Whether it is the poor farmers in Afghanistan harvesting opium or in Columbia harvesting coca in our drug war or the poor Iraqi insurgents trying to survive in our war on terrorism, economics is a driving force. Of course to acknowledge such a fact would remove the smoke screen used to continue these unpopular and ineffective policies. It’s a war of cultures sells better than, it’s a war of the haves versus the have nots.

So send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free and we will imprison them and label them terrorists. Once they’ve been labeled, then we can do what we want to them; they’re terrorists stupid.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/world/middleeast/24cnd-detain.html?hp
[2] Ibid.

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Progress On The Curve

Well, it’s September. The month we’ve all been waiting for. The kids are back in school, the long days of summer are shortening, and the Iraq dog and pony show continues. I am reminded by the changing of the leaves of how often this President has changed the meaning of progress in Iraq. Let’s have a recap of just what exactly progress in Iraq has meant over the last four years, because if you are like me it has been hard to keep track. Under this administration progress has been such an elusive concept to define because every time I think I understand what it means it changes. Here we go I hope you have your scorecards ready.


1) The first use of the term “progress in Iraq” came in June 2003, on June 23rd in a speech President Bush outlined what progress in Iraq would entail.[1]
2) Progress – Free and democratic Iraq with elections.
3) Progress – Restoring Iraq economy and oil revenues.
4) Progress – Iraqi Constitution and Iraqi sovereignty.
5) Progress – Unified central government and reconciliation.
6) Progress – Iraqi government benchmarks.
7) Progress – Secure and stable Baghdad.
8) Progress – Sunni tribal chiefs stop attacking American troops.

So, as you can see progress in Iraq is a very obscure concept, as the years have gone by its meaning has evolved. The question is why has the definition of progress changed? Could it be because every benchmark of progress that this administration has setup has yet to yield any real progress? Let’s look at the record after over four years in Iraq and see how much progress has been achieved.

Free and democratic Iraq with elections: While there were democratic elections, I think anyone would be hard pressed to claim freedom and democracy in Iraq at this time. What the election demonstrated was what the real experts in the region already knew, that the Iraqis would split along sectarian lines in their voting. By voting along these lines instead of unity we have sectarianism, instead of a central government with a popular mandate to govern we have a sectarian government rife with division.

Restoring Iraq economy and oil revenues: The Iraqi economy is in shambles for the Iraqis, however for the American contractors working in Iraq and the corporations doing business in Iraq, it could not be better. Rather than improving the lives of the Iraqis we have improved the lives of our corporations. This is not progress, this is war profiteering. The oil industry is under constant attack and the price and supply of gas in Iraq is outrageous.

Iraqi Constitution and sovereignty: Yes, Iraq does have a Constitution written under our tutelage and representing our values. Does it reflect what the Iraqis want? I happen to believe that it does not and that is why the current government is dysfunctional. We tried to instill western values into their culture rather than conforming our values to their culture, just another display of western arrogance and hegemony towards those heathen Arabs.

Unified central government and national reconciliation: Any thoughts of this being a sign of progress should have been dispelled at the execution of Saddam Hussein. It’s funny how the signs continue to appear that there are problems and yet they continue to be ignored. There has been no national reconciliation, if anything there has been more sectarianism and division. The central government is paralyzed and the local councils feel no loyalty to the central government in Baghdad.
Iraqi government benchmarks: According to the recent GAO report, the Iraqi government has failed to meet 11 of the 18 benchmarks. Remember it was this administration that created and defined these benchmarks, so it is tragic that they are now attempting to back away from these benchmarks as a measuring stick of progress. No matter what your political stripe, I have yet to hear even the wing-nuts proclaim this government as progressing. The PM has stated that he does not feel obligated to meet these arbitrary goals set up by politicians in Washington; he represents the citizens of Iraq.

Secure and stable Baghdad: This of course will depend on who you talk to in order to gauge any progress. If you talk to Senator McCain and his straight talk, you will learn that it is as safe as a market in Indiana. If you talk to the locals, they tend to disagree. Though the deaths of American service personnel have dropped, the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods, the sectarian violence, and the number of attacks outside of Baghdad have not. The surge has managed to relocate the violence out of Baghdad and into the other parts of Iraq. The security has also been increased in the Green Zone, one of the few safe havens in Iraq.

Sunni tribal chiefs stop attacking American troops: In an effort to generate support President Bush has redefined progress in Iraq to getting the Sunni tribal chiefs to accept our money and our guns in exchange for no longer supporting the insurgents, whom they had come to resent. It seems that this administration has finally come to accept its limits in Iraq. The President seems to be moving away from his grandiose vision of Iraq as the beacon of democracy in the Arab world. Right now it seems he would settle for just a little peace of mind, if he finds it it will be short-lived. The Sunni chieftains have shifting loyalties and no loyalty to the central government; so on the one hand Mr. Bush is becoming cozy with the Sunnis and alienating the government. This truce will not last long.

So based on the data it would appear that in all areas being touted at one time or another by this administration as progress, they have failed miserably. But yet they continue to create newer, lower benchmarks, if this were a school in the “No Child Left Behind” program it would be condemned. My fear is that we as a nation are still not that outraged by what is happening, we are still willing to grade this assignment on a curve. Soon, there will be no curve that can measure complete failure.

[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030723-1.html

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Clowns To The Left, Jokers To The Right

There has been a subtle change going on in Iraq for the last couple of months. The change has been so subtle you may have missed it. In an effort to position itself in the event of a withdrawal from Iraq, this administration has been arming the Sunnis as they are also arming the Shiite government. Why would we be arming the Sunnis you might ask, aren’t they suppose to be the insurgents and Baathists? Yes, they are, but in the event that our current policy fails, it seems like the answer will be to arm all parties and keep Iraq destabilized for any foreseeable future.

How could this strategy benefit the Neo-Cons? The administration is convinced and with good reason that Iran is positioning itself to be a major power broker in Iraq whenever we leave. The thought of having another Shia led country in the region under Iranian influence has the Sunni led countries many of whom are our allies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan) a bit nervous.

The strategy appears to work like this; we arm the Saudis and Israel to the teeth and under the guise of arming the loyal tribesmen of Iraq we are arming the local Sunnis. Then of course there are all those missing weapons (190,000), just what a civil war needs is 190,000 unaccounted for weapons. My guess is that the plan is to ensure the Sunnis will be a thorn in the side of any central government until the Neo-Cons can come up with a new strategy or figure out a way to blame the failure on you peace-loving anti-war communists. This is part of the scorched earth fall-back plan, if you can’t win destabilize. Basically you’ll have the Saudis on one side and the Iranians on the other, fighting a proxy war for Iraq on our behalf and with our arms.

How awful it must be when your best strategy is to stoke the fires of sectarianism and arm both sides in a bloody civil war. This of course would prevent al Qaeda from setting up a base of operations and at the same time prevent the Iranians from setting up a client state. Throw into this mix the Kurdish rebels in the north attacking the Turks and you have the recipe for a successful conclusion to the invasion of Iraq. We are going to once again find ourselves in the middle of two warring factions playing both sides against the middle and pretending to be an objective arbitrator.

Now, there is even talk of bringing the ex-Prime Minister Allawi back for a second tour. Mr. Allawi an ex-Baathist and a secular Shia would play the role of strongman to offset the sectarian influence of the current government. The administration is becoming frustrated with the lack of progress of the current government, with many believing that PM al Maliki is too weak and too sectarian to resolve the current stalemate. With the surge in full effect the talk of political breathing room for this current Iraqi government is losing steam. PM al Maliki has made it clear recently in the press that he does not feel bound by any American benchmarks and is attempting to exert some independence from what is perceived as American pressure. Just how long the PM can holdout is up for debate, with defections from his coalition government occurring almost weekly he will be hard pressed to produce enough of a majority to appoint dog catchers in Baghdad let alone attack the issues that are currently dividing the country and fueling the insurgency.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the success or lack of success of the surge and what the ramifications will be in September. One’s position on the surge will of course depend on what that person’s goal happens to be. From a military standpoint the surge has managed to curb some of the violence in Baghdad, but this has only caused the violence to move. It should come as no surprise that increasing the troops would increase the security. I remember at the beginning of this fiasco a certain General Shinseki who stated the following:

Shinseki, who commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, testified in Congress in February 2003 that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with "the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."[1]

So, it was known from the beginning that an increase in troop presence would increase security, but what was the reason for the surge? A military victory was not and is not the purpose of the surge. The surge was to provide cover for the current Iraqi regime to unite behind reconciliation for the entire country. Well, this has been a disaster to all no matter what side of the issue they are on. So how anybody can come in September and claim success will be a mystery to me.

At the current time all we are is a buffer for all sides. We are giving all the players a chance to train and arm themselves for the upcoming battle for Iraq. We are the arms dealer and training facilitator for the Sunnis, Kurds, and the Shiites. Currently, we are showing loyalty to no one beyond our own failed policy. It is no longer about accomplishing the possible; it is about supporting the foolish. We have no one we can trust on any side and we are stuck in the middle of a further escalating crisis.

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[1] http://www.johnkerry.com/2006/11/16/shinseki-was-right-and-other-thoughts-on-iraq

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Armageddon 2

With the growing sentiments in Washington among lawmakers turning away from our continued presence in Iraq building momentum, it appears that the military strategists have been working on exit strategies. It is especially important to consider options as the President continues to play the Armageddon card to use fear tactics to coerce people to continue to support his Iraq policies. Because of my skepticism of this administration, I cannot accept at face value any predictions that they make, no matter how sincere they may appear on the surface.

So what do our brilliant military minds with the help of millions of tax payer dollars predict the outcome of our withdrawal will be? As usual that depends on who you talk to, some tend to side with the end of the world crowd, but many more tend to believe that while it will be bad, it will not be the apocalyptic scenario being bandied around the Beltway.

That was the conclusion reached in recent "war games" exercises conducted for the U.S. military by retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson. "I honestly don't think it will be apocalyptic," said Anderson, who has served in Iraq and now works for a major defense contractor. But "it will be ugly."

However, just as few envisioned the long Iraq war, now in its fifth year, or the many setbacks along the way, there are no firm conclusions regarding the consequences of a reduction in U.S. troops. A senior administration official closely involved in Iraq policy imagines a vast internecine slaughter as Iraq descends into chaos but cautions that it is impossible to know the outcome. "We've got to be very modest about our predictive capabilities," the official said.[1]

The consensus is that Iraq will be divided into the three ethnic groups that now comprise Iraq. We will have the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in the west, and the Shia in the center and south. I listen to these predictions with a grain of salt, remember these are the same guys who predicted that we would be welcomed with garland wreaths, that the insurgency was dead, and that the mission was accomplished.

I have a different take on the outcome of our withdrawal. Now of course for all of us this is conjecture, but for what it’s worth here is my two cents. I think that the government is going to collapse shortly after our departure. This government has shown time and again that it is either incapable or unwilling to protect, govern, or enlist the support of the people. More and more Iraqis believe that this government in particular and politics in general have nothing to do with their day to day survival. An infant government cannot rule without the support of the people. So, the government collapses, then what?

I believe that after some sectarian violence and infighting, Mr. Moktada al-Sadr, the Shite cleric will emerge as the de facto leader of Iraq. Mr. Sadr has already been aligning himself to become the populist leader that the Iraqi people can rally behind. Mr. Sadr has been able to gain traction being on both sides, he appears as an outsider, but uses politics to advance his agenda, he appears as a peaceful man, yet his Sadr Brigade has been carrying out attacks against Sunnis. He already has a reputation for standing up against the Americans and he does not have a clear alliance with Iran.

BAGHDAD, July 18 — After months of lying low, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street while distancing himself from the increasingly unpopular government.

Mr. Sadr and his political allies have largely disengaged from government, contributing to the political paralysis noted in a White House report last week. That outsider status has enhanced Mr. Sadr’s appeal to Iraqis, who consider politics less and less relevant to their daily lives.

Mr. Sadr has been working tirelessly to build support at the grass-roots level, opening storefront offices across Baghdad and southern Iraq that dispense services that are not being provided by the government. In this he seems to be following the model established by Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shiite group, as well as Hamas in Gaza, with entwined social and military wings that serve as a parallel government.[2]

If I were working on the plan after withdrawal, I would be trying to rehabilitate the relationship with Mr. Sadr. He will be one of the main, if not the main player after our withdrawal. Of course our clowns in Washington will find a way to let another opportunity slip away. Once again they will allow short-sightedness and our relationship to Israel to ruin any chance we could have to continue to exert some level of influence in Iraq. Mark my words when this thing goes bad, it will deteriorate quickly. Once we withdrawal there will be a lot of people jockeying for position. My fear is that due to our inaction or maybe by our design we will end up with another Saddam. Another line in the dictator/strongman series that Washington and the Pentagon love to use for just such an emergency. There are many twists and turns waiting to be played out in this plot, but my money is on Mr. Sadr and short of his assassination I think he will be king. It’s good to be king!

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[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071601680_2.html?hpid=topnews

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/world/middleeast/19sadr.html

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